i
Frank Weinhold, "Black Otter's Narrative: Wisconsin Native Recollections Relating to Pre-History of the Lewis-Clark Expedition," 1-27, in The Encyclopedia of Hocąk (Winnebago) Mythology.
Stable URL: (to be supplied after Nov. 11, 2020).
Contents
Introduction: The Chandler-Green Recordings | Who Made the Wax Recordings? | What was Recorded on the Cylinders, How Were They Transcribed, and Where Are They Now? | How Was the War-Bundle Narrative Recovered? | What is the Story of Black Otter's War Bundle? | When and Where Did These Events Occur? | How Do These Events Relate to the Lewis and Clark Expedition? | Who Were the Missouria People, and How Did They Come to be Associated With This Central Missouri Region? | Synopsis: Black Otter's Eyewitness Account of the Missouria Village Raid | Can the Oral Tradition be Verified by Independent Historical, Archaeological, and Ethnographic Evidence? | Conclusion | Acknowledgments | References |
Figures
Figure 1. Milford G. Chandler | Figure 2. Mark Green with Sam Blowsnake Carley | Figure 3. Forrest Green (with author's wife) at the Stand Rock Indian Ceremonial, mid-1990s; Monte Green at Louis' Bluff, 2007 | Figure 4. William Hall Jr. and family, about 1920 | Figure 5. Abel Green with wife Nina (“Sunshine”) and baby son Mark, about 1930 | Figure 6. Mitchell Red Cloud Sr. of Black River Falls/Hatfield. He was a World War I veteran and father of famous Korean War Medal of Honor winner Mitchell Red Cloud Jr. | Figure 7. Rachel S. Commons with father John R. Commons and brother Jack at their Madison home Hocheera (Ho-Chunk “abode”; “lodge”) about 1920 | Figure 8. The Lewis and Clark Expedition in Missouri, “The Departure from the Wood River Encampment, May 14, 1804” | Figure 9. Map of the Missouria Village site and other locations near the mouth of Grand River, comparing present and former river boundaries | Figure 10. Current topography of Chariton Co. MO, showing Cutoff Lake that marks the approximate location of Three Point Island in the former river channel | Figure 11. Winnebago war dance, by Peter Rindisbacher | Figure 12. Siouan scalp dance, by Karl Bodmer | Figure 13. Dog Head's signature on the Treaty of Prairie du Chien, August 19, 1825. The portrait of Dog Head, also known as “Little Duck”, painted at the treaty of Green Bay, 1827. Entitled, “She-Sheba or The Little Duck: A Celebrated Winnebago Chief”, by J. O. Lewis. | Figure 14. Near-contemporary portraits of Winnebago, Sauk-Fox, and Missouri warriors (possible participants in the battle). Winnebago warrior Hoowanneka (“Little Elk”), by George Cook; Sauk-Fox warrior Powasheek, by George Cook; Missouri chief Haw-che-ke-sug-ga (“He Who Kills the Osages”), by George Catlin | Figure 15. Archaeological display at the Visitor's Center of Van Meter State Park, Missouri | Figure 16. Black Hawk (Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak), by Charles Bird King |
Pages
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 |
Black Otter's Narrative: Wisconsin Native Recollections
Relating to Pre-History of the Lewis-Clark Expedition
Frank Weinhold
Introduction: The Chandler-Green Recordings
Shortly before his death in 1920, an aged Winnebago (now Ho-Chunk) in Black River Falls, Wisconsin, sat before an ornate Ediphone recording cabinet and began speaking into a trumpet-shaped horn, recounting the ancestral Worâk tradition of his family's sacred war bundle while his second-born son listened attentively:
Higû ́hayninegì hap'énîk wa'û ́âhírejè.
Hirarextcîgàdjâ wirá haghép hujé.
Égi Pû ́zakexétenâkà homâkíni ...
As ancient phrases animated a diaphragm, the attached stylus scratched a barely perceptible pattern on the rotating wax cylinder, slowly cranked by its white owner. Although the words were incomprehensible to the white man, the son listened eagerly to the heroic tales, passed down to his father through generations of ritual recitals. Frequent interruptions were required to mount the new cylinders, each holding only about two minutes of recording. One after another the white man carefully stored the imprinted cylinders in boxes, ready for the return train to his home in Chicago.
Such in essence is the opening chapter of a complex mystery story that spans more than two centuries of Wisconsin and Midwestern history. The story is tied to multiple locales and epochs and touches on the oral traditions of Indian prehistory as well as the documented history of American westward expansion. Central to these mysteries is the cache of wax cylinders, which its co-creators must have considered a virtual “Rosetta Stone” to preserve the voice of pre-European spiritual and historical traditions that were fast fading from living memories.
Who were the participants in this unlikely partnership? What were the recollections entrusted to the wax cylinders, and how were intact narratives recovered from scratchy recordings of an archaic Winnebago dialect, virtually unintelligible to fluent native speakers of the 1950s who first attempted their translation? When and where did the recounted events unfold, and how can their authenticity be tested against current historical and archaeological evidence? Most importantly, how can the narratives serve to critically assess the usefulness of traditional Winnebago oral history in illuminating pivotal events of American pre-history?
The present article addresses these questions in the context of one major segment of the recordings -- the origin of Black Otter's war bundle. We describe the provenance and content of this remarkable narrative and propose its probable association with a dramatic 18th-century event in the lower Missouri Valley that was to significantly impact the subsequent Lewis-Clark exploration of this region.
In recounting both the origins and significance of Black Otter’s narrative, our presentation touches on many details of Wisconsin and Missouri Valley pre-history, as well as aspects of Black Hawk’s Autobiography, the founding of St. Louis, and other topics of broader regional interest. Nevertheless, the story as it can presently be told has deepest roots in Wisconsin, ranging from Black Otter’s home village near Green Lake to the Black River Falls and Wisconsin Dells regions where the narrative was recorded and eventually deciphered. The story is not yet complete, but its continuation awaits further archaeological explorations along the Lewis and Clark Trail, near the confluence of the Grand and Missouri Rivers in Chariton County, Missouri.
The protagonists in recording the cylinders were Milford Chandler (1889-1981), an automotive engineer originally from the Detroit area, and Mark Green (1862-1920), a full-blood Winnebago from Black River Falls. Exactly how these men first came to be acquainted and the extent of their interaction is uncertain. Nevertheless, enough is known about each man to suppose that their eventual meeting was very probable, if not inevitable.
Milford G. Chandler [Figure 1] was a pioneering collector of Indian art whose acquisitions from Wisconsin and the Great Lakes region were later to become the nucleus of the world-famous Chandler-Pohrt collection [1], assembled in collaboration with his long-time apprentice and colleague, Richard A. Pohrt, Sr. The Chandler-Pohrt collection would eventually encompass Indian treasures from throughout North America, and its holdings would be prominently featured in Indian art exhibitions worldwide. But the foundation of Chandler's early acquisitions was a network of Indian acquaintances in the Winnebago communities of central and western Wisconsin, visited regularly on weekend train trips from Chicago. Further details of Chandler's remarkable life and the Chandler-Pohrt collection are described elsewhere [2].
Figure 1. Milford G. Chandler (reprinted from Ref. [1])
Mark J. Green [Figure 2] (Nâgiga, fourth-born son) was the direct descendant of Black Otter (DocA'nAksEpga [3]), his paternal grandfather (born ca. 1779) and Clear Horn (father, born ca. 1820). He had inherited possession of his family's war bundle and became the first of his family line to receive a “white man's name”. The Green surname is carried on by his descendants in Wisconsin, including Monte Green of Tomah and Forrest Green of Wisconsin Dells [Figure 3], who currently possess the bundle and kindly provided background information for this article. The close personal ties that existed between Chandler and the Green family are indicated by the fact that one of Mark Green's grand-nephews, Forrest and Monte's father, was named Milford Chandler Green.
What was Recorded on the Cylinders, How Were They Transcribed, and Where Are They Now?
Chandler's collection of wax recordings eventually grew to hundreds of cylinders, of which only 87 are known to survive, representing 25 segments recorded by Mark Green, Frank Charles Allen, and other unidentified informants in the years 1918-1926. Chandler originally deposited the cylinders with the Cranbrook Institute of Science (Detroit), but in 1945 they were forwarded to Prof. Thomas Sebeok at Indiana University for transcription. Sebeok carried out field work at Black River Falls with Stella Stacy (Mountain Wolf Woman [4]), Andrew Blackhawk, and Alvin Stacy, and was able to obtain two fragmentary texts that were later published [5]. The linguistic work was subsequently taken up by Prof. Gerd Fraenkel (U. Pittsburgh), who obtained retellings of some of the stories from informants Adam Thundercloud, Andrew Blackhawk, Stella Stacy, Jim Smoke (Chief Daybreak of Stand Rock Indian Ceremonial fame), and Alvin Stacy in Black River Falls, Wisconsin Dells, and Greenwood, Wisconsin, in 1959 [6]. Fraenkel's transcriptions also included earlier material recorded by Paul Radin at Winnebago, Nebraska, in 1908, as well as a 1939 New York City performance by Chief Sam Blowsnake (Radin's principal informant), recorded by Amelia Susman Schultz and George Herzog. However, the ravages of time, misordered cylinders, and general poor quality of the original recordings prevented much of the material of the wax cylinders (including scattered fragments of the Black Otter war bundle story) from being recovered in coherent form [7]. The cylinders and their best available transcriptions, with additional translations by William Hall [Figure 4] of Black River Falls, are currently preserved in the Archives of Traditional Music at Indiana University [8].
Figure 4. William Hall Jr. and family, about 1920 (courtesy Ho-Chunk Department of Heritage Preservation).
In the 1970s, Chandler entrusted to Benson Lanford of Ashford, Oregon, a RITEWORTHY Stenographer's Note Book, described as “Bill Hall's Narrative/Translation of Andrew Black Hawk's narrative (translation) of a portion of the tapes (cylinder records) recorded by Mark Green, Black River Falls, Wisconsin”. The note book consists of 40 pages of cursive script describing Winnebago participation in the War of 1812 and the Winnebago origin myth, as well as Black Otter's war bundle story in a much less coherent form.
How Was the War-Bundle Narrative Recovered?
Late in 2001, Monte Green came into possession of a second war bundle and an alternative transcript of the Mark Green narration. His brother Forrest, then living at Louis' Bluff near Wisconsin Dells, provided a copy to the present author in mid-December, 2001. Recognizing the potential historical importance of the narrative, the author initiated inquiries with Richard L. Dieterle (U. Minnesota; hotcakencyclopedia.com), Bob Birmingham (Wisconsin State Archaeologist), Richard Pohrt, Sr. and Benson Lanford (longtime Chandler associates), and Prof. R. J. DeMallie of Indiana University, all of whom contributed valuable information for the preparation of this article.
Surprisingly, the “new” narration was obtained not from the wax cylinders, but from the young son, Abel Green [Figure 5], who was present during the recordings! The typescript narrative is identified as being “Told by Abel Green, present owner of this bundle, informant member of Bear Clan” [9], with the additional annotation, “Interpreter M. Red Cloud” [Figure 6]. The collector of the narrative and preparer of the typescript was Rachel S. Commons [Figure 7], a University of Chicago graduate anthropology student doing her field work in Wisconsin under a Rockefeller Foundation grant. Commons apparently recorded Mitchell Red Cloud's free English interpretation in shorthand as the story was being recited to Red Cloud by Abel Green, then prepared the annotated typescript (as quoted below) and recorded its collection in her field book on August 25, 1931. However, due to her untimely death and the onset of World War II, the field work was never brought to fruition, and the typescript languished in university archives until brought to the attention of Monte Green and others in 2001 [10].
Figure 5. Abel Green with wife Nina (“Sunshine”) and baby son Mark, about 1930 (courtesy Ho-Chunk Department of Heritage Preservation).
Figure 6. Mitchell Red Cloud Sr. of Black River Falls/Hatfield (courtesy Milwaukee Public Museum). He was a World War I veteran and father of famous Korean War Medal of Honor winner Mitchell Red Cloud Jr. (http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/dictionary/ index.asp?action=view&term_id12117&keyword=Birth)
Figure 7. Rachel S. Commons with father John R. Commons and brother Jack at their Madison home Hocheera (Ho-Chunk “abode”; “lodge”) about 1920; WHi(x3)37686. Her father was a noted UW-Madison economics professor and LaFollette advisor, regarded as the “spiritual father” of Social Security (www.wisconsinhistory.org/topics/commons).
What is the Story of Black Otter's War Bundle?
In short, the narrative recounts Black Otter's first war party and the destruction of a large Indian village that occupied an island in the Missouri River, far from the Wisconsin homelands of the mixed Sauk/Winnebago raiders. Black Otter's actions in this notable victory constituted his family's most glorious claim to fame in the Winnebago warrior tradition. In the ritualized conventions of Indian warfare, high honors were accorded the first warrior to count coup (touch an opponent with a feather) or, even higher, the first to take an opponent captive (for eventual torture and death), as Black Otter was able to accomplish. Even as a youth (14 years old at the time, according to Hall), Black Otter fully realized his good fortune in delivering the first enemy captive to the war leader, insuring that his and his family's name would have the honored first position in all future tribal rituals recalling and celebrating the great victory. For this achievement, the war chief's highest reward, coveted by every warrior of the war party, was a ceremonial bone-bead belt. This and related war objects belonged to Black Otter's war bundle that his descendants proudly preserve to the present day.
The sections of Black Otter's war-bundle narrative quoted below focus on details of the battle, as best a young boy on his first warpath could recognize them under the circumstances. The full transcript also includes biographical details of his premature birth and orphaned upbringing, as well as his miraculous survival from a childhood fall through the ice.
It also recounts the religious practices, dreams and premonitions that foreshadowed his fortune as a warrior, mystically associating, e.g., a youthful duck-hunting incident with his later battlefield triumph. But despite its mystical overlay, the narrative reflects a Winnebago warrior's canny acuity and attention to minute details of his environment as he verbally reconstructs the attack on the village. Black Otter's recollections include many interesting details concerning his own war party as well as the hapless villagers who fell victim to the onslaught. These details, as well as the physical evidence of the war bundle, provide opportunities for assessing the accuracy and self-consistency of the recollections in the framework of other historical evidence, as discussed below.
When and Where Did These Events Occur?
Given the chronology of the Green family tree and the average length of a generation, one can roughly estimate that the events described by Black Otter must have occurred near the close of the 18th century. This is also consistent with other internal evidence of the Green recordings, which places these events before the ill-starred involvement with Tecumseh's rebellion in the War of 1812 [11]. Thus, we may safely conclude that the battle at the Missouri River village site (as explicitly located in the narrative) must have occurred within a few years of the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804-1806, which opened the great Missouri riverway to the surge of westward American expansion. Unless the Indian raid on the island village site somehow occurred after Lewis and Clark passed through (implausible on the basis of time constraints leading up to the war at Tippecanoe), or unless the village massacre site somehow escaped the close scrutiny of the Corps of Discovery (even more implausible!), we may fairly conclude that historical evidence of the raiding site should be found in the extensive documentation of the Lewis and Clark expedition [12], as well as in subsequent archaeological investigations. This indeed appears to be the case. Based on evidence presented below, we suggest that the events described by Black Otter probably occurred in the spring of 1793 [13], perhaps on the “Three Point Island” passed by Lewis and Clark on June 13, 1804, in Chariton County, Missouri, near Lake and Palmer Creeks, southeast of present Brunswick.
How Do These Events Relate to the Lewis and Clark Expedition?
According to the directives that Jefferson presented to Lewis and Clark [14], the Corps of Discovery was to seek out contacts with all the Indian tribes established along the Missouri River, announce the transition to American sovereignty, and endeavor to consolidate peaceful relations among the tribes and favorable trading arrangements with St. Louis. Accordingly, as the Corps departed from St. Louis in May of 1804 [Figure 8], their first priority was to encounter remnants of the Missouria tribe that had traditionally occupied central Missouri, giving the state and river its name. The search for the chiefs of the Missourias and Otoes, with whom the Missourias had taken up refuge, was to dominate the Corps' attention through the first two months of the expedition, until the council with these chiefs was finally convened near the present site of Council Bluffs, Iowa, in early August, 1804.
Figure 8. The Lewis and Clark Expedition in Missouri, “The Departure from the Wood River Encampment, May 14, 1804” (original painting by Gary R. Lucy; Gary R. Lucy Gallery)
Along the way, Lewis and Clark took note of the sad circumstances that had overtaken the once-proud Missouria. On June 13, 1804, they recorded that [15]
Between these two creeks is the prairie, in which once stood the ancient village of the Missouris. Of this village there remains no vestige, nor is there anything to recall this great and numerous nation, except a feeble remnant of about 30 families. They were driven from their original seats by the invasions of the Sauks and other Indians from the Mississippi, who destroyed at this village 200 of them in one contest...
Fortunately, an accurate digital remapping of the lower Missouri River was recently prepared by University of Missouri geographer James Harlan and Missouri DNR historian James Denny [16], allowing detailed reconstruction of the Lewis and Clark trail and comparison with modern waypoints. Figure 9 presents a modern map of the region traversed by Lewis and Clark in June 13-15, 1804, showing both the current river boundaries as well as the former track of the river as it appeared to surveyors in the early 1800s, with the campsites and landmarks noted by Lewis and Clark marked as accurately as present reconstructions allow [17]. Details in the individual diaries of expedition members sometimes differed from those quoted in the final report [18], but all suggest the catastrophic destruction of the Missouria village in comparatively recent times.
Figure 9. Map of the Missouria Village site and other locations near the mouth of Grand River, comparing present and former river boundaries (reprinted from Ref. [16]).
The campsite of principal interest is now far from the present river course. As shown in Figure 10, the former oxbow on which the June 13 campsite was situated was cut off in the flooding of 1879, leaving “Cutoff Lake” (currently, a hunting preserve) as a remnant of the abandoned river channel. Superposition of the Harlan-Denny map [16] with that of the current terrain suggests that the Missouria village should be located in close proximity to Cutoff Lake, probably buried under the mud layers of successive inundations that regularly cover the Missouri bottoms.
Figure 10. Current topography of Chariton Co. MO, showing Cutoff Lake that marks the approximate location of Three Point Island in the former river channel.
Who Were the Missouria People, and How Did They Come to be Associated With This Central Missouri Region?
Ethnohistoric evidence indicates the close cultural association of the Missouria people (Niutachi, “People of the River Mouth’’ [19]) with kindred Iowa, Otoe, and Winnebago tribes, all of Chiwere Siouan linguistic group. Tribal traditions of all these tribes hold that they were once a single people in the Winnebago homelands of the Green Bay region. Thereafter, individual bands migrated westward and southward in diverse directions, conferring their names (except the Otoes of Nebraska) on the rivers and regions into which they eventually settled. Archaeological evidence indicates that the Missourias established their prototypical Oneota village (Utz site) at the Grand-Missouri River confluence about 1350 AD [20]. Marquette and Joliet first recorded mention of the upriver “Missourit” tribe as they passed the mouth of Missouri River in 1673.
The tribe reappears in the historical record at Detroit in 1712, where Missourias came to the assistance of the French commandant, Etienne Veniard de Bourgmont, to repel the siege of Fox Indians at Fort Pontchartrain [21]. Bourgmont subsequently abandoned his command, fled with his Missouria wife to the tribal homelands at the mouth of Grand River, and began his extensive explorations of the Missouri River [22]. There he established the French trading outpost of Fort (l')Orleans [23] in 1723, in close proximity to the Missouria village. The Missouria thus became closely allied with French interests, exposing themselves both to the white men's diseases and to ongoing hostilities with the British-backed Fox, Sauk, and allied tribes of the Upper Mississippi, as well as Spanish-backed tribes of the Rio Grande region. These hostilities increased after Fort Orleans was abandoned in 1728, eventually forcing the large Missouria town (then estimated at more than 1000 population) to move from its former upland position to a more secure site in the Missouri bottoms, near a Little Osage village. Hostilities with the Sauk and Fox sharply worsened after 1770 when the Spanish took over St. Louis and enlisted the help of these tribes to oppose French/Missouria influence in the Missouri Valley [24].
The earlier Missouria village (now within the confines of Van Meter State Park, near Miami, MO) is renowned in archaeological circles as the first secure identification of a prototypical “Oneota Phase” site with a historical tribe. The distinctive Oneota characteristics are recognized at archaeological sites throughout the upper Midwest [25], but the long-suspected association with the ancestors of modern Winnebagos, Iowas, and other Chiwere-speaking tribes was unambiguously confirmed at the Missouria site, with its long record of continuous occupation up to historical contact with French traders.
The Missouria people also played a significant role in the founding of St. Louis. As related by Auguste Chouteau [26] (who, with his uncle Pierre Laclede, cleared, and oversaw initial construction at the future city site in early 1764), the small contingent of 30 workmen was surprised and alarmed by the unexpected arrival of the entire Missouria tribe, consisting of 150 warriors and their wives and children (perhaps 500 in all) who were seeking to relocate from their ancient village to escape the threat of Sauk enemies. Although the pitiful Missourias showed no hostility, their presence was naturally unsettling to prospective settlers, who quickly retreated to the Illinois side.
Laclede skillfully persuaded the Missourias to seek an alternative village site upriver, “in a woody place, and covered with brush” so as not to appear as ducks in open water where “birds of prey could discover them easily” and “kill your warriors...and make your women and children slaves”. Within fifteen days of their arrival (during which they assisted in digging cellars for the first buildings of St. Louis), the Missourias took their leave and returned upriver. They apparently chose a succession of lowland village sites, initially in close proximity to a nearby Little Osage village (Plattner and Gumbo Point sites, near present Malta Bend). However, the Little Osage village was itself abandoned in the face of increasing Sauk assaults as effective control of St. Louis passed to the Spanish, and the Missourias eventually moved to their final village site about 20 miles downriver [27], where they suffered the final devastating attack by a massive force of Sauks and their allies.
As noted by Lewis and Clark, the Sauk-led attack culminated in total destruction of the Missouria village, with only a few survivors escaping to join the Otoes along the Platte River in Nebraska, where they were eventually found in 1804. Subsequent studies recorded the further demise of what was “once the most powerful nation on the Missouri river” [28], until no full-blood Missourias were known after 1910 [19].
Lewis and Clark's meeting with the Otoe and Missouria chiefs at Council Bluffs marked the conclusion of the Lower Missouri phase of the expedition. After this, the river course arched westward toward the Dakota, Arikara and Mandan country that lay on the Upper Missouri. However, the valuable experiences gained in this “tame” lower segment of the river were instrumental in their preparations for penetrating the little-known territories that stretched westward to the Pacific Ocean, culminating eventually in their safe return and the brilliant overall success of the expedition. The demise of the Missourias thereby opened the door to exploration of the American interior and paved the way for rapid settlement of areas previously subject to French/Missouria/Osage control.
Synopsis: Black Otter's Eyewitness Account of the Missouria Village Raid
Black Otter had grown up as an orphan under the care of elder brother Big Sand (Poza'kax,Etiga) and his barren wife. Once when Black Otter was still “a little boy”, Big Sand was invited to join a small war party (Dota,'ksik) and Black Otter attempted to go along. But he was sent back to stay with his sister-in-law because “it was believed by the people that no two brothers should go together on a small war-path”. However, he was told that Dog Head (C,unge'page [29]) was going on a warpath in the spring and “everyone would go”.
After Big Sand's safe return and a winter of fasting and preparation, Dog Head named the time when “the weeds were long enough to tie together (about 1 ft. high)” [30] as the signal for the war party to depart. On the chosen day, a feast and night-long Death Dance [Figure 11] were held, at which
...a certain old man came and danced naked, carrying a sawed-off gun. When he stopped dancing, he fired the gun into the air. He went up and spoke to the war-leader, Dog Head.
He said that, however large the village he would attack, this gun would be heard first after the battle had started. He also said that he had asked his daughter to sacrifice a dog that she owned (before the war-party left), and she replied that she was depending on this dog for all the food that she ate, and she would not offer it. Therefore, not being considered as a parent by his daughter, he was going into the enemy's village and leave himself there (be killed).
Figure 11. Winnebago war dance, by Peter Rindisbacher (McKenney-Hall Collection).
At the break of dawn the warriors moved to the first stopping-place (higi a') at the edge of the village, where “all the women relatives of the men came, and brought them moccasins and all different kinds of clothing they had made for them”. Thereafter the war party departed, “walking day after day, all the old warriors went ahead; all the young men who had never been on a warpath before bringing up the rear”. Black Otter's two older brothers accompanied him, as did one of his nephews, “a tall young man” who was “doing all the cooking for the war party”. Their path evidently remained close to the Mississippi river, in a generally southward direction, and one night after they had stopped to camp near the river:
...word went out that they would inquire about certain things that night. There were a good many Sauks who were along, having joined the party after they had left their village. And they were to ask these certain things of Dog Head and one of his cousins. These two were the leaders of the war party. Then, when they had asked Dog Head's cousin, he told them that he was going after the occupants of three long-lodges. What he meant was three long-lodges of the Osage tribe; and the warriors told him that that was not enough scalps to go around. Then they asked Dog Head, and he said he was going after a large pile of driftwood; and the warriors were satisfied with it, because they thought that would be more. And the next morning they started out again.
With that fateful decision, the raiding party's target evidently shifted from a minor village of the Little Osage (near present Malta Bend, MO) to the much larger Missouria village about twenty miles downriver. This village was probably already known to the “good many Sauks who were along” [31], if not to Black Otter and other Winnebagoes, as subsequent events would reveal. As the narrative continues,
...about noon they came to the Missouri River. There was a large island out in the river, and on this island was a large Indian village, and when the people had begun whispering, it sounded as if it could be heard for a long way. While they were sitting there, they appointed from among the party two scouts [32]...One of the scouts had climbed a tree and the other was still on the ground. They saw a certain man coming from the east, carrying a deer on his back. When the scouts saw that this man had seen them, they jumped to the ground and they made sounds like a bear. This man thought he saw that they were bears, but he knew that they were enemy scouts. But he did not run, he just kept walking. When he came up near to where the scouts were, he stopped and shifted the deer over to one side and rested a while. As they looked on, this man waded across to the island and entered the village.
After this man had entered the village, he told some of his relatives that he had seen a large war party, and some did not believe that he had seen what he said, but anyway he took his relatives and fled from the village. And after they had heard that there was a large war party across the river, some of them said, “If these should happen to be Winnebagoes, we will just take them over to where the three long lodges of Osage are, and there we will kill all of them”. And this hunter who had just returned to the village was telling about how he had seen these two scouts in the trees, and how they had jumped to the ground and pretended to be bears, and how he had pretended not to be afraid and had just walked past.
These details were presumably related by the Nu,djatci woman who was later captured and returned with the Winnebagoes. The few surviving Missouria who “fled from the village” were probably the nucleus of the small group that moved upriver to an Otoe village in Nebraska by 1796 [33]. The surviving deer hunter who led the escape may have been one of the Missouria chiefs that Lewis and Clark were to meet six years later at Council Bluffs [14], or even possibly Haw-che-ke-sug-ga, the aged chief of the Missourias who was painted by Catlin in the 1830s [Fig. 14].
The narrative continues with the overnight preparations leading up to the daylight attack, initiated by a surprising gun shot:
They (Winnebago) stayed there all afternoon until evening and about dusk they would enter the village, they planned. In the evening they started. It was very quiet on this evening and when the war party approached, they could be heard a long way. And just as they started wading, when they had reached a depth where the water reached above the knees, Dog Head, the leader, had cramps just then. When that happened he cried out, “I have some cramps in my legs!”, and being quiet, it could be heard over in the village. And some of the warriors said, “The night is not very dark, and we should have a little cloud and a little rain to help us cover up”.
So they offered Dog Head some tobacco. Then Dog Head told how there were some Night Spirit warriors who had blessed him. When he spoke he began to sing, and when he had finished singing, a strong night wind came up. Then, when it had grown dark, all the Sauk that were in the war party surrounded one half of the village, and the Winnebago surrounded the other half; and they almost met on the other end. There were some warriors who walked all along the line of these men who were lying down, and told them the attack would commence immediately at dawn...
Just before daylight there was a heavy fog all around. Just before the attack began, just before they were to give the signal whoop, they heard a gun shot in the village. It was made by the old man who had said he was going to be the first to be heard in the battle; so they did not take time to give a whoop, but they made the attack immediately. So when they had all started at once, it sounded like thunder. When the battle began, there were all sorts of noises to be heard -- the flutes of the war bundles, the cry of the eagle and the blackhawk, and all the different animals represented in the war-bundles, they were all crying out; and the cry of the people was also heard.
Black Otter now describes the details of his capture of the young boy, as well as the frenetic attempts of his brother-in-law and others to steal the glory of the bone-bead belt for delivering the first captive to Dog Head:
Young Black Otter was running about the village. He was not trying to kill anyone, he just went running around. As he entered a certain round-lodge, he found his nephew who was cooking for them, lying on the ground, with arrows and spears piercing his body, and part of his body was in the fireplace. As he was running around, he came to the banks of the river, and he saw a fight going on there also, in the water. He could see the heads of men bobbing up and down. And he saw a canoe floating by, with a buffalo pelt covered over it. So when he saw this, he threw his bow and arrows on the ground, and dove in and came to where the canoe was floating, and seized it. When he had looked underneath the buffalo pelt, he saw two little children lying in the bottom of the canoe. Their heads were shaved. Just as he pulled out the older of the two children, another man (his sister-in-law's brother) came running out from the shore and took this child away from him, so he seized the other. Taking this boy with him, he came to where he had laid his bow and arrows and entered the village...Black Otter started out looking for Dog Head, with his captive. As he went looking for Dog Head, he met a warrior named Thunderbird; and when this man saw that Black Otter had the little boy captive, he tried to take him away from him, but Black Otter just hung on to his prisoner. Then this man [his brother-in-law Waka,'djago] who had taken the little girl captive, started running away with her. Black Otter called for Dog Head, and Dog Head answered somewhere off in the distance, and Black Otter began running in that direction. When he got to the place where Dog Head was, he found him standing there singing; and when he had presented the little boy captive to Dog Head, they put the bone-bead belt on Black Otter, for bringing the first captive given to the chief of the war party. When Black Otter looked at Dog Head, he saw that his body was all painted black, except his hands and his forearm, these were painted red; and also his feet and ankles up to the garter line were all painted red;
