From the accounts brought to New York in the fall of 1838, by Messrs.
M‘Kenzie, Mitchell, and others, from the Upper Missouri, and with whom
I conversed on the subject, it seems that in the summer of that year
the small-pox was accidentally introduced amongst the Mandans, by the
Fur Traders; and that in the course of two months they all perished,
except some thirty or forty, who were taken as slaves by the Riccarees;
an enemy living two hundred miles below them, and who moved up and
took possession of their village soon after their calamity, taking up
their residence in it, it being a better built village than their own;
and from the lips of one of the Traders who had more recently arrived
from there, I had the following account of the remaining few, in whose
destruction was the final termination of this interesting and once
numerous tribe.
The Riccarees, he said, had taken possession of the village after the
disease had subsided, and after living some months in it, were attacked
by a large party of their enemies, the Sioux, and whilst fighting
desperately in resistance, in which the Mandan prisoners had taken an
active part, the latter had concerted a plan for their own destruction,
which was effected by their simultaneously running through the piquets
on to the prairie, calling out to the Sioux (both men and women) to
kill them, “that they were Riccaree dogs, that their friends were all
dead, and they did not wish to live,”—that they here wielded their
weapons as desperately as they could, to excite the fury of their
enemy, and that they were thus cut to pieces and destroyed.
The accounts given by two or three white men, who were amongst the
Mandans during the ravages of this frightful disease, are most
appalling and actually too heart-rending and disgusting to be recorded.
The disease was introduced into the country by the Fur Company’s
steamer from St. Louis; which had two of their crew sick with the
disease when it approached the Upper Missouri, and imprudently stopped
to trade at the Mandan village, which was on the bank of the river,
where the chiefs and others were allowed to come on board, by which
means the disease got ashore.
I am constrained to believe, that the gentlemen in charge of the
steamer did not believe it to be the small-pox; for if they had known
it to be such, I cannot conceive of such imprudence, as regarded
their own interests in the country, as well as the fate of these poor
people, by allowing their boat to advance into the country under such
circumstances.
It seems that the Mandans were surrounded by several war-parties of
their more powerful enemies the Sioux, at that unlucky time, and they
could not therefore disperse upon the plains, by which many of them
could have been saved; and they were necessarily enclosed within the
piquets of their village, where the disease in a few days became so
very malignant that death ensued in a few hours after its attacks; and
so slight were their hopes when they were attacked, that nearly half
of them destroyed themselves with their knives, with their guns, and
by dashing their brains out by leaping head-foremost from a thirty
foot ledge of rocks in front of their village. The first symptom of
the disease was a rapid swelling of the body, and so very virulent
had it become, that very many died in two or three hours after their
attack, and that in many cases without the appearance of the disease
upon the skin. Utter dismay seemed to possess all classes and all ages,
and they gave themselves up in despair, as entirely lost. There was
but one continual crying and howling and praying to the Great Spirit
for his protection during the nights and days; and there being but few
living, and those in too appalling despair, nobody thought of burying
the dead, whose bodies, whole families together, were left in horrid
and loathsome piles in their own wigwams, with a few buffalo robes, &c.
thrown over them, there to decay, and be devoured by their own dogs.
That such a proportion of their community as that above-mentioned,
should have perished in so short a time, seems yet to the reader, an
unaccountable thing; but in addition to the causes just mentioned, it
must be borne in mind that this frightful disease is everywhere far
more fatal amongst the native than in civilized population, which may
be owing to some extraordinary constitutional susceptibility; or, I
think, more probably, to the exposed lives they live, leading more
directly to fatal consequences. In this, as in most of their diseases,
they ignorantly and imprudently plunge into the coldest water, whilst
in the highest state of fever, and often die before they have the power
to get out.
Some have attributed the unexampled fatality of this disease amongst
the Indians to the fact of their living entirely on animal food; but
so important a subject for investigation I must leave for sounder
judgments than mine to decide. They are a people whose constitutions
and habits of life enable them most certainly to meet most of its
ills with less dread, and with decidedly greater success, than they
are met in civilized communities; and I would not dare to decide that
their simple meat diet was the cause of their fatal exposure to one
frightful disease, when I am decidedly of opinion that it has been the
cause of their exemption and protection from another, almost equally
destructive, and, like the former, of civilized introduction.
During the season of the ravages of the Asiatic cholera which swept
over the greater part of the western country, and the Indian frontier,
I was a traveller through those regions, and was able to witness its
effects; and I learned from what I saw, as well as from what I have
heard in other parts since that time, that it travelled to and over the
frontiers, carrying dismay and death amongst the tribes on the borders
in many cases, so far as they had adopted the civilized modes of life,
with its dissipations, using vegetable food and salt; but wherever it
came to the tribes living exclusively on meat, and that without the
use of salt, its progress was suddenly stopped. I mention this as a
subject which I looked upon as important to science, and therefore one
on which I made many careful enquiries; and so far as I have learned
along that part of the frontier over which I have since passed, I have
to my satisfaction ascertained that such became the utmost limits of
this fatal disease in its travel to the West, unless where it might
have followed some of the routes of the Fur Traders, who, of course,
have introduced the modes of civilized life.
From the Trader who was present at the destruction of the Mandans I had
many most wonderful incidents of this dreadful scene, but I dread to
recite them. Amongst them, however, there is one that I must briefly
describe, relative to the death of that noble _gentleman_ of whom I
have already said so much, and to whom I became so much attached,
_Mah-to-toh-pa_, or “the Four Bears.” This fine fellow sat in his
wigwam and watched every one of his family die about him, his wives and
his little children, after he had recovered from the disease himself;
when he walked out, around the village, and wept over the final
destruction of his tribe; his braves and warriors, whose sinewy arms
alone he could depend on for a continuance of their existence, all laid
low; when he came back to his lodge, where he covered his whole family
in a pile, with a number of robes, and wrapping another around himself,
went out upon a hill at a little distance, where he laid several days,
despite all the solicitations of the Traders, resolved to _starve_
himself to death. He remained there till the sixth day, when he had
just strength enough to creep back to the village, when he entered the
horrid gloom of his own wigwam, and laying his body alongside of the
group of his family, drew his robe over him and died on the ninth day
of his fatal abstinence.
So have perished the friendly and hospitable Mandans, from the best
accounts I could get; and although it may be _possible_ that some few
individuals may yet be remaining, I think it is not probable; and one
thing is certain, even if such be the case, that, as a nation, the
Mandans are extinct, having no longer an existence.
There is yet a melancholy part of the tale to be told, relating to
the ravages of this frightful disease in that country on the same
occasion, as it spread to other contiguous tribes, to the Minatarees,
the Knisteneaux, the Blackfeet, the Chayennes and Crows; amongst whom
25,000 perished in the course of four or five months, which most
appalling facts I got from Major Pilcher, now Superintendent of Indian
affairs at St. Louis, from Mr. M‘Kenzie, and others.
It may be naturally asked here, by the reader, whether the Government
of the United States have taken any measures to prevent the ravages
of this fatal disease amongst these exposed tribes; to which I
answer, that repeated efforts have been made, and so far generally,
as the tribes have ever had the disease, (or, at all events, within
the recollections of those who are now living in the tribes,) the
Government agents have succeeded in introducing vaccination as a
protection; but amongst those tribes in their wild state, and where
they have not suffered with the disease, very little success has
been met with in the attempt to protect them, on account of their
superstitions, which have generally resisted all attempts to introduce
vaccination. Whilst I was on the Upper Missouri, several surgeons were
sent into the country with the Indian agents, where I several times
saw the attempts made without success. They have perfect confidence
in the skill of their own physicians, until the disease has made one
slaughter in their tribe, and then, having seen white men amongst them
protected by it, they are disposed to receive it, before which they
cannot believe that so minute a puncture in the arm is going to protect
them from so fatal a disease; and as they see white men so earnestly
urging it, they decide that it must be some new mode or trick of pale
faces, by which they are to gain some new advantage over them, and they
stubbornly and successfully resist it.
[Illustration: _180_
A CHART SHEWING THE MOVES OF THE MANDANS & THE PLACE OF THEIR
EXTINCTION.]