"
The Assiniboin custom of sacrificing to their deity, or "great
medicine," the article which they most value themselves, is not by any
means peculiar to that tribe, nor to the Indian race.
An unusual number of porcupines were seen along here, and these
creatures were so free from wildness that they fed on, undisturbed,
while the explorers walked around and among them. The captains named
a bold and beautiful stream, which here entered the Missouri from the
north,--Porcupine River; but modern geography calls the water-course
Poplar River; at the mouth of the river, in Montana, is now the Poplar
River Indian Agency and military post. The waters of this stream, the
explorers found, were clear and transparent,--an exception to all the
streams, which, discharging into the Missouri, give it its name of the
Big Muddy. The journal adds:--
"A quarter of a mile beyond this river a creek falls in on the south,
to which, on account of its distance from the mouth of the Missouri, we
gave the name of Two-thousand-mile creek. It is a bold stream with a bed
thirty yards wide. At three and one-half miles above Porcupine River,
we reached some high timber on the north, and camped just above an
old channel of the river, which is now dry. We saw vast quantities of
buffalo, elk, deer,--principally of the long-tailed kind,--antelope,
beaver, geese, ducks, brant, and some swan. The porcupines too are
numerous, and so careless and clumsy that we can approach very near
without disturbing them, as they are feeding on the young willows.
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