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Show SIOUX BEAD LODGES. 43 the bottom would be so rapidly excavated from beneath us, that a hole of sufficient depth would be formed to render swimming necessary. After continuing these tedious and laborious efforts until we had nearly reached the opposite shore, on advancing a single step we found ourselves in water beyond our depth, ( the channel of the river running close to the bank,) and the shirts we had so carefully endeavoured to keep dry were in a moment thoroughly soaked. We made out, however, to scramble ashore. I put on my moccasins, and, displaying my wet shirt, like a flag, to the wind, we proceeded to the lodges which had attracted our curiosity. There were five of them, pitched upon the open prairie, and in them we found the bodies of nine Sioux, laid out upon the ground, wrapped in their robes of buffalo- skin, with their saddles, spears, camp- kettles, and all their accoutres^ nts, piled up around them. Some lodges contained three, others only one body, all of which were more or less in a state of decomposition. A short distance apart from thefce was one lodge which, though small, seemed of rather superior pretensions, and was evidently pitched with great care. It contained the body of a young Indian girl of sixteen or eighteen years, with a countenance presenting quite ap agreeable expression: she was richly dressed in leggings of fine scarlet cloth, elaborately ornamented; a new pair of moccasins, beautifully embroidered with porcupine quills, was on her feet, and her body was wrapped in two superb buffalo- robes, worked in like manner. She had evidently been dead but a day or two; and to our surprise a portion of the upper part of her person was bare, . exposing the face and a part of the breast^ as if the robes in which she was wrapped had by some means been disarranged, whereas all the other bodies were closely covered up. It was, at the time, the opinion of our mountaineers that these Indians must have fallen in an encounter with a party of Grows; but I subsequently learned that they had all died of the cholera, and that this young girl, being considered past recovery, had been arrayed by her friends in the habiliments of the dead, enclosed in the lodge alive, and abandoned to her fate- so fearfully alarmed were the Indians by this, to them, novel and terrible disease. But the melancholy tale of this poor forsaken girl, does not end here. Her abandonment by her people, though with inevitable death before her eyes, may perhaps be excused from the extremity of their terror; but what will be thought of the conduct of men enlightened by Christianity, and under no such excess of fear, who, by their own confession, ap- |
