Page:A Topographical Description of the State of Ohio, Indiana Territory, and Louisiana.djvu/181

171 in buffaloe canoes. The river is nearly half a mile wide, and as the Indians informed me, flows through a plain, level country, for several hundreds of miles, mostly destitute of timber. On the head waters risidereside [sic] several tribes of Indians, with which the Sioux are at war. The most powerful of these tribes are the Chein, or Dog Indians. There are also the Gens-di-rach, or Kananawesh, the Kites and Dotame, besides bands of the Mahas, Pancars, and Kataka. We met with a camp of the Rus Indians, who were hunting, and continued here until the 18th, when they joined us, and we proceeded to the villages about sixty miles, travelling through a country destitute of timber, and interspersed with large hills. On the 22d, arrived at the lower village and joined several camps of Sioux and Dog Indians. The Ricaras or Rus, have three villages, situated on the south bank of the Missouri, in the great bend of the river. The lower village is on a large bottom, covered with cotton wood, and contains about fifty huts. These huts were built in a different manner, and were more comfortable habitations, than any Indian huts I had before seen. To build their huts, %hey cut four forked posts, which are set up fifteen feet high. Two of these posts stand eighteen inches apart, and two stand at the distance of ten feet from the other two posts, and ten feet from each other, on which two ridge poles are placed. Around these posts they erect sixteen forked posts more,