Fort Mandan, North Dakota — Patrick Gass: December 7, 1804

white head chief, of the first village of the Mandans, came to
*The course of the Missouri, and distances of places on it appear to be very
erroneously laid down upon the maps of Louisiana generally. On these the villages
of the Mandans are placed in about 43 1-2 degrees of north latitude and 112 1-2 of
west longitude from Greenwich. ‘This would placethem about 500 miles nearer the
mouth of the Columbia on the Pacific ocean, than the mouth of the Missouri: sup-
posing the mouth of the Columbia to be about 124 degrees west of London. But the
nearest practicable route from the Mandan villages to the mouth of the Columbia,
according to Captain Clarke’s estimate, places them 335 miles nearer the mouth of
the Missouri than that of the Columbia; and by the route actually taken by the
expedition to the mouth of the Columbia, they are 900 miles nearer the mouth of the
Missouri.
By Captain Lewis’s observations these villages are in latitude 47. 21. 32. 8. and
according to Mr. Mackenzie, Mr. Thompson, astronomer to the North West company,
in the year 1798, determined the northern bend of the Missouri to be in latitude 47. 32.
LEWIS AND CLARK EXPEDITION 59
our garrison and told us that the buffaloe were in the prairie
coming into the bottom. Captain Lewis and eleven more of
us went out immediately, and saw the prairie covered with
buffaloe and the Indians on horseback killing them. They
killed 30 or 40 and we killed eleven of them. They shoot
them with bows and arrows, and have their horses so trained
that they will advance very near and suddenly wheel and fly
off in case the wounded buffaloe attempt an attack.