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Chapter IV -- Novel Experiences among the Indians
About this time (the nineteenth and twentieth of August), the explorers
lost by death the only member of their party who did not survive the
journey. Floyd River, which flows into the Upper Missouri, in the
northwest corner of Iowa, still marks the last resting-place of Sergeant
Charles Floyd, who died there of bilious colic and was buried by his
comrades near the mouth of the stream. Near here was a quarry of red
pipestone, dear to the Indian fancy as a mine of material for their
pipes; traces of this deposit still remain. So fond of this red rock
were the Indians that when they went there to get the stuff, even
lifelong and vindictive enemies declared a truce while they gathered the
material, and savage hostile tribes suspended their wars for a time.
On the north side of the Missouri, at a point in what is now known
as Clay County, South Dakota, Captains Lewis and Clark, with ten men,
turned aside to see a great natural curiosity, known to the Indians as
the Hill of Little Devils. The hill is a singular mound in the midst of
a flat prairie, three hundred yards long, sixty or seventy yards wide,
and about seventy feet high. The top is a smooth level plain. The
journal says:--
"The Indians have made it a great article of their superstition: it
is called the Mountain of Little People, or Little Spirits; and they
believe that it is the abode of little devils, in the human form, of
about eighteen inches high, and with remarkably large heads; they are
armed with sharp arrows, with which they are very skilful, and are
always on the watch to kill those who should have the hardihood to
approach their residence.
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