Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri 1

Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri 1

Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri

Edited With Notes and Biographical Sketch

 

Author: Edwin Thompson Denig

PREFACE

 

 

This manuscript is entitled “A Report to the Hon. Isaac I. Stevens,

Governor of Washington Territory, on the Indian Tribes of the Upper

Missouri, by Edwin Thompson Denig.” It has been edited and arranged

with an introduction, notes, a biographical sketch of the author, and a

brief bibliography of the tribes mentioned in the report.

 

The report consists of 451 pages of foolscap size; closely written

in a clear and fine script with 15 pages of excellent pen sketches

and one small drawing, to which illustrations the editor has added

two photographs of Edwin Thompson Denig and his Assiniboin wife,

Hai-kees-kak-wee-lãh, Deer Little Woman, and a view of Old Fort Union

taken from “The Manoe-Denigs,” a family chronicle, New York, 1924.

 

The manuscript is undated, but from internal evidence it seems safe to

assign it to about the year 1854.

 

The editor has not attempted to verify the statements of the author as

embodied in the report; he has, however, where feasible, rearranged

some portions of its contents by bringing together under a single

rubric remarks upon a common topic which appeared in various parts of

the report as replies to closely related but widely placed questions;

and he has attempted to do this without changing the phraseology or

the terminology of Mr. Denig, except in very rare instances, and then

only to clarify a statement. For example, the substitution of the

native term for the ordinary English __EXPRESSION__, the Great Spirit,

and divining in the place of “medicine” in medicine man, practically

displacing _medicine man_, by the word _diviner_.

 

In his letter of transmittal “To his Excellency, Isaac I. Stevens,

Governor of Washington Territory,” Mr. Denig writes: “Being stimulated

with the desire to meet your wishes and forward the views of

government, I have in the following pages endeavored to answer the

‘Inquiries’ published by act of Congress, regarding the ‘History,

Present Condition, and Future Prospects of the Indian Tribes’ with

which I am acquainted. * * * Independent of my own personal observation

and knowledge acquired by a constant residence of 21 years among the

prairie tribes, in every situation, I have on all occasions had the

advice of intelligent Indians as to the least important of these

inquiries, so as to avoid, if possible, the introduction of error. * * *

 

“It is presumed the following pages exhibit a minutiæ of information,

on those subjects not to be obtained either by transient visitors or

a residence of a few years in the country, without being, as is the

case with myself, intimately acquainted with their camp regulations,

understanding their language, and in many instances entering into their

feelings and actions.

 

“The whole has been well digested, the different subjects pursued

in company with the Indians for an entire year, until satisfactory

answers have been obtained, and their motives of speech or action well

understood before placing the same as a guide and instruction to others.

 

“The answers refer to the Sioux, Arikara, Mandan, Gros Ventres, Cree,

Crow, Assiniboin, and Blackfeet Nations, who are designated as prairie,

roving, or wild tribes—further than whom our knowledge does not extend.

 

“I am aware of your capacity to judge the merits of the work and will

consider myself highly honored if I have had the good fortune to meet

your approbation; moreover I shall rejoice if I have contributed in any

degree toward opening a course of policy on the part of the Government

that may result in the amelioration of the sad condition of the

savages. Should the facts herein recorded ever be published or embodied

in other work it is hoped the errors of language may be corrected, but

in no instance is it desired that the meaning should miscarry.”

 

Elsewhere in this letter Mr. Denig writes: “Some of their customs and

opinions now presented, although very plain and common to us who are in

their daily observance, may not have been rendered in comprehensible

language to those who are strangers to these things, and the number of

queries, the diversity of subjects, etc., have necessarily curtailed

each answer to as few words as possible.”

 

The report was made in response to a circular of “Inquiries, Respecting

the History, Present Condition, and Future Prospects of the Indian

Tribes of the United States,” by Henry R. Schoolcraft, Office of Indian

Affairs, Washington, D. C., printed in Philadelphia, Pa., in 1851.

This circular is a reprint of the circular issued in July, 1847, in

accordance with the provisions of section 5, chapter 66, of the Laws of

the Twenty-ninth Congress, second session, and approved March 3, 1847,

which read, “_And be it further enacted_, That in aid of the means now

possessed by the Department of Indian Affairs through its existing

organization, there be, and hereby is, appropriated the sum of five

thousand dollars to enable the said department, under the direction

of the Secretary of War, to collect and digest such statistics and

material as may illustrate the history, the present condition, and

future prospects of the Indian tribes of the United States.”

 

The original circular recites that it was addressed to four classes

of individuals, namely, “I. Persons holding positions under the

department, who are believed to have it in their power to impart much

practical information respecting the tribes who are, respectively,

under their charge. II. Persons who have retired from similar

situations, travelers in the Indian Territory, or partners and factors

on the American frontiers. III. Men of learning or research who have

perused the best writers on the subject and who may feel willing to

communicate the results of their reading or reflections. IV. Teachers

and missionaries to the aborigines.”

 

The circular closes with an __EXPRESSION__ of the “anxiety which is felt to

give to the materials collected the character of entire authenticity,

and to be apprised of any erroneous views in the actual manners and

customs, character, and condition of our Indian tribes which may have

been promulgated. The Government, it is believed, owes it to itself

to originate a body of facts on this subject of an entirely authentic

character, from which the race at large may be correctly judged by

all classes of citizens, and its policy respecting the tribes under

its guardianship, and its treatment of them, properly understood and

appreciated.”

 

The 348 inquiries in the circular embrace the history (and archeology),

the tribal organization, the religion, the manners and customs, the

intellectual capacity and character, the present condition, the future

prospects, and the language, of the Indian tribes of the United States.

 

But the report of Mr. Denig consists of brief and greatly condensed

replies to as many of the questions propounded in the circular in

question as concerned the native tribes of the upper Missouri River, to

wit, the Arikara, the Mandan, the Sioux, the Gros Ventres, the Cree,

the Crows, the Assiniboin, and the Blackfeet, tribes with whom he was

thoroughly acquainted, although the Assiniboin seem to have been the

chief subjects of his observations. It should be noted that the answers

to some of the questions, if adequately treated, would have required

nearly as much space as was devoted to the entire report.

 

While the facts embodied in the replies of Mr. Denig are, when

unqualified, affirmed of all the eight tribes mentioned in his letter

of transmittal, he is nevertheless careful, when needful, to restrict

many of his answers to the specific tribes to which their subject

matter particularly related. But, of course, all the tribes mentioned

belonged measurably to a single cultural area at that time.

 

That Mr. Denig made use of the circular issued by Mr. Schoolcraft is

clearly evident from the fact that on the left-hand margin of the

manuscript he usually wrote the number of the question to which he was

giving an answer.

 

In the manuscript there appear two quite distinct handwritings, and so

it is possible that this particular manuscript is a copy of an original

which was retained by the author.

 

Dr. F. V. Hayden made extensive use of this report in preparation of

his “Contributions to the Ethnography and Philology of the Indian

Tribes of the Missouri Valley,” Philadelphia, C. Sherman & Son, 1862.

But he did not give Mr. Denig proper credit for using verbatim numbers

of pages of the manuscript without any indication that he was copying a

manuscript work from another writer whose position and long experience

among them made him an authority on the tribes in question. This piece

of plagiarism was not concealed by the bald statement of Doctor Hayden

that he was “especially indebted to Mr. Alexander Culbertson, the

well-known agent of the American Fur Co., who has spent 30 years of his

life among the wild tribes of the Northwest and speaks several of their

languages with great ease. To Mr. Andrew Dawson, superintendent of Fort

Benton; Mr. Charles E. Galpin, of Fort Pierre; and E. T. Denig, of Fort

Union, I am under great obligations for assistance freely granted at

all times.”

 

Mr. Edwin Thompson Denig, the author of this manuscript report, was the

son of Dr. George Denig and was born March 10, 1812, in McConnellstown,

Huntingdon County, Pa., and died in 1862 or 1863 in Manitoba, probably

in the town of Pilot Mound, in the vicinity of which his daughters

live, or did live in 1910. His legally married wife was the daughter of

an Assiniboin chief, by whom he had two daughters, Sara, who was born

August 10, 1844, and Ida, who was born August 22, 1854, and one son,

Alexander, who was born May 17, 1852, and who was killed by lightning

in 1904.

 

To his early associates Mr. Denig was a myth, more or less, having

gone West as a young man and having died there. He lost caste with his

family because of his marriage with the Assiniboin woman.

 

Mr. Denig entered the fur trade in 1833 and became very influential

among the tribes of the upper Missouri River. He was for a time a

Government scout; then a bookkeeper for the American Fur Co. Earlier he

had gone to St. Louis and became connected with the Chouteaus and the

American Fur Co. Before he was 30 years of age he was living among the

Indians as the representative of these two companies in that vast and

almost unknown region between the headwaters of the Mississippi and the

Missouri Rivers inhabited by tribes of the Sioux.

 

Mr. Denig became a bookkeeper for the American Fur Co. at Fort Union,

situated near the mouth of the Yellowstone River, of the offices of

which for a time, about 1843, he was superintendent. Because of his

thorough and comprehensive knowledge of the Indians of his adopted

tribe, their language, customs, and tribal relations, he was consulted

by most of the noted Indian investigators of that period—Schoolcraft, Hayden, and others.