July 1, 1833
In the morning, partially overcast sky, windy, cool; at night, cold. In the morning we learned that during the night the Assiniboines had shot to death the Blackfoot whom we had brought from the Hidatsa villages. He had been warned and hitherto had been kept at home every day. This evening he went out, a small, halfbreed Indian with him, and wanted to look for a squaw. He was barely inside a [tipi] when a shot was fired; the boy looked inside the [tipi] and saw the poor Piegan stretched out on the ground. He had been shot in the chest with a bullet and was dead instantly. I saw him lying in one of the Indian rooms of the fort; he had been wrapped in his big buffalo blanket and bound with straps. The carpenter soon brought a box into which he was laid. Last year exactly the same thing had happened: they brought along an Indian like this one; everything seemed to be going well until the Crees were leaving, when he went into their camp and immediately received a fatal shot. At 7:30, 61°F [16.1°C]. Everything was calm and peaceful in the Indians’ [tipis] this morning. We were in the camp and saw the young Blackfoot’s grave being dug while the Assiniboines looked on. Today the young Cree, the son of a bastard Frenchman, told me the words of his language.
At twelve o’clock two Indian chiefs arrived, a deputation from the Assiniboines, and brought Mr. McKenzie a horse. They carried several splendidly decorated pipes. One of them had a large feather fan and numerous horsehair tufts dyed green. Mr. McKenzie received the Indians, and they stayed about half an hour, during which time the chief usually called General Jackson is said to have spoken very well. At twelve o’clock, 63°F [17.2°C].
In the afternoon we went into the camp of the Assiniboines, where an old man
was being treated in a [tipi] by conjurers, or doctors (medicine men). Several men sat about in a circle. The sick old man had a small white leather cap on his head, which he lowered toward his chest. Two of the magicians had flat drums shaped like a flat Swiss cheese, which they struck without interruption in rapid time. A third conjurer stood bent over and, in front of his body, held a small calabash filled with stones on a stick, exactly like the one I depicted for the Camacans in Brazil. He shook this instrument, which the Crees call schischikué (and the Assiniboines quakemúha), continuously
in a revolving motion before his abdomen. They perspired profusely, chanted, and occasionally uttered abrupt shouts. They sucked on the sore spot of the patient and alleged that they were extracting the evil demon in order to transplant it, etc. The patient has to pay greatly for this cure. He immediately hands over tobacco and all kinds of valuable things, which these gentlemen never give back again, even if the patient is not healed. If one were to pay these conjurers, they would also come to whites.
This afternoon I learned that the Assiniboines had not stripped or scalped the Piegan who had been shot dead; several Indians, however, are said to have threatened to dig him up during the night to take his scalp. One continually heard the beating of drums in the Indians’ huts all day and all evening until into the night.