dan
villages.

La Verendrye did not know how much of this to believe, and he was not
even sure that he correctly understood what the Mandans tried to convey
to him by signs. He was not at all certain that the quarter in which
these people, so different from the Mandans, were said to live was the
direction it was necessary to take in order to reach the Western Sea.
He did not know the truth, that the river by which he stood, the
Missouri, emptied into the Mississippi, and that the settlements spoken
of by the Mandans were probably the Spanish settlements on the lower
waters of the Mississippi. In order to extend his information, he used
every agency to learn as much as possible about the Mandans themselves.
He sent his son Francois to another village near by, to examine it and
to make further inquiries.

La Verendrye himself made close observations. He walked about the
village in which he was quartered, and examined the {66} fortifications
with a great deal of interest. There were about one hundred and thirty
cabins within the walls; the streets and squares were laid out
regularly and were kept remarkably neat and clean. The smooth, wide
ramparts were built of timber strengthened with cross-pieces. At each
corner was a bastion, and the fort was surrounded by a ditch fifteen
feet deep and from fifteen to eighteen feet wide. He was astonished to
find such elaborate fortifications among a savage tribe. Nowhere else
in the New World had he seen anything of the kind.

The dwellings of the Mandans were large and comfortable; they were
divided into several rooms and round the walls were beds in the form of
bunks. They had earthen vessels in which they cooked their food. The
women made very neat baskets of wicker-work. The most remarkable thing
about these people was their prudence for the future. They had
storerooms underground in which they stored the dressed skins which
they preserved to trade with neighbouring tribes for guns and
ammunition; they had products of Europe in use, though they had not yet
come into direct contact with Europeans. In these storerooms they
preserved also dried meat and grain for food in the winter. This
foresight {67} impressed La Verendrye. Most of the Indian tribes lived
only in the present; when they had food they feasted upon it from
morning to night, and when their provisions were gone they starved.
The Mandans, however, kept on hand an ample supply of food, both for
their ow