You have taken me prisoner with all my warriors. I am much grieved, for I expected to hold out much longer and give you more trouble before I surrendered. I tried hard to bring you into ambush, but your last general understands Indian fighting.
I fought hard, but your guns were well aimed. The bullets flew like bees in the air, and whizzed by our ears like wind through the trees in winter. My warriors fell around me; I saw my evil day at hand. The sun rose dim on us in the morning, and at night it sank in a dark cloud, and looked like a ball of fire.
That was the last sun that shone on Black-hawk. His heart is dead. He is now a prisoner to the white men; they will do with him as they wish. But he can stand torture and is not afraid of death. He is no coward. Black-hawk is an Indian.
He has done nothing for which an Indian ought to be ashamed. He has fought for his people, against the white men, who have come year after year to cheat him and take away his lands.
You know the cause of our making war. It is known to all white men. They ought to be ashamed of it. The white men despise the Indians and drive them from their homes.
An Indian who is as bad as the white men could not live in our nation; he would be put to death and be eaten up by the wolves. The white men are poor teachers; they shake us by the hand, to make us drunk, and fool us. We told them to let us alone, but they followed us.
Things were growing worse. There were no deer in the forests; the springs were drying up and our women and children had no food. The spirits of our fathers arose and spoke to us, to avenge our wrongs, or die.
Black-hawk is satisfied. He will go to the land of spirits, content. He has done his duty. His father will meet him there and praise him.
He is a true Indian and disdains to cry like a woman. He does not care for himself. He cares for his nation. They will suffer. His country-men will not be scalped; the white men poison the heart. In a few years the Indians will be like the white men, and nobody can trust them. They will need many officers to keep them in order.
Goodby, my nation. Black-hawk tried to save you. He drank the blood of some of the whites. He has been stopped. He can do no more.
After this, Black-hawk had little authority among the Sacs and Foxes. They respected him, but they looked only to Keokuk for orders and advice. Keokuk was made rich by the United States, as reward; he gave out the goods and monies; he ruled, for he had followed the peace trail.
The Black-hawk prisoners were put in charge of Lieutenant Jefferson Davis, at Fort Crawford. Then they were sent down by steamboat to Jefferson Barracks, at St. Louis.
There were Black-hawk, his two sons—Nah-se-us-kuk or Whirling Thunder, and Wa-saw-me-saw or Roaring Thunder; White Cloud, the false prophet; Nahpope, the head brave; Ioway, Pam-a-ho or Swimmer, No-kuk-qua or Bear's-fat, Pa-she-pa-ho or Little Stabber; and others.
They were forced to wear ball and chain.
"Had I taken the White Beaver [who was General Atkinson] prisoner, I would not have treated a brave war chief in this manner," complained Black-hawk.
Keokuk, the successful, was kind and tried to get the prisoners freed. But they were sent on to Washington, to see the President. President Andrew Jackson understood Indians, and Black-hawk was pleased with him.
"I am a man; you are another," he greeted, as he grasped President Jackson's hand.
"We did not expect to conquer the whites," he explained. "They had too many houses, too many men. I took up the hatchet to avenge the injuries to my people. Had I not done so, they would have said, 'Black-hawk is a woman. He is too old to be a chief. He is no Sac.'"
From the last of April until June 4 the Black-hawk party was kept in Fortress Monroe, Virginia. Then the Indians were started home. They were given a long tour, to show them the power of the United States.
They stopped at Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Albany, Buffalo and Detroit. The white people crowded to see the famous Black-hawk and to hear him speak. He received valuable presents. He was treated like a chief indeed, and his heart was touched.
When he arrived at Fort Armstrong again, on Rock Island, where he was to be freed, his heart had somewhat failed. The village of Saukenuk had long ago been leveled in ashes; he returned, a chief without a people.
Keokuk came, to attend this council, and to receive him back into the nation. Keokuk arrived riding grandly in two canoes lashed side by side; a canopy over him and his wives with him, and medals on his breast.
That was rather different from ball and chain, and old Black-hawk's head sank upon his chest. He felt as bitter as Logan the Mingo had felt.
Before he finally settled down in a lodge built near Iowaville on the lower Des Moines River, Iowa, he made other trips through the East. Keokuk went, also—but it was "General Black-hawk" for whom the people clamored.
He died on October 3, 1838, at his home. His last speech was made at a Fourth of July banquet, at Fort Madison, Iowa, where he was a guest of honor.
"Rock River was a beautiful country. I liked my towns, my corn-fields, and the home of my people. I fought for it. It is now yours; keep it as we did. It will bear you good crops.
"I once was a great warrior. I am now poor. Keokuk put me down, but do not blame him. I am old. I have looked upon the Mississippi since I was a child. I love the Great River. I look upon it now. I shake hands with you, and I hope you are my friends."
These were some of his words.
He was seventy-one when he died; a spare, wrinkled old man with sharp, fiery face and flashing eye. He picked out his grave—at a place about half a mile from his cabin, where, he said, he had led his Sacs in a great battle with the Iowas.
All his people, and the neighboring whites, mourned him. He was buried sitting up, clad in the uniform given him at Washington, by the Secretary of War. He wore three medals, from President Jackson, ex-President John Quincy Adams, and the City of Boston. Between his knees was placed a cane presented to him by Henry Clay, the statesman; at his right side was placed a sword presented to him by President Jackson.
All his best things were buried with him. They included tobacco, food and moccasins, to last him on a three days' journey to spirit land.
The grave was covered by a board roof. A United States flag, and a post with his name and age and deeds, were erected over him. A picket fence twelve feet high was built around the grave.
He left an old wife—the only wife that he had ever taken. He thought a great deal of her. He rarely drank whiskey, he fought it among his people; he was opposed to torture; he had treated prisoners kindly; he had waged war in defense, as he believed, of his own country; and altogether he had been a good man in his Indian way.
His bones were dug up by a white doctor, and strung on a wire to decorate an office in Illinois. Black-hawk's sons did not like this, and had the bones brought back. They were stored in the historical collection at Burlington, where in 1855 a fire burned them.
Black-hawk probably did not care what became of his old bones. He was done with them. The white race had over-flowed the land that he loved, and the bones of his fathers, and he had ceased fighting.
This is the story of one slight little Indian woman, aged sixteen, who opened the trail across the continent, for the march of the United States flag.
When in March, 1804, the United States took over that French Province of Louisiana which extended from the upper Mississippi River west to the Rocky Mountains, a multitude of Indians changed white fathers.
These Western Indians were much different from the Eastern Indians. They were long-hair Indians, and horse Indians, accustomed to the rough buffalo chase, and a wide range over vast treeless spaces.
To learn about them and their country, in May, 1804, there started up the Missouri River, by boats from St. Louis, the famed Government exploring party commanded by Captain Meriwether Lewis and Captain William Clark.
It was an army expedition: twenty-three enlisted men, a hunter, a squad of boatmen, Captain Clark's black servant York, and a squad of other soldiers for an escort part of the way. In all, forty-three, under the two captains.
Their orders were, to ascend the Missouri River to its head; and, if possible, to cross the mountains and travel westward still, to the Columbia River and its mouth at the Pacific Ocean of the Oregon country.
No white man knew what lay before them, for no white man ever had made the trip. The trail was a trail in the dark.
This fall they had gone safely as far as the hewn-timber towns of the Mandan Indians, in central North Dakota; here they wintered, and met the little Bird-woman.
Her Indian name was Sa-ca-ga-we-a, from two Minnetaree words meaning "bird" and "woman." But she was not a Minnetaree, who were a division of the Sioux nation, living in North Dakota near the Mandans. She was a Sho-sho-ni, or Snake, woman, from the distant Rocky Mountains, and had been captured by the Minnetarees. Between the Minnetarees of the plains and the Snakes of the mountains there was always war.
Now at only sixteen years of age she was the wife of Toussaint Chaboneau, a leather-faced, leather-clad French-Canadian trader living with the Mandans. He had bought her from the Minnetarees—and how much he paid in trade is not stated, but she was the daughter of a chief and rated a good squaw. Toussaint had another wife; he needed a younger one. Therefore he bought Sacagawea, to mend his moccasins and greet him with a smile for his heart and warm water for his tired feet. His old wife had grown rather cross and grunty.
Chaboneau was engaged as interpreter, this winter, and moved over to the white camp. Sacagawea proved to be such a cheerful, willing little woman that the captains and the men made much of her. And when, in February, a tiny boy arrived to her and Toussaint, there was much delight.
A baby in the camp helped to break the long dull spell of forty-below-zero weather, when two suns shone feebly through the ice-crystaled air.
A thousand miles it was, yet, to the Rocky or Shining Mountains, by the river trail. In the Mandan towns, and in the American camp, Sacagawea was the only person who ever had been as far as those mountains. They were the home of her people, but nearly three years had passed since she had been taken captive by the Minnetarees.
Could she still speak the Snake tongue? Certainly! Did she remember the trail to the country of the Snakes? Yes! Was there a way across the mountains? Yes! Beyond some great falls in the Missouri there was a gate, by which the Shoshonis came out of the mountains to hunt the buffalo on the plains. It was there that she had been captured by the Minnetarees. Would the Snakes be friendly to the white men? Yes, unless they were frightened by the white men. Would she like to go back to her own people? Yes! Yes!
That was great luck for Sacagawea, but it was greater luck for the two captains. In the spring they broke camp, and taking Chaboneau as interpreter in case that the hostile Minnetarees were met, and little Sacagawea to spy out the land of the Snakes, and littlest Toussaint, the baby, as a peace sign to all tribes, with a picked party of thirty-one the two captains started on, up the swollen Missouri.
They made no mistake, in the Bird-woman. Of course she was used to roughing it; that was the life of an Indian woman—to do the hard work for the men, in camp and on the trail. But Sacagawea early showed great good sense.
Her husband Chaboneau almost capsized their canoe, by his clumsiness. She neither shrieked nor jumped; but calmly reaching out from it, with her baby tightly held, she gathered in the floating articles. She saved stuff of much value, and the captains praised her.
"She's a better man than her husband," asserted the admiring soldiers.
After hard travel, fighting the swift current, the strong winds, storms of rain and sleet, and monster grizzly bears, the expedition arrived at the Great Falls, as the Bird-woman had promised.
She had ridden and waded and trudged, like the rest. She had carried her baby on her back, and had built the fires for her husband, and cooked his meals, and kept right along with the men, and had not complained nor lagged.
At the Great Falls she was not so certain of the best route. This was a strange country to her, although she had known that the Falls were here. The Shining Mountains were in sight; the land of the Shoshonis lay yonder, to the southwest. All right.
The captains chose what seemed to be the best route by water, and headed on, to the southwest. Sacagawea gazed anxiously, right, left, and before. Her heart was troubled. She not only much desired to find her people, for herself, but she desired to help the great captains. "The fate of the whole party" depended upon her—and she was just a slight little Indian woman!
The Snakes did not come down, by this way. It was too far north; it was the haunts of their enemies the Blackfeet and the Minnetarees, of whom they were deathly afraid. They were a timid mountain folk, poorly armed to fight the Sioux, who had obtained guns from traders down the Missouri.
After a time the river narrowed still more, and between rough banks poured out from a canyon of high cliffs, black at their base and creamy yellow above.
"The Gate of the Mountains, ain't it?" passed the hopeful word. Sacagawea agreed. She had heard of this very "gate," where the river burst into the first plains.
"When we come to the place where the river splits into three parts, that is Shoshoni country—my people will be there."
On forged the boats, poled and hauled and rowed, while the men's soggy moccasins rotted into pieces, and the mosquitoes bit fiercely. The two captains explored by land. Hunting was forbidden, lest the reports of the guns alarm the Snakes.
Abandoned Indian camp-sites were found, but the big-horn sheep peered curiously down from the tops of the cliffs along the river, and that was not a good sign. The game was too tame.
Captain Clark the Red Head took the advance, by land, to look for the Indians. Captain Lewis, the young Long Knife Chief, commanded the boats. Small United States flags were erected in the bows of each, as a peace signal.
The boats reached an open place, where the river did indeed split into several branches.
"The Three Forks," nodded Sacagawea, brightly. "These are the Three Forks. We are on the right trail to the land of my people. Now I know."
The party proceeded at top speed. The southwest fork seemed to be the best, for boating. The stream shallowed. At the next camp Sacagawea was more excited.
"She say here in dis spot is where de Snake camp was surprise' by de Minnetaree, five years ago, an' chase' into de timber," announced Drouillard the hunter. "De Minnetaree keel four warrior an' capture four boy an' all de women. She was capture' here, herself."
Hurrah! the trail was getting warm. The canoes had to be hauled by tow-lines, with Sacagawea proudly riding in one of them and helping to fend off with a pole. She had not been here since she was a girl of eleven or twelve, but she caught more landmarks.
"Dat is w'at ze Snake call ze Beaver's Head," proclaimed Chaboneau, whose feet had given out. "Ze Snake spen' deir summer 'cross ze mountains jes' ze odder side. She t'ink we sure to meet some on dis side, to hunt ze boof'lo. Mebbe furder up one leetle way."
Captain Lewis took three men and struck out, to find an Indian trail and follow it into the mountains.
"I'll not come back until I've met with the Snakes," he asserted.
He was gone a long time. The shallow river, full of rapids and shoals, curved and forked and steadily shrank. But although Sacagawea eagerly peered, and murmured to herself, no Indians appeared.
The water was icy cold, from the snow range. This was middle August, in extreme southwestern Montana (a high country). The nights were cold, too. Game grew scarce. Three thousand miles had been logged off, from St. Louis. Unless the company could get guides and horses from the Snakes, and travel rapidly, they would be stuck, for the winter—likely enough starve; at any rate be forced to quit.
By August 16 Captain Lewis had not returned. Captain Clark set out afoot, with Sacagawea and Chaboneau, to walk across country. The Snakes simply must be found.
The toiling boats rounded a great bend, and a shout arose.
"There's Clark! He's sighted Injuns, hasn't he?"
"So has Sacagawea! Sure she has! See?"
"Injuns on horseback, boys! Hooray!"
For Captain Clark, yonder up the curve, was holding high his hand, palm front, in the peace sign. Sacagawea had run ahead, little Toussaint bobbing in the net on her back; she danced as she ran; she ran back again to him, sucking her fingers.
"Dat mean she see her own peoples!" panted Cruzatte the chief boatman, who was a trapper and trader, too, and knew Indians. "Dere dey come, on de hoss. Hooray!"
"Hooray!"
What a relief! The Indians were prancing and singing. They made the captain mount one of the horses, and all hustled on, for an Indian camp.
By the time that the hurrying canoes arrived, Sacagawea and another woman had rushed into each other's arms. Presently they and the captain and Chaboneau had entered a large lodge, built of willow branches. The Captain Lewis squad was here, too. The men had come down out of the mountains, by a pass, with the Snakes. The Snakes had been afraid of them—the first white men ever seen by the band. Old Drouillard the hunter had argued with them in the sign language and with a few Shoshoni words that he knew.
It had looked like war—it had looked like peace—and it had looked like war, and death, again. Finally, before he could persuade them, the captain had delivered over his guns, and had promised them to be their prisoner if they did not find, down below, one of their own women acting as the white men's guide.
But now all was well. The token of Sacagawea saved the day. The other woman, whom she hugged, had been captured by the Minnetarees, at the same time with herself, and had escaped.
And the chief of the band was Sacagawea's brother. He had mourned her as dead, but now he and she wept together under a blanket. Truly, he had reason to be grateful to these white strangers who had treated her so well.
Much relieved by this good fortune at last, the captains bought horses and hired guides. The Snakes were very friendly; even engaged not to disturb the canoes, which were sunk with rocks in the river to await the return trip.
There was little delay. The mountains should be crossed at once, before winter closed the trails. To the surprise and delight of all the company, Sacagawea announced that she was going with them, to see the Great Salt Water. Somehow, she preferred the white men to her own people. She had been weeping constantly. Most of her relatives and old friends had died or had been killed, during her absence. Her new friends she loved. They were a wonderful set, these white men—and the Red Head, Captain Clark, was the finest of all.
Six horses had been bought. Five were packed with the supplies; Sacagawea and little Toussaint were mounted upon the sixth, and the whole company, escorted by the Snakes, marched over the pass to Chief Ca-me-ah-wait's principal camp.
From there, with twenty-seven horses and one mule, with the happy Bird-woman and the beady-eyed Toussaint, the two captains and their men took the trail for the Great Salt Water, one thousand miles toward the setting sun. Ah, but a tough trail that proved, across the Bitter Root Mountains; all up and down, with scarcely a level spot to sleep on; with the snow to the horses' bellies and the men's thighs; with the game failing, until even a horse's head was treasured as a tidbit.
And the Bird-woman, riding in the exhausted file, never complained, but kept her eyes fixed to the low country and the big river and the Great Salt Water.
Once, in the midst of starvation, from her dress she fished out a small piece of bread that she had carried clear from the Mandan towns. She gave it to Captain Clark, that he might eat it. A brave and faithful heart had Sacagawea.
Struggling down out of the mountains, at the end of September, they changed to canoes. The Pierced Noses, or Nez Percés Indians, were friendly; and now, on to the Columbia and thence on to the sea, Sacagawea was the sure charm. For when the tribes saw the strange white warriors, they said, "This cannot be a war party. They have a squaw and a papoose. We will meet with them."
That winter was spent a few miles back from the Pacific, near the mouth of the Columbia River in present Washington.
Only once did the Bird-woman complain. The ocean was out of sight from the camp. Chaboneau, her husband, seemed to think that she was made for only work, work, work, cooking and mending and tending baby.
"You stay by ze lodge fire. Dat is place for womans," he rebuked. Whereupon Sacagawea took the bit in her teeth (a very unusual thing for a squaw to do) and went straight to Captain Clark, her friend.
"What is the matter, Sacagawea?"
She had been crying again.
"I come a long way, capitin. I carry my baby, I cold, hungry, wet, seeck, I come an' I no care. I show you trail; I say 'Snake peoples here,' an' you find Snakes. You get hosses, food, guide. When Indians see me an' my Toussaint, dey say 'Dis no war party,' an' dey kind to you. When you get hungry for bread, I gif you one leetle piece dat I carry all de way from Mandan town. I try to be good woman. I work hard, same as mens. Now I been here all dis time, near de salt water dat I trabble many days to see—an' I not see it yet. Dere is a beeg fish, too. Odders go see—I stay. Nobody ask Sacagawea. My man he say 'You tend baby!' I—I feel bad, capitin." And she hid her face in her blanket.
"By gracious, go you shall, Sacagawea, and see the salt water and the big fish," declared Captain Clark. "Chaboneau can stay home and tend baby!"
However, the Bird-woman took little Toussaint, of course; and they two viewed in wonderment the rolling, surging, thundering ocean; and the immense whale, one hundred and five feet long, that had been cast ashore. It is safe to assert that to the end of her days Sacagawea never forgot these awesome sights.
In the spring of 1806 the homeward journey was begun. On the Missouri side of the mountains the Bird-woman was detailed to help Captain Clark find a separate trail, to the Yellowstone River.
And this she did, in splendid fashion; for when the party knew not which way was the best way, out of the surrounding hills, to the plains, she picked the landmarks; and though she had not been here in many years, she showed the gap that led over and down and brought them straight to the sunken canoes.
On August 14 the whole company was at the Mandan towns once more. After her absence of a year and a half, and her journey of six thousand miles, bearing little Toussaint (another great traveler) Sacagawea might gaily hustle ashore, to entertain the other women with her bursting budget of stories.
The captains offered to take Chaboneau and Sacagawea and Toussaint on down to St. Louis. The Bird-woman would gladly have gone. She wanted to learn more of the white people's ways. She wanted to be white, herself.
But Chaboneau respectfully declined. He said that it would be a strange country, and that he could not make a living there; later, he might send his boy, to be educated by the captains. That was all.
So he was paid wages amounting to five hundred dollars and thirty-three cents. Sacagawea was paid nothing. The captains left her to her Indian life, and she followed them only with her heart.
Nevertheless, she did see her great Red Head Chief again. Captain Clark was appointed by the President as Indian agent with headquarters in St. Louis. He was a generous, whole-souled man, was this russet-haired William Clark, and known to all the Indians of the plains as their stanch friend.
So it is probable that he did not forget Sacagawea, his loyal Bird-woman. In 1810 she, the boy Toussaint, and Chaboneau, visited in St. Louis. In 1811 they were on their way up-river, for the Indian country. Life among the white people had proved too much for the gentle Sacagawea. She had tried hard to live their way, but their way did not agree with her. She had sickened, and she longed for the lodges of the Shoshonis. Chaboneau, too, had become weary of a civilized life.
Sacagawea at last returned to her "home folks" the Snakes. No doubt Chaboneau went with her. But there is record that he was United States interpreter, in 1837, on the upper Missouri; and that he died of small-pox among the Mandans, soon afterward.
The Bird-woman out-lived him. She and her boy removed with the Snakes to the Wind River reservation, Wyoming; and there, near Fort Washakie, the agency, she died on April 9, 1884, aged ninety-six years, and maybe more.
A brass tablet marks her grave. A mountain peak in Montana has been named Sacagawea Peak. A bronze statue of her has been erected in the City Park of Portland, Oregon. Another statue has been erected in the state capitol at Bismarck, North Dakota.
So, although all the wages went to her husband, she knows that the white people of the great United States remember the loving services of the brave little Bird-woman, who without the promise of pay, helped carry the Flag to the Pacific.
While the United States was getting acquainted with the Western Indians, there lived among the Mandans in the north a most noted hero—the chief Mah-to-toh-pa, or Four Bears.
Young Captain Lewis the Long Knife Chief, and stout Captain Clark the Red Head, who with their exploring party wintered among the Mandans in 1804-1805, and enlisted the Snake Bird-woman as guide, were the first white men to write a clear account of the curious Mandans; but they did not tell the half.
For a curious people indeed were these Mandans, dwelling in two villages on the Missouri River above present Washburn in central North Dakota.
They were polite, hospitable, and brave. Their towns were defended by ditches and loose timber palisades, not tight like those of the Iroquois and Hurons. Their houses were circular; of an earthern floor sunk two feet, and heavy six-foot logs set on end inside the edge of it, with a roof of timbers, woven willow, and thick mud-plaster; with a sunken fire-place under a hole in the center of the roof, and with bunks, screened by elk-hides or buffalo-robes, along the walls.
These houses were large enough to shelter twenty to forty persons; the roofs were favorite loafing spots, for men, women, and dogs.
The Mandans formed a happy, talkative people, of strange appearance, but exceedingly clean, fond of bathing, either in the river or in wicker tubs. Their hair was heavy, sometimes reached to the ground, and was black, brown, and frequently gray or pure white even on the young. Their eyes were likely to be hazel, blue or gray, instead of black; their skin almost white. They made glassy clay vases and bowls, and remarkable blue glass beads. In fact, they seemed to have white manners, white arts, and white blood. Rumor asserted that they were partly Welsh, descended from the lost colony of the Welsh prince, Madoc.
Now this Madoc, a prince of the early Welsh people, set sail about the year 1180, with ten ships, to found a colony in a new Western continent that he claimed to have discovered.
He never was heard from. He and his ten shiploads vanished. But if he reached North America, and traveled inland, to be swallowed up amidst the red blood, the strange Mandans may have been the proof of his arrival.
Their round boats, of bowl-like wicker-work covered with hide, and their way of dipping the paddle from the front instead of from the rear, were exactly the Welsh method of canoe travel.
In the days of Mah-to-toh-pa the Mandans numbered two thousand, in two towns allied with the towns of the Minnetarees. They were beset by the tough, winter-traveling Assiniboins to the north, and by the treacherous Arikarees and the bold Sioux to the south. Therefore when in 1833 the wandering artist George Catlin of Pennsylvania, who spent eight years painting Indians in their homes all the way from Florida to the Rocky Mountains, made a long stay among the Mandans, they rejoiced him by their brave tales as well as with their curious habits.
According to all the reports, the "bravest of the braves" in the Mandan towns was Mahtotohpa; second chief by rank, but first of all by deeds. "Free, generous, elegant, and gentlemanly in his deportment—handsome, brave and valiant," says Artist Catlin. Such words speak well for Four Bears, but not a bit too well.
Before he arrived at the Artist Catlin lodge to have his portrait painted, the warning ran ahead of him: "Mahtotohpa is coming in full dress!" He was escorted by a great throng of admiring women and children. Now it was twelve o'clock noon, and he had been since early morning getting ready, so as to appear as befitted a noble chief.
His dress was complete: shirt, leggins, moccasins, head-dress, necklace, belt, robe, medicine-bag, tobacco sack, pipe, quiver, bow, knife, lance, shield, tomahawk and war-club. And as he proudly stood erect, waiting, he made a splendid sight.
His shirt was mountain-sheep skins, one before, one behind, sewed together at their edges. They were embroidered with porcupine quills brightly dyed, and fringed with the black scalp-locks of the enemies whom he had slain in combat, and tasseled with ermine tails. They were pictured with his deeds, painted in sign language.
The leggins were of finely dressed deer-skin, worked with the porcupine quills, fringed with the scalp-locks, and fitting tightly from moccasins to thighs.
The moccasins were of buck-skin, armored with the dyed quills.
The head-dress was a crest of two polished buffalo horns set in a thick mat of ermine, from which fell clear to his heels a ridgy tail of countless eagle plumes also set in the ermine fur.
The necklace was of fifty grizzly-bear claws, strung from otter skin.
The belt was of tanned buck-skin, supporting tomahawk and broad-bladed scalping knife with elk-horn haft.
The robe slung from his shoulders like a Roman toga was the softened hide of a young buffalo bull worn fur side in; and on the white skin side all the battles of his life had been painted.
The medicine-bag was a beaver skin, ornamented with hawk-bills and ermine. He held it in his right hand.
His tobacco sack was of otter skin decorated with porcupine quills. In it were dried red-willow bark, flint and steel, and tinder.
His pipe was of curiously carved red pipe-stone from the peace quarries in present Minnesota. The stem was ash, three feet long, wound with porcupine quills to form pictures of men and animals; decorated with wood-peckers' skins and heads, and the hair of the white buffalo's tail. It was half painted red, and notched for the years of his life.
His quiver was of panther skin and filled with arrows, flint pointed and steel pointed, and some bloody.
His bow was of strips of elk-horn polished white, cemented with glue of buffalo hoof, and backed with deer sinews to give it spring. Three months had been required to make it. There was none better.
His lance had a deadly two-edge steel blade, stained with the dried blood of Sioux and Arikaree and Cheyenne and Assiniboin. The six-foot ashen shaft was strung with eagle feathers.
His shield was the hide from a buffalo's neck, hardened with hoof glue. Its center was a pole-cat skin; its edges were fringed with eagle feathers and antelope hoofs that rattled.
His battle-axe was of hammered iron blade and skull-pecker, with ash handle four feet long and deer-sinew grip. Eagle feathers and fur tufts decorated it.
His war-club was a round stone wrapped in raw-hide at the end of a cow-tail, like a policeman's billy.
After his portrait was painted, Mahtotohpa spread out his wonderful robe, and told the stories of the twelve battles and the fourteen scalps pictured on it by his own hand; and these stories included that of his Arikaree lance, and Cheyenne knife.
The lance story came about in this way. In the shaft of the lance, near the blade, there had been set an antelope prong; and when Mahtotohpa posed for his portrait, with the butt of the lance proudly planted on the ground, he carefully balanced an eagle feather across this prong.
"Do not omit to paint that feather exactly as it is," he said, "and the spot of blood upon it. It is great medicine, and belongs to the Great Spirit, not to me. I pulled it from the wound of an enemy."
"Why do you not tie it to the lance, then?"
"Hush!" rebuked Mahtotohpa. "If the Great Spirit had wished it to be tied on, it would never have come off."
Whereupon, presently, he told the story of the mighty lance. This had been the lance of a famous Arikaree warrior, Won-ga-tap. Some years back, maybe seven or eight, the Mandans and the Arikarees had met on horses near the Mandan towns, and had fought. The Mandans chased the Arikarees, but after the chase the brother of Mahtotohpa did not come in.
Several days passed; and when Mahtotohpa himself found his brother, it was only the body, scalped and cut and pierced with an arrow, and fastened through the heart to the prairie by the lance of Won-ga-tap.
Many in the village recognized that as the lance of Won-ga-tap. Mahtotohpa did not clean it of its blood, but held it aloft before all the village and swore that he would clean it only with the blood of Wongatap the Arikaree.
He sent a challenge to the Arikarees; and for four years he waited, keeping the lance and hoping to use it as he had promised. Finally his heart had grown so sore that he was bursting; and again holding the lance up before the village, he made a speech.
"Mahtotohpa is going. Let nobody speak his name, or ask where he is, or try to seek him. He will return with fresh blood on this lance, or he will not return at all."
He set out alone, on foot, like Piskaret, the Adirondack, had set out in his great adventure against the Iroquois. By night journeys he traveled two hundred miles, living on the parched corn in his pouch, until he was seven days hungry when at last he came to the Arikaree town where the lodge of Wongatap was located.
He knew the village well, for there had been brief periods when the Mandans and the Arikarees were at peace; besides, it was a warrior's business to know an enemy's lodges.
The Arikaree towns were much the same as the Mandan towns. Now Mahtotohpa lay outside and watched, until at dusk he might slip through between the pickets, and seek the lodge of Wongatap. He was enveloped in a buffalo robe, covering his head, so that he would be taken for an Arikaree.
He peeped through a crack in the Wongatap lodge and saw that his enemy was getting ready for bed. There he was, Wongatap himself, sitting with his wife in the fire-light, and smoking his last pipe. Pretty soon, as the fire flickered out, he rapped the ashes from his pipe, his wife raked the coals of the fire together, until morning; and now they two crawled into their bunk.
Hotly grasping his lance, and surrounded by the enemy, Mahtotohpa delayed a little space; then he arose and boldly stalked into the lodge and sat by the fire.
Over the coals was hanging a pot of cooked meat; beside the fire were the pipe and the pouch of red-willow smoking tobacco, just as left by Wongatap.
Amidst the dusk Mahtotohpa ate well of the cooked meat; and filling the pipe, smoked calmly, half lying down, on one elbow.
"Who is that man, who enters our lodge and eats of our food and smokes of our tobacco?" he heard Wongatap's wife ask.
"It is no matter," Wongatap replied. "If he is hungry, let him eat."
That was right. By Indian law a person in need may enter any lodge, and eat, and no questions shall be asked until he has finished.
Mahtotohpa's heart almost failed him. Had that not been the killer of his brother, he would only have left a challenge, and gone away. But he thought of his brother, and his vows, and his heart closed again.
When his pipe was smoked out, he laid it aside, and gently stirred the fire with the toe of his moccasin, for more light. He dared to wait no longer. On a sudden he grasped his lance with both hands, sprang up and drove it through the body of Wongatap, in the bunk.
With his knife he instantly snatched off the scalp. Then he uttered the Mandan scalp-halloo, and dived for the door. There he paused, for just a second, to look back, that the squaw might see his face—and in the glimmer of fire-light he noted a feather from the lance sticking in the hole in Wongatap's side.
So back he darted, plucked the feather, and carrying it in his left hand, that the Great Spirit might help him, he ran hard. Wongatap's wife was shrieking; all the village heard and answered, and the warriors streamed out of the lodges.
The whole night Mahtotohpa ran, while the Arikarees vainly searched for his trail. This day he hid, in the brush along the Missouri River. The next night he ran again; and on the sixth morning he panted into the Mandan town, with the dried blood of Wongatap on his lance's blade and the stiffened scalp of Wongatap hanging to its handle.
So that was why he cherished the lance, and that was why he considered the loose eagle's feather to be a strong medicine from the Great Spirit.
But this was only Number Six, in the twelve recorded deeds of Four Bears.
His next-biggest deed was as follows, and it is bigger, according to white man's way of thinking. By that deed he won his knife.
Early one morning one hundred and fifty Cheyenne warriors attacked the Mandan town. They took a scalp and many horses before they rode away. The Mandans had been surprised; but Mahtotohpa rallied fifty warriors and pursued.
The fifty warriors led by Mahtotohpa pursued for a day and half a day. At noon they sighted the Cheyennes driving the stolen horses; but the Cheyennes were so numerous that the Mandan warriors lost their hearts and wished to turn back.
Not so, Mahtotohpa! He galloped forward alone; he planted his lance in the earth, to the full length of the blade; and making a circle around it with his horse he tore from his clothing a strip of red cloth and hung that to the lance shaft, for a banner.
"If you are cowards, you may go back to the women," he called to his men. "I stay here, where my lance is firm in the ground."
His men were ashamed, and hesitated. Now the Cheyennes had turned and were coming for battle. Their chief saw the planted lance of Mahtotohpa, and Mahtotohpa waiting beside it, and he galloped forward, alone, on his white horse.
"Who is it that has stuck down his lance, and defies the Cheyennes?" he shouted.
"I am Mahtotohpa."
"That is good. Mahtotohpa is a chief. Does he dare to fight?"
"Is this a chief who speaks to Mahtotohpa?"
"I wear scalps at my horse's bit, and the eagle's feathers."
"You have said enough," replied Mahtotohpa. "Come. Let us meet."
Forward hammered the Cheyenne chief, riding splendidly in circles, until he dashed in and planted his lance, also, at the side of Mahtotohpa's lance. That was his answer.
They each drew off a little way, while the Mandan warriors and the Cheyenne warriors gazed expectant. Then they charged like knights in a tournament, and shot at the same moment with their guns. After they had passed each other, and had wheeled, Mahtotohpa held up his powder-horn. The Cheyenne's bullet had smashed it, so that the powder had flowed out.
Having shown, Mahtotohpa flung away his horn, threw his gun to the ground, and setting his buffalo-hide shield upon his left arm, deliberately strung his bow and placed an arrow upon the string.
The Cheyenne chief was a mighty warrior. He likewise cast aside his powder-horn and gun, adjusted his painted shield, prepared bow and arrow. Again they charged. They circled swiftly about each other, performing many clever feats of horsemanship, while their stout bows twanged so fast that the arrows crisscrossed like darting bees.
Some thudded into the thick shields, and the shields bristled with the feathered ends. Some found legs and arms—but that mattered little. Now Mahtotohpa's horse reeled and fell, an arrow in his heart. Mahtotohpa sprang nimbly off. And off from his own horse sprang the Cheyenne chief, that he might not have the advantage.
They plied their bows, on foot. Soon the brave Cheyenne stripped his quiver from his left shoulder and flourished it. It was empty. He tossed it away, and tossed away bow and shield. Then he drew his knife.
"Ai!" responded Mahtotohpa, gladly; and ridding himself of shield and quiver he rushed forward, feeling for his knife, too.
But his knife was not in his belt. He had lost it, or left it at home! Hah! He could not stop—they had come together—the Cheyenne was upon him. So he fought with his bow. He struck aside the Cheyenne's thrust, and hit him over the head and knocked him down. They grappled. It was a terrible fight.
Mahtotohpa clutched for the knife, and the sharp blade was wrenched through his hand, cutting to the bone. The Cheyenne stabbed him many times, and many times Mahtotohpa clutched the knife blade again, before he could tear the haft from the Cheyenne's fingers.
But suddenly he succeeded, and the Cheyenne died. The warriors of both parties had formed a circle close about, watching. Mahtotohpa staggered up, with the Cheyenne's scalp and knife, and gave the kill whoop—and thus victory rested with the Mandans.
That was Mahtotohpa's most famous battle. In another battle he got his name, Four Bears. The Assiniboins had put all his warriors to flight; but he stood his ground, and shot his gun and killed an Assiniboin, and charged with lance and shield, and made them run off. He took sixty horses, besides the scalp. After this he was called Four Bears, because the Assiniboins said that he charged "like four bears in one."
His worst wound he received from the Sioux. They shot an arrow clear through his body, so that the arrow continued on, dropping blood. But he lashed his horse forward, against them, and won another victory.
Such honorable scars he kept covered with red paint, that all who saw might read.
These stories, and others, as pictured by the robe, Mahtotohpa told to Artist Catlin, while Indian trader James Kipp translated the words, and Four Bears acted out the scenes; and they three sat upon the robe itself.
The Cheyenne chief's knife he gave to Artist Catlin. He also made a copy of the pictures, on another robe, and the knife and the second robe were sent to the Catlin Indian gallery, at Washington, where they doubtless may be seen at this day.
Mahtotohpa's end came to him as follows:
In the summer of 1837, a great death attacked the Mandan towns. It was the small pox. The Sioux hedged the towns so closely that there was no escape into the prairie. The Mandan men, women and children, thus herded together, died by hundreds.
Mahtotohpa was among the last left. He witnessed all his family and friends stretched cold and lifeless, and he decided to try a sacrifice to the anger of the Great Spirit.
So he dragged his wives and children together and covered them decently with buffalo robes. Then he went out to a little hill, and laid himself down, with a vow not to eat or drink, if the Great Spirit would stay the plague.
On the sixth day he was very weak; but he crept back to his lodge, and again laid himself down, in a robe, beside his family. And on the ninth day, he, too, died.
However, the plague was not stayed for many days. Of the sixteen hundred Mandans in the two towns, only thirty-one remained alive; of all the Mandan nation there were scarce above one hundred; and today they number about one hundred and fifty.