In the spring of 1838 [1837], the smallpox (it was not well known how) was communicated to the Indian tribes in (on the] Upper Missouri. The ravages of this disease entirely changed the position which Tchatka had hitherto held among the Indians. The fine camp of Tchatka, composed of 1,200 warriors, was reduced, in this single season, to eighty men capable of bearing arms. Other tribes experienced trials still more severe. This scourge counted more than io,ooo victims among the Crows and the Blackfeet; the Minnetarees were reduced from I,00o to 500; the Mandans, the noblest among the races in the upper Missouri, counting 6oo warriors before the epidemic, were reduced to thirty-two, others say to nineteen only! A great number committed suicide, in despair; some with their lances and other warlike instruments, but the greater part by throwing themselves from a high rock which overlooks the Missouri.
In the course of the following year, Tchatka formed the design of sLizing, by stratagem, the large village of the Mandans,l° and of taking all the horses and effects which they could find in it.
The village of the Mandans was then permanent, and in the neighborhood of the present site of Fort Clark. About five miles lower dwelt the Aricaras, new allies and friends of the Mandans, who numbered about 500 warriors and had escaped the contagion, because they were absent in the hunting grounds when the scourge broke out. The Aricaras
10 I have mentioned the Mandans, and some of their traditions, in several of my letters. Their Indian name is See-pohs-ka-nu-ma-ka-kee, which signifies a partridge. They have a remarkable tradition concerning the deluge. On a high hill existing in their territory, they say that the big canoe (the ark) rested. Every year, when the willow buds, they celebrate this event by grand festivals and noisy ceremonies. Their tradition says that the branch brought back to the great canoe by the bird was a willow branch, full of leaves. The bird they allude to was the dove, and it is forbidden, in their religious code, to kill itAuthor's Note.- (See Catlin, vol. I, p. 158.1