THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 275 



the present Fort Buford, Mont. This fort was the rallying place for 

 trade and annuities for the Upper Missouri and Yellowstone Indians. 

 It was built by K. McKenzie. It burned down in 1831 and was rebuilt 

 in the same year. This new fort was two hundred and fifty feet square, 

 built of stone, and was inside a stockade. It remained intact (although 

 abandoned by the American Fur Company) until 1868, when it was torn 

 down by order of the commanding officer at Fort Buford (five miles be- 

 low). Fort Buford was built in 1866. 



The fort in which I am residing was built by Mr. McKenzie, who now occupies it. 

 It is the largest and best-built establishment of the kind on the river, being the great 

 or principal headquarters and depot of the fur company's business in this region. A 

 vast stock of goods is kept on hand at this place, and at certain times of the year 

 the numerous outposts concentrate here with the returns of their season's trade, and 

 refit out with a fresh supply of goods to trade with the Indians. 



The site for the fort is well selected, being a beautiful prairie on the bank near the 

 junction of the Missouri with the Yellowstone Rivers, and its inmates and its stores 

 well protected from Indian assaults. 



Mr. McKenzie is a kind-hearted and high-minded Scotchman, and seems to have 

 charge of all the fur company's business in this region, and from this to the Rocky 

 Mountains. He lives in good and comfortable style, inside of the fort, which contains 

 some eight or ten log-houses and stores, and has generally forty or fifty men and one 

 hundred and fifty horses about him. 



He has, with the same spirit of liberality and politeness with which Monsieur Pierre 

 Chouteau treated me on my passage up the river, pronounced me welcome at his table, 

 which groans under the luxuries of the country — with buffalo meat and tongues, with 

 beavers' tails, and marrow-fat ; but sans coffee, sans bread and butter. Good cheer and 

 good living we get at it, however, and good wine also ; for a bottle of madeira and 

 one of excellent port are set in a pail of ice every day and exhausted at dinner. 



At the hospitable board of this gentleman I found also another, who forms a happy 

 companion for mine host ; and whose intellectual and polished society has added not 

 a little to my pleasure and amusement since I arrived here. 



The gentleman of whom I am speaking is an Englishman, by the name of Hamilton, 

 of the most pleasing and entertaining conversation, whose mind seems to be a complete 

 store house of ancient and modern literature and art, and whoso free and familiar 

 acquaintance with the manners and men of his country gives him the stamp of a gen- 

 tleman who has had the curiosity to bring the embellishments of the enlightened 

 world to contrast with the rude and the wild of these remote regions. 



We three bon vivants form the group about the dinner table, of which I have before 

 spoken, and crack our jokes and fun over the bottles of port and madeira which I 

 have named, and a considerable part of which this gentleman has brought with 

 great and precious care from his own country. 



This post is the general rendezvous of a great number of Indian tribes in these re- 

 gions, who are continually concentrating here for the purpose of trade, sometimes 

 coming, the whole tribe together, in a mass. — G. C. 



(See Mr. Catlin's Intinerary for 1832, herein, for a description of the 

 several tribes about Fort Union.) 



Mr. Oatlin reached Fort Union June 25, 1832, in the steamer Yellow- 

 stone. He thus describes the fort : 



The American Fur Company have erected here, for their protection against the 

 savages, a very substantial fort, about three hundred feet square, with bastions armed 

 with ordnance (Plate 3, No. 388) ; and our approach to it under the continued roar 



