174 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 77 
sel of their own manufacture.” Later, when he returned to the same 
village, he wrote (p. 158): “I noticed over their fires much larger 
vessels of earthenware than any I had before seen, and was per- 
mitted to examine them. They were sufficiently herdened by the 
fire to cause them to emit a sonorous tone on being struck, and in all 
I observed impressions on the outside seemingly made by wicker 
work. This led me to enquire of them by signs how they were 
made? when a squaw brought a basket, and taking some clay, she 
began to spread it very evenly- within it, shewing me at the same 
time that they were made in that way. From the shape of these 
vessels, they must be under the necessity of burning the basket to . 
disengage them, as they are wider at the bottom than at the top. I 
must here remark, that at the Great Salt Lick, or Saline, about twenty 
miles from the mouth of the Wabash, vast quantities of Indian 
earthenware are found, on which I have observed impressions ex- 
actly similar to those here mentioned. From the situation of these 
heaps of fragments, and their proximity to the salt works, I am 
decidedly of opinion that the Indians practised the art of evaporat- 
ing the brine, to make salt, before the discovery of America.” 
It was the custom of the people of the village to gather in the 
evenings on the tops of their lodges, there to sit and converse, and 
“every now and then the attention of all was attracted by some old 
men who rose up and declaimed aloud, so as to be heard over the 
whole village.” Within the village women were often seen busily 
engaged in dressing buffalo robes, stretched on frames near the 
lodges. Men, playing at various games, or sitting in groups smoking 
and talking; children and dogs innumerable. Such was the appear- 
ance of an Arikara village a little more than a century ago. 
On the 18th of June Bradbury visited the bluffs southwest of 
the village and on one discovered 14 buffalo skulls placed in a row, 
and in describing them said: “The cavities of the eyes and the 
nostrils were filled with a species of artemisia common on the 
prairies, which appears to be a non-descript. On my return I caused 
our interpreter to enquire into the reason for this, and found that it 
was an honour conferred on the buffaloes which they had killed, in 
order to appease their spirits, and prevent them from apprising 
the living buffaloes of the danger they run in approaching the 
neighbourhood.” (Op. cit., p. 125.) 
An interesting observation was made at this time by Brackenridge 
concerning a temporary encampment of a small party of Arikara 
when away from their permanent, well-protected villages. He said 
(op. cit., pp. 254-255) : “To avoid surprise, they always encamp at 
the edge of a wood; and when the party is small, they construct a 
kind of fortress, with wonderful expedition, of billets of wood, ap- 
