660 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



leagues from the fort, to which it has also come and a part of th» Emissourites 

 and others, which together, form a village of two or three hundred fires. I have 

 established their fields at four leagues from the fort." 



Perhaps it is unnecessary for me to say that this scheme proved fruitless, and 

 that the Missouris and other tribes soon returned to their own villages. 



M. Bossu, a captain in the French Marines, spent several years in the Mis- 

 sissippi valley, and on his return to France, published at Paris in 1768, his 

 travels in Louisiana, and has the following concerning the Missouris: "Baron 

 Porneuf, who was governor of Fort Orleans, established in that nation, and who 

 knows their genius perfectly well, has informed me that they were formerly very 

 warlike and good, but that the French hunters had corrupted them by their bad 

 conduct. They had made themselves contemptible by frauds in trade, they car- 

 ried off Indian women and performed other irregularities which irritated the Mis- 

 souris against them, and therefore, during M. de Bienville's government, they 

 massacred the Sieur Dubois and the little garrison under his command, and as 

 no soldier escaped, we have never been able to know who was right and who 

 was wrong." At another place the author relates a long story, the substance of 

 which is as follows : A trader from the French settlements deceived the Missouris 

 by making them believe that powder would grow in their fields, thereby inducing 

 them to purchase his stock and sow it for the purpose of raising a crop. The 

 Missouris retaliated for this deceit by taking the goods of the next trader that 

 visited them, without giving any furs in exchange. A subsequent trader turned 

 the whole transaction to his own profit by bringing with him a keg of powdered 

 charcoal and after inducing the chiefs to enter his hut for the purpose of trade^ 

 pretended to become crazy, and threatened to discharge his pistols into the keg 

 of charcoal, which the Indians supposed to be powder, if the friends of the 

 chiefs in the hut with him, did not bring beaver enough to pay for all the goods 

 taken from the other trader. The Missouris supposing their chiefs to be in im- 

 minent danger, complied with the demand and brought in piles of beaver skins, 

 when the crafty trader announced that he had recovered his senses. He then 

 poured water on the charcoal to prevent a recurrence of the danger to his friends 

 in case his senses left him again. By such schemes were the Indians defrauded 

 by the French, who came among them for the purpose of trade. 



The same author gives an instance of what he terms jugglery by one of the 

 Missouris, as follows: .'T will give you another account of the superstition of 

 these people, and of the divine service they give to horrid animals. In 1756 

 there arrived a deputation of Indians at Fort Chartres, of the nation of Missouris. 

 There was an old woman among them who passed for a magician. She wore- 

 around her naked body a living rattlesnake, whose bite is mortal if the remedy is 

 not applied the moment after. This priestess of the devil spoke to the serpent, 

 which seemed to understand what she said, ' I see,' said she, ' thou art weary of 

 staying here, go then, return home, I shall find thee at my return.' The reptile 

 immediately ran into the woods and took the road to the Missouris. 



