"I researched old journals while putting together a historical document for the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction several years ago. And as I did so, I found statements and observations of explorers, traders and others that just didn't ring true. Yet, these firsthand accounts often are taken as unvarnished truth. They were, after all, the word of someone who actually had stepped into the muddy waters of the Missouri River or bent low to enter a smoky earth lodge.

Conversely, as Native people observed white men, their portrayals likely had their own biases and assumptions, too. I know: Some of the comments about non-Natives that I heard as a child, I now realize were not altogether accurate. The comments were from Native people seeing non-Natives from a Native perspective.

One of the journals I read was by the fur trader, Edwin Denig. I was amazed at how harsh Denig was on the Sahnish (Arikara) people. Denig lived most of his years at Fort Union, which is at the junction of the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers. He is described in book reviews as a trader who saw how things really were on the Upper Missouri from 1833 to 1856.

He reported that Indian women walked the shores of the river with their skirts held up, appearing to be "soliciting their company," Denig wrote. At the time, non-Native society thought that seeing women's body parts such as the ankle was indecent.

But when told about this, the Native elders laughed. Have you ever worn a wet buckskin dress? they asked. It would weigh 10 times more than a dry dress and, when dry, would be as stiff as a board."

Get the Story:
Dorreen Yellow Bird: Take explorers' writings with grain of salt (The Grand Forks Herald 12/1)

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