Volume 1

344 SOULIERS—LITTLE BIG BELLIES.
same. Their long intercourse with those people has tended
to this similarity of language, and from proximity they have
acquired the manners and customs of the other nations,
though they continue to live by themselves. They have the
reputation of a brave and warUke people. They formerly
sustained a three-years' war with the Big Bellies, notwithstanding
the latter were then ten times their number.
They
held out wath the greatest resolution and disdained to submit
till the others, finding it impossible to reduce them,
unless by extermination, proposed to make peace.
Since
then they have lived in amity. They are stationary, like
their neighbors, the Mandanes, with whom they have
always been at peace, and have acquired more of their customs
and manners than those of the Big Bellies, who continue
to view them with an envious eye.
We stopped here only a short time ; and having been
invited into several huts, and treated with what they had to
tobacco,
offer, in return for which we gave them a pipe of
we proceeded on a delightful hard, dry road. The soil
being a mixture of sand and clay, and rain being infrequent,
the heat of
the sun makes the road as hard as pavement.
Upon each side were pleasant cultivated spots,
some of which stretched up the rising ground on our left,
whilst on our right they ran nearly to the Missouri. In
those fields were many women and children at work, who
Upon the road were passing and
all appeared industrious.
repassing every moment natives, afoot and on horseback,
curious to examine and stare at us. Many horses were
feeding in every direction beyond the plantation. The
whole view was agreeable, and had more the appearance of
a country inhabited by a civilized nation than by a set of
savages.
We came to the little village of Big Bellies or Willow
Indians, situated nearly at the mouth of Knife river, which
comes from the S. and enters into the Missourie, about
one mile from the Saulteur [Soulier] village. Here we
found a sudden and great change in the manners of the