It is a remarkable fact, and worthy of observation in this place, that after I passed the Mississippi, I saw but very little wampum used; and on ascending the Missouri, I do not recollect to have seen it worn at all by the Upper Missouri Indians, although the same materials for its manufacture are found in abundance through those regions. I met with but very few strings of it amongst the Missouri Sioux, and nothing of it amongst the tribes north and west of them. Below the Sioux, and along the whole of our Western frontier, the different tribes are found loaded and beautifully ornamented with it, which they can now afford to do, for they consider it of little value, as the Fur Traders have ingeniously introduced a spurious imitation of it, manufactured by steam or otherwise, of porcelain or some composition closely resembling it, with which they have flooded the whole Indian country, and sold at so reduced a price, as to cheapen, and consequently destroy, the value and meaning of the original wampum, a string of which can now but very rarely be found in any part of the country. [10] Several years after I left the Sioux country, I saw Messrs. Chardon and Piquot, two of the Traders from that country, who recently had left it, and told me in St. Louis, whilst looking at the portrait of this girl, that while staying in Mr. Laidlaw’s Fort, the chief, Black Rock, entered the room suddenly where the portrait of his daughter was hanging on the wall, and pointing to it with a heavy heart, told Mr. Laidlaw, that whilst his band was out on the prairies, where they had been for several months “making meat,” his daughter had died, and was there buried. “My heart is glad again,” said he, “when I see her here alive; and I want the one the medicine-man made of her, which is now before me, that I can see her, and talk to her. My band are all in mourning for her, and at the gate of your Fort, which I have just passed, are ten horses for you, and Ee-ah-sa-pa’s wigwam, which you know is the best one in the Sioux nation. I wish you to take down my daughter and give her to me.” Mr. Laidlaw, seeing the _unusually_ liberal price that this nobleman was willing to pay for a portrait, and the true grief that he expressed for the loss of his child, had not the heart to abuse such noble feeling; and taking the painting from the wall, placed it into his hands; telling him that it of right belonged to him, and that his horses and wigwam he must take back and keep them, to mend, as far as possible, his liberal heart, which was broken by the loss of his only daughter.