45 



the white man "whose skins were almost white," whom their 

 earliest visitors declare were "a strange people, and half white,' 

 with many "from infancy to manhood and old age, with hair 

 of a bright silverv grey." These Mandans, or as our half- 

 breeds call them, "Mandrills," regarded themselves as not an 

 ancient people in their location on the Missouri. Since Catlin 

 visited them they have nearly all been carried away by small- 

 pox. It does not seem unlikely that they have been the disap- 

 pearing remnant of a race which faded away as did the Hoche- 

 lagans in Montreal before the time of Champlain. It is worthy 

 of remark, at any rate, that in our Northwest mounds we have 

 found among the copper, shell, bone and stone implements and 

 ornaments nothing of European manufacture, which would al- 

 most certainly have been the case had the burials taken place 

 within the last two hundred years, since which time the In- 

 dians from this region have been in the habit of going down 

 to meet the traders at Hudson Bay. And yet it would seem 

 from their not building mounds, but having some of the other 

 characters of the mound builders, that the Mandans are but 

 connected with that race which must be looked upon as ex- 

 inet. The writer was informed by Sir William Dawson that 

 an Indian race further south have a tradition that they inter- 

 married with the extinct mound builders, and that their lan- 

 guage, which is composite, is now being examined to eliminate 

 the mound builders' element and thus we may perhaps hope 

 for something as to this strange race from a philological 

 direction. 



THE SOURIS FORTS. 



The country along the Souris was well known in early 

 fur-trading years for its larsre herds of buffalo. It is believed 

 there was a French Fort at the mouth of the Souris, on its 

 entrance into the Assiniboine, for though there is not yet 

 known an historic record of it, it is declared that in the time 

 of Verandrye this river was " the centre of the establish- 

 ments." We learn that before 1754 there was a French priest 

 at this point, that he had lived there several }'ears as a mis- 

 sionary, and that he had taught the Indians some short prayers 

 in the French language, the whole of which they had not 

 forgotten as vouched for by a fur-trader in 1804. At the 

 beginning of the century the importance as a trading point 

 of the mouth of the Souris river may be seen by the fact that 

 there were here three forts, representing three rival trading 

 movements, the most considerable being Brandon House, be- 

 longing to the Hudson's Bay Company, Assiniboine House,* 

 of the Northwest Fur Company of Montreal, and Fort a la 



*See large Map, Page 24. 



