from the book ''"Maximilian, Prince of Wied's Travels in the Interior of North America, during the years 1832–1834"''
Origins and early history The exact origins and early history of the Mandan are unknown. Early studies by
linguists gave evidence that the Mandan language may have been closely related to the language of the
Ho-Chunk or Winnebago people of present-day
Wisconsin. Scholars theorize the Mandans' ancestors may have settled in the Wisconsin area at one time. This idea is possibly confirmed in their
oral history, which refers to their having come from an eastern location near a lake. Some
Ethnologists and scholars studying the Mandan subscribe to the theory that, like other
Siouan-speaking people (possibly including the Hidatsa), they originated in the area of the mid-
Mississippi River and the
Ohio River valleys in present-day
Ohio. If this was the case, the Mandan would have migrated north into the
Missouri River Valley and its tributary the
Heart River in present-day
North Dakota. That is where Europeans first encountered the historical tribe. This migration is believed to have occurred possibly as early as the 7th century but probably between 1000 CE and the 13th century, after the cultivation of maize was adopted. It was a period of a major climatic shift, creating warmer, wetter conditions that favored their agricultural production. After their arrival on the banks of the Heart River, the Mandan constructed several villages, the largest of which were at the mouth of the river. Archeological evidence and ground imaging radar have revealed changes in the defensive boundaries of these villages over time. The people built new ditches and palisades circumscribing smaller areas as their populations reduced. What was known as Double Ditch Village was located on the east bank of the Missouri River, north of where present-day Bismarck developed. It was occupied by the Rupture Mandan for nearly 300 years. Today the site has depressions that are evidence of their lodges and smaller ones where they created cache pits to store dehydrated corn. The name comes from two defensive trenches built outside the area of the lodges. Construction of the fortifications here and at other locations along the Missouri has been found to have correlated to periods of drought, when peoples would have raided each other for food. At some point during this time, the Hidatsa people also moved into the region. They also spoke a Siouan language. Mandan tradition states that the Hidatsa were a
nomadic tribe until their encounter with the Mandan, who taught them to build stationary villages and cultivate agriculture. The Mandan were divided into bands. The '''''Nup'tadi''''' (does not translate) was the largest linguistic group. The Mandan gradually moved upriver, and consolidated in present-day North Dakota by the fifteenth century. From 1500 to about 1782, the Mandan reached the height of their population and influence. Their villages showed increasing densities as well as stronger fortifications, for instance at Huff Village. It had 115 large lodges with more than 1,000 residents. The bands did not often move along the river until the late 18th century, after their populations plummeted due to smallpox and other epidemics. Aulneau was killed before his planned expedition to visit the Mandans could take place. The first European known to visit the Mandan was the
French Canadian trader
Sieur de la Verendrye in 1738. The Mandans carried him into their village, whose location is unknown. It is estimated that at the time of his visit, 15,000 Mandan resided in the nine well-fortified the villages held a total of 1,000 lodges. In 1796 the Mandan were visited by the Welsh explorer
John Evans, who was hoping to find proof that their language contained Welsh words. Numerous European Americans held that there were Welsh Indians in these remote areas, a persistent myth that was widely written about. Evans had arrived in St. Louis two years prior, and after being imprisoned for a year, was hired by Spanish authorities to lead an expedition to chart the upper Missouri. Evans spent the winter of 1796–97 with the Mandan but found no evidence of any Welsh influence. In July 1797 he wrote to Dr. Samuel Jones, "Thus having explored and charted the Missurie for 1,800 miles and by my Communications with the Indians this side of the Pacific Ocean from 35 to 49 degrees of Latitude, I am able to inform you that there is no such People as the Welsh Indians." British and French Canadians from the north carried out more than twenty fur-trading expeditions down to the Hidatsa and Mandan villages in the years 1794 to 1800. meeting the Mandan Indians, by
Charles Marion Russell, 1897 By 1804 when
Lewis and Clark visited the tribe, the number of Mandan had been greatly reduced by smallpox epidemics and warring bands of
Assiniboine,
Lakota and
Arikara. (Later they joined with the Arikara in defense against the Lakota.) The nine villages had consolidated into two villages in the 1780s, one on each side of the Missouri. In 1825 the Mandans signed a peace treaty with the leaders of the Atkinson-O'Fallon Expedition. The treaty required that the Mandans recognize the supremacy of the United States, admit that they reside on United States territory, and relinquish all control and regulation of trade to the United States. This was in exchange for annual payments that were never received. The Mandan and the United States Army never met in open warfare. In 1832, artist
George Catlin visited the Mandan near
Fort Clark. Catlin painted and drew scenes of Mandan life as well as portraits of chiefs, including
Four Bears or
Ma-to-toh-pe. His skill at rendering so impressed Four Bears that he invited Catlin as the first man of European descent to be allowed to watch the sacred annual ceremony. During the winter months of 1833 and 1834, Prince
Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied and Swiss artist
Karl Bodmer stayed with the Mandan.
Speculation about pre-Columbian European contact 18th-century reports about characteristics of Mandan lodges, religion and occasional physical features among tribal members, such as blue and grey eyes along with lighter hair coloring, stirred speculation about the possibility of
pre-Columbian European contact. Catlin believed the Mandan were the "Welsh Indians" of folklore, descendants of Prince
Madoc and his followers who had emigrated to America from
Wales in about 1170.
Rudolf Friedrich Kurz wrote that "What Catlin calls blonde hair among the Mandan is nothing more than sun-burned hair that is not continually smeared with grease.... I may mention, also, that the lighter color of some Indians' skin (not only Mandan) is easily traced to the 'whites.'
François-Antoine Larocque visited the Crow and the Mandan. He commented on the Crow saying ""Such of them as do not make practice of exposing themselves naked to the sun have a skin nearly as white as that of white people.... most of those Indians, as they do not so often go naked, are generally of a fairer skin than most of the other tribes with which I am acquainted." He wrote nothing about the skin color of the Mandan. Hjalmar Holand has proposed that interbreeding with Norse survivors of an expedition he thought that
Paul Knutson had made looking for surviving Greenland Christians might explain the "blond" Indians among the Mandan on the Upper Missouri River. In a multidisciplinary study of the
Kensington Runestone, anthropologist
Alice Beck Kehoe wrote that "Knutson would have been fervent indeed to paddle thousands of miles inland searching for the apostates; Holand's hypothesis of a Knutson expedition seems only slightly less speculative than the legend of Prince Madoc." Archaeologist
Ken Feder has stated that none of the material evidence that would be expected from a Viking presence in and travel through the American Midwest exists.
Intertribal warfare 1785-1845 Sioux Indians attacked the Mandan village Nuptadi and set it on fire around 1785. The "turtles" used in the ceremony were saved. "When Nuptadi Village was burned by the Sioux ...", recounted Mandan woman Scattercorn, "... the turtles produced water which protected them ...". The Sioux kept consolidating their dominant position on the northern plains. In the words of "Cheyenne warrior" and Lakota-allied
George Bent: "... the Sioux moved to the Missouri and began raiding these two tribes, until at last the Mandans and Rees [Arikaras] hardly dared go into the plains to hunt buffalo". The Arikara Indians were from time to time also among the foes of the Mandans. Chief Four Bears's revenge on the Arikara, who had killed his brother, is legendary. The Mandan maintained the stockade around Mitutanka Village when threats were present. Major fights were fought. "We destroyed fifty tepees [of Sioux]. The following summer thirty men in a war party were killed", tells the Mandan
winter count of Butterfly for 1835–1836. The big war party was neutralized by Yanktonai Sioux Indians. Mitutanka, now occupied by Arikaras as well as some Mandans, was burned by Yankton Sioux Indians on January 9, 1839. "... the small Pox last year, very near annihilated the Whole [Mandan] tribe, and the Sioux has finished the Work of destruction by burning the village". In 1845, the Hidatsa moved some 20 miles north, crossed the Missouri and built
Like-a-Fishhook Village. Many Mandans joined for common protection.
Smallpox epidemic of 1837–38 , a Mandan chief"
: aquatint by Karl Bodmer from the book "Maximilian, Prince of Wied's Travels in the Interior of North America, during the years 1832–1834"'' The Mandan were first plagued by
smallpox in the 16th century and had been hit by similar epidemics every few decades. Between 1837 and 1838, another smallpox epidemic swept the region. In June 1837, an
American Fur Company steamboat traveled westward up the Missouri River from St. Louis. Its passengers and traders aboard infected the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara tribes. There were approximately 1,600 Mandan living in the two villages at that time. The disease killed 90% of the Mandan people, effectively destroying their settlements. Almost all of the tribe's members, including the second
chief, Four Bears, died. Estimates of the number of survivors vary from 27 up to 150 persons, with some sources placing the number at 125. The survivors banded together with the nearby surviving Hidatsa in 1845 and moved upriver, where they developed Like-a-Fishhook Village. The Mandan believed that they had been infected by whites associated with the steamboat and Fort Clark. Chief Four Bears reportedly said, while ailing, "a set of Black harted Dogs, they have deceived Me, them that I always considered as Brothers, has turned Out to be My Worst enemies". Francis Chardon, in his
Journal at Fort Clark 1834–1839, wrote that the Gros Ventres (ie. Hidatsa), "swear vengeance against all the Whites, as they say the small pox was brought here by the S[team] B[oat]." (Chardon, Journal, p. 126). In the earliest detailed study of the event, in
The American Fur Trade of the Far West (1902),
Hiram M. Chittenden blamed the American Fur Company for the epidemic. Oral traditions of the affected tribes continue to claim that whites were to blame for the disease. R. G. Robertson in his book
Rotting Face: Smallpox and the American Indian, blames Captain Pratte of the steamboat
St. Peter for failing to quarantine passengers and crew once the epidemic broke out, stating that while not guilty of premeditated genocide, but he was guilty of contributing to the deaths of thousands of innocent people. The law calls his offence criminal negligence. Yet in light of all the deaths, the almost complete annihilation of the Mandans, and the terrible suffering the region endured, the label criminal negligence is benign, hardly befitting an action that had such horrendous consequences. Some scholars who have argued that the transmission of smallpox to Native Americans during the 1836-40 epidemic was intentional, including Ann F. Ramenofsky who asserted in 1987: "
Variola Major can be transmitted through contaminated articles such as clothing or blankets. In the nineteenth century, the U.S. Army sent contaminated blankets to Native Americans, especially Plains groups, to control the Indian problem." The Commissioner of Indian Affairs had refused to send the vaccine to the Mandans, apparently not thinking them worthy of protection. Some accounts repeat a story that an Indian sneaked aboard the
St. Peter and stole a blanket from an infected passenger, thus starting the epidemic. The many variations of this account have been criticized by both historians and contemporaries as fiction, a fabrication intended to assuage the guilt of white settlers for displacing the Indians. "The blanket affair was created afterward and is not to be credited", notes B. A. Mann. Given trade and travel patterns, there were numerous ways for people to have been infected, as they had been in earlier, also severe, epidemics.
Late-19th and 20th centuries area on the Fort Berthold Reservation. Built in 1923, this is a wooden version of the classic Mandan earthwork lodge. This area was flooded in 1951. From the
Historic American Engineering Record collection, Library of Congress. The Mandan were a party in the
Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851. They shared a mutual treaty area north of Heart River with the Hidatsa and the Arikara. Soon attacks on hunting parties by Lakota and other Sioux made it difficult for the Mandan to be safe in the treaty area. The tribes called for the United States Army to intervene, and they would routinely ask for such aid until the end of Lakota primacy. Despite the treaty, the Mandan received little protection from US forces. In the summer of 1862, the Arikara joined the Mandan and Hidatsa in Like-a-Fishhook Village on the upper Missouri. All three tribes were forced to live
outside their treaty area south of the Missouri by the frequent raiding of Lakota and other Sioux. Before the end of 1862, some Sioux Indians set fire to part of a Like-a-Fishhook Village. In June 1874, there "was a big war" near Like-a-Fishhook-Village. Colonel
George Armstrong Custer failed to cut off a large war party of Lakota that was attacking the Mandan, although "... the Mandans should be protected same as white settlers". Five Arikaras and a Mandan were killed by the Lakota. The attack turned out to be one of the last made by the Lakota on the Three Tribes. The Mandan joined with the Arikara in 1862. By this time, Like-a-Fishhook Village had become a major center of trade in the region. By the 1880s, though, the village was abandoned. In the second half of the 19th century, the Three Affiliated Tribes (the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara) gradually lost control of some of their holdings. The
Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 recognized 12 million acres (49,000 km2) of land in the territory owned jointly by these tribes. With the creation of the Fort Berthold Reservation by
Executive Order on April 12, 1870, the federal government acknowledged only that the Three Affiliated Tribes held 8 million acres (32,000 km2). On July 1, 1880, another executive order deprived the tribes of 7 million acres (28,000 km2) of land lying outside the boundaries of the reservation.
20th century to present In the early 20th century, the government seized more land; by 1910, the reservation was reduced to 900,000 acres (3,600 km2). This land is located in
Dunn,
McKenzie,
McLean,
Mercer,
Mountrail and
Ward counties in North Dakota. Under the 1934
Indian Reorganization Act, which encouraged tribes to restore their governments, the Mandan officially merged with the Hidatsa and the Arikara. They drafted a constitution to elect representative government and formed the federally recognized
Three Affiliated Tribes, known as the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation. In 1951, the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began construction of
Garrison Dam on the Missouri River. Developed for flood control and irrigation, this dam created
Lake Sakakawea. It flooded portions of the Fort Berthold Reservation, including the villages of Fort Berthold and
Elbowoods, as well as a number of other villages. The former residents of these villages were moved and
New Town was constructed for them. While New Town was constructed for the displaced tribal members, much damage was done to the social and economic foundations of the reservation by the loss of flooded areas. The flooding claimed approximately one quarter of the reservation's land. This land contained some of the most fertile agricultural areas upon which their economy had been developed. The Mandan did not have other land that was as fertile or viable for agriculture. In addition, the flooding claimed the sites of historic villages and archaeological sites with sacred meaning for the peoples. ==Culture==