Page:A Topographical Description of the State of Ohio, Indiana Territory, and Louisiana.djvu/211

195 crooked, a thing very rarely to be seen among Indians; of a small size, thin and slender. Both men and women have their hair hanging loose on their heads, and only cut short over their eves. Their dress consists only of mountain sheep, cabree or deer skins, thrown over their shoulders. The women sometimes wore a girdle of loose bark, tied round their middle, which was but an indifferent covering. Their ornaments consisted of white bear's claws, and a few beads. The men were armed with the Casoe-tite, or war club, a target or shield made of raw buffaloe hides, a dagger made of bone, ten inches long, and a small bow. We were the first white people which either they, or the Flat-heads had ever seen. The Fiat-heads, likewise, arm themselves with the war club, in which a bone is fastened that projects three inches, a bone dagger, and sometimes one made of iron, which they work out themselves, ten inches long, and three wide, at the handle; a spear pointed with bone or iron, and when they cross the mountains to hunt the buffaloe, they carry a bow with them. The buffaloe is not found on the west side of the Rocky mountains, and there these people subsist on fish and roots.

Our horses arrived on the 15th, and on the 16th, we embarked, to ascend the Jaun river. On the 17th, came to a camp of the Paunch Indians, where we halted for the horses. These, Indians reside mostly towards the head waters of the river Jaun, and the branches of the Big-horn.