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Show 162 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF frequently affected without sufficient ground to stand upon, warps the mind from the charity that is natural to it, and leads to all the petty strifes, and scandalous tales, and heartburnings that imbitter the lives of so many in civilized life. I now engaged in trapping until the latter part of December. I celebrated Christmas by myself, as the Indians knew nothing about the birth of our Savior, and it was hard to make them understand the nature of the event. At this time a trading-party started from our village for the Grovan and Mandan country, where there was a trading-post established, for the purpose of buying our winter supply of ammunition, and tobacco, and other necessary articles. I sent thirty beaver-skins, with directions what to purchase with their value, and had marked my initials on all of the skins. These letters were a mystery to the trader. He inquired of the Crows who had marked the skins with those letters. They told him it was a Crow, one of their braves, who had lived with the whites. Kipp, the trader, then sent an invitation to me to visit him at his fort. While our party was away, our village was attacked by a combined party of the Siouxs and Re-ke-rahs, numbering two thousand five hundred. So sudden was the attack that they inflicted considerable mischief upon us before we had a chance to collect our forces. But when we at length charged on them, it was decisive. We penetrated their ranks, throwing them into -the direst confusion, and they withdrew, leaving two hundred · and fifty-three dead on the field. Our loss was thirty-one killed, and one hundred and sixty wounded. They had supposed that nearly all the warriors had left the village, when but a small party had JAMES P. BECKWOURTH. 163 gone, and they met with such a reception as they little expected. I had three horses killed under me, and my faithful battle-axe was red with the blood of the enemy to the end of the haft ; fourteen of the Siouxs had fallen beneath it. Although we had taken such a number of scalps, there was no dancing or rejoicing. All were busied in attending the ' wounded, or mourning their relatives slain. Their mourning consists in cutting and hacking themselves on every part of the body, and keeping up a dismal moaning or howling for hours together. Many cut off their fingers in order to mourn through life, or, at least, to wear the semblance of mourning; hence the reason of so many Western Indians having lost one or more of their fingers, and of the scars which disfigure their bodies. . . . The Crows fasten the remains of their dead rn trees until their flesh is decayed; their skeletons are then taken down and inhumed in caves. Sometimes, but not frequently, they kill the favorite horse of the deceased, and bury him at the foot of the tree; but t~at custom is not followed so strictly with them as With most other tribes. I was pacifically engaged in. trapping during the ensuing winter, and the season being open an~ pleasant, I met with great success. Could I have dispos.ed of my peltry in St. Louis, I should have been as nch as I coveted. In the month of March (1826), a small war-party of twenty men left our village on an excursion, and not one of them ever came back, their pack-dogs (used for carrying extra moccasins when a party goes to war) alone returning to intimate their fate. An~ther party was quickly dispatched, of whom I was appOinted lead- |