1 December: Warm, pleasant morning, initially hardly any frost. Slightly overcast sky. At seven thirty, 26 1/2°F [−3.1°C], winds calm. Many Mandans came into the fort, and at this opportunity one always notices that they are generally smaller than the Hidatsas. Mató Tópe brought me a drawing today he had done for me. It depicts him characteristically fighting with the Cheyenne chief. Afterward he attentively watched Mr. Bodmer when he was drawing. Toward noon a troop of about thirty Indians, mostly women and children, came up the ice of the Missouri. Opposite the fort, the river still has a water channel about 30 to 40 paces wide. At noon, very warm and excellent weather, 50°F ⟨[10°C]⟩, wind southeast.

In our absence Mr. Kipp had a scaffold built in the yard of the fort on which he would like to protect his Indian corn from the rats. The rats eat all the grain. He lays the ears of corn on this scaffold and covers them against moisture with parflèche. The pillars were peeled smooth, so that the rats could not climb up or down on them.