Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri: Edited with Notes and Biographical SketchDenig, Edwin Thompson
History
Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri: Edited with Notes and Biographical Sketch
Denig, Edwin Thompson
Assiniboine Indians; Indians of North America -- Missouri River Valley
Wo´-a-see´-chah, or Bad Animal, known to traders by the name of Le
Serpent, is a war leader and chief of Les Gens des Canots Band, the
same 200 lodges of which Blue Thunder is one of the warriors and camp
soldiers. I believe he has never killed many enemies but has murdered
in quarrels two of his own people, is considered a sensible man, very
friendly to the whites, judicious in his government of his band, and
also is a person whom it is not desirable to aggravate too much. Me-nah
(The Knife), A-wah-min-ne-o-min-ne (The Whirlwind), Ish-ta-o-ghe-nah
(Gray Eyes), He-boom-an-doo (La Poudrière), and others are soldiers and
warriors whose histories are known to us and would present the usual
features of savage life and warfare.
The Assiniboin speak but one dialect, being radically the same as the
Sioux; no other is incorporated in it, though some few can in addition
speak Cree and others of the northern bands of Blackfeet, but no more
than one interpreter is required in transacting any business with each
or all of them. A person who can speak the Sioux language well could
interpret for the Assiniboin, or vice versa.
There are many elderly persons capable of stating their traditions and
willing to impart any information they are in possession of regarding
their history; but what is heard from them in this respect is so
mingled with fable and superstition as seldom to admit of its serving
as a basis for truth or knowledge or for a correct representation
of their past condition. They do not exhibit any chain of connected
facts; and though these oral tales have been preserved entire,
transmitted in their original form through successive generations,
and may possibly have been the belief of their ancestors, yet at the
present day are regarded more as a source of amusement than a medium
of instruction or means of perpetuating their history. Too much error
has been the result of depending for knowledge on these traditions by
people who only understand them in their literal sense or have been
badly interpreted. All facts among the nations with whom we profess an
intimate acquaintance and minute knowledge farther than a century back
are involved in obscurity, mingled with fable, or embodied in their
superstitions.
The time when the tribe reached its present location was from 1804 to
1825, when the most of them might be considered as established on the
waters of the Missouri, the boundaries of which have been pointed out,
though in 1839, 60 lodges of Assiniboin came over from the British
northern possessions and joined those of the Missouri, since which time
they have resided together.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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