appy, talkative people, of strange appearance,
but exceedingly clean, fond of bathing, either in the river or in
wicker tubs. Their hair was heavy, sometimes reached to the ground,
and was black, brown, and frequently gray or pure white even on the
young. Their eyes were likely to be hazel, blue or gray, instead of
black; their skin almost white. They made glassy clay vases and bowls,
and remarkable blue glass beads. In fact, they seemed to have white
manners, white arts, and white blood. Rumor asserted that they were
partly Welsh, descended from the lost colony of the Welsh prince, Madoc.

Now this Madoc, a prince of the early Welsh people, set sail about the
year 1180, with ten ships, to found a colony in a new Western continent
that he claimed to have discovered.

He never was heard from. He and his ten shiploads vanished. But if he
reached North America, and traveled inland, to be swallowed up amidst
the red blood, the strange Mandans may have been the proof of his
arrival.

Their round boats, of bowl-like wicker-work covered with hide, and
their way of dipping the paddle from the front instead of from the
rear, were exactly the Welsh method of canoe travel.

In the days of Mah-to-toh-pa the Mandans numbered two thousand, in two
towns allied with the towns of the Minnetarees. They were beset by the
tough, winter-traveling Assiniboins to the north, and by the
treacherous Arikarees and the bold Sioux to the south. Therefore when
in 1833 the wandering artist George Catlin of Pennsylvania, who spent
eight years painting Indians in their homes all the way from Florida to
the Rocky Mountains, made a long stay among the Mandans, they rejoiced
him by their brave tales as well as with their curious habits.

According to all the reports, the "bravest of the braves" in the Mandan
towns was Mahtotohpa; second chief by rank, but first of all by deeds.
"Free, generous, elegant, and gentlemanly in his deportment--handsome,
brave and valiant," says Artist Catlin. Such words speak well for Four
Bears, but not a bit too well.

Before he arrived at the Artist Catlin lodge to have his portrait
painted, the warning ran ahead of him: "Mahtotohpa is coming in full
dress!" He was escorted by a great throng of admiring women and
children. Now it was twelve o'clock noon, and he had been since early
morning getting ready, so as to appear as befitted a noble chief.

His dress was complete: shirt, leggins, moccasins, head-dre