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 ship-loads 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 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 theostory 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 lie 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! Iie 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 (lashed 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 at 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.