After
wandering together and having nothing but grapes to subsist on, they
were at last converted into stone, which, beginning at the feet,
gradually invaded the nobler parts, leaving nothing unchanged but a
bunch of grapes which the female holds in her hand to this day. Whenever
the Ricaras pass these sacred stones, they stop to make some offering
of dress to propitiate these deities. Such is the account given by the
Ricara chief, which we had no mode of examining, except that we found
one part of the story very agreeably confirmed; for on the river near
where the event is said to have occurred we found a greater abundance of
fine grapes than we had yet seen."
While at their last camp in the country now known as South Dakota,
October 14, 1804, one of the soldiers, tried by a court-martial for
mutinous conduct, was sentenced to receive seventy-five lashes on the
bare back. The sentence was carried out then and there. The Rickaree
chief, who accompanied the party for a time, was so affected by the
sight that he cried aloud during the whole proceeding. When the reasons
for the punishment were explained to him, he acknowledged the justice of
the sentence, but said he would have punished the offender with
death. His people, he added, never whip even their children at any age
whatever.
On the eighteenth of October, the party reached Cannonball River, which
rises in the Black Hills and empties in the Missouri in Morton County,
North Dakota. Its name is derived from the perfectly round, smooth,
black stones that line its bed and shores.
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