whole,
eighteen villages; but their numbers had been so much reduced, by the
small-pox and by their wars with the Sioux, that they were compelled to
emigrate in a body, and unite themselves with the Ricara nation; and
they now occupy only two villages, on opposite sides of the Missouri,
and about three miles asunder. Each of these contains forty or fifty
lodges, built in the same manner as those of the Ricaras. The whole
force of the Ahanaways is not, at present, more than fifty men. Their
residence is on an elevated plain, near the mouth of the _Knife river_.
On the south side of the same river, and about half a mile distant from
this people, is a village of the _Minnetarees_; and there are four other
villages of these Indians at a little distance.

The religion of the Mandans consists in the belief that one great Spirit
presides over their destinies; but they also believe that various
beings, some imaginary and some existing in the form of animals, have
the power of interceding for them with the great spirit. To these they
pay their devotion. They believe in a future state; and that, after
death, they shall go to the original seats of their forefathers, which
they suppose to be underground, immediately beneath a spot on the banks
of the Missouri, where they formerly had nine villages.

On the 7th of December, the Missouri was frozen over, and the ice was an
inch and half in thickness. The cold was so intense, that the air was
filled with icy particles resembling a fog; and the snow was several
inches deep. Notwithstanding this, one of the commanders, accompanied by
some of the men, went out almost every day to hunt. On the tenth,
Captain Clarke and his hunters, after having killed nine buffaloes, were
obliged to spend a wretched night on the snow: having no other covering
than a small blanket and the hides of the buffaloes they had killed. The
next day the wind blew from the north; and the ice in the atmosphere was
so thick, as to render the weather hazy, and to give the appearance of
two suns reflecting each other. On the seventeenth, the mercury in the
thermometer fell to seventy-four degrees below the freezing point. The
fort was completed on the day before Christmas.

The Indians, inured to the severity of the climate, are able to support
the rigours of the season, in a way which Captains Lewis and Clarke had
hitherto considered impossible. Many parts of their bodies were exposed;
and one of the Indians, in par