450 THE GEOKGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLEKY. 



This beautiful aud costly skin, when its history is known, will furnish a striking 

 proof of the importance which they attach to these propitiatory offerings. But a 

 few weeks since a party of Mandans returned from the mouth of the Yellowstone, 

 two hundred ojiles above, with information that a party of Blackfeet were visiting 

 that place on business with the American Fur Company, and that they had with 

 them a white buffalo robe for sale. This was looked upon as a subject of great impor- 

 tance by the chiefs, and one worthy of public consideration. A white buffalo robe is a 

 great curiosity, even in the country of buffaloes, and will always command an almost 

 incredible j)rice from its extreme scarcity ; and then, from its being the most costly 

 article of traffic in these regions, it is usually converted into a sacrifice, being offered 

 to the Great Spirit as the most acceptable gift that can be procured. Amongst the 

 vast herds of buffaloes which graze on these boundless prairies there, is not one in a 

 hundred thousand, iierhaps, that is white, aud when such a one is obtained, it is 

 considered great medicine or mystery. 



On the receipt of the intelligence above-mentioned the chiefs convened in council 

 and deliberated on the expediency of procuring th^ white robe from the Blackfeet, and 

 also of appropriating the requisite means and devising the proper mode of procedure 

 for effecting the purchase. At the close of their deliberations, eight men were fitted 

 out on eight of their best horses, who took from the Fur Company's store, on the credit 

 of the chiefs, goods exceeding even the value of their eight horses, aud they started 

 for the mouth of the Yellowstone, where they arrived in due time, aud made the pur- 

 chase by leaving the eight horses and all the goods which they carried, returning on 

 foot to their own village, bringing home with them the white robe, which was looked 

 upon by all eyes of the villagers as a thing that was vastly curious^and containing 

 (as they express' it) something of the Great Spirit. This wonderful anomaly laid 

 several days in the chief's lodge until public curiosity was gratified, and then it was 

 taken by the doctors or high-priests, and with a great deal of form aud mystery con- 

 secrated, and raised on the top of a long j)ole over the medicine-lodge, where it now 

 stands in a group with the others, and will stand as an offering to the Great Spirit 

 until it decays and falls to the ground. 



DRESS OF THE MANDANS. 



The Mandans in many instances dress very neatly, and some of them splendidly. 

 As they are in their native state, their dresses are all of their own manufacture, and, 

 of course, altogethc made of skins of different animals belonging to those regions. 

 There is, certainly, a reigning and striking similarity of costume amongst most of the 

 Northwestern tribes, and I cannot say that the dress of the Mandans is decidedly dis- 

 tinct from that of the Crows or the Blackfeet, the Assiuneboins, or the Sioux ; yet 

 there are modes of stitching or embroidering in every tribe Avhich may at once ena- 

 ble the traveler who is familiar with their modes to detect or distinguish the dress of 

 any tribe. These differences consist generally in the fashions of constructing the 

 head-dress, or of garnishing their dresses with the porcupine quills, which they use 

 in great profusion. 



Amongst so many different and distinct nations, always at war with each other, and 

 knowing nothing at all of each other's languages, and amongst whom fashions in dress 

 seldom if ever change, it may seem somewhat strange that we should find these peo- 

 ple so nearly following or imitating each other in the forms and modes of their dress 

 and ornaments. This must, however, be admitted, and I think may be accounted for 

 in a manner without raising the least argument in favor of the theory of their having 

 all sprung from one stock or one family ; for in their continual warfare, when chiefs 

 or warriors fall, their clothes and w^eapons usually fall into the i^ossession of the vic- 

 tors, who wear them, and the rest of the tribe would naturally more or less often 

 copy from or imitate them ; and so, also, in their repeated councils or treaties of iieace, 

 such articles of dress and other manufnctures are customarily exchanged, which are 



