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Show I II 346 THE MANDANS----HOSPITALITY-AGRICULTURE. The Mandans are hospitable, and often invite their acquaintance to come and see them. Their pipes are made of the red-stone, or of black clay. They obtain the red pipe-heads chiefly from the Sioux; sometimes they have wooden heads lined with stone; the tube is plain, long, round or flat, on the whole, of the same shape as among the Sioux, but they are not so fastidious about ornamenting their pipes as other tribes. They smoke the leaves of the tobacco plant, which is cultivated by them ; the bark of the red willow (Cornus sericea), which they obtain from the traders, is sometimes mixed with the tobacco, or the latter with the leaves of the bearberry (Arbutus uva urs'i). The tobacco of the Whites, unmixed, is too strong for the Indians, because they draw the smoke into their lungs ; hence they do not willingly smoke cigars. The meals of the Mandans are served in wooden dishes. The spoons are generally large and deep ; they are made of the horn of the bighorn (see woodcut, p. 251) ; sometimes they are yellow, or else they are shallow, made of black buffalo's horn. They have a considerable variety of dishes. The Indians residing in permanent villages have the advantage of the roving hunting tribes, in that they not only hunt, but derive their chief subsistence from their plantations, which afford them a degree of security against distress. It is true these Indians sometimes suffer hunger when the buffalo herds keep at a great distance, and their crops fail; but the distress can never be so great among the Missouri Indians, as in the tribes that live further northwards. The plants which they cultivate are maize, beans, French beans, gourds, sunflowers, and tobacco (Nicotiana quadrivalvis), of which I brought home some seeds, which have flowered in several botanic gardens. Of maize there are several varieties of colour, to which they give different names. The several varieties are:-1. White maize. 2. Yellow maize. 3. Red maize. 4. Spotted maize. 5. Black maize. 6. Sweet maize. 7. Very hard yellow maize. 8. White, or red-striped maize. 9. Very tender yellow maize.* The beans are likewise of various sorts-small white beans, black, red, and spotted beans. The gourds are-yellow, black, striped, blue, long, and thick-shelled gourds. The sunflower is a large helianthus, which seems perfectly to resemble that cultivated in our gardens. It is planted in rows between the maize. There are two or three varieties, with red, and black, and one with smaller seeds. Very nice cakes are made of these seeds. The tobacco * I brought to Europe specimens of the several kinds of maize grown among the Mandans; these have been sown, but only the early species were ripe in September, 1835. The heads have by no means attained the same size, on the Rhine, as in their native country. There the plant attains a height of five or six feet, and the colours of the grains are very various, bright and beautiful: while, on the Rhine, the plant grew to the height of four or four and a half feet. The later sorts grew to the height often feet, and were not quite ripe at the end of October. (See Bradbury, page 145, for an account of the maize of the Mandans.) According to Tanner (page 180), an Ottowa Indian first introduced the cultivation of maize on the Red River, among the Ojibuas, or Chippeways. |