While walking through the interpretive center, we learned so much about the Lewis & Clark expedition and how they made it through the winter, as well as learned about the Native tribes who welcomed them. This post covers the Natives who already lived here in the early 1800s and how they lived. The next post concentrates on the expedition.
While the expedition forged against the river’s current to find a place to spend the winter, they passed an area that had been the home of a large group of Mandan Natives, but the camp was empty. Later Lewis and Clark found out that these Natives had been hit with smallpox and those who were still alive moved north a little ways to the Knife River Villages that were close to Fort Mandan. In a future post we’ll look at this area called On-a-Slant Village at Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park just outside of the Bismark/Mandan area. We’ll also show you the inside of some earth lodges that we saw earlier in our trip.
The original Fort Mandan site is believed to be underwater now due to the changing course of the Missouri River. Lewis and Clark chose this place so they’d be near the 5 Mandan and Hidatsa villages at the mouth of the Knife River. The villages were the hub of an important trade network and had a population of almost 5000 people.
While here over the winter, the captains could learn about the cultures of the Missouri River Indians. Here they could establish a foothold for American commerce over European traders.
The Mandan and Hidatsa people were originally woodland people who moved to the plains at various times. One theory is the Mandan moved from the area of southern Minnesota and northern Iowa to the plains in South Dakota about 900 AD, and slowly migrated north along the Missouri River to North Dakota about 1000 AD.
According to anthropologists, the Arikara people lived in an area that extended from the Gulf of Mexico across Kansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota. In 1862, the Arikara moved north to join the Mandan and Hidatsa [so they won’t really be part of our story].
This wasn’t the first time that we’ve learned about these tribal trade routes. On our 2019 road trip, we spent a few days at Mesa Verde National Park and learned about some of the trading that the cliff-dwellers did some 2000 years ago.
The Mandan and Hidatsa tribes traded their corn for shells from the Pacific Coast and the Atlantic Coast, obsidian from the Yellowstone Park area, native copper exposed by the last glacier around the Great Lakes, and shells from the Gulf Coast and rivers.
The Mandan and Hidatsa villages were the center of Upper Missouri trade. Tribes met annually to trade at these permanent villages and rendezvous points. Each group brought its own specialties, and individual artisans shrewdly bargained to get the best value for the hand-crafted items.
The extent of trade networks is shown by archaeological evidence:
- Knife River flint is found in village and hunting sites thousands of miles from its source in North Dakota.
- Research also shows that European trade goods—metal tools, cloth, beads, and guns—permeated the continent long before most Indians ever saw a white man.
Mandan Indians
Along with their Hidatsa neighbors, the Mandan Indians were at the center of trade along the Upper Missouri River in today’s central North Dakota. When Louis and Clark arrived, the Natives lived in earth lodges in 2 villages. In a future post, we’ll learn more about these earth lodges and see some examples.
A sacred cedar post stood at the village surrounded by an open plaza, and the primary medicine lodge was located at the north end of the plaza. Forty or fifty additional lodges populated the plaza. The more powerful a family, the closer its lodge was to the center. On average, 10 people lived in each lodge. In the winter, to avoid storms, the Mandan constructed temporary lodges in wooded, low-lying areas.
The Mandan grew crops of corn, beans, squash, sunflower, and tobacco in fields that surrounded the villages. With the arrival of autumn, numerous Indian tribes and Europeans descended on Mandan villages, bringing an assortment of trade goods. Cree, Cheyenne, Assiniboin, Crow, and even enemy Teton Sioux came to trade. Everything was fair game in the exchange for Mandan corn.
the Hidatsa
In 1804, traveling northwest, it was a short trip from the 2 Mandan villages to Mahawha, the first of the 3 neighboring Hidatsa villages.
Hidatsa villages were similar to the Mandan villages. Earthl odges were grouped around a central plaza and were occupied for about 7-12 years. A log wall surrounded the village for protection. Mahawha was located at the meeting of the Knife and Missouri Rivers and was home to about 50 warriors.
Unlike the Mandan, the Hidatsa regularly sent war parties westward against the Shoshone and Blackfeet. They did this not only for wealth, protection, and revenge, but also for ritual reasons. For the Hidatsa, battle was the way that young men established themselves as leaders in the tribe.
life with and in the 2 Native tribes
When visiting an earth lodge, the captains and men were no doubt given places of honor near the fire, such was Indian hospitality to strangers.
The Corps of Discovery’s new winter home quickly became the “in place” to visit. Curious villagers came early and stayed late. Likewise, the men of the expedition spent many pleasant hours n the nearby [warm] earth lodges.
The captains continued negotiations with village leaders to establish peace. They also tried to win Indian loyalties away from British and French traders who were also staying in the villages that winter.
The Native men and women had different roles that balanced out each other. Men killed and brought meat to the family, while women raised frost-resistant varieties of corn, beans, squash, and sunflowers in river bottom fields near the villages. Some of the produce and meat were carefully dried and stored in cache pits. [The captains used this method later on during their trip so they’d have supplies for their trip home.]
Charles Mackenzie, a North West Company employee living in the Knife River Indian villages in the summer of 1805, wrote, “I never witnessed anything equal in richness to the appearance of the fields. The stalks of the Indian corn were generally eight feet high, the leaves of the kidney beans were entirely covered with blossoms, promising abundance. The pumpkins were already gathered, cut into slices and dried in the sun ready for us.”
According to Mandan custom, a dead buffalo without an arrow or other identifying mark was the property of the finder. Of the ten buffalo killed by expedition members the first day, they retrieved only five. Their neighbors had to eat too.
Lewis wrote on July 13, 1805, “we eat an emensity of meat; it requires 4 deer, an Elk and a deer, or one buffaloe, to supply us plentifully for 24 hours.” If they ate this much meat in July, think how much more they needed during cold weather.
Sakakawea
William Clark wrote to Charbonneau, Sakakawea’s husband, on August 20, 1806, “Your woman who accompanied you that long dangerous and fatigueing rout to the Pacific Ocean and back diserved a greater reward for her attention and services on that rout than we had in our power to give her.”
What we do know of her is that she was a Shoshone who was kidnapped at age 5 by the Hidatsa. She was the wife of the trader Toussaint Charbonneau; they both accompanied the Corps of Discovery to the Pacific Ocean and back to the Mandan villages.
While we don’t know what she looked like, this artwork gives us one artist’s imagination.
We’ll learn more about her and perhaps what she looked like later on our trip.
Two historical records of Sakakawea were included in the museum. One by a fur trader in 1811 describing the return of Charbonneau and Sakakawea to the Knife River villages after having lived for a time near St. Louis.
Both references to her were really positive. Time has magnified Sakakawea’s contributions to the expedition, some casting her in the role of principal guide.
Either way, she was an amazing woman on an amazing journey. The Girl Scout camp I went to in Iowa was named after her.
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