At first they did not seem to hurt each
other much; but one or two of them, smarting under the lash, returned
the blows in good earnest, and then they all got angry, and beat each
other so unmercifully that, in a few minutes, they were scarcely able to
move. Nothing could exceed the ludicrous picture which Gabriel would
draw out of this little event.
There is one circumstance which will form a particular datum in the
history of the Western wild tribes,--I mean the terrible visitation of
the small-pox. The Apaches, Comanches, the Shoshones, and Arrapahoes are
so clean and so very nice in the arrangement of their domestic comforts,
that they suffered very little, or not at all; at least, I do not
remember a single case which brought death in these tribes; indeed, as I
have before mentioned, the Shoshones vaccinate.
But such was not the case with the Club Indians of the Colorado of the
West, with the Crows, the Flat-heads, the Umbiquas, and the Black-feet.
These last suffered a great deal more than any people in the world ever
suffered from any plague or pestilence. To be sure, the Mandans had been
entirely swept from the surface of the earth; but they were few, while
the Black-feet were undoubtedly the most numerous and powerful tribe in
the neighbourhood of the mountains.
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