Note 286 — THE MISSOURI RIVER JOURNALS

As Audubon thus gently chides the extravagant statements of George Catlin, the well-known painter and panegyrist of the Indian, it may be well to state here that his own account of the putridity of drowned buffalo which the Indians eat with relish is not in the least exaggerated. Mr. Alexander Henry, the fur-trader of the North West Company, while at the Mandans in 1806, noticed the same thing that Audubon narrates, and described it in similar terms.