In the course of the day several Indians came down to partake of our fresh meat; among the rest, three chiefs of the second Mandan village.  They inform us that the Sioux on the Missouri above the Chayenne river, threaten to attack them this winter; that these Sioux are much irritated at the Ricaras for having made peace through our means with the Mandans, and have lately ill treated three Ricaras who carried the pipe of peace to them, by beating them and taking away their horses.  We gave them assurances that we would protect them from all their enemies.

November 21st.  The weather was this day fine:  the river clear of ice and rising a little:  we are now settled in our new winter habitation, and shall wait with much anxiety the first return of spring to continue our journey.

The villages near which we are established are five in number, and are the residence of three distinct nations:  the Mandans, the Ahnahaways, and the Minnetarees.  The history of the Mandans, as we received it from our interpreters and from the chiefs themselves, and as it is attested by existing monuments, illustrates more than that of any other nation the unsteady movements and the tottering fortunes of the American nations.  Within the recollection of living witnesses, the Mandans were settled forty years ago in nine villages, the ruins of which we passed about eighty miles below, and situated seven on the west and two on the east side of the Missouri.  The two finding themselves wasting away before the small-pox and the Sioux, united into one village, and moved up the river opposite to the Ricaras.  The same causes reduced the remaining seven to five villages, till at length they emigrated in a body to the Ricara nation, where they formed themselves into two villages, and joined those of their countrymen who had gone before them.  In their new residence they were still insecure, and at length the three villages ascended the Missouri to their present position.  The two who had emigrated together still settled in the two villages on the northwest side of the Missouri, while the single village took a position on the southeast side.  In this situation they were found by those who visited them in 1796; since which the two villages have united into one.  They are now in two villages, one on the southeast of the Missouri, the other on the opposite side, and at the distance of three miles across.  The first, in an open plain, contains about forty or fifty lodges, built in the same way as those of the Ricaras:  the second, the same number, and both may raise about three hundred and fifty men.

On the same side of the river, and at the distance of four miles from the lower Mandan village, is another called Mahaha.  It is situated in a high plain at the mouth of Knife river, and is the residence of the Ahnahaways.  This nation, whose name indicates that they were “people whose village is on a hill,” formerly resided on the Missouri, about thirty miles below where they now live.  The Assiniboins and Sioux forced them to a spot five miles higher, where the greatest part of them were put to death, and the rest emigrated to their present situation, in order to obtain an assylum near the Minnetarees.  They are called by the French, Soulier Noir or Shoe Indians; by the Mandans, Wattasoons, and their whole force is about fifty men.