[11] Many individuals attach small bags, of the size of the end of the thumb, to various parts of their dress, as talismanic preventives of personal injury. The custom of sacrificing their clothes to the medicine is unknown to the Omawhaws, but it is practised with the Upsaroka and some other nations.—JAMES. {252} As connected with the superstitions of the Missouri Indians, we may mention some anecdotes that came to our knowledge. First, of the Me-ma-ho-pa or medicine stone of the _Gros ventres_, or Minnetarees.[12] This is a large, naked, and insulated rock, situate in the midst of a small prairie, at the distance of about two days' journey, southwest of the village of that nation. In shape it resembles the steep roof of a house. The Minnetarees resort to it, for the purpose of propitiating their Man-ho-pa or Great Spirit, by presents, by fasting, and lamentation, during the space of from three to five days. [12] The tribe here mentioned belonged to the Siouan family, and its numbers were estimated by Lewis and Clark at two thousand five hundred. Their chief village was situated on Knife River, North Dakota. Minitaree means "to cross water;" Grosventres is French for "Big Bellies." The proper name of this tribe is Hidatsa, which distinguishes it from an unrelated tribe farther west, to which both of the former appellations are sometimes applied—generally with the addition "of the Prairie;" the Hidatsa being known as Grosventres (or Minitaree) "of the Missouri." Their numbers were thinned by an epidemic in 1837, and in 1845 they removed some sixty miles farther up the Missouri, where they were joined by the Mandan, and later (1862) by the Arikara. About four hundred and fifty Hidatsa now live on the Fort Berthold Reservation, in North Dakota.—ED.