460 THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 



tribe, wliicli happened a short time after I left their country ; and the manner and causes of their 

 misfortune I have explained in the appendix to the second volume of this work, as well as some 

 further considerations of the subject just above named, relative to their early history and the prob- 

 able fate of the followers of Madoc, to which I respectfully refer the reader before he goes further in 

 the body of the work. [See Appendix A, below.] 



Mr. Catlin, in his " Life Amongst the Indians," 1861, pages 140, 141, 

 thus writes of his final leave-taking of the Mandans: 



The last I saw of my friends tlie Mandans was at the shore of the river in front of 

 their village. My canoe and all my packs were brought down in safety to the water's 

 edge, my canoe i)laced in the water — the whole tribe npon the beach ; my friend 

 Mah-to-toh-pa, the Wolf Chief, and the Great Medicine, all successively embraced me 

 in their arms; the warriors and braves shook hands with me, and the women and 

 children saluted me with shouts of farewell ; Batiste and Bozard and myself were 

 again afloat and on our way for Saint Louis. 



At this exciting moment, when we had got too far into the current to stop, and 

 well under way, a gallant young warrior, whom I recognized, followed opposite to 

 us, at the water's edge, and leaning over, tossed safely into the canoe a parcel which 

 he took out from under his robe, and seeing me attempting to unfold it, he waved 

 his hand and shook his head, and made a sign for me to lay it down in the canoe, 

 which I did. All now was done, and we move oif. 



After we had got a mile or so from the village I took'in my paddle and opened tbe 

 parcel by untying many thongs, and, to my great surprise, found the most beautiful 

 pair of leggings which I ever had seen, fringed with a profusion of scalp-locks, and 

 handsomely garnished with porcupine quills. 



These I instantly recognized as belonging to the son of a famous chief, the " Four 

 Men," and the identical pair I had been for some time trying to purchase, and for 

 which I had offered the young man a horse, but got no reply, excepting that, " He 

 could not sell them, as the scalp-locks were so precious as trophies, and his fellow- 

 warriors would laugh at him if he sold them." 



EXTINCTION OF THE MANDANS. — APPENDIX A.* 



From the accounts brought to New York in the fall of 1838, by Messrs. McKenzie, 

 Mitchell, and others, from the Upper Missouri, and with whom I conversed on the 

 subject, it seems that in the summer of that year the small-pox was accidentally in- 

 troduced amongst the Mandans, by the far-traders; and that in the course of two 

 months they all peri8hed,t except some thirty or forty, who were taken as slaves by 

 the Riccareos, an enemy, living two hundred miles below them, and who moved up 

 and took possession of their village soon after their calamity, taking up their resi- 

 dence in it, it being a better built village than their own; and from the Hps of one of 

 the traders, who had more recently arrived from there, I had the following account 

 of the remainiug few, in whose destruction was the final termination of this interest- 

 ing and once numerous tribe. 



The Riccarees, he said, had taken possession of the village after the disease had 

 subsided, and after living some months in it were attacked by a large party of their 

 enemies, the Sioux, and whilst fighting desperately in resistance, in which the Man- 

 dan xirisouers had taken an active part, the latter had concerted a plan for their own 

 destruction, which was effected by their simultaneously running through the j)iquets 

 on to the prairie, calling out to the Sioux (both men and women) to kill them, "that 

 they were Riccaree dogs, that their friends were all dead, and they did not wish to 

 ■ live," — that they here wielded their weapons as desperately as they could, to excite 

 the fury of their enemy, and that they were thus cut to pieces and destroyed. 



* Vol. 2, Catlin's Eight Tears. 



t A few escaped. See page 8(i, heroin. — T. D. 



