Villages of the Algonquian, Siouan, and Caddoan Tribes West of the Mississippi Part 13

[Ill.u.s.tration: _a._ Mandan wooden bowl. Marked "Ft. Berthold, Dacotah Ter. Drs. Gray and Matthews." Diameter 7-1/4 inches, depth 2 inches.

(U.S.N.M. 6341)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _b._ Mandan earthenware jar, collected by Drs. Gray and Matthews. (U.S.N.M. 8407)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _c._ Wooden bowl. Marked "Bowl of Mandan Indians, Dakota T. Drs. Gray and Matthews--U. S. A." Diameters 10-3/4 and 9-1/4 inches, depth 3-1/2 inches. (U.S.N.M. 8406)]

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 77 PLATE 42

[Ill.u.s.tration: _a._ Spoon, marked "Buffalo horn spoon, presented by Gen.

T. Duncan." Length about 10 inches. (U.S.N.M. 12259)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _b._ Spoon made of horn of mountain sheep. "Mandan Indians, Dacotah Ter. Drs. Gray and Matthews." Extreme length 16-1/2 inches. (U.S.N.M. 6333)]

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 77 PLATE 43

[Ill.u.s.tration: "MINATARREE VILLAGE"

George Catlin]

At the time of Catlin's and Maximilian's visits to the Mandan the latter were making and using their primitive forms of utensils such as had been in use for generations. Wooden mortars, bowls hollowed out of hard knots, spoons made of the horn of buffalo and mountain sheep, and, most interesting of all, dishes and vessels made of pottery--all these were used in the preparation or serving of food. Some remarkable examples of wooden bowls made by the Mandan are now preserved in the collection of the United States National Museum, Was.h.i.+ngton. One of the most interesting is shown in plate 41, _c_ (U.S.N.M. 8406), and another, of simpler form but equally well made, in plate 41, _a_ (U.S.N.M. 6341).

Both examples were evidently quite old even when collected. They are fas.h.i.+oned out of maple knots, worked thin and smooth, and are beautiful specimens. Large spoons, often termed "drinking cups," were, as already mentioned, made of the horns of buffalo and mountain sheep. The former were extensively used by many tribes, and usually resembled the one shown in plate 42, _a_. The spoons made of mountain-sheep horns were often much larger and thinner, of a yellowish hue, and the handles were frequently bent into form or decorated. A very beautiful spoon of this sort is shown in plate 42, _b_. (U.S.N.M. 6333.)

Pottery dishes and vessels, so Catlin wrote, "are a familiar part of the culinary furniture of every Mandan lodge, and are manufactured by the women of this tribe in great quant.i.ties, and modelled into a thousand forms and tastes. They are made by the hands of the women, from a tough black clay, and baked in kilns which are made for the purpose, and are nearly equal in hardness to our own manufacture of pottery; though they have not yet got the art of glazing, which would be to them a most valuable secret. They make them so strong and serviceable, however, that they hang them over the fire as we do our iron pots, and boil their meat in them with perfect success." (Op. cit., p. 116.) Maximilian described the art of pottery making among the Mandan as exactly like that of the two a.s.sociated tribes, the Hidatsa and Arikara. He wrote regarding the three tribes that they "understand the manufacture of earthen pots and vessels, of various forms and sizes. The clay is of a dark slate colour, and burns a yellowish-red, very similar to what is seen in the burnt tops of the Missouri hills. This clay is mixed with flint or granite reduced to powder by the action of fire. The workwoman forms the hollow inside of the vessel by means of a round stone which she holds in her hand while she works and smooths the outside with a piece of poplar bark. When the pot is made, it is filled and surrounded with dry shavings, and then burnt, when it is ready for use. They know nothing of glazing." (Op. cit., p. 348.) This was probably the simple process of manufacture followed by the widely scattered tribes, and the apparent ease with which the vessels were made accounts for the great quant.i.ties of fragments now discovered scattered over ancient village sites. Two small vessels made by the Mandan, and collected by Dr. Matthews half a century ago, are in the National Museum collection, and one is shown in plate 41, _b_. Very few perfect specimens exist, several being in the collection of the State Historical Society of North Dakota. The specimens in the National Museum are rather small, but some very large vessels were made and used in boiling their food.

Bows and arrows were the princ.i.p.al weapons of the Mandan. The heads of the arrows, at the time of Maximilian's stay among the people, were made of thin bits of iron, although persons then living remembered the use of stone. Lances and clubs were likewise made and used, and when mentioning the latter Maximilian said, "a simple, knotty, wooden club is called mauna-panischa," and gives, on page 390, a woodcut of such a weapon. It is of interest to know that an example of this peculiar form of weapon, which at once suggests the traditional club of Hercules, is preserved in the Museo Kircheriana, in Rome. It is one of four specimens now belonging to the museum which were collected by Maximilian, the other three being a knife sheath, a horse bridle, and a saddle blanket, all being beautifully decorated with colored quillwork. The club is shown in figure 9, after a drawing made for the writer in 1905 by Dr. Paribeni, of the museum. The smaller end is bound or braided with tanned skin, to serve as a handle, and around the upper end of the wrapping is a band of quillwork similar in workmans.h.i.+p to that on the other objects. All are remarkably well preserved, and several specimens in the Ethnological Museum in Florence may have belonged to the Maximilian collection.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 9.--Wooden club.]

The Mandans, like other tribes of the upper Missouri Valley, were very expert in the art of dressing skins, especially those of the buffalo.

They used two forms of implements, one of which is similar to those shown in plate 12, _a_; the second, rather more complicated, is represented in plate 34, _c_. This is a beautiful old specimen now in the National Museum. The handle is formed of a piece of elk antler; the blade is of clear, brownish flint, well chipped. Other similar objects are preserved in the collection.

How fortunate it was that Catlin and Maximilian chose to spend much time among the Mandan during the years 1832, 1833, and 1834. A few years later, in the spring of 1837, the dreaded smallpox swept away the greater part of this most interesting nation, and "when the disease had abated, and when the remnant of this once powerful nation had recovered sufficiently to remove the decaying bodies from their cabins, the total number of grown men was twenty-three, of women forty, and of young persons sixty or seventy. These were all that were left of the eighteen hundred souls that composed the nation prior to the advent of that terrific disease, and even those that recovered were so disfigured as scarcely to be recognized." (Hayden, (1), p. 433.) Soon those who survived deserted their old village near Fort Clark and removed a few miles above, and the town was, about this time, occupied by the Arikara.

It is interesting to know that the small remnant of the Mandan continued to follow their own peculiar customs and to maintain their tribal unity although so reduced in numbers. It will not be necessary in the present sketch to trace the later history of the tribe.

In recent years the State Historical Society of North Dakota has caused surveys to be made of the more important village sites in that State. In addition to the plans of the sites, showing the position of the earth lodges, they have been fortunate in obtaining drawings of the Mandan and Hidatsa villages, made by a Mandan living on the Fort Berthold Reservation. In writing of the picture and plan of the "most important historical site of the Mandan tribe in the state, the one visited and described by Lewis and Clark, Catlin, and Maximilian," Libby said: "The Indian chart and the map of the village as it appears to-day are here shown. It is seen that the two representations are not essentially unlike. The grouping of the houses about a common center, at one side of which is the holy tepee, is the predominating characteristic of each."

The Indian drawing, although crude, shows some details omitted by Catlin in his many sketches; but the map (fig. 10) is of the greatest interest.

It shows the site near Fort Clark as it appeared about the year 1908, and to quote from the description: "In the center of the tepees, on the s.p.a.ce devoted by the old Mandans to the 'big canoe' and cedar post of the 'elder man,' stands now a large tepee (shown in dotted outline) which was placed there by the Arikara who occupied the village after the small-pox scourge of 1837 had killed or driven away the original inhabitants." The structures surrounding the open s.p.a.ce were occupied by the princ.i.p.al men of the village, and the names as given by Libby were secured by him from "Bad Gun, Rus.h.i.+ng War Eagle, son of the Ma-ta-to-pe or Four Bears, whose portrait Catlin painted." In the list of names "Tepee No. 1 was the holy tepee and was also used by Lance Shoulder,"

and "No. 2 was occupied by Four Bears." The list includes fifteen names.

At the time the survey was made the entire ditch could not be traced, but its general course could be followed, thus indicating the approximate boundary of the town, "beyond which only a few tepees are located." (Libby, (1), pp. 498-499.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 10.--Plan of the Mandan village at Fort Clark.]

When it is realized how little is known regarding the arrangement of the many ancient villages which once stood in the country east of the Mississippi, villages which in their time were probably as large and important as those of the Mandan of the last century, it is not possible to overestimate the value of the work of the Historical Society in causing to be made an accurate survey of the sites and in securing descriptions of the villages from some who remember them. A generation later this would not have been possible.

HIDATSA GROUP.

Two tribes are regarded as const.i.tuting this group: The Hidatsa proper, known to the earlier writers as the Minnetarees, and to others as the Gros Ventres of the Missouri; and the Crows. The Hidatsa and the Crows were, until a few generations ago, one people, but trouble developed and the latter moved farther up the Missouri to the Rocky Mountains, and there they were discovered by the early explorers of the region.

The Amahami may have been a distinct tribe, and as such were recognized by Lewis and Clark, but according to their own traditions they, together with the Hidatsa and Crows, once formed a single tribe. Their language differs only slightly from that of the Hidatsa. During the early years of the last century their one village stood at the mouth of Knife River.

Already greatly reduced in numbers, they suffered during the epidemic of 1837, and later the majority of those who had survived became more closely a.s.sociated with the Hidatsa.

HIDATSA.

The Hidatsa, also known as the Minnetarees and designated by some writers the Gros Ventres of the Missouri, a name which must not be confused with Gros Ventres of the Prairie often applied to the Atsina, lived when first known to Europeans near the junction of the Knife and Missouri Rivers, in the eastern part of the present Mercer County, North Dakota. Some are of the belief that it was the Hidatsa and not the Mandan whom the French, under La Verendrye, visited during the autumn and winter of 1738, but in the present sketch the Mandan are accepted as undoubtedly being the tribe at whose villages the French remained.

The Hidatsa villages as seen by Catlin and Maximilian during the years 1832, 1833, and 1834 had probably changed little since the winter of 1804-05, when Lewis and Clark occupied Fort Mandan, their winter quarters, some 8 miles below the mouth of Knife River. Describing the villages, Catlin said the princ.i.p.al one stood on the bank of Knife River and consisted of 40 or 50 earth-covered lodges, each from 40 to 50 feet in diameter, and this town being on an elevated bank overlooked the other two which were on lower ground "and almost lost amidst their numerous corn fields and other profuse vegetation which cover the earth with their luxuriant growth.

"The scenery along the banks of this little river, from village to village, is quite peculiar and curious; rendered extremely so by the continual wild and garrulous groups of men, women, and children, who are wending their way along its winding sh.o.r.es, or das.h.i.+ng and plunging through its blue waves, enjoying the luxury of swimming, of which both s.e.xes seem to be pa.s.sionately fond. Others are paddling about in their tub-like canoes, made of the skins of buffaloes." (Catlin, (1), I, p.

186.) Among the great collection of Catlin's paintings belonging to the United States National Museum, in Was.h.i.+ngton, is one of the large village. The original painting is reproduced in plate 43. A drawing of the same was shown as plate 70 in Catlin's work cited above. The work is crude but interesting historically, and conveys some idea of the appearance of the town, although in this, as in other paintings by the same artist, the earth lodges are very poorly drawn, failing to show the projection which served as the entrance and having the roofs too rounded and dome-shaped. Bodmer's sketches are far superior.

On June 19, 1833, Maximilian, aboard the steamboat _a.s.siniboin_, left Fort Clark bound for Fort Union at the mouth of the Yellowstone. Soon after pa.s.sing the Mandan village of Ruhptare, so Maximilian wrote: "We saw before us the fine broad mirror of the river, and, at a distance on the southern bank, the red ma.s.s of the clay huts of the lower village of the Manitaries, which we reached in half an hour. The Missouri is joined by the Knife River, on which the three villages of the Manitaries are built. The largest, which is the furthest from the Missouri, is called Elah-Sa (the village of the great willows); the middle one, Awatichay (the little village), where Charbonneau, the interpreter, lives; and the third, Awachawi (le village des souliers), which is the smallest, consisting of only eighteen huts, situated at the mouth of Knife River.... The south bank of the river was now animated by a crowd of Indians, both on foot and on horseback; they were the Manitaries, who had flocked from their villages to see the steamer and to welcome us.

The appearance of this vessel of the Company, which comes up, once in two years, to the Yellow Stone River, is an event of the greatest importance to the Indians.... The sight of the red brown crowd collected on the river side, for even their buffalo skins were mostly of this colour, was, in the highest degree, striking. We already saw above a hundred of them, with many dogs, some of which drew sledges, and others, wooden boards fastened to their backs, and the ends trailing on the ground, to which the baggage was attached with leather straps."

(Maximilian, (1), pp. 178-179.)

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 77 PLATE 44

[Ill.u.s.tration: _a._ Original pencil sketch]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _b._ Finished picture of the same

"WINTER VILLAGE OF THE MINATARRES"

Karl Bodmer, 1833]

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 77 PLATE 45

[Ill.u.s.tration: _a._ Manner of carrying basket similar to that shown in plate 52, _a_]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _b._ The ring-and-pole game]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _c._ Hidatsa group with bull-boats. At Fort Berthold, July 13, 1851

FROM KURZ'S SKETCHBOOK]

As told in the preceding section, Maximilian returned from Fort Union to Fort Clark, where, with the artist Bodmer, he spent the long winter.

While near the Mandan towns he made several visits to the Hidatsa villages a few miles above, and learned much of the manners and ways of life of the people. He again spoke of the three villages on the banks of Knife River, "two on the left bank, and the third, which is much the largest, on the right bank." He continued: "At present the Manitaries live constantly in their villages, and do not roam about as they formerly did, when, like the p.a.w.nees and other nations, they went in pursuit of the herds of buffaloes as soon as their fields were sown, returned in the autumn for the harvest, after which they again went into the prairie. In these wanderings they made use of leather tents, some of which are still standing by the side of their permanent dwellings" (p.

395). He then described the dress and general appearance of the people and continued: "The Manitari villages are similarly arranged as those of the Mandans, except that they have no ark placed in the central s.p.a.ce, and the figure of Ochkih-Hadda is not there. In the princ.i.p.al village, however, is the figure of a woman placed on a long pole, doubtless representing the grandmother, who presented them with the pots, of which I shall speak more hereafter. A bundle of brushwood is hung on this pole, to which are attached the leathern dress and leggins of a woman. The head is made of wormwood, and has a cap with feathers. The interior of their huts is arranged as among the Mandans: like them the Manitaries go, in winter, into the forests on both banks of the Missouri, where they find fuel, and, at the same time, protection against the inclement weather. Their winter villages are in the thickest of the forest, and the huts are built near to each other, promiscuously, and without any attempt at order or regularity. They have about 250 or 300 horses in their three villages, and a considerable number of dogs"

(pp. 396-397). Bodmer's picture of the "Winter Village of the Minatarres," made during the winter of 1833, is probably the most accurate drawing of an earth-lodge village in existence. It was given as plate xxvi by Maximilian, which is here reproduced as plate 44, _b_. A pencil sketch which may be considered as the original sketch made by Bodmer, and from which the finished picture was made, is now in the E.

E. Ayer collection preserved in the Newberry Library. Unfortunately the drawing is unfinished but is very interesting historically. It is shown in plate 44, _a_.

Maximilian then referred briefly to the creation myth of the people with whom he was then resting. The entire surface was once covered with water. There were two beings: one a man who lived in the far Rocky Mountains who made all; the other was the old woman called grandmother by the members of the tribe. "She gave the Manitaries a couple of pots, which they still preserve as a sacred treasure," and "When their fields are threatened with a great drought they are to celebrate a medicine feast with the old grandmother's pots, in order to beg for rain: this is, properly, the destination of the pots. The medicine men are still paid, on such occasions, to sing for four days together in the huts, while the pots remain filled with water." Such were the superst.i.tious beliefs of these strange people.

November 26, 1833, Maximilian, Bodmer, and several others went from Fort Clark to the winter village to attend "a great medicine feast among the Manitaries." They pa.s.sed the two Mandan towns and during the journey saw a large stone, "undoubtedly one of those isolated blocks of granite which are scattered over the whole prairie, and which the Indians, from some superst.i.tious notion, paint with vermilion, and surround with little sticks, or rods, to which were attached some feathers." The little party had seen much of interest on the way, and it was late in the day when they arrived at the village, "the large huts of which were built so close to each other that it was sometimes difficult to pa.s.s between them." Herds of buffalo having been reported in the vicinity of the village, a party of Indians had decided to start after them the following day, and planned "to implore the blessings of heaven upon their undertaking by a great medicine feast." This appears to have been a ceremony arranged by the women of the village. The structure in which the dance took place was not one of the earth-covered lodges of the town, but a rather temporary shelter of unusual shape. As described by Maximilian: "Between the huts, in the centre of the village, an elliptical s.p.a.ce, forty paces or more in length, was enclosed in a fence, ten or twelve feet high, consisting of reeds and willow twigs inclining inwards. (See the woodcut.) [Fig. 11.] An entrance was left at _a_; _b_ represents the fence; _d_ are the four fires, burning in the medicine lodge, which were kept up the whole time. At _e_ the elder and princ.i.p.al men had taken their seats; to the right sat the old chief, Lachpitzi-Sihrisch (the yellow bear); some parts of his face were painted red, and a bandage of yellow skin encircled his head. Places were a.s.signed to us on the right hand of the yellow bear. At _f_, close to the fence, the spectators, especially the women, were seated: the men walked about, some of them handsomely dressed, others quite simply; children were seated round the fires, which they kept alive by throwing twigs of willow trees into them." Here follows a description of the ceremony, and it is related how six elderly men who had been chosen by the younger ones to represent buffalo bulls, entered the inclosure. They came from the hut opposite and when they were within, and after certain formalities, were seated at _c_. The ceremony was attended by smoking, the pipes were "brought first to the old men and the visitors; they presented the mouth-piece of the pipe to us in succession, going from right to left: we each took a few whiffs, uttered, as before, a wish or prayer, and pa.s.sed the pipe to our next neighbours.... The six buffalo bulls, meantime, sitting behind the fire, sang, and rattled the medicine sticks, while one of them constantly beat the badger skin. After a while they all stood up, bent forward, and danced; that is, they leaped as high as they could with both their feet together, continuing to sing and rattle their sticks, one of them beating time on the badger. Their song was invariably the same, consisting of loud, broken notes and exclamations. When they had danced for some time, they resumed their seats.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 11.--Plan of a ceremonial lodge.]

"The whole was extremely interesting. The great number of red men, in a variety of costumes, the singing, dancing, beating the drum, &c., while the lofty trees of the forest, illumed by the fires, spread their branches against the dark sky, formed a _tout ensemble_ so striking and original, that I regretted the impracticability of taking a sketch of it on the spot."

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 12.--Plan of the large Hidatsa village.]