When Lewis and Clark reached the Mandans it was late fall:the trees had changed and cold northern winds were on their way,bearing with them great flocks of ducks and geese on their waysouth. Mandans swarmed out of their homes and clustered on therim of the high riverbank as the Corps of Discovery beached theircraft. They stepped on shore near the base of the rocky ledgealong the bank below their first village, that of Big White, or Sheheke-shote.

Lewis and Clark’s initial plan in St. Louis had beento spend the winter near the source of the Missouri River. Assummer passed, however, they had only gone as far as modern SiouxCity, Iowa. From there, Jefferson was told that the expeditionexpected to winter among the Mandans (Jackson 1962: 218-19), forit was obvious that reaching the Rocky Mountains that fall wasimpossible. A location near the Mandans would be ideal for a winterpost. Had the Corps wintered alone they would have had a wretchedtime, and perhaps starved, if indeed they survived at all.

By Christmas, an observer high over the landscape would haveseen the Corps of Discovery’s newly-erected fort just downstreamfrom five Native American towns clustered around the mouth ofthe Knife River, some seventy river miles above Bismarck, themodern capitol of North Dakota. During the coming winter, Indianresidents would interact with a dual alien culture, one that hadtwo different agendas: that of the exploratory party of Americans,and that of the Canadian traders who were there to obtain furs.Indeed, seven employees of the competing North West Company andthe Hudson’s Bay Company were visiting these Indians. Thus,three voices may be heard in the interactions between them thatfollowed. We have detailed views of the events that winter fromthe journals of the Corps of Discovery, and, fortunately, accountsby two of the North West Company traders, but the Indian voicehas been muted, though not stilled, by time.

At the time of Lewis and Clark there were two Mandan communities,both of them near the three towns of the closely related HidatsaIndians. The first Mandan village was on the south side of theriver (Mitutanka) and the other was on the north bank oppositeit (Ruptare), just downstream from the mouth of the Knife River.These villages are known today as Deapolis and Black Cat, respectively,and in Lewis and Clark’s time they were under the leadershipof two renowned chiefs, Big White, or Sheheke, and Black Cat,or Posecopsahe.

The three Hidatsa villages were upstream, at the mouth ofthe Knife River. The Awaxawi Hidatsas (also known as the Amahami,or Shoe Indians) lived in a small village at the mouth of theKnife River. This small but aggressive Hidatsa group was distinguishedfrom the other Hidatsas because of its slightly different dialectand lifestyle. The middle town lay on the south bank of the Knifea mile from its confluence with the Missouri. It was occupiedby Awatixa Hidatsa (also called the Minitarees) and is known todayas the Sakakawea site. Its modern name came fromthe fact it was the home of Toussaint Charbonneau and Sacagawea.Big Hidatsa was the most northern, and largest, community:it was occupied by the Hidatsa Proper and lay on the north bankof the Knife River. Today, the latter two villages are part ofthe Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site, a unitof the National Park Service. Since the combined villages hada population of almost 6,000 individuals, they were far largerthan the combined residents of St. Louis and Washington, D.C.

The Corps of Discovery reached the lower Mandan village onOctober 26. After scouting the neighborhood for a location havingenough timber to build a fort, a site was chosen a few miles downstreamand across the Missouri River from Big White’s village.A location near the Mandans had many advantages, both practicaland strategic. Practical, because they had access to the gardenproduce of the Mandans; and strategic, because this was whereBritish merchants from Canada were trading on the Missouri River.Lewis and Clark’s presence would introduce American sovereigntyand prestige to the Indians and the British traders alike.

Construction on their fort began on November 2. The men ofthe Corps moved into the structure on November 16, but for whateverreason, the captains slept on the keelboat until November 20.The fort was completed by Christmas eve — in 53 days. Indianvisitors were surprised at the speed with which the men cut andshaped its timbers, and erected the structure. The captains namedthe fort in honor of their “friendly neighbours” during festivities on Christmas day (Lewis in Jackson 1962: 222).

Fort Mandan was not a solitary building set on the riverbank.Sgt. Ordway is the only one to tell us of sanitary facilities.A latrine was dug 100 yards from the fort, “to keepthe place healthy.” This is an astonishingly long distanceconsidering the North Dakota winters: surely they had no ideaof the severity of the local temperatures to come (Ordway in Moulton9: 94).

Two outbuildings were erected nearby: on November 16 they“raised a provision & Smoak house” measuring14 by 24 feet (Ordway in Moulton 9: 96-97); a few days later itreceived its first consignment of meat, which was suspended onpoles. A second structure was a hut of some sort erected for theFrench boatmen, who were not housed in the fort itself (Clarkin Moulton 3: 286). Jusseaume and Charbonneau and their wivesmay not have lived in the fort either, but in their own quarters(in a tipi, or a cabin), apparently 60 yards from the fort (Clarkin Moulton 3: 239), though we do not know whether this was a temporaryor a permanent arrangement. The latrine was “above,” or west, of the fort; the location of the other two dwellingsis problematical, but it would make sense that they were on theside of the fort nearest the latrine.

Lewis and Clark were the first known Americans to see theMandans and Hidatsas, but the two tribes had been subject to Europeaninfluences, at first indirectly, for more than a century and ahalf. Trade goods began arriving in their villages through intertribaltrade by about 1650, and direct trade with Europeans began followingthe arrival from Canada of the Sieur La Vé rendrye in 1738.By 1785 traders from Canada were regular visitors and residentsin their communities. The villages remained magnets for Europeantraders, as well as for intertribal trade, until the mid-1800s.

Mandan technology began to change as metal items began toreplace stone, bone, and pottery ones, but more profound changeswere initiated by the arrival of horses and guns. Horses beganto appear in the mid-1700s, and by the end of the century gunswere introduced by Canadian traders. John C. Ewers (1968b) longago pointed out that it was here that the frontier of the gunmet that of the horse. Spaniards in the Southwest prohibited Indiansfrom obtaining guns, while Canadians were happy to provide them.Horses, however, were introduced to the Mandans from the Southwestby intertribal trade. These animals were in short supply in theNorthern Plains, for Canadian and and St. Louis fur traders reachedthis area from Canada after a long voyage in a canoe or boat — that is, in vessels that entirely precluded the importation ofhorses of any size.

The Mandans were scarcely pristine in other ways. Once theyhad lived in perhaps nine large villages near modern Bismarck.Devastating attacks of smallpox, combined with attacks by theSioux, had reduced their population in the mid-1700s of perhaps9,000 people to only two villages containing about 1,500 individuals(Wood and Irwin 2001: 352). After 1781, the broken remnants ofthe Mandans moved upriver and settled near their neighbors, theHidatsas. Previously, the Mandans had been power brokers on theNorthern Plains, but now they were surrounded by the Sioux andlargely at their mercy.

Despite population losses, the Mandan and Hidatsa villagesremained important in the regional intertribal trade. Every fall,nomadic Plains Indians came to their villages with products ofthe hunt to exchange for the corn these village peoples grew intheir extensive gardens. As European and, later, American goodsbegan trickling into this system, horses from the south and gunsfrom the north passed through the Mandan and Hidatsa trade centers.The two tribes, diminished in size as they were, nonetheless becamewealthy through this trade, sometimes exacting a 100-percent markupon goods as they passed through their hands.

It is no exaggeration that the Mandan and Hidatsa villagesare sometimes called the “Wal-Mart” of theNorthern Plains, for they were depots of goods drawn from themany horse nomads that occupied thousands of square miles aroundthem. When white traders began visiting their villages after themiddle 1700s, the trade in guns and other European goods beganto be taken over by free traders and by agents of the Hudson’s Bay Company and the North West Company, arriving from the AssiniboineRiver valley. No significant trade with agents and companies originatingin St. Louis began until after the Louisiana Purchase: Lewis andClark were the bellwethers of that trade.

The ranking chiefs of the the Mandan villages, Black Catand Big White, were frequent visitors at Fort Mandan, undeterredby the usually bitter cold — often 20 or more degrees belowzero. They sometimes spent the night in the fort, and reciprocatedby entertaining members of the Corps in their villages. Some ofthe enlisted men were, indeed, invited to participate as eldersin the buffalo-calling ceremony, a ritual in which the wives ofyounger men surrendered themselves to the elders. This was notpromiscuity, but a means of transferring power from older mento younger ones through the medium of their wives. But less ceremonialrelations with the women also were common, and the captains oftencommented on the presence of “venereal complaints” among the enlisted men.

Meat became increasingly difficult to obtain as the winterwore on, but John Shields and Alexander Willard, the Corps’ blacksmiths, were helpful providers. They made battleaxes andmended iron tools for the Mandans, and received corn in exchange.One Hidatsa chief told trader Charles Mackenzie that “there are only two sensible men among them — the workerof Iron, and the mender of Guns” (Wood and Thiessen1985: 233).

The Corps spent Christmas in high spirits, but without theinevitable Indian guests (they had been told to stay away, forit was a great “medicine day”). The day passedin toasts, singing, firing of guns, and dancing with one another.On New Years’ Day, Sgt. Ordway and fifteen of the partywent, at the Mandans’ request, to Big White’s villageto dance. They took a fiddle, a tambourine, and a sounding horn.Francois Rivet danced on his hands, and everyone danced aroundhim. The Mandans were so pleased at their performance they gavethem corn and buffalo robes. The men continued to dance in differentlodges until late afternoon (Ordway in Moulton, 9: 107).

More than pleasantries and goods were exchanged. Mutual trustand dependence grew when the captains offered to assist the Mandansin the event of a Sioux attack, and the Mandans helped pursuea Sioux party that had stolen some horses from the Americans.There was also reciprocal socializing.

There were less cordial relations between the Corps and theHidatsas. One Eye (Le Borgne), chief of the principal Hidatsavillage, visited Fort Mandan only once following an initial council,and Lewis made only one visit to the Hidatsas. Relations mustnot have been uniformly bad, however, for in 1832 Black Moccasin,chief of the middle Hidatsa village, told George Catlin of hisregard for the captains, “Long Knife” and“Red Hair,” and asked Catlin to relay somedispatches to Clark on his return to St. Louis (Catlin 1965, I:187).

John C. Ewers (1968a: 50) speculated that this coolness waslikely the product of rumors by North West Company and Hudson’s Bay Company men, who were frequent visitors in the Hidatsa villages.The Hudson’s Bay Company men operated out of Brandon Houseon the Assiniboine River. North West Company employee FrancoisLarocque visited the fort to ask if he could accompany the expeditionto the west coast, but he was told instead not to give flags ormedals to the Indians of the newly acquired territory of the UnitedStates. Larocque had to have known that the possibility of a foreignnational being allowed to accompany an American army long-rangepatrol (to use modern parlance), was out of the question.

It has often been noted that there is no indication of anystrife between the captains. The enlisted men, also, even whenconfined by the weather to Fort Mandan, displayed no recoded signof tension, or the symptoms of “cabin fever” we might have expected. Leaving the fort was an open invitationto frostbite, with temperatures often hovering at forty degreesbelow zero. Indeed, on December 29, a temperature of only ninedegrees below zero was “not considered Cold” (Clark in Moulton 3: 263). After four months of close associationin the fort, Clark was able to say that

all the party in high Spirits theypass but fiew nights without amuseing themselves danceing[,] possessingperfect harmony and good understanding towards each other (Moulton3:323-24,
for March 31, 1805).

Lewis also was to say that “not a whisper of discontentor murmur is to be heared among them, but all act in unison, andwith the most perfect harmony” (Jackson 1962: 224-225).

These quotes reinforce the sense of camaradie that developedearly in the expedition. When the Missouri River passage was lessthan a month old, near today’s Jefferson City, Missouri,Sgt. Ordway was at the rudder when it passed beneath a tree andthe mast snapped off. This event is recorded only in Ordway’s journal: no other expeditionary account places the blame forthis event on an individual (Ordway in Moulton 9: 9).

President Jefferson had asked for the Corps to return toWashington a few influential Indian chiefs to visit him. Clarkwas successful in recruiting only one such individual: Big White,but only after he was persuaded to go by a French trader, René Jusseaume. The Mandans were afraid of being killed by the Sioux,but in retrospect Big White’s greatest problem was gettingback: later hostilities with the Sioux downriver kept him fromreturning home for three years.

Toussaint Charbonneau had two Shoshone wives in the Hidatsavillage where he lived. The Hidatsas often carried away slaveswhen they raided the Shoshones in the Rocky Mountains, and theFrenchman had purchased the girls from their captors. One of thewomen of course was Sacagawea, the Bird Woman. She was a LemhiShoshone, born about 1788. As Lewis and Clark left the Mandans,she was about 18 years of age; her son, eight weeks old. JamesWillard Schultz alleges, on the basis of informants at Fort Clark,years later (including the daughter of Mato-Tope), that the otherwife’s name was Otter Woman, who “died shortlyafter the return of the expedition” (Schultz 1918: 130,205). Both wives wintered at, or near, Fort Mandan with Charbonneau.Originally, both women were to accompany the expedition but, ultimately,only Sacagawea did so (Moulton 3: 328, n3). Sacagawea died atFort Manuel, South Dakota, in December, 1812, while she was livingthere with Charbonneau

When Sacagawea was captured by the Hidatsas yet another womanof her tribe was carried back to the Missouri River, a woman namedPop-pank, or Jumping Fish (Rees 1958: 4, 9; Schultz 1918). Shemust have been older than Sacagawea, for she escaped and successfullytrekked back to her people. She recognized Sacagawea when shere-appeared with the Corps of Discovery (Clark in Moulton - 5:109).

Prophetically, on April 7, 1805, the day of their departurefrom Fort Mandan, Lewis wrote that

This little fleet altho’ not quiteas rispectable as those of Columbus or Capt. Cook were still viewedby us with as much pleasure as those deservedly famed adventurersever beheld theirs; and I dare say with quite as much anxietyfor their safety and preservation. ... we were about to penetratea country ... on which the foot of civillized man had never trodden;the good or evil it had in store for us was for experiment yetto determine.... (Lewis in Moulton, vol. 4: 9, for April 7, 1805)

The men of course made it home, the goal of the expedition— a failure: they had not found the economical route tothe Pacific that Jefferson had sought. But Enlightenment knowledgehad been immensely expanded. However, the overall good and evilof the expedition itself remains a topic for debate.

In closing, I shall change gears drastically. Paleoclimatologiststell us that Lewis and Clark were in the northern Plains duringa droughty period that spanned the years just before 1800 andlater. If we analyze the climatic data in their journals (andin other approximately contemporary ones), we also learn thatthe winters during this time (particularly Januarys) were colderthan those today. The reason? A cold period that paleoclimatologistscall the Little Ice Age took place between about 1550 and 1850(Grove 1988), and Lewis and Clark entered the northern plainsas it was in its waning stages.

So their journals provide valuable information on this timeand place that otherwise is lacking, and help fill in our knowledgeof past climates. Indeed, close analysis of their entries revealthat winter front passages for those years can be compared tomodern ones: for example, a synoptic sequence that climatologistscall a “back door front” can be recognizedin the journals, just as it occurs today on the northern plains(Snyder 1981). The journals therefore contribute important datafor past climate change, a necessary step in understanding thebackground for global warming. So take another look at those journals!

References

Catlin, George. (1965) Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs,and Condition of the North American Indians, 2 vols. Rossand Haines, Minneapolis.
Ewers, John C. (1968a) “Reactions of the Plains Indiansto the Lewis and Clark Expedition.” In Indian Lifeon the Upper Missouri, pp. 45-56. University of Oklahoma Press,Norman.
---- (1968b) “The Indian Trade of the Upper MissouriBefore Lewis and Clark: An Interpretation.” In IndianLife on the Upper Missouri, pp. 14-33. University of OklahomaPress, Norman.
Grove, Jean M. (1988) The LittleIce Age. Methuen, London.
Jackson, Donald. (1962) Letters of the Lewisand Clark Expedition with Related Documents, 1783-1854. Universityof Illinois Press, Urbana.
Moulton, Gary E., editor. (1986-2001) The Journals of the Lewis& Clark Expedition, 13 Vols. University of Nebraska Press,Lincoln.
Rees, John E. (1958) The Shoshone Contribution to Lewis and Clark.Idaho Yesterdays 2 (Summer), 2-13.
Schultz, James Willard (1918) The Bird Woman (Sacajawea), theGuide of Lewis and Clark. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Snyder, Lynn M. (1981). “Early Meteorological Data inthe Journals of Northern Great Plains Explorers.” Termpaper for Anthropology 953, Ethnohistory, Department of Anthropology,University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Wood, W. Raymond, and Lee Irwin (2001). “Mandan.” In Handbook of North American Indians, general editor,William C. Sturtevant, Vol. 13, Part 1, Plains, editor,Raymond J. DeMallie, pp. 349-364. Smithsonian Press, Washington, D.C.
Wood, W. Raymond, and Thomas D. Thiessen. (1985) Early FurTrade on the Northern Plains: Canadian Traders among the Mandanand Hidatsa Indians, 1738-1818. University of Oklahoma Press,Norman.