Mato-tope, Native American Mandan Indian Chief
Mato-tope. The six sticks in his hair represent killing six men with a gun and the wooden knife represents he killed a Cheyenne chief with a knife. The split turkey feather is said to stand for an arrow wound. The hand on Four Bears' torso may indicate that he once seized an enemy for his comrades to kill. Mato-tope (1784 - July 30, 1837) was the second chief of the Mandan tribe to be known as Four Bears, a name he earned after charging the Assiniboine tribe during battle with the strength of four bears. Around 1830 the trading post Fort Clark was built less than 600 feet south of Mitutanka. At that time, Four Bears was a brave warrior among his people, famous for killing a Cheyenne chief in hand-to-hand combat. Besides the Cheyenne, Four Bears fought the Sioux, the Arikara, and the Assiniboine and once he killed two Ojibway women. The 1837 Great Plains smallpox epidemic wiped out most of Four Bears' tribe, leaving 27 (or by some accounts 100 to 150) survivors out of a former population of around 2,000. He died on July 30, 1837 after suffering from smallpox, brought to his tribe by whites. Voyage dans l'intérieur de l'Amérique du Nord, exécuté pendant les années 1832-34. Karl Bodmer (February 11, 1809 - October 30, 1893) was a Swiss printmaker, lithographer, painter, illustrator and hunter. He accompanied the German explorer Prince Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied on his Missouri River expedition.
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