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Show HISTORY OF FORT CLARKE. 323 were already beginning to retreat towards the forest, when the Black Cat called to the Coal, his adversary, who was among the retreating party, whether this retreat was a proof of his vaunted courage ? On which the Coal recovered himself, took his adversary by the arm, and said, " Well then, we will die together!" They both turned back and rode into the thickest of the enemy. Their example was instantly followed by all the other warriors; they recommenced the attack with renewed vigour ; the enemy was totally worsted, and many of their people killed. At another time a war party of the Sioux appeared opposite the village Les Souliers, in the large prairie. The Manitaries crossed the river, defeated the enemy, and pursued them for twenty miles. The Sioux constantly remained near the river to keep their opponents from their camp in hills, where their women and children were placed. A Sioux, wearing a handsome feather cap and tufts of hair, proceeded along the hills, and a Manitari chief pursued this enemy on a fleeter horse, and overtook him. Both dismounted and fought with their knives till the Sioux was killed. Forty-eight of the enemy were slain, while the Manitaries lost only three men. The Mandans had supported their allies and neighbours in this battle. Charbonneau was witness of this action, and said that in the following night the scalp dance was performed. Ten or twelve years ago the Manitaries were preparing an antelope park, and one of their people, who was occupied in a ravine, collecting the wood necessary for the purpose, was shot by some Assiniboins, who were lying in ambush. The relations were in the act of placing the deceased on the stage for the dead, when about thirty Assiniboins, with two calumets, came to the village to conclude a peace, not knowing that another band of their people had just committed the above-named murder. All the inhabitants hastened together, attacked and killed about twenty Assiniboins, took three of the women prisoners, while the few remaining of the party escaped by flight. Individuals are even now often murdered on both sides; and only three weeks before my arrival at Fort Clarke, three of the enemy had come to the bank opposite the fort, and made signals that they wished to be conveyed across. A man and two women accordingly went over in a leather boat, on which the strangers immediately shot the man, and the women with difficulty escaped. Fort Clarke is about three quarters of a mile below the site of the old fort of Lewis and Clarke, 300 paces from the Mandan village, Mih-Tutta-Hang-Kush, and between eighty and ninety paces from the southern side of the river, in a level prairie, above the rather steep bank of the Missouri. This bank, immediately below the Indian village, is much higher and quite perpendicular. About 200 paces below the fort is a streamlet which has steep clay banks, and at the distance of 200 paces from the Missouri divides into two arms, one of which comes down further south, and the other about 700 paces behind the fort, after issuing from the hills into the level prairie. This chain of hills limits the back-ground of the prairie, and closes on that side the view from the fort. (See the small plan of this spot.) The ground near the stream |