INDIAN TRIBES OF THE MISSOURI VALLEY. 421 
lands is now left, but many traditions are told of their creation, which are reliable only 
as forming a part of their mythology and affording some index to their intellectual status. 
These Indians should not be confounded with the Atsinas or Fall Indians, who inhabit 
the country of the Blackfeet. The languages of the two tribes are entirely distinct, nor 
do we know that they have ever held any association with each other whatever, or ever 
been at war with each other. This is the only tribe in the Northwest to which the name 
Minnitaree is in any way applicable or proper. Lewis and Clarke present us with a very 
complete view of the condition of the stationary tribes of the Upper Missouri as they saw 
them in 1804. In order that we may compare their history and condition at that time 
with their present state, we will quote the following paragraphs from the excellent Journal 
of Lewis and Clarke, which, from the well-known character of the travellers, and their 
advantages for obtaining information, we suppose to be in every way reliable. 
«The villages near which we are established are five in number, and are the residence 
of three distinct nations: the Mandans, the Ahnahaways, and the Minnitarees. The his- 
tory of the Mandans, as we received it from our interpreters, and from the chiefs them- 
selves, and as it is attested by existing monuments, illustrates, more than that of any other 
nation, the unsteady movements and the tottering ‘fortunes of the American nations. 
Within the recollection of living witnesses, the Mandans were settled forty years ago in 
nine villages, the ruins of which we passed about eighty miles below, and situated seven 
on the west and two on the east side of the Missouri. The two finding themselves wasting 
away before the small-pox and the Sioux, united in one village and moved up the river 
opposite to the Ricaras. The same causes reduced the remaining seven to five villages, 
till at length they emigrated in a body to the Ricara nation, where they formed themselves 
into two villages, and joined those of their countrymen who had gone before them. In 
their new residence they were still insecure, and at length the three villages ascended the 
Missouri to their present position. The two who had emigrated together still settled in 
the two villages on the northwest side of the Missouri, while the single village took a 
position on the southeast side. In this situation they were found by those who visited 
them in 1796, since which the two villages have united into one. ‘They are now in two 
villages, one on the southeast of the Missouri, the other on the opposite side, and at the 
distance of three miles across. The first, in an open plain, contains about forty or fifty 
lodges, built in the same way as those of the Ricaras; the second the same number; and 
both may raise about three hundred and fifty men. 
“On the same side of the river, and at the distance of four miles from the lower Mandan 
village, is another, called Mahaha. It is situated on a high plain at the mouth of Knife 
River, and is the residence of the Ahnahaways. This nation, whose name indicates that 
they were ‘ people whose village is on a hill,’ formerly resided on the Missouri, about thirty 
