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Excerpt from The Lure of the Black Hills
Important trails from the Rocky Moun tains, from the great plains east and west and from the mysterious Bad Lands and Black Hills crossed here, and all the furs caught by red and white trappers on the far away headwaters of the big muddy Missouri passed through Fort Pierre. The Indians brought to it thousands of buffalo skins and tons of meat, tallow, and buffalo tongues to barter all for the goods which the traders brought up from St. Louis.
Travelers, government officials, and sol diers bound for the western Indian country, always stopped here. Many other noted men also visited old Fort Pierre. The artist, Catlin, who arrived on the first steamboat in 1882, painted some of his famous Indian pic tures at Fort Pierre, and the great Audubon studied here the birds and animals of the plains in 1843.
On the day our story begins, late in April, 1840, the first boat of the season had come up from St. Louis. Numerous Indians of the Teton Sioux who were camping on the plains near by, had come into the palisade. Some were busy in the trading-houses, others watched the work of the white men and black men at the boat landing, and others sat in groups talking and smoking with that calm restful expression peculiar to Indians, show ing that they have no duties pressing on them to-day and that they expect none to-mor row.
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