18 THE AUDUBON BULLE ig 
Where the Elk Teeth 
Came From 
The following charming little episode from Audubon’s trip to Fort Union, was written by 
his granddaughter, Miss Maria R. Audubon, to accompany the elk teeth which she sent 
in 19co as a Christmas offering to my sons, Charles and Henry Towner Deane, then aged 
13 and 10 years. It was made into a little booklet with soft leather covers held together 
with a thong and for a frontispiece had a photograph of a group of five elk. 
—RurtHveN DEANE. 
Blackfoot Indian Princess. It is made of finely dressed antelope 
skin, cut into fringe around the bottom, and embroidered with 
opaque white beads and bright with squares of scarlet cloth, while 
round the neck and shoulders it is heavy with big blue and white glass 
beads as large as peas. But its most valuable decoration is just below 
these beads. There, fastened on with slender thongs of skin, hung a close 
row of ivory-white elk teeth, rounded and glossy with use. To make this 
fringe the teeth of fifty-six elk were used, and the robe with the leggings, 
also of antelope skin fringed and beaded, but with no teeth, was worth 
thirty horses. 
For years this Indian robe has been a treasured possession of those 
who still own it, and now how did it come to them from the far away 
prairies and hills where once dwelt the powerful tribe of the Blackfeet? 
Many, many years ago, there were no railroads in our western lands, 
indeed, very few anywhere, and except for a few forts with a handful of 
soldiers and fur-traders, the Indians, the buffalo, the elk, the antelope, 
the wolf, and many another wild animal had the country to themselves, 
and above them were many birds some of which have wholly disappeared 
and the rest are fast going, so that we see fewer every year. To these 
distant woods and prairies, to find new species, and to draw and paint 
the beautiful creatures where they lived, Audubon went in 1843, leaving 
his lovely home on the Hudson river, and the wife and sons he loved so 
dearly. He left, too, a daughter-in-law whom he called his “‘Indian 
Queen” because she was tall and straight and slender, with hair as black 
as the raven’s wing and bright dark eyes; and because she loved the 
woods, the water, the clouds, the birds, and the flowers as Audubon did 
himself. 
To get to the hills and plains where he wished to be, Audubon went to 
St. Louis, and then in a little flat-bottomed steamboat belonging to the 
fur company, up the Missouri river, a wild stream then, with few houses 
or white people to be seen, but plenty of Indians and the wild things, both 
bird and beast, of which he was in search. After some weeks Audubon 
reached Fort Union, now passed away, and there he stayed all one 
[ THE hall of an old house in the country there hangs the dress of a 
