CHAPTER XIII

AT THE MANDAN VILLAGES

The winter camp. Hunting the buffalo. The journey onward. Finding the Yellowstone River. Adventures with grizzly bears. Hunting in Montana.

On the north bank of the Missouri, in the present McLean County, North Dakota, about eight miles below the mouth of Big Knife

River, where the town of Stanton is now situated, the explorers built two rows of log huts, protected by a stockade, for their winter camp. The roofs were rudely thatched with grass and

clay, and in spite of the bitter weather they "passed the winter comfortably."

Here they secured an Indian interpreter named Chaboneau. His wife, Sacajawea (Bird Woman), had been captured from the Snake Indians and sold to her husband. The journal speaks of her as "a good creature, of a mild and gentle disposition, greatly attached to the whites." She and her husband accompanied the travelers throughout the remainder of their journey, and her patience, courage, and helpfulness were unfailing.

The Sioux and other Indians were constantly engaged in warfare, and the Mandans. suffered so much that Captain Clark once mustered twenty-four men and offered to lead the Mandans against the Sioux. The deep snow prevented, but the offer was gratefully received and remembered. The friendliest relations prevailed between these Indians and the explorers.

In December, Clark and others joined the Mandans in a great buffalo hunt. "The hunters, mounted on horseback and armed with

bows and arrows, encircle the herd and gradually drive them into a plain. ... They then ride in and singling out a buffalo, a female being preferred, go as close as possible and wound her with arrows till they think they have given the mortal stroke, when they pursue another. If, which rarely happens, the wounded buffalo attacks the hunter, he evades his blow by the agility of his horse, which is trained for the combat with great dexterity."

In spite of weather so cold that the mercury often went thirty-two degrees below zero, the Indians kept up outdoor sports. Even the white men enjoyed a merry Christmas. Later, when their meat supply grew low, a hunting expedition was sent out, which killed forty deer, sixteen elk, and three buffalo. Although the game was lean and the wolves stole much of it, they gathered, in all, some three thousand pounds of meat.

Visits from white fur traders and the inroads of the Sioux were among the incidents of a winter which must, after all, have passed