Volume 1

302 PREVIOUS MANDAN TOURS NOTED.
the summer. There are here three laboring men, an Assiniboine
interpreter, and 40 women and children, almost
starving. There are no buffalo in these parts at present,
Mandans he was as usual busier with geography and ethnography than with
trade, and made various observations. He fixed the principal Mandan village
at lat. 47" 17' 22", long. ioi° 14' 24" ; and there he estimated the source of the
Missouri to be lat. 45° 30' 37", long. 110° 49' 08" ; of Shell (Musselshell) r.,
lat. 44° 41' 39", long. 110° 18' 45" ; of Large Corn (Bighorn) r., lat. 420 44'
19", long. 109" 11' 55" ; and of the Yellowstone, lat. 43° 39' 45", long. 109°
43' 17". He notes 5 villages, altogether of 318 houses and 7 tents, viz.: Upper
Fall Indians, 31 houses, 7 tents ; Lower Fall Indians, 82 houses ;
third village,
" Mahnon of Mandens and a few Fall Indians," 52 houses, 37 Mandan, and 15
Fall ; fourth village, Mandan, " across the river," 40 houses ;
fifth or principal
Mandan village, lowest, 113 houses. He made a Mandan vocabulary, which is
extant. Left at 8.30 a. m. Wednesday, Jan. lOth, 1798 ;
trouble with refractory
men and bad weather; " Minie " becomes Minier ;
notes Dog Tent or
Dog hill, Long 1., Elbow of Mouse r., Old Ash house. Plumb r.. Boss hill.
Moose Head hill, etc., and arr. McDonnell's 10.30 a. m. Saturday, Feb. 3d,
having practically retraced his steps. He took a more direct route than Henry
is
about to follow, but nearly the same for the most part, and his itinerary will
help us much in trailing our author. He notes that McCraghen, Minier, and
Murray started back to the Mandans next day, Feb. 4th.
But Thompson had been anticipated in the Missouri trip by earlier parties of
Thus McDonnell's Journal
the N. W. Co., of which little is known accurately.
of May 2 1st, 1795, Masson, I. 1889, p. 294, has :
" Jussome and the Mandan
men arrived here with their returns, 15 days ago, all but Jos. Dube, who deserted
from the rest and staid with the Indians of the Missouri." Again Mc-
Donnell's Journal of Dec. loth, 1793,
ibid. p. 286, indicates a still earlier visit
to the Mandans, as follows :
" The nine men equipt (on their own account)
for the Missouri, started, viz: Raphael Faignan, Antoine Bourier dit Lavigne,
Joseph Dube, J. B. Lafrance, Joseph Tranquille, J. B. Bertrand, Chrysostome
Joncquard, Louis Houle et Fran9ois La Grave."
The H. B. Co. also sent people from the Assiniboine to the Missouri in those
years, but I have no memoranda of names and exact dates.
The original visit of the whites to the Mandans was made in
1738 by Pierre
Gaultier de Verennes, Le Sieur de Verendrye, whose own account of it, in
quaint French and in English, on alternate pages, may be read in the Report on
Canadian Archives by Douglas Brymner, 1889, pp. 3-29 ;
in default of which,
see Pike, ed. 1895, pp. 254-56, or Neill's article there cited.
Agreeably with my desire to account for as many personal names as I can, in
the order in which they come up in the present work, I will offer the following
memoranda of individuals here in mention and not previously noted :
Rene
Jussome is our old acquaintance in Lewis and Clark: ed. 1893, pp. 180, 181,
189, 232, 1178, I184. Besides the many aliases there, Gissom is found inChas.