396 TRIBES OF THE UPPER MISSOURI [etb. ann. 46 



the latter country their home. One principal incident in their his- 

 tory which they have every reason to remember and by which many 

 of the foregoing data are ascertained is a visitation of the smallpox 

 in 1780 (see Mackenzie's travels), when they occupied the British 

 territory. Even yet there are two or three Indians living who are 

 marked by the disease of that period and which greatly thinned their 

 population, though owing to their being separated through an im- 

 mense district, some bands entirely escaped. Upon the whole it does 

 not appear to have been as destructive as the same disease on the 

 Missouri in 1838, which I will have occasion to mention in its proper 

 place in these pages and which reduced them from 1,200 lodges to 

 about 400 lodges. 



Name and Geographical Position. — The name of the Assiniboin 

 among themselves is Da-co-tah, same as the Sioux, which means " our 

 people." By the Sioux they are called Ho'-hai or "Fish-eaters," 

 perhaps from the fact that they lived principally on fish while on 

 the British grounds, as most of those Indians do. By the Cree 

 and Chippewa they are called As-see-nee-poi-tuc or Stone Indians; 

 hence the English name of Assiniboin arises. As has been stated, 

 at the earliest date known they roved about the head of St. Peters, 

 Des Moines, Lac du Diable, and Lac qui Parle; and they were then 

 joined with the Sioux Indians, who inhabited and claimed all the 

 lands between the Mississippi and the Missouri as low down as Big 

 Sioux River and as high up as the head of Rivier a Jacques, thence 

 northward toward Lac du Diable, other bands of Sioux (Teton) 

 residing west of the Missouri. The number of Assiniboin when they 

 separated must have been at least 1,500 lodges, averaging six souls 

 to a lodge [or about 9,000 persons]. Their migration has been 

 referred to and the extent of land they occupied in the British terri- 

 tory on the Saskatchewan, etc., was very large, but at present their 

 habitat is entirely different, and it may be as well to state it here. 

 The northern Assiniboin, 250 or 300 lodges, rove the country from 

 the west banks of the Saskatchewan, Assiniboin, and Red Rivers 

 in a westward direction to the Woody Mountains north and west 

 among small spurs of the Rocky Mountains east of the Missouri, and 

 among chains of small lakes through this immense region. Occa- 

 sionally making peace with some of the northern bands of Blackfeet 

 enables them to come a little farther west and deal with those Indians, 

 but. these " peaces " being of short duration, they are for the most 

 part limited to the prairies east and north of the Blackfeet range. 

 The rest of the Assiniboin, say 500 to 520 lodges [who may be called 

 the Southern Assiniboin], occupy the following district, viz, com- 

 mencing at the mouth of the White Earth River on the east, extend- 

 ing up that river to its head, thence northwest along the Couteau 



