14 November: In the morning, , 30 3/4°F
[−0.7°C]. A
strong, raw, cold wind, west hora 4 south, was blowing across the prairie. Today they
put glass windows in our house. The wind was so unpleasant and strong that they could
not saw wood outdoors. Sky bright and clear. Beyond the river
there was a dark cloudbank and a gray, hazy horizon. Péhriska-Rúhpa was here for a long time and [was given] food along
with several others. At , 41°F [5°C]. The same ugly wind continued to blow.
At some people arrived here with letters; [they] had
been sent by Mr. Picotte at the Yanktonai trading house. Honore Picotte (1796-1860) had been a member of the
Columbia Fur Company and a partner in P.D. Papin and Company before joining the
Upper Missouri Outfit in 1830. During the winter of 1833-34, he appears to have
wintered near the mouth of Apple Creek,
a few miles south of Bismarck,
North Dakota, and traded
with Yanktonai Sioux living in the area.
For a biography, see Gray, "Honore Picotte, Fur Trader." They had only
business papers and no letters from the lower Missouri; [those] had not arrived yet but were expected any day.
Mr. Picotte was in St. Louis in May and June, where at that time twenty-five
to thirty people died of cholera each day. The Sioux were now dispersed across the prairies,
but a rather good beaver trade had been conducted with
them. Ortubise had remained with Mr. Picotte.
A deaf-mute Mandan visited us, sitting down
like an automaton. He also did not smoke tobacoo. He wrapped in a blanket and had [a]
bow and arrows slung over his shoulders. He was a
strong man; his height [was five feet] eight to nine Prussian inches. I have seen cripples, dwarfs, harelips, crippled
limbs, and deaf-mutes among North American Indians. Among the Brazilians I never
experienced that. [Ed.: As he did in several instances in volumes 1 and 2,
Maximilian here expresses a person's
height as a number of inches. Evidence in the Reise indicates that these
expressions should be understood as five feet plus teh given number of inches in
Prussian measure. A Prussian inch was approximately 1.03 English inches. See NAJ,
1:373n121 and 2:82-83n93.]
Mr. Kipp now had seventeen men. He
therefore decided to take my boat out of the water tomorrow, hecause he [would] soon
have to send many people away. He kept up a conversation with the deaf-mute using
signs [and] was very skillful at it. About eveing, Wolf
Chief (Cháratä-Numakschi) and a few other Mandans visited us. Alternative spellings and modern orthography for Wolf
Chief are given in NAJ, 2:197nM56. They were anxious to
receive news from the lower Missouri. The chief
wore his leather shift [fastened] with a long row of shiny, large buttons after the
fashion of the whites. He stayed until we ate and [was given] meat, coffee, and corn
bread. At the beginning the Indians did not like to drink coffee. They considered it
to be medicine. But now they all like to drink it very much. It was medicine for him
not to smoke from a stone pipe. He asked Dreidoppel for his wooden one. In the night the severe wind abated and
it became nice weather with frost.