21 January: In the morning, clear, calm, cold. At eight o’ clock the mercury was only 1 1/2°F [−18. ">6°C] above the bulb of the thermometer. Wind moderate out of the east. Everything froze in our room during the night. The surrounding area was covered with fog, or haze, on the riverbanks and across the prairie hills. In this fog the sun formed two beautiful additional images or half moons, large and high; the eastern one continued on the icy surface of the river. They stood far off from the sun and were whitish yellow, bright in a dim haze, like the sun itself. The snow was frozen so solidly that one could break it into large hard pieces
that gave off a clear [ringing?] sound when we pushed them away with our feet. If we looked at the air in the sunshine, it glittered, filled with thousands of small, floating particles of ice. The Indians had hacked some holes in the icy surface of the Missouri from which they fetched water. [The holes] were marked with twigs and surrounded with buffalo robes. At twelve o’ clock, little wind out of the west, −10 1/2°F [−23.6°C].

Three Yanktonai (Dacotas) came to invite the Mandans to [participate in] a raid against the Saones. But they will not accept the invitation, as they say.

Before dusk Dreidoppel saw a schähä́ckä below the creek that ran past him [to about] 150 paces distant, where he shot it with a rifle. It was a male and colored very whitish. In the evening, clear, calm, and cold.