Journey from Fort Pierre on the Teton River to Fort Union on the Yellowstone River
Stay at Fort Pierre – The Dacotas (Yanktons and Tetons) – The Yellow Stone returns; we travel on the Assiniboine – Difficult voyage – Cheyenne River – Cheyenne Indians – Antelope and elk – Little Cheyenne – Good day of hunting – Moreau’s River – Rivière du Rampart – Two Arikara villages – The Arikara Indians – Cannonball River – Old Mandan village – Heart River – Storms and bad weather delay us – Meeting with the Yanktonais (Dacotas) – Arrival at Fort Clark – The Mandan, Hidatsa, and Crow Indians – Five villages of the Mandans and Minitaris (Gros Ventres) [Hidatsas] – Meeting with the Hidatsas – Little Missouri – Difficult navigation around a promontory – Fire aboard ship – View of the first bears – Two Blackfoot Indians – Meeting with the Assiniboines – First glimpse of the bighorn – Muddy River – Second meeting with the Assiniboines – Yellowstone River – Fort Union
June 16, 1833
Early in the morning, overcast sky. Very strong, raw northeast wind; intermittent rain. Early in the morning we covered about 3 miles to beyond the mouth of the Heart River, which emerges at a place where a bend of the river reaches [an] unusual hill chain. It issues from green bushes where these hills join a low-lying area. Before six o’clock the wind and the strong current drove the ship sideways against the bank and forced us to remain here on the left bank.
At 7:30, 65°F [18.3°C]. From here it is still 50 more miles to the Mandans, about as far as from the Cannonball River to here. The motion of the ship moored at the bank was so strong that it created an unpleasant sensation. I used the time to have the interpreter Berger tell me some words of the Blackfoot language. All our hunters had gone out despite the bad weather. It was very muddy in the willows where the ship lay.
At twelve o’clock noon, 62°F [16.7°C]. Dreidoppel had found three elk and had shot the cow. We went there with eight or ten men to bring home the venison and the hide and also saw another elk cow in the vicinity of the one that was shot. Mr. Bodmer had also shot at elk and on the prairie encountered three or four antelope, one of which he had wounded in the foreleg. In the afternoon he went out again for this wounded animal. In the forest we found a large number of elk and buffalo tracks, trails, and droppings, [as well as] buffalo hair and wool on many trees, which they scrape or rub against. The elk cow killed by Dreidoppel was as big as one of our red stags with sixteen tines. As we were returning, we saw the now very splendid river as rough as the ocean. Toward evening the wind had subsided somewhat, and we therefore sailed upstream at 6:30. It is estimated that there are 30 miles by land and 60 by water from the Heart River to the Mandan villages. To the left we had lowland with woods; to the right, hills that in the distance before us formed three regular steps like a stairway. A half hour later, the forest came to an end to the left and gave way to a flat prairie with bushes, in which we saw a white wolf. The buffalo like to be in this prairie to the left. To the right, tablelike hills with thickets in the low plains before them; we move to this right side and take soundings. Three wolves on top of the hills. The river is broad and imposing. At nightfall we made fast at the right bank. During the night, rain, bolts of lightning, and sheet lightning.