July 4, 1833
It was one year ago today that we landed at Boston. Early in the morning, beautiful, warm weather, bright sunshine. At eight o’clock, 71°F [21.7°C]. I went onto the prairie equipped with short notched pegs to mark a cactus bush of each variety, both those with the red [and] those with the yellow filaments, so that next spring I can take them along to Europe. The red kind is marked with a single-notched, the yellow with a double-notched stake. The direction in which both stakes point is from the right rear corner of the fort straight toward the small valley where Dreidoppel wounded the Numenius, and the distance from the fort amounts to 844 paces.
On the way toward the cacti I saw the small striped suslik on the prairie but could not shoot it. A half-Indian went out to catch some of these little animals. One lays snares in the opening of their burrows, for which purpose the Indians often use their bowstring. They place it at some distance in front of the opening and pull back the bow as soon as the animal is inside the snare. By chance, this half-Indian found the Numenius, [the one] that had been wounded by Dreidoppel, dead in the prairie, and now I recognized that it was Numenius longirostris Wils. I tried to take the noon altitude of the sun with my sextant and got a reading of 103°44′, but the sun was behind light clouds and the observation site unfavorable. Temperature at twelve o’clock, 76°F [24.4°C]. It was exceptionally hot in the courtyard of the fort.
In the afternoon Berger and Harvey rode off in order to proceed to Fort McKenzie by land. They expect to cover the distance of [——] miles in nine days. They are riding on this side of the river and have nothing with them but their blankets to sleep [in], their weapons, and some dried meat. Today I took fourteen pounds of tobacco from the local store for bartering with the Indians; for [tobacco] everyone here has to pay one and a half dollars a pound, but Mr. McKenzie gave me this amount for only seventy-five cents. Four gallons Six gallons of whiskey cost ninety-six dollars here in the store; Mr. McKenzie was willing to give them to me for forty-eight dollars. All these articles are so expensive in the company’s stores. Up here they sell their wares to their own people at enormously increased prices. The Indians are said to obtain whiskey at 3,000 percent. About three o’clock dark clouds approach (a thunderstorm). Suddenly a violent wind began to blow, which abated after a quarter of an hour. The weather [then] cooled off and was pleasant. Dreidoppel had gone to the forest where the Assiniboine dead lie on trees. He returned gripped by revulsion, for he had found the remains of corpses, devoured by the wolves, still lying under the trees, some with completely new woolen blankets. He brought back the skull of a young person in which a mouse had made its nest. All the corpses lying here—one sometimes saw two or three on top of each other on the same tree—are Assiniboines.
Three men came in with their woolen blankets buffalo blankets, which they carry on their backs in heavy bundles with their guns. In the intense heat today, they still wore, as many people here and in the distant regions of North America do, long overcoats made of thick white woolen blankets, mostly with a blue border. They came from Fort Cass on the Yellowstone River. The evening [was] pleasant, the mosquitoes tolerable. After supper we went onto the prairie to shoot ground squirrels but did not see any.