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Show iiALLEBT] DAKOTA WINTER COUNTS, 1824- 1826. 113 White- Cow- Killer calls it " Old- corn- plenty winter." Mato Sapa's chart gives the human figure with a military cap, beard, and goatee. 1824-, 25- No. I. All the horses of Little- Swan's father are killed by Indians through spite. No. II. Swan, chief of the Two Kettle tribe, had all of his horses killed. Device, a horse pierced by a lance, blood flowing from the wound. No. III. Swan, a Minneconjou Indian, had twenty horses killed by a jealous Indian. Mato Sapa says: Swan, a Minneconjou chief, lost twenty horses killed by a jealous Indian. Major Bush says the same. 1825-' 26.- No. I. River overflows the Indian camp; several drowned. The- Flaine, the recorder of this count, born. In the original drawing the five objects above the line are obviously human heads. No. II. There was a remarkable flood in the Missouri River, and a number of Indians were drowned. With some exercise of fancy, the symbol may suggest heads appearing above a line of water, or it may simply be the severed heads, several times used, to denote Indians other than Dakotas, with the uniting black line of death. No. III. Thirty lodges of Dakota Indians drowned by a sudden rise of the Missouri River about Swan Lake Creek, which is in Horsehead Bottom, 15 miles below Fort Rice. The five heads are more clearly drawn than in No. II. Battiste Good says: " Many- Yanktonais- drowned winter;" adding: The river bottom on a bend of the Missouri River where they were encamped was suddenly submerged, when the ice broke and many women and children were drowned. This device is . presented in Figure 43. All the winter counts refer to this flood. 1826-' 27.- No. I. All of the Indians who ate of a buffalo killed on a hunt died of it, a peculiar sub- FIG. 43.- Kiver freahet. stance issuing from the mouth. No. II. " An Indian died of the dropsy." So Basil Clement was understood, but it is not clear why this circumstance should have been noted, unless the appearance of the disease was so unusual in 1826 as to excite remark. Baron de La Hontan, a good authority concerning the Northwestern Indians before they had been greatly affected by intercourse with whites, although showing a tendency to imitate another baron- Munchausen- as to his personal adventures, in his Nouveaux Voyages dans PAm^ riqne Septentrionale specially mentions dropsy as one of the diseases unknown to them. Carver also states that this malady was extremely rare. Whether or not the dropsy was very uncommon, the swelling in this special case might have been so enormous 4BTH 8 m |
