Bringier on the Region of the Mississippi, ^'e. 31 . 



to have sprung from these, and their language differs very 

 httle from that of the other two. All three tribes abound 

 with tall, well-proportioned, and large men. Both in their 

 physical and moral faculties, they are much superior to all 

 the other tribes of Indians inhabiting North America. 



Amongst the Osages, there are some unsubordinated strag- 

 glers, who now and then commit depredations abroad, but in 

 their villages, as in those of the other two tribes, a stranger 

 is in more security than he would be in any civilized city. 

 Their hospitality exceeds all bounds; they act as if nothing 

 was their own, and the best way to please them, is to refuse 

 nothing from them. When a trader stops his boat on the 

 Arkansas, at the landing place, forty-six miles from their vil- 

 lage, they immediately send people to transport his goods 

 to the village; they unload the boat themselves; station a 

 guard to take care of the empty boat, sometimes for four 

 months; and they pack the goods themselves, disputing the 

 privilege of lodging the people of the boat, whom they di-* 

 vide among them. The merchant is reserved for the princi- 

 pal chief, who gives him a warrior to guard his person and his 

 goods, besides many other attentions, which, with delicate al- 

 though unpolished courtesy, he pays to his guest, who receives 

 every day, a large wooden bowl full of provisions, from every 

 one of the principal cabins of the village. The bowls con- 

 tain smoked pumpkins, cut in shoes and plated together; 

 sweet corn which they boil when green, and dry in the sun ; 

 buffaloe's dry meat, and bear's meat, or fresh venison and 

 turkeys. All the other Indian tribes, except these Osages, 

 aat beaver; the latter have a tradition, by which they pre- 

 tend to have sprung from a female beaver and a snake. 

 They, like most of the other tribes, beheve in the metem- 

 sychosis ; they revere a Supreme Being, whom they call 

 Kaykay, (great Chief,) to whom they always present the 

 best piece in the dish, which they bury in the fire before 

 they eat. They have a great veneration foi- old people, for 

 the use of whom the first choice of their provision is put 

 aside. When the whole village united, surrounds a herd of 

 buffaloes, by making a double fence, with their own bodies, 

 so as to encircle sometimes forty or fifty of these animals,. 

 two or three men on horseback pursue the animals within 

 the circle with their bows and arrows, (for they never kill a 

 ^^^ffalop with a snn,) and when all are killed tbev first select 



