All the winter counts refer to this flood.
1826-’27.--No. I. All of the Indians who ate of a buffalo killed on a hunt died of it, a peculiar substance issuing from the mouth.
No. II. “An Indian died of the dropsy.” So Basil Clément was understood, but it is not clear why this circumstance should have been noted, unless the appearance of the disease was so unusual in 1826 as to excite remark. Baron de La Hontan, a good authority concerning the Northwestern Indians before they had been greatly affected by intercourse with whites, although showing a tendency to imitate another baron--Munchausen--as to his personal adventures, in his Nouveaux Voyages dans l’Amérique Septentrionale specially mentions dropsy as one of the diseases unknown to them. Carver also states that this malady was extremely rare. Whether or not the dropsy was very uncommon, the swelling in this special case might have been so enormous as to render the patient an object of general curiosity and gossip, whose affliction thereby came within the plan of the count. The device merely shows a man-figure, not much fatter than several others, but distinguished by a line extending sidewise from the top of the head and inclining downward. The other records cast doubt upon the interpretation of dropsy.
No. III. Dakota war party killed a buffalo; having eaten of it they all died.
Battiste Good says: “Ate-a-whistle-and-died winter,” and adds: “Six Dakotas, on the war-path, had nearly perished with hunger, when they found and ate the rotting carcass of an old buffalo, on which the wolves had been feeding. They were seized soon after with pains in the stomach, their abdomens swelled and gas poured from the mouth, and they died of a whistle, or from eating a whistle.” The sound of gas escaping from, the mouth is illustrated in his figure which see in Figure 146, page 221.
White-Cow-Killer calls it “Long-whistle-sick winter.”
BUREAU OF ETHNOLOGY FOURTH ANNUAL REPORT PL. XVIII
1827-’28.--No. I. A Minneconjou is stabbed by a Gros Ventre, and his arm shrivels up.
No. II. Dead-Arm was stabbed with a knife or dirk by a Mandan. The illustration is quite graphic, showing the long-handled dirk in the bloody wound and the withered arm. Though the Mandans are also of the great Siouan family, the Dakotas have pursued them with special hatred. In 1823, their number, much diminished by wars, still exceeded 2,500.