Charles McKenzie's Narratives of the "Mississouri Indians:" A New Transcription

The documents that follow are new literal transcriptions of several handwritten narratives describing the experiences and observations of Charles McKenzie among the Hidatsa and Mandan Indians from 1804 to 1806. They were originally published in 1889-90 by Louis Francois Rodrigue Masson as part of a collection of first-hand accounts of the fur trading operations of the North west Company (Masson 1960). These transcriptions are an interim product of a larger, in-progress study undertaken by W. Raymond Wood and the editor, of the trading relationships between the Siouan-speaking villagers of the upper Missouri and Euro-American fur traders of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Although previously published, the original manuscript narratives have been retranscribed in order to determine the extent to which they were editorially changed by Masson in the process of publication. During the course of this work, a number of unexpected problems arose, which are considered in the "Discussion" section of this volume.