6,400
Assinaboines 8,000
Crees 3,000
Gros Ventres 3,000
Aurekaras 3,000
Cheyennes 2,000
Mandans 1,500
Black Feet 30,000
Camanches 7,000
Minatarees 1,500
Crows 4,500
Arrepahas and Kiawas 1,400
Caddoes 800
Snake and other tribes within
the Rocky mountains 20,000
West of the Rocky mountains 80,000

The Camanches, Arrepahas, Kiawas and Caddoes roam over the great plains
towards the sources of the Arkansas and Red rivers, and through the
northern parts of Texas. The Black Feet are towards the heads of the
Missouri.

_Monuments and Antiquities._--Before dismissing the subject of the
aborigines, I shall touch very briefly on the monuments and antiquities
of the west,--with strong convictions that there has been much
exaggeration on this subject. I have already intimated that the mounds
of the west are natural formations, but I have not room for the
circumstances and facts that go to sustain this theory. The number of
objects considered as antiquities is greatly exaggerated. The
imaginations of men have done much. The number of mounds on the American
bottom in Illinois, adjacent to Cahokia creek, is stated by Mr. Flint at
200. The writer has counted all the elevations of surface for the extent
of nine miles, and they amount to 72. One of these, Monk hill, is much
too large, and three fourths of the rest are quite too small for human
labor. The pigmy graves on the Merrimeek, Mo., in Tennessee, and other
places, upon closer inspection, have been found to contain decayed
skeletons of the ordinary size, but buried with the leg and thigh bones
in contact. The _giant_ skeletons sometimes found, are the bones of
buffalo.

It is much easier for waggish laborers to deposit old horse shoes and
other iron articles where they are at work, for the special pleasure of
digging them up for credulous antiquarians, than to find proofs of the
existence of the horses that wore them!

There may, or may not, be monuments and antiquities that belong to a
race of men of prior existence to the present race of Indians. All that
the writer urges is, that this subject may not be considered as settled;
that d