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It is but due to say of the Yanktons, that, while other bands of Sioux have been hostile to the government and citizens, they have uniformly been friendly, even to the extent of assisting the government against their own kindred.
In war they go forward without sheltering themselves behind trees, or aiding their natural valor by any artifice. Their punctilious determination not to be turned from their course became heroic, or ridiculous, a short time since, when the Yanktons were crossing the Missouri on the ice. A hole lay immediately in their course, which might easily have been avoided by going around.
He returned without finding the horse, but had caught in the trap he had out a prairie wolf, which he carried home on his back and a bundle of kinikinic wood in his right hand. Then, he gave his reasons: 'I know he is old, by the impression his gait has made and a Yankton by that of his moccasin. He is from the other side of the river, as there are no Yanktons on this side.
Just as these were observed, another band, numbering eighty or ninety, came out of the woods nearer the shore. As they had a hostile appearance, the party in the canoes made preparations to receive them; they were suspected to be Teton-Sioux, although they might be Yanktons, Pawnees, or Omahas. The journal adds:
"We've been here almost two years now; long before you and the others came. Half the hunters who pass this way stop here. It wasn't a month ago that a party of Yanktons left a whole antelope. You ought to see Baby Bess shake hands with some of those wrinkled old bucks. Danger! We're safer here than we would be in Sioux City." "But there's been massacre already, I tell you," exploded the other.
I then walked on the Sand beech and the indians came down to meet me I gave them my hand and enquired of them what they were Shooting at, they informed me that they were Shooting off their guns at an old Keg which we had thrown out of one of the Canoes and was floating down. those Indians informed me they were Yanktons, one of the men with me knew one of the Indians to be the brother of young Durion's wife. finding those indians to be Yanktons I invited them down to the boats to Smoke. when we arived at the Canoes they all eagerly Saluted the Mandan Chief, and we all Set and Smoked Several pipes.
Suffice it to say that Antoine lived and died among the Yanktons at a good old age; but Ami could not brook the invasion upon their hermit life. He was never seen after that first evening. On the Assiniboine River in western Manitoba there stands an old, historic trading-post, whose crumbling walls crown a high promontory in the angle formed by its junction with a tributary stream.
The bearing of the Yanktons, as of almost every other Indian tribe, has been modified or altogether changed, time and again, under the will of successive chiefs. The attention of the expedition was not wholly engrossed with the Indians.
The chiefs and warriors, from the camps two miles up the river, met us, about fifty or sixty in number, and after smoking we delivered them a speech; but as our Sioux interpreter, M. Durion, had been left with the Yanktons, we were obliged to make use of a Frenchman who could not speak fluently, and therefore we curtailed our harangue.
I Sent the two Small Canoes on a head with derections to hunt in two bottoms below, and after a delay of half an hour proceeded on wind-hard a head at the lower point 7 of Pelecan Island a little above the Petite River de Seeoux we met a tradeing boat of Mr. Ag. Choteaux of St Louis bound to the River Jacque to trade with the Yanktons, this boat was in Care of a Mr.
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