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CHAPTER XX 
PLAINS’ TRIBES 
ASSINIBOINE 
1 he plains’ tribe that lived nearest to the Iroquoians during 
the early seventeenth century was the Assiniboine (‘hhe people that 
cook with hot stones”), who had ])robably separated off from the 
Dakota Sioux only a few generations before. They were then hunt- 
ing in the country around the Lake of the Woods and lake Nipigon, 
and, though depending mainly on the chase, gathered large quantities 
of wild rice,^ which they cooked, like their neighbours the Ojibwa, 
in clay pots and vessels of birch bark. I^y the eighteenth century, 
however, most of them had moved away to the northwest,- and 
divided into two branches, one of which lived on the edge of the 
forest northwest of lake \Mnnipeg, in close contact with the Cree, 
while the other centred about the valley of the Assiniboine river 
a little to the southward. 
The acquisition of horses and firearms about the middle of the 
eighteenth century increased the range of their movements, and 
shifted their centres a little farther west. With their Cree allies 
they fought bittei’ly against the Hlackfoot confederacy for the control 
of the Canadian praii ies; ami they waged war on the Sioux, Mandan, 
ami other tribes of the 1 nited States, and the Kootenav and Salish 
tribes across the Rocky mountains, rheir hunting grounds now 
embraced all the prairies of C anaria, and the buffalo provided them 
with tents and daily food. They slaughtered entire herds by driving 
them into pounds, and roasted the meat on sjiits, or boiled it in hide 
bags by means of hot stones;*^ for they had now abandoned the 
clay pots anrl l)irch-bark vessels that had .served their needs wlien 
their home lay farther to the eastward. But constant wars and 
1 “ .lesiiit Rt'Iaf tons,” vol. .>4, p. 193. 
2 Somp mnainod iti Cic Red River di.sirict unlil 1 he end of flip eeiilurv. McDonnell, John- “Some 
Account of the Red River”; in Masson, oji. cit., ser. i, p. 278, 
3 According to Lowie the women always loa.stcil the meat, and onlv tlie men, when travelline alone 
.sometimes boiled it (Lowie. R. IL: '•The A.ssiniboine” ; Anth. Paiiers, Am. Mus. Nat. HLst., 
vol. iv, pf. 1, p. 12 (New \ ork, 1909)). Yet Denijj, in the early nineteenth cenlurv, found Vioiling 
the commoner niethofl, and noticed no dislinclion ba.se<l on sex (Denip, Edwin Tho'mp.son : “ Tndian 
Tribes of the Upper Mi.s.sr.uri” ; edited with notes and biopraiihical sketch bv J. X. B. Hewitt, Forty- 
sixth Ann. Rept., Bur. Am. Elhn., 1928-1929, p. 581 f (Washinpton, 1930j). 
