their husbands, brothers, or connexions. Having arranged themselves in
two columns, one on each side of the fire, as soon as the music began
they danced towards each other till they met in the centre, when the
rattles were shaken, and they all shouted and returned back to their
places. They have no step, but shuffle along the ground; nor does the
music appear to be any thing more than a confusion of noises,
distinguished only by hard or gentle blows upon the buffaloe skin: the
song is perfectly extemporaneous. In the pauses of the dance, any man of
the company comes forward and recites, in a sort of low guttural tone,
some little story or incident, which is either martial or ludicrous; or,
as was the case this evening, voluptuous and indecent; this is taken up
by the orchestra and the dancers, who repeat it in a higher strain and
dance to it. Sometimes they alternate; the orchestra first performing,
and when it ceases, the women raise their voices and make a music more
agreeable, that is, less intolerable than that of the musicians. The
dances of the men, which are always separate from those of the women,
are conducted very nearly in the same way, except that the men jump up
and down instead of shuffling; and in the war dances the recitations are
all of a military cast. The harmony of the entertainment had nearly been
disturbed by one of the musicians, who thinking he had not received a
due share of the tobacco we had distributed during the evening, put
himself into a passion, broke one of the drums, threw two of them into
the fire, and left the band. They were taken out of the fire: a buffaloe
robe held in one hand and beaten with the other, by several of the
company, supplied the place of the lost drum or tambourin, and no notice
was taken of the offensive conduct of the man. We staid till twelve
o'clock at night, when we informed the chiefs that they must be fatigued
with all these attempts to amuse us, and retired accompanied by four
chiefs, two of whom spent the night with us on board.

While on shore we saw twenty-five squaws, and about the same number of
children, who had been taken prisoners two weeks ago, in a battle with
their countrymen the Mahas. In this engagement the Sioux destroyed forty
lodges, killed seventy-five men, of which we saw many of the scalps, and
took these prisoners; their appearance is wretched and dejected; the
women too seem low in stature, coarse and ugly; though their present
condition m