THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 421 



Sioux country; and having been well fortified in all their locations, as in their pres- 

 sent one, by a regular stockado and ditch, they have been able successfully to resist 

 the continual assaults of the Sioux, that numerous tribe, who have been, and still are, 

 endeavoring to effect their entire destruction. I have examined at least fifteen or 

 twenty of their ancient locations on the banks of this river, and can easily discover 

 the regular differences in the ages of these antiquities; and around them all I have 

 found numerous bits of their broken pottery, corresponding with that which they are 

 now manufacturing in great abundance ; and which is certainly made by no other 

 tribe in these regions. These evidences, and others which I shall not take the time 

 to mention in this place, go a great way in my mind towards strengthening the possi- 

 bility of their having moved from the Ohio River, and of their being a remnant of 

 the followers of Madoc. I have much further to trace them yet, however, and shall 

 certainly have more to say on so interesting a subject in future. 



Almost every mile I have advanced on the banks of this river I have met evidences 

 and marks of Indians in some form or other; and they have generally been those of 

 the Sioux, who occupy and own the greater part of this immense region of country. 

 In the latter part of my voyage, however, and of which I have been speaking in the 

 former part of this letter, I met the ancient sites of the O-ma-ha and Ot-to towns, 

 which are easily detected when they are met. In Plate 121, Letter A, is seen the 

 usual mode of the Omahas of depositing their dead in the crotches and on the 

 branches of trees, enveloped in skins, and never without a wooden dish hanging by 

 the head of the corpse ; probably for the purpose of enabling it to dip up water to 

 quench its thirst on the long and tedious journey, which they generally expect to 

 enter on after death. These corpses are so frequent along the banks of the river, that 

 in some places a dozen or more of them may be seen at one view. 



Letter B, in the same plate, shows the customs of the Sioux, which are found in 

 endless nmbers on the river ; and, in fact, through every part of this country. The 

 wigwams of these people are only movable tents, and leave but a temporary mark 

 to be discovered. Their burials, however, are peculiar and lasting remains, which 

 can be long detected. They often deposit their dead on trees, and on scaffolds ; but 

 more generally bury in the tops of bluffs, or near their villages ; when they often split 

 out staves and drive in the ground around the grave, to protect it from the trespass of 

 dogs or wild animals. 



Letter C, same plate, shows the character of Mandan remains that are met with in 

 numerous places on the river. Their mode of resting their dead upon scaffolds is not 

 so peculiar to them as positively to distinguish them from Sioux, who sometimes 

 bury in the same way ; but the excavations for their earth-covered wigwams, which I 

 have said are two feet deep in the ground, with the ends of the decayed timbers re- 

 maining in them, are peculiar and conclusive evidence of their being of Mandan con- 

 struction; and the custom of leaving the skulls bleached upon the ground in circles 

 (as I have formerly described in Plate 48, vol. 1), instead of burying them as the other 

 tribes do, forms also a strong evidence of the fact that they are Mandan remains. 



In most of these sites of their ancient towns, however, I have been unable to find 

 about their burial places these characteristic deposits of the skulls, from which Icon- 

 elude that whenever they deliberately moved to a different region they buried the 

 skulls out of respect to the dead. I found just back of one of these sites of their ancient 

 towns, however, and at least 500 miles below where they now live, the same arrange- 

 ment of skulls as that I described in Plate 48. They had laid so long, however, ex- 

 posed to the weather that they were reduced almost to a powder, except the teeth, 

 which mostly seemed polished and sound as ever. It seems that no human hands had 

 dared to meddle with the dead, and that even their enemies had respected them, for 

 every one— and there were at least two hundred in one circle — had moldered to chalk 

 in its exact relative position as they had been placed in a circle. In this case I am 

 of opinion that the village was besieged by the Sioux and entirely destroyed, or that 

 the Mandans were driven off without the power to stop and bury the bones of their 

 dead.— Pages 9-11, vol.2, Catlin's Eight Years. 



