RAVAGES OF SMALLPOX, 1X37-1840 



275 



Fig, 81 — Smallpox (from the Dakota calendars) 



lint among the ])as8engers of a steamer' in the Missouri river above 

 Fort Leavenworth, and although every ettort was made to warn the 

 Indiaus by seuding runners in advance, the sickness was conimunicated 

 to tbem. It appeared first among the Mandan about the middle of 

 July, 1S37, aud practically destroyed that tribe, reducing them in a 

 tew weeks from about sixteen hundred to thirty-one souls. Their 

 neighboring and allied tribes, the Arikara and Minitari, were reduced 

 immediately after from about 

 four thousand to about half 

 that number. The artist Catliu 

 gives a melancholy account of 

 the despair and destruction of 

 the ]\Iandan. 



From the Mandan it si^read 

 to the north and west among 

 the Crows, Asiuiboin, and 

 Blaekfeet. Among the last 

 named it is estimated to have destroyed from six to eight thousand 

 (CUirli^ IS). As the plains tribes were then almost unknown to the 

 general government, we tind little of all this in the oflicial reports 

 beyond the mention that over sixty lodges of Yauktonais Dakota— per- 

 haps four hundred persons — died by this disease about the same time 

 (I\ej)ort, 75). In 1838 it reached the Pawnee, being communicated 

 by some Dakota prisoners captured by them in the spring of that year. 

 From the best information it seems probable that at least two thou- 

 sand Pawnee perished ( Clark., 1-1), about double the 

 whole population of the tribe today. It probably 

 continued southward through the Osage until it 

 reached the Kiowa and Comanche the next year, 

 although it is possible that it may have come more 

 directly from the east through the emigrating Chicka- 

 saw, who brought it with them to Indian Territory 

 in the spring of 1838 {Report, 76). We learn ( (h-egtj, fi) 

 that the disease ravaged New Mexico in the spring 

 of ISiO and was again carried east to the frontiers 

 of the United States by the Santa Fe traders. 



SUMMER 1S40 



Fig. 82— Summer 1840- 

 • KecVbluft"Bun dance. 



Oi'iadal Doha K'ddo, " Eed-blutt' sun dance," so 

 called because held at GuadaJ Doha on the north side 

 of the South Canadian, about the mouth of Mustang creek, in the 

 panhandle of Texas. The (red) figure over the medicine lodge is 

 intended to represent the "red bluff." The Red hills on the North 

 Canadian above Fort Keno are called by the same name, but distin- 

 guished by the prefix Sa'kodal, "Cheyenne." 



The prominent event of this summer was the peace made by the 

 Arapaho and Cheyenne with the Kiowa, Comanche, aud Apache — a 



