Their round boats, of bowl-like wicker-work covered with hide, and their way of dipping the paddle from the front instead of from the rear, were exactly the Welsh method of canoe travel. In the days of Mah-to-toh-pa the Mandans numbered two thousand, in two towns allied with the towns of the Minnetarees. They were beset by the tough, winter-traveling Assiniboins to the north, and by the treacherous Arikarees and the bold Sioux to the south. Therefore when in 1833 the wandering artist George Catlin of Pennsylvania, who spent eight years painting Indians in their homes all the way from Florida to the Rocky Mountains, made a long stay among the Mandans, they rejoiced him by their brave tales as well as with their curious habits. According to all the reports, the "bravest of the braves" in the Mandan towns was Mahtotohpa; second chief by rank, but first of all by deeds. "Free, generous, elegant, and gentlemanly in his deportment--handsome, brave and valiant," says Artist Catlin. Such words speak well for Four Bears, but not a bit too well. Before he arrived at the Artist Catlin lodge to have his portrait painted, the warning ran ahead of him: "Mahtotohpa is coming in full dress!" He was escorted by a great throng of admiring women and children. Now it was twelve o'clock noon, and he had been since early morning getting ready, so as to appear as befitted a noble chief. His dress was complete: shirt, leggins, moccasins, head-dress, necklace, belt, robe, medicine-bag, tobacco sack, pipe, quiver, bow, knife, lance, shield, tomahawk and war-club. And as he proudly stood erect, waiting, he made a splendid sight. His shirt was mountain-sheep skins, one before, one behind, sewed together at their edges. They were embroidered with porcupine quills brightly dyed, and fringed with the black scalp-locks of the enemies whom he had slain in combat, and tasseled with ermine tails. They were pictured with his deeds, painted in sign language. The leggins were of finely dressed deer-skin, worked with the porcupine quills, fringed with the scalp-locks, and fitting tightly from moccasins to thighs. The moccasins were of buck-skin, armored with the dyed quills. The head-dress was a crest of two polished buffalo horns set in a thick mat of ermine, from which fell clear to his heels a ridgy tail of countless eagle plumes also set in the ermine fur. The necklace was of fifty grizzly-bear claws, strung from otter skin. The belt was of tanned buck-skin, supporting tomahawk and broad-bladed scalping knife with elk-horn haft. The robe slung from his shoulders like a Roman toga was the softened hide of a young buffalo bull worn fur side in; and on the white skin side all the battles of his life had been painted. The medicine-bag was a beaver skin, ornamented with hawk-bills and ermine. He held it in his right hand. His tobacco sack was of otter skin decorated with porcupine quills. In it were dried red-willow bark, flint and steel, and tinder.