Illustrations of the manners, customs, and condition of the North American Indians, 1. köide1845 |
Common terms and phrases
American Fur Company amongst amusements animals arrow Assinneboins Ba'tiste battle beautiful big canoe Blackfeet bluffs body Bogard braves buffalo buffalo bull ceremonies character chief civilized world colours commenced corn Crows curious customs dance distance doctors dress dried enemies ermine exceedingly eyes feast feet four friends grizzly bear ground hair hand head head-dress heart honourable horns horses hundred Indian killed knife lance length LETTER-No living lodge looking Mah-to-toh-pa Mandan language Mandan village manner master of ceremonies meat medicine or mystery medicine-lodge medicine-man miles Minatarees modes mouth occasion ornamented painted passed peculiar pipe PLATE porcupine portrait prairie quills reader Riccarees river robe Rocky Mountains scalp-locks scalps scenes seen shield Shienne side Sioux skin smoke soon Spirit standing strange TETON RIVER throwing Traders tribe UPPER MISSOURI war-eagles warriors weapons whilst whole wigwam wild women Yellow Stone young
Popular passages
Page 261 - ... might in future be seen (by some great protecting policy of government) preserved in their pristine beauty and wildness, in a magnificent park, where the world could see for ages to come, the native Indian in his classic attire, galloping his wild horse, with sinewy bow, and shield and lance, amid the fleeting herds of elks and buffaloes.
Page 262 - ... wild horse, with sinewy bow, and shield and lance, amid the fleeting herds of elks and buffaloes. What a beautiful and thrilling specimen for America to preserve and hold up to the view of her refined citizens and the world, in future ages! A nation's Park, containing man and beast, in all the wild and freshness of their nature's beauty!
Page 54 - This custom is a very awkward and tedious one, and used only as an ingenious means of boiling their meat, by a tribe who was too rude and ignorant to construct a kettle or pot. The Traders have recently supplied these people with pots ; and even long before that, the Mandans had instructed them in the secret of manufacturing very good and serviceable earthen pots ; which together have entirely done away the custom, excepting at public festivals; where they seem, like all others of the human family,...
Page 252 - I arrived, (when an immense herd of buffaloes had showed themselves on the opposite side of the river almost blackening the plains for a great distance,) a party of five or six hundred Sioux Indians on horseback, forded the river about mid-day, and spending a few hours amongst them, recrossed the river at sun-down and came into the Fort with fourteen hundred fresh buffalo tongues, which were thrown down in a mass, and for which they required but a few gallons of whiskey, which was soon demolished,...
Page 208 - I might take satisfaction in stigmatizing the Indian character as thievish and murderous. That the Indians in their -native state are " drunken," is false ; for they are the only temperance people, literally speaking, that ever I saw in my travels, or ever expect to see.
Page 93 - There is certainly great justice in the remark; and so forcibly have I been struck with the peculiar ease and elegance of these people, together with the diversity of complexions, the various colours of their hair and eyes; the singularity of their language, and their peculiar and unaccountable customs, that I am fully convinced that they have sprung from some other origin than that of the other North American tribes, or that they are an amalgam of natives with some civilised race.
Page 6 - Of the two millions remaining alive at this time, about 1,400,000, are already the miserable living victims and dupes of white man's cupidity, degraded, discouraged and lost in the bewildering maze that is produced by the use of whiskey and its concomitant vices ; and the remaining number are yet unroused and unenticed from their wild haunts or their primitive modes, by the dread or love of white man and hia allurements.
Page 136 - Spirit above, who rides in the clouds and commands the winds! Three days they have sat here, my friends, and nothing has been done to relieve your distress. On the first day was Wah-kee (the shield), he could do nothing; he counted his beads and came down — his medicine was not good — his name was bad, and it kept off the rain. The next was Om-pah (the elk); on his head the raven was seen, who flies above the storm, and he failed. War-rah-pa (the beaver) was the next, my friends; the beaver lives...
Page 252 - ... with the Fur Company's men,) in bringing in, in the above manner, several of these little prisoners, which sometimes followed for five or six miles close to our horses' heels, and even into the Fur Company's Fort, and into the stable where our horses were led. In this way, before I left for the head waters of the Missouri, I think we had collected about a dozen, which Mr. Laidlaw was successfully raising with the aid of a good milch cow, and which were to be committed to the care of Mr.
Page 24 - We all crossed the river, and galloped away a couple of miles or so, when we mounted the bluff; and to be sure, as was said, there was in full view of us a fine herd of some four or five hundred buffaloes, perfectly at rest, and in their own estimation (probably) perfectly secure. Some were grazing, and others were lying down and sleeping ; we advanced within a mile or so of them in full view, and came to a halt. Mons. Chardon "tossed the feather" (a custom always observed, to try the course of the...