The Assiniboins are direct descendants of the Sioux tribes. What separated them was this. The famous buffalo was in this case also the apple of discord. In a common chase, a great number of the animals were brought down. The old men, women and children were butchering them. Each family has its own mark and can recognize the arrows of its hunters. Two women, the wives of two chiefs, claimed the same animal and quarreled over the mark on the arrow, each one asserting that it was her husband's mark. As usual, from words they came to acts, and to hair, which they pulled out, and then to fists and teeth and woundings. One " fixed " the other in the most barbarous manner. In the meantime the two chiefs arrived together on the field of battle. At the sight of the disarranged and lacerated features of their dear spouses, each one took the side of his own. Here they too go, into the stupid quarrel. The conflict soon became general and wound up in a fight to the finish, which left dead and wounded. The Assiniboin band had the worst of it, and parted forever from the others. Since that day they never meet save as mortal enemies.
From Cheyenne river to Fort Randall, Sao miles, the physiognomy of the country, on both sides of the Missouri, is so monotonous as in the end to depress the observer and weary the sight. Wooded points are rare, and with the exception of some bottom lands, the land is generally dry and arid. Large herds of buffalo, antelope and deer are seen from time to time at a great distance, and seem then to animate the sad desert and lend it a fleeting interest. Take away the animals, and for days and weeks together there is nothing to be seen but an endless succession of plateaus, bluffs and hills, which all resemble one another and seem drawn up like a long file of brothers and sisters, representing the same types.
I have traversed these regions in all seasons of the year. I have seen the prairies in spring, covered with a rich and supple mantle of verdure, waving and bowing under every