[41] See the four days’ religious ceremonies of the Mandans, and use of the willow boughs, and sacrifices of fingers, &c. in Vol. I. pp. 159. 170; and also the custom of war-chiefs wearing horns on their head-dresses, like the Israelitish chiefs of great renown, Vol. I. p. 104.

[42] For the satisfaction of the reader, I have introduced in the Appendix to this Volume, Letter B, a brief vocabulary of the languages of several adjoining tribes in the North West, from which, by turning to it, they can easily draw their own inferences. These words have all been written down by myself, from the Indian’s mouths, as they have been correctly translated to me; and I think it will at once he decided, that there is very little affinity or resemblance, if any, between them. I have therein given a sample of the Blackfoot language, yet, of that immense tribe who all class under the name of Blackfoot, there are the Cotonnés and the Grosventres des Prairies—whose languages are entirely distinct from this—and also from each other—and in the same region, and neighbours to them, are also the Chayennes—the Knisteneaux, the Crows, the Shoshonees, and Pawnees; all of whose languages are as distinct, and as widely different, as those that I have given. These facts, I think, without my going further, will fully show the entire dissimilarity between these languages, and support me to a certain extent, at all events, in the opinion I have advanced above.

[43] The reader will bear it in mind, that these drawings, as well as all those of the kind that have heretofore been given, and those that are to follow, have been correctly traced with a Camera, from the robes and other works of the Indians belonging to my Indian Museum.

[44] Lewis and Clarke, in their Tour across the Rocky Mountains, have given an account of a Mandan chief, who had sacrificed seventeen horses to his medicine-bag—to conciliate the good will of the Great Spirit. And I have met many instances, where, while boasting to me of their exploits and their liberality, they have claimed to have given several of their horses to the Great Spirit, and as many to white men!

[45] During the summer of this transaction I was on the Upper Missouri river, and had to pass the Riccaree village in my bark canoe, with only two men, which the leader will say justly accounts for the advice of Mr. M‘Kenzie, to pass the Riccaree village in the night, which I did, as I have before described, by which means it is possible I preserved my life, as they had just killed the last Fur Trader in their village, and as I have learned since, were “dancing his scalp” when I came by them.

[46] The Reverend Mr. Parker in his Tour across the Rocky Mountains says, that amongst the Indians below the Falls of the Columbia at least seven-eighths, if not nine-tenths, as Dr. M‘Laughlin believes, have been swept away by disease between the years 1829, and the time that he visited that place in 1836. “So many and so sudden were the deaths which occurred, that the shores were strewed with the unburied dead, whole and large villages were depopulated, and some entire tribes have disappeared.” This mortality he says “extended not only from the Cascades to the Pacific, but from very far North to the coast of California.” These facts, with hundreds of others, shew how rapidly the Indian population is destroyed, long before we become acquainted with them.