{134} This game, like some of those described in a former part of this work, requires considerable exertion, and is well calculated for the exhibition of that gracefulness of figure, and that ease and celerity of motion in which the savages so far surpass their civilized neighbours. We saw many young men engaged at these diversions, who had thrown aside their robes, leggins, and all superfluous articles of dress, displaying a symmetry of proportion, and beauty of form, which we have rarely seen surpassed. They were so intent upon their diversion, that in some instances our approach towards them, as we were rambling about the village, did not for a moment call off their attention from the game. The population of the three Pawnee villages was estimated by Captain Pike, in 1806, at 6,223, and they were at that time supposed to be able to call into the field 1,993 warriors. At present it is believed they would fall short of this estimate, particularly in the number of warriors. They are, however, still numerous, and are said to be increasing, and are respected by the Sioux, and other neighbouring nations, as warlike and powerful.[88] [88] The Pawnee now number about six hundred and fifty souls.—ED. About the three villages are six or eight thousand horses, feeding in the plains during the day, but confined at night. These, with a breed of sharp-eared, meagre, wolf-like dogs, are their only domestic animals. On the approach of winter they conceal their stores of corn, dry pumpkins, beans, &c. and with their whole retinue of dogs and horses desert their villages. This they are compelled to do from the want of wood, not only for fuel, but for the support of their numerous horses. They encamp in their lodges of skins wherever the cotton wood is found in sufficient quantities for their horses, and game for themselves. The horses, in the country bordering the Missouri, are fed during the winter, in the extensive wooded bottoms of that river, and are not, therefore, confined exclusively to {135} the cotton wood, having access to other timber, also to the rushes and coarse grass which abound in the bottoms. We are, however, well assured that the Indian horses, farther to the west, about the upper branches of the Platte, and Arkansa, subsist and thrive during the winter, with no other article of food than the bark and branches of the cotton wood. The winter at the Pawnee villages is said to be uncommonly severe, but is probably little, if any more so, than at Council Bluff, on the Missouri. Thermometric observations at Council Bluff, and at St. Peters[89] on the Mississippi, prove that the climate at these two places does not very widely differ from that of the corresponding latitudes on the Atlantic coast, except that it is at times something colder. The vicissitudes of temperature appear to be equally great and sudden.