We shortly after passed the mouth of the great Sioux River--this river comes in from the north and is about one hundred and ten yards wide. M. Durion our Sioux interpreter says that it is navigable upwards of two hundred miles to the falls and even beyond them. That below the falls a creek falls in from the Eastward after passing through cliffs of red rock. Of this the Indians make their pipes: and the necessity of procuring them has introduced a sort of law of nations, by which the banks of the creek are sacred, so that even tribes at war meet at these quarries without hostility. Thus we find even among savages certain things held sacred which mitigate the rigours of their merciless warfare. A few days following we had a violent storm of wind and rain in the evening and had to repair our pirogues the next day. At four o’clock Sergeant Pryor and his men came back with five chiefs of the Sioux and about seventy warriors and boys. Sergeant Pryor reported that on reaching their village twelve miles from our camp he was met by a party with a buffalo-robe on which they desired to carry their visitors: an honour which they declined informing the Indians that they were not the commanders of the party. As a mark of respect they were then presented with a fat dog, already cooked of which they partook heartily and found it well flavored. The camps of the Sioux are of a conical form covered with buffalo-robes painted with various figures and colours, with an aperture in the top for the smoke to pass through. The lodges contain from ten to fifteen persons and the interior arrangement is compact and handsome, each lodge having a place for cooking detached from it. The next day we prepared a speech and some presents and then sent for the chiefs and warriors whom we received under a large oak-tree near to which the flag of the United States was flying. Captain Lewis delivered the speech and we gave to the grand chief a flag, a medal, and a certificate, to which we added a chief’s coat; that is a richly-laced uniform of the United States Artillery Corps, and a cocked hat and red feather. A second chief and three inferior ones were given medals and a present of tobacco and articles of clothing. We then smoked the pipe of peace, and the chiefs retired to a bower formed of bushes by their young men, where they divided the presents among each other and ate and smoked and held a council on their answer to us to-morrow. The young people exercised their bows and arrows in shooting at marks for beads as prizes; and in the evening the whole party danced until a late hour. In the course of their amusement we threw among them some knives, tobacco, bells, tape and binding with which they were much pleased. Their musical instruments were the drum, and a sort of little bag made of buffalo-hide dressed white with small shot or pebbles in it and a bunch of hair tied to it for a handle. This produces a sort of rattling