430 THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 



stout, and think not of me ; I am no lonc^er good for anything." In this Avay they 

 had finished the ceremony of exposing him, and taken their final leave of him. I ad- 

 vanced to the old man, and was undoubtedly the last human being who held converse 

 with him. I sat by the side of him, and though he could not distinctly see me, he 

 shook me heartily by the hand and smiled, evidently aware that I was a white man, 

 and that I sympathized with his inevitable misfortune. I shook hands again with 

 him, and left him, steering my course towards the steamer which was a mile or more 

 from me, and ready to resume her voyage up the Missouri.* 



This cruel custom of exposing their aged people belongs, I think, to all the tribes 

 who roam about the prairies, making severe marches, when such decrepit persons are 

 totally unable to go, unable to ride or to walk, when they have no means of carrying 

 them. It often becomes absolutely necessary in such cases that they should be left ; 

 and they uniformly insist upon it, saying, as this old man did, that they are old and 

 of no further use, that they left their fathers in the same manner, that they wish to 

 die, and their children must not mourn for them. 



AN OVERLAND JOURNEY. 



When above (now) Yankton, Dak,, the steamer Yellowstone, owing- to 

 a fall in the river, was forced to wait for higher water, and Mr. Chouteau 

 sent a land expedition to Fort Pierre (old Fort Pierre); Mr. Catliu went 

 with it. He describes it as follows : 



From the Puncah village our steamer made regular progress from day to day to- 

 wards the mouth of the Teton, from where I am now writing, passing the whole way 

 a country of green fields, that come sloping down to the river on either side, forming 

 the loveliest scenes in the world. 



From dayto day we advanced, opening our eyes to something new and more beauti- 

 ful every hour that we progressed, until at last our boat was aground ; and a day's work 

 of sounding told us at last that there was no possibility of advancing further until 

 there should be a rise in the river to enable the boat to get over the bar. After '^lay- 

 ing in the middle of the river about a week, in this unpromising dilem.ma, Mr. 

 Chouteau started off twenty men on foot, to cross the jDlains for a distance of two 

 hundred miles to Laidlaw's Fort (old Fort Pierre), at the mouth of Teton River. 

 To this expedition I immediately attached myself; and having heard that a numerous 

 party of Sioux were there encamped, and waiting to see the steamer, I packed on the 

 backs, and in the hands of several of the men, such articles for iiainting as I might 

 Avant; canvas, paints, andbrushes, with my sketch-book slung on my back, and my 

 rifle in my hand, and I started oif with them. 



We took leave of our friends on the boat, and, mounting the green bluffs, steert d 

 our course from day to day over a level prairie, without a tree or a bush in sight, to 

 relieve the painful monotony, filling our canteens at the occasional little streams that 

 we passed, kindling our fires with dried buffalo dung, which we collected on the prairie, 

 and stretching our tired limbs on the level turf whenever we were overtaken by 

 night. 



We were six or seven days in performing this march, and it gave me a good oiipor- 

 tunity of testing the muscles of my legs with a number of half-breeds and French- 

 men, whose lives are mostly spent in this way, leading a novice a cruel and almost 

 killing journey. Every rod of our way was over a continuous prairie, with a ver- 

 dant green turf of wild grass of six or eight inches in height ; and most of the way 

 enameled with wild flowers, and filled with a profusion of strawberries. 



* When passing by the site of the Puncah village a few months after this, on my return voyage in 

 Axe fall of 1832, in my canoe, I went ashore with my men, and found the poles and the bulfalo slcin, 

 standing as they were left over the old man's head. The firebrands were lying nearlj' as I had left 

 them, and I found at a few yards distant the skull and others of his bones which had been picked and 

 cleaned by the wolves, which is probably all that any human being can ever know of his final andmel- 

 ancholy fate. 



