EFFECTS OP THE SMALL-POX. 361 



telling them what would be the fatal consequences. The 

 Indians sent back word that their corn was suffering to be 

 worked, and that they would return and face the danger, which 

 they thought was fabulous. Word was again sent them that 

 certain destruction would attend their return ; but it was all in 

 vain, come back they would, and come back they did, and the 

 plague began in its most malignant form, their habits and 

 improper food making them a ready prey, and a few hours 

 sometimes terminating the loathsome disease by death. 



" The Mandans were enraged because at first it was confined 

 to them, and they supposed the whites had caused it, and saved 

 themselves and the Eecarees from the pestilence; and they 

 threatened the lives of all the former, supposing they had a 

 medicine to prevent it, which they would not give them. But 

 by-and-by Eecarees and whites died also ; the disease increased 

 in malignity — hundreds died daily, and their bodies were thrown 

 beneath the bluffs, and created an intolerable stench, and added 

 to its fatalness. Men shot each other when they found they 

 were attacked : one man killed his wife and children, and then 

 loaded his gun and placing the muzzle in his mouth, touched 

 the trigger with his toe and blew out his own brains. One young 

 chief made his friends dig a grave for him, and putting on his 

 war-robes, he tottered out to it, singing his death-song, and 

 jumping in, cut his body nearly in two with a knife, and was 

 buried there ; and others committed suicide after they were 

 attacked, rather than die of the loathsome disease. The annals 

 of pestilence do not furnish another such example of horrors, 

 or where the mortality was so great in proportion to the popula- 

 tion : of the once powerful tribe of Mandans only twenty-seven 

 persons remained, and one hundred and fifty thousand 

 persons perished, and the details are too horrible to relate. 

 Added to this, the few whites were alarmed lest the Indians 

 should massacre them as the cause of the evil. One influ- 

 ential chief attempted to instigate the Indians to kill all 

 the whites, but he was himself seized and died before his plans 

 were matured ; but in his last moments he confessed his wicked- 

 ness, and expressed sorrow for it, and begged that his body 

 might be laid before the gate of the fort until it was buried, 

 with the superstitious belief that if this were done the white 



