INDIAN TRIBES OF THE MISSOURI VALLEY. 381 
to his “ Account of an Expedition from Pittsburg to the Rocky Mountains, in 1819 and 
1820.” 
The most important vocabulary of the language of this tribe ever published may be 
found in the fourth volume of Schooleraft’s great work, which consists of over four hun- 
dred words, prepared by Mr. E. 'T. Denig, an intelligent trader, who resided for many 
years at the junction of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers, as superintendent of Fort 
Union, the trading-post for the Assiniboins. I know of no others that are of sufficient 
importance to mention here. 
We will now continue the history of the Assiniboins as given by the most intelligent 
men of the tribe. ‘The name of this tribe among themselves is Dakota, the same as that 
of the numerous tribes along the Missouri and the sources of the Mississippi, and with 
them it signifies “our people.” By the Dakotas they are called “ Ho’-he,” or Fish-eaters, 
perhaps from the fact that they lived on fish while residing in the British possessions, as 
most of the Indians do in the absence of other food. By the Crees and Chippeways they 
are called A-si-ni-poi’-tuk or Stone Indians,—thence the name of Assiniboins is derived. 
As has been stated, at the earliest date known they roved about the sources of the St. 
Peter’s and Des Moines Rivers, Lac du Diable, Lac qui Parle, &c., and were then joined 
with the Dakotas proper, who inhabited and claimed all the land between the Mississippi 
and Missouri as low down as Big Sioux River, reaching to the source of James River, and 
stretching thence northward as far as Lac du Diable. There were also other bands of 
Dakotas (Tetons), occupying the country west of the Missouri. The number of the As- 
siniboins when they separated could not have been much less than fifteen hundred lodges, 
averaging six souls to a lodge. ‘Their migration has already been alluded to, and the ex- 
tent of territory which they traversed in search of game, in the Hudson’s Bay country, 
along the Saskatchewan, was very great, but at the present time their location is entirely 
different, which we may as well define at this time. 
The northern Assiniboins roam over the country from the west banks of the Saskatche- 
wan and Assiniboin Rivers, in a western direction, to the Woody Mountains, north and 
west amongst some of the small outliers of the Rocky Mountains east of the Missouri, and 
on the banks of the small lakes frequently met with on the plains in that district. They 
consist of about two hundred and fifty or three hundred lodges, and they occasionally 
make peace with some of the most northern bands of Blackfeet, which enables them to 
extend a little farther west, and deal with those Indians, but these peace arrangements 
are usually of short duration, and thus they are, for the most part, limited in their hunt- 
ing operations, and confined to the prairies east and north of the Blackfoot range. The 
remainder of the tribe, now reduced to two hundred and fifty lodges, occupy the district 
defined as follows. Commencing at the mouth of White Earth River on the east, extend- 
