The Assiniboine

Edwin Thompson Denig; J N B Hewitt; David R Miller
University of Oklahoma Press
 9780806132358
0-8061-3235-3

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.

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about the tribal groups of the Upper Missouri and was consulted for information on them by several noted investigators of Indian culture. When Denig was asked to respond to a circular by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, he didn't simply rely on his own knowledge of the Assiniboines, but instead interviewed his subjects "for an entire year, until satisfactory answers [had] been obtained."Denig's manuscript, which he probably finished in 1854, remained unpublished until 1930, when J. N. B. Hewitt edited it for publication in the Smithsonian Bureau of American Ethnology's Forty-sixth Annual Report. This edition, featuring an introduction by David R. Miller, 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.