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Show BATTLE WITH THE ASSINIBOINS. 275 confusion and the noise, which was increased by the loud report of the musketry, the moving backwards and forwards of the people carrying powder and ball, and the tumult occasioned by above twenty horses shut up in the fort. When the enemy were still very near the fort, Mr. Mitchell had given orders to fire the cannons of the right-hand front block-house among them; but this had not been done, because the Black-feet were partly mixed with the Assiniboins ; no use, therefore, had been made of them, of which the Indians complained bitterly. The enemy gradually retreated, and concentrated themselves in several detachments on the brow of the hill (see the plan of the action on the map), and this gave us an opportunity to open the gate, with due precaution, and view the destroyed tents and the bodies of the slain. The Indian who was killed near the fort especially interested me, because I wished to obtain his skull. The scalp had already been taken off, and several Blackfeet were engaged in venting their rage on the dead body. The men fired their guns at it; the women and children beat it with clubs, and pelted it with stones; the fury of the latter was particularly directed against the privy parts. Before I could obtain my wish, not a trace of the head was to be seen. Not far from the river there was a melancholy scene; old Haisikat (the stiff foot) was lamenting over his grown-up daughter, who had concealed herself in the bushes near the fort, and had been shot in mistake by Dechamp, who thought she was an enemy. At the very beginning of the engagement, the Blackfeet had despatched messengers on horseback to the great camp of their nation, which was eight or ten miles off, to summon their warriors to their aid, and their arrival was expected every moment. Meantime, Ninoch-Kiaiu came and called on Mr. Mitchell for assistance, for they had been attacked by another party of the enemy. Hotokaneheh likewise came to the fort, and made a long and violent speech, in which he reproached the Whites with being inactive while the enemy were still in the vicinity ; they ought not to confine themselves to the " defence of the fort, if they seriously desired the alliance of the Blackfeet, but endeavour to attack the common enemy in the prairie," &c. All these reproaches hurt Mr. Mitchell, and he resolved to show the Indians that the Whites were not deficient in courage. With this view he made the best hunters and riflemen mount their horses, and, in spite of our endeavours to dissuade him from this impolitic measure, he proceeded to the heights, where 150 or 200 Blackfeet kept up an irregular fire on the enemy. We who remained in the fort had the pleasure of viewing a most interesting scene. From the place where the range of hills turns to the Missouri, more and more Blackfeet continued to arrive. They came galloping in groups, from three to twenty together, their horses covered with foam, and they themselves in their finest apparel, with all kinds of ornaments and arms, bows and quivers on their backs, guns in their hands, furnished with their medicines, with feathers on their heads; some had splendid crowns of black and white eagles' feathers, and a large hood of feathers hanging down behind, sitting on fine panther skins lined with red ; the upper part of their bodies partly naked, with a v' Ml ¦ |