The Massachusetts Spy, And Worcester County Advertiser

Great Western Freshet—The breaking up of the rivers, which contribute to form the majestic Missouri, in the month of May, caused a most destructive and melancholy inundation of the lands bordering on that river.

A gentleman engaged in the fur trade, arrived at St. Louis, states that nearly all the houses, boats, and other property of the company to which he belonged, had been washed away. and some of the men barely escaped with their lives.

At the Mandan Villages. it rose 17 feet perpendicularly in a few hours; and at the Arickara Villages, it rose 15 feet in two hours. Every thing on the low banks was swept away or inundated.

A band of the Sioux were encamped some distance below the Arickaras; the water came upon them so suddenly that between 60 and 70 of their number, men, women, and children perished. Some of the sufferers attempting to swim, were dashed down by the current, and crushed to death among the drifting ice and timber. Others hung to the branches of trees, till they were benumbed with the cold, and, gradually slackening their grasp, were borne down the stream. Several of the men succeeded in climbing the trees, where they remained in hopes of a rescue, but a sudden change in the atmosphere, accompanied by a heavy sleet, deprived them of all feeling. and they dropped senseless into the current below.

The rise of the water is attributed to the melting of the snow and ice of the heads of the Yellow Stone and Cayenne rivers. At the commencement of the freshet, the ice had not broken up in the Missouri; but as the water rose, it forced its way down, bearing every thing before it, and breaking loose, with a tremendous crashing, the ice of the Missouri.