514 THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 



for a book. Two hundred miles from the mouth of Yellowstone brought us to the 

 village of the kind and gentlemanly Mandans. With them I lived for some time — 

 was welcomed, taken gracefully by the arm by their plumed dignitaries, and feasted 

 in their hospitable lodges. Much have I already said of these people, and more of them, 

 a great deal, I may say at a future day; but now to our story. As preamble, however, 

 having launched our light canoe at the Mandan village, shook hands with the chiefs 

 and braves, and took the everlasting farewell glance at those models which I wept to 

 turn from, we dipped our paddles, and were again gliding off upon the mighty waters 

 on our way to Saint Louis. We traveled fast, and just as the village of the Mandans 

 and the bold promontory on which it stands were changing to blue and ' dwind- 

 ling into nothing,' we heard the startling yells, and saw in distance behind us the 

 troop that was gaining upon us; their red shoulders were bounding over the grassy 

 bluffs, their hands extended, and robes waving with signals for us to stop. In a few 

 moments they were opposite to us on the bank, and I steered my boat to the shore. 

 They were arranged for my reception, with amazement and orders imperative stamped 

 on every brow. * ■ Mi-ncek-esunk-te-ka' (the Mink), they exclaimed, 'is dying. The 

 picture which you made of her is too much like her; you put so much of her into it 

 that when your boat took it away from our village it drew a part of her life away 

 with it; she is bleeding from her mouth — she is puking up all her blood ; by taking 

 that away you are drawing tho strings out of her heart and they will soon break ; 

 we must take her picture back, and then she will get well. Your medicine is great, it 

 is too great; but we wish you well.' Mr. Kipp, their trader, came with the party and 

 interpreted as above. I unrolled my bundle of portraits, and though I was unwilling 

 to part with it (for she was a beautiful girl), yet I placed it in their hands, telling 

 them that I wished her well, and I was exceedingly glad to get my boat peaceably 

 under way again and into the current, having taken another and everlasting shake 

 of the hands. They rode back at full speed with the portrait, but intelligence which 

 I have since received from there informs me that the girl died, and that I am forever 

 to be considered as the cause of her misfortunes. This is not the story, however, but 

 I will tell it as soon as I can come to it. We dropped off, and down the rolling cur- 

 rent again, from day to day, until at length the curling smoke of the Riccarees an- 

 nounced their village in view before us ! 



" We trembled and quaked, for all boats not stoutly armed steal by them in the 

 dead of night. We muffled our paddles, and instantly dropped under some willows, 

 where we listened to the yelping, barking rabble until sable night had drawn her 

 curtain around (though it was not sable, for the moon arose, to our great mortification 

 and alarm, in full splendor and brightness), when, at eleven o'clock, we put out to 

 the middle of the stream, silenced our paddles, and trusted to the current to waft us 

 by them. We lay close in our boat with a pile of green bushes over us, making us 

 nothing in the world but a floating tree-top. On the bank, in front of the village, 

 was enacting at that moment a scene of the most frightful and thrilling nature. A 

 hundred torches were swung about in all directions, giving us a full view of the group 

 that were assembled, and some fresh scalps were hung on poles, and were then going 

 through the nightly ceremony that is performed about them for a certain number of 

 nights, composed of the frightful and appalling shrieks and yells and gesticulations 

 of the scalp- dance.* 



u In addition to this multitude of demons (as they looked), there were some hun- 

 dreds of cackling women and girls bathing in the river on the edge of a sand-bar at 

 the lower end of the village, at which place the stream drifted our small craft in close 

 to the shore, till the moon lit their shoulders, their foreheads, chins, noses, and they 



* But a fe w weeks before I left the mouth of Yellowstone the news arrived at that place that a 

 party of trappers and traders had burnt two Biccarees to death on the prairies, and M'Kenzie advised 

 me not to stop at the Riccaree village, but to pass them in the night, and after I had got some hun- 

 dreds of miles below them I learned that they were dancing two white men's scalps taken in revenge 

 for that inhuman act. 



