In places where at that time
there were sandbars, the current of the river now passes, and the former
channel of the river is in turn a bank of sand. Sandbars then naked are
now covered with willows several feet high; the entrance of some of
the creeks and rivers has changed in consequence of the quantity of mud
thrown into them; and in some of the bottoms are layers of mud eight
inches in depth."
The streams that flow into the Missouri and Mississippi from the
westward are notoriously fickle and changeable. Within a very few years,
some of them have changed their course so that farms are divided into
two parts, or are nearly wiped out by the wandering streams. In at least
one instance, artful men have tried to steal part of a State by changing
the boundary line along the bed of the river, making the stream flow
many miles across a tract around which it formerly meandered. On this
boundary line between the Sioux and their upper neighbors, the party
met a band of Cheyennes and another of Ricaras, or Arikaras. They held
a palaver with these Indians and reproached the Ricara chief, who was
called Gray-eyes, with having engaged in hostilities with the Sioux,
notwithstanding the promises made when the white men were here before.
To this Gray-eyes made an animated reply:--
"He declared that the Ricaras were willing to follow the counsels we had
given them, but a few of their bad young men would not live in peace,
but had joined the Sioux and thus embroiled them with the Mandans.
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