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known. "Sioux" is a contraction of "Nadonesioux," meaning "little snakes," i.e., enemies. The name was given the Dakota by the Ojibways, to whom the Iroquois were known as "big snakes," and the Dakota as "little snakes." On page 131, Parkman calls the name Sioux "meaningless."

59. the Platte lay before us. The scene is near the head of Grand Island.

60. "The Great American Desert." As this name was graduually being transferred to a region farther west, Parkman omitted it from the 1872 edition.

62. Fur Company. By "Fur Company" or just "Company," the American Fur Company is always meant. The western headquarters were at St. Louis. See note, p. 94. 63. capote, a long overcoat, with a hood.

CHAPTER VII

63. bois de vache, dried buffalo dung; locally called " COW chips."

buttes, low, detached mountains which rise abruptly from the plain.

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tall white wagons, known as the "prairie schooners." prickly pear (Cactus opuntia), also known as Indian fig. 67. to 66 run," approach." These two methods of killing buffalo are explained in detail at the beginning of Chapter XXIV.

68. old Papin (P. D. Papin) was a member of the French Fur Company which had been forced out by the monopoly (The American Fur Company) in 1830. He entered the service of the latter in the same year.

bourgeois. In the 1872 edition the author adds the words, or "boss." The bourgeois was the manager of the trading post.

The boats. Bull-boats were used exclusively on the Platte. They were made of buffalo skins stretched over a frame of willow and cottonwood, and had a draught of only four inches of water.

70. Tom, from Tom o' Bedlam, the English term for a harmlessly insane person.

scot-free; literally, free from payment of tax; unhurt.

71. prairie-dogs. The prairie-dog among animals and the sage brush among plants, though both are said to be the most useless of living things, are the two objects that first attract the traveler's notice.

72. snaffle, a bridle bit with a joint in the middle.

curb. A chain or strap behind the jaw of the horse, connected with a stiff bit in such a way as to form a fulcrum for the branches of the bit which act as levers.

CHAPTER VIII

78. Taking French Leave, taking leave without giving notice.

80. their ancestors. The Teutonic tribes overspread Europe at the time of the fall of the Roman Empire. The emigrants of whom Parkman speaks were descendants of Angles, Saxons, Danes, and Normans, branches of the Teutonic race.

83. Ash Hollow, where the Trail touched the North Platte, since famous as the scene of a bloody battle between Little Thunder, chief of the Brulé Indians, and the Second Regiment of United States Dragoons.

84. patriarchal scene. A patriarch is a father and ruler of a family, as in Bible times when several generations dwelt together. In classes other than the emigrants the patriarchal organization was noticeable in the West; as in the cases of Indian villages, and trading posts.

Scott's Bluff. Scott was one of a party of fur-traders descending the Platte in canoes in 1830. Near the mouth of Laramie River the boat was upset and their powder and provisions lost. Scott fell sick and could not proceed. His companions, realizing that unless they reached the main party some miles in advance they would be lost, abandoned him to save themselves, and told the party that he had died of his disease. Next year the same traders, ascending the river, found his skeleton on what has since been called Scott's Bluff. Sick and starving, he had crawled upwards of fifty miles before death had put an end to his sufferings.

85. Smoke's village. The word village, as applied to Indian tribes, refers to the community rather than to the place of abode.

86. Horse Creek, a large southern tributary of the Platte, rises in Wyoming and joins the Platte in Nebraska.

87. Macbeth's witches. The three witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth are represented as being hideously ugly. See Act I, scenes 1 and 3.

88. Le Cochon, the hog.

89. Black Hills. Not the Black Hills as we now use the term, for they are due north from Parkman's position. Numerous mountain ranges between the Missouri and the Rocky Mountains were called the Black Hills in 1846. The peaks referred to were in the Laramie range.

cotton-wood trees. The cottonwood, a species of poplar, was the most important, practically the only tree, in the whole region. It grew along water courses. It furnished fuel, shelter, food for horses, boats ("dugouts"), and palisades for forts.

little trading fort, Fort Richard, built about 1843.

Richard, or Richards, notorious as a smuggler for Pratte, Cabanne & Co., the owners of Fort Platte, referred to later in this chapter.

90. Navaho slave, from New Mexico, west of Taos, which was

the place where Richards began his operations in smuggling whiskey across the Mexican border for the fur-traders. Shongsasha, red willow bark. See p. 176.

91. another post of less recent date. Fort Platte, built by Pratte, Cabanne & Co.

its successful competitor, Fort Laramie, built by the American Fur Company. It was built on the site of Fort William (Fort John) which was erected by Robert Campbell for the Rocky Mountain Fur Co., in 1834.

92. "At the first plunge..." See Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel, Canto First, Stanza XXIX.

CHAPTER IX

92. engagés, hired men, bound for a period of five years, at such low wages that at the end of the period they were sure to be in the company's debt. They would then be bound for another five years, unless they resorted to the dangerous expedient of desertion.

not traders. The bourgeois as a servant of the monopoly was jealous of any independent company coming upon the scene of action.

93. admiration, wonderment.

94. "American Fur Company." Incorporated by John Jacob Astor in 1808, with headquarters at Michilimackinac. In 1822 the company opened its Western Department at St. Louis. After it absorbed the Columbia Fur Company, 1828, "the company" or "the Fur Company" always meant the American Fur Company, among all the traders of the West. According to the best authority, it was "thoroughly hated even by its own servants."

bastions, parts of the fort which project at the corners of the walls.

banquette, a raised bank inside a parapet, for musketeers. corral, a common device in the West. The Oregon emigrants often formed one when necessary by drawing their wagons up in such a way as to form an inclosure. 95. " great medicine," very The "medicine wonderful. was the conjurer, the magician of the tribe.

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Jesuit or Puritan. The Jesuits are a society of Catholic missionaries. They were especially prominent in the French explorations and settlements in America. The Puritans were not so famous as missionaries; however, the " Apostle to the Indians," John Eliot, spent his life in the work, and translated the Bible into the Indian language. Two of Parkman's ancestors preached to the Indians in their own tongue. For the story of the western missions, see "A History of Oregon Missions,' by Rev. Gustavus Hines, and "The Bridge of the Gods," by F. H. Balch.

98. May, William P., a trader of the Missouri River, had been

put out of business by the American Fur Company in 1843, and like the others had then entered the service of "the Company."

the traveller Catlin. George Catlin, the artist, was on the first steamboat on the upper Missouri, 1832. His chief work was painting Indian portraits from life. He completed about 500. They are now in the National Museum. Parkman did not trust Catlin's Indian studies, and spoke of him as a garrulous and windy writer."

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Laramie Creek, the main southern tributary of the North Platte.

travaux, a combination of the French word traineau and the Canadian travois.

100. voyageur, a boatman, a canoe man, especially the Canadian. Voyageurs made inland journeys sometimes thousands of miles in extent, carrying their canoes from the tributaries of one river to another.

Monterey, Buena Vista. Two battles of the Mexican War, in which the troops from the South and what were then western states showed great bravery.

102. unless troops are speedily stationed.

In the same year

that the Oregon Trail appeared in book form, the United States government bought Fort Laramie.

Brulé, a branch of the Teton Dakotas.

Meneaska, Dakota for white men.

lamentable in the extreme. About 1,000 settlers in northern Minnesota were massacred in 1862 by the Dakota; Fetterman's detachment at Fort Kearney, 100 men, met the same fate in 1866, and the massacre of Gen. Custer's command in 1876 is the well-known climax to this series.

104. Spanish flies, the blister-beetles.

105. "Western State." The idea of Oregon's becoming a state was ridiculed for a decade or more after Parkman's journey.

106. South Pass, where the Oregon Trail crossed the Rocky Mountains, 947 miles from Independence, Missouri. Although it was less than half the distance to their destination, "Here hail Oregon!" was the emigrants' cry as they emerged from the Pass.

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106. Snake country, the country west of the Dakota tribes; in particular, the basin of the Snake River.

107. partisan, the commander of a detachment sent on a special enterprise. Cf. Irving's Adventures of Captain Bonneville, Chapter V: "They were headed by Mr. Fontenelle, an experienced leader, or 'partisan,' as a chief of a party is called in the technical language of the trapper."

La Bonté's camp, a temporary trading house on the Platte established about 1841, at the mouth of La Bonté Creek.

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make myself an inmate. A typical example of Parkman's method of gathering historical material.

109. same disorder, dysentery.

Rio Grande, i.e., in the Mexican War. long-haired Canadian, named Raymond.

female animal. Parkman had written in his diary the year before: "Is not a half-educated vulgar weak woman a disgusting animal?" Parkman's “appreciation of feminine character was both ardent and discriminating."-Farnham.

travail, the singular number of the word travaux, described in the preceding chapter.

110. absanth, called wild sage in the 1872 edition. It is better known as sage brush. This despised plant, covering vast regions of the West, is soon to be made use of in the manufacture of wood alcohol, creosote, tar, pitch, acetic acid, and charcoal.

112. daguerreotype, a process of photography invented by a Frenchman, named Daguerre, about 1839.

par' flèche, rawhide.

113. Chugwater, a creek flowing into the Laramie, southwest of the fort.

115. Capuchin friar. The Capuchins, a branch of the Franciscan order of monks, were so named because of their cowl (capuche). This was a pointed hood attached to the coat.

Pierre Dorion was the son of a French creole, Durion, the interpreter who accompanied the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 1804-5. Durion's wife was a Sioux squaw. His son's wife was also a squaw. She and her children accompanied Pierre on the overland expedition to found Astoria, 1811.

Jim Beckwith, a mulatto, was an adopted chief of the Crow Indians. When he dictated his "Autobiography" some years later, he became "James P. Beckwourth." He was a notorious prevaricator, and his autobiography is filled with fabrications. 117. Minnicongew, a branch of the Teton Dakotas living on the prairies of Eastern Dakota.

118. bowie-knife, a hunting-knife, named from its inventor, Colonel Bowie.

grandsons of Daniel Boone. Members of the overland expedition to Astoria saw Daniel Boone at Charette, an old French village on the Missouri. He had, as Irving says, "kept in advance of civilization." He was then in his eighty-fifth year.

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fed upon each other's flesh. On one of Fremont's expeditions to the Rockies, his men were reduced to cannibalism. Professor Meany, in his History of the State of Washington, cites John Bigelow's campaign Memoir" as follows: "Colonel Fremont came out to us and after referring to the dreadful necessities to which his men were reduced on a previous expedition, of eating each other, he begged us to swear that in no extremity of hunger would any of his men lift his hand against, or attempt to prey upon a comrade; sooner let them die with them than live upon them."

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