fore
he could tear the haft from the Cheyenne's fingers.

But suddenly he succeeded, and the Cheyenne died. The warriors of both
parties had formed a circle close about, watching. Mahtotohpa
staggered up, with the Cheyenne's scalp and knife, and gave the kill
whoop--and thus victory rested with the Mandans.

That was Mahtotohpa's most famous battle. In another battle he got his
name, Four Bears. The Assiniboins had put all his warriors to flight;
but he stood his ground, and shot his gun and killed an Assiniboin, and
charged with lance and shield, and made them run off. He took sixty
horses, besides the scalp. After this he was called Four Bears,
because the Assiniboins said that he charged "like four bears in one."

His worst wound he received from the Sioux. They shot an arrow clear
through his body, so that the arrow continued on, dropping blood. But
he lashed his horse forward, against them, and won another victory.

Such honorable scars he kept covered with red paint, that all who saw
might read.

These stories, and others, as pictured by the robe, Mahtotohpa told to
Artist Catlin, while Indian trader James Kipp translated the words, and
Four Bears acted out the scenes; and they three sat upon the robe
itself.

The Cheyenne chief's knife he gave to Artist Catlin. He also made a
copy of the pictures, on another robe, and the knife and the second
robe were sent to the Catlin Indian gallery, at Washington, where they
doubtless may be seen at this day.

Mahtotohpa's end came to him as follows:

In the summer of 1837, a great death attacked the Mandan towns. It was
the small pox. The Sioux hedged the towns so closely that there was no
escape into the prairie. The Mandan men, women and children, thus
herded together, died by hundreds.

Mahtotohpa was among the last left. He witnessed all his family and
friends stretched cold and lifeless, and he decided to try a sacrifice
to the anger of the Great Spirit.

So he dragged his wives and children together and covered them decently
with buffalo robes. Then he went out to a little hill, and laid
himself down, with a vow not to eat or drink, if the Great Spirit would
stay the plague.

On the sixth day he was very weak; but he crept back to his lodge, and
again laid himself down, in a robe, beside his family. And on the
ninth day, he, too, died.

However, the plague was not stayed for many days. Of the sixteen
hundred Mandans in the two towns, onl