The Assiniboine - by Edwin Thompson Denig (Paperback)

About the Book

Edwin Thompson Denig entered the fur trade on the Upper Missouri River in 1833. As husband to the daughter of an Assiniboine headman and as a bookkeeper stationed at Fort Union, Denig became knowledgeable about the tribal groups of the Upper Missouri and was consulted by several noted investigators of Indian culture.

Book Synopsis

Edwin Thompson Denig entered the fur trade on the Upper Missouri River in 1833. As husband to the daughter of an Assiniboine headman and as a bookkeeper stationed at Fort Union, Denig became knowledgeable about the tribal groups of the Upper Missouri and was consulted by several noted investigators of Indian culture. When Denig was asked to respond to a circular by Schoolcraft, he didn't simply rely on his own knowledge, but instead interviewed "in company with the Indians for an entire year" until he had obtained satisfactory answers.

Denig's manuscript was unpublished until 1930, when J.N.B. Hewitt edited it for publication in the Smithsonian Bureau of American Ethnology's Forty-sixth Annual Report. Long unavailable, this new edition provides a complete ethnology of the Assiniboine Indians, including information on their history, tribal organization and government, religion, manners and customs, warfare, dances, and language.

Review Quotes

"This work may be regarded as the most complete and authentic description of Assiniboine Indian culture in the mid-nineteenth century known to ethnology."--John C. Ewers, editor of Edwin Thompson Denig's Five Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri