Page:A Topographical Description of the State of Ohio, Indiana Territory, and Louisiana.djvu/135

125 to burn their village and become a wandering people. They were then deserted by traders: and a deficiency of arms and ammunitions, invited aggression from their neighbours, which further reduced them to one hundred and fifty warriors. They rove principally on the head waters of Wolf river, and on the river Quicurre, or Rapid river. This country is high, level, and open, well watered, and a good soil. They are good hunters, and well disposed towards the whites. They were lately attacked by the Tetons Bois Brule, who killed and took about sixty of them.

Poncars are the remnant of a nation, once respectable for its numbers. Their former residence was on a branch of the Red river, of Lake Winnipie; but being oppressed by the Sioux, they removed to the southward, and took up their residence on Poncar river, west of the Missouri, where they built and fortified a village, and remained some years. At length their implacable enemy, the Sioux, pursued them; reduced them to about fifty warriors, and two hundred people; and compelled them to join and reside with the Mahas, whose language they speak.

The Ricaras are the remains of ten large tribes of the Panis, who have been reduced by the small pox and the Sioux, to about five hundred warriors, and two thousand souls, They live in fortified villages, claim no land, except that on which their villages stand, and the fields they improve; and hunt immediately in their own 11*