The Minetarees, a small tribe of about 1,500 souls, reside in three villages, consisting of earth-covered lodges, on the banks of the Knife River, a branch of the Missouri. This people are supposed to be a part of the Crows, who, at some remote period, being cut off by their enemies, and unable to return, threw themselves upon the hospitality of the Mandans, with whom they became, in a measure, joined. In language and customs they are said much to resemble the Crows, though they have also become somewhat assimilated to the Mandans. They have a tradition to the following effect. They came to the vicinity of the Mandans, poor, and without wigwams or horses. They were nearly all women, as their warriors had been killed off in fight; the Mandans would not take them into their village, nor let them come nearer than where they are now living, but they assisted them to build wigwams. Their chief, Black Moccasin, who treated Lewis and Clarke with great kindness, when they crossed the Rocky Mountains, in 1819, was still living when Catlin was among them, though probably more than a hundred years old. Lewis and Clarke constituted him chief of the tribe, and such has he been ever since. He remembered and inquired very earnestly after Red Hair and Long Knife, as he called those officers, from the fact that one had red hair and the other wore a broadsword. The Minetarees are a bold and daring tribe, often carrying war into their enemies’ country, and thus greatly diminishing their numbers.