Describes the history, beliefs, customs, homes, and day-to-day life of the Mandan Indians. Also discusses how they live today.

This Pulitzer Prize–winning work pieces together the lost history of the Mandan Native Americans and their thriving society on the Upper Missouri River. The Mandan people’s bustling towns in present-day North Dakota were at the center of the North American universe for centuries. Yet their history has been nearly forgotten, maintained in fragmentary documents and the journals of white visitors such as Lewis and Clark. In this extraordinary book, Elizabeth A. Fenn pieces together those fragments along with important new discoveries in archaeology, anthropology, geology, climatology, epidemiology, and nutritional science. The result is a bold new perspective on early American history, a new interpretation of the American past. By 1500, more than twelve thousand Mandans were established on the northern Plains, and their commercial prowess, agricultural skills, and reputation for hospitality became famous. Recent archaeological discoveries show how they thrived—and how they collapsed. The damage wrought by imported diseases like smallpox and the havoc caused by the arrival of horses and steamboats were tragic for the Mandans, yet, as Fenn makes clear, their sense of themselves as a people with distinctive traditions endured.

Generations before the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery wintered in the northern Plains, the Mandan Indians farmed along the banks of rivers. The traditional world of the Mandans comes vividly to life in this classic account by anthropologist Alfred W. Bowers. Based on years of research and conversations with Crows Heart and ten other Mandan men and women, Bowers offers an engaging and detailed reconstruction of their way of life in earlier times. Featured here are overviews of how their households function, the makeup of their clan and moiety systems and kinship network, and a valuable look at the entire Mandan life cycle, from birth and naming through adulthood, marriage, and death. Mandan Social and Ceremonial Organization also includes descriptions and analyses of Mandan ceremonies, legends, and religious beliefs, including origin myths, the Okipa Ceremony, sacred bundles, Corn ceremonies, the Eagle-Trapping Ceremony, Catfish-Trapping Ceremony, and the Adoption Pipe Ceremony. Many of these practices and beliefs remain vital and relevant for Mandans today. A comprehensive look at the legacy and traditional roots of present-day Mandan culture, Mandan Social and Ceremonial Organization is a classic ethnography of an enduring North American Native community.

O-Kee-Pa; A Religious Ceremony; And Other Customs Of The Mandans has been considered by academicians and scholars of great significance and value to literature. This forms a part of the knowledge base for future generations. So that the book is never forgotten we have represented this book in a print format as the same form as it was originally first published. Hence any marks or annotations seen are left intentionally to preserve its true nature.

"His Mandan name is She-he-ke-shote. In English this means White Coyote. Lewis and Clark called him Chief Big White. Mandan interpreter Rene Jessaume referred to him in French as Le Gros Blanc. To some, he was simply 'the Mandan Chief'. Today, we call him Sheheke, the Mandan Indian who traveled from North Dakota with Lewis and Clark to meet President Thomas Jefferson in Washington, D.C., in 1806. The story of his life has been too long untold. It is the story of a dynamic native culture, a peaceful and welcoming people, and a nation struggling for survival. It is the story of a procession of curious explorers from the north and east. It is the story of one man with the mettle and foresight to embark upon an unprecedented trip that would take him thousands of miles into a foreign land with unfamiliar customs. Sheheke was an ambassador for the Mandan Nation, a consistent friend of the United States, and an important part of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. In sharing his story, his legacy of kindness, friendship, and courage lives on."--Back cover

Particularly valuable for Ronda's inclusion of pertinent background information about the various tribes and for his ethnological analysis. An appendix also places the Sacagawea myth in its proper perspective. Gracefully written, the book bridges the gap between academic and general audiences.OCo"Choice""

A thriving fur trade post between 1830 and 1860, Fort Clark, in what is today western North Dakota, also served as a way station for artists, scientists, missionaries, soldiers, and other western chroniclers traveling along the Upper Missouri River. The written and visual legacies of these visitors—among them the German prince-explorer Maximilian of Wied, Swiss artist Karl Bodmer, and American painter-author George Catlin—have long been the primary sources of information on the cultures of the Mandan and Hidatsa Indians, the peoples who met the first fur traders in the area. This book, by a team of anthropologists, is the first thorough account of the fur trade at Fort Clark to integrate new archaeological evidence with the historical record. The Mandans built a village in about 1822 near the site of what would become Fort Clark; after the 1837 smallpox epidemic that decimated them, the village was occupied by Arikaras until they abandoned it in 1862. Because it has never been plowed, the site of Fort Clark and the adjacent Mandan/Arikara village are rich in archaeological information. The authors describe the environmental and cultural setting of the fort (named after William Clark of the Lewis and Clark expedition), including the social profile of the fur traders who lived there. They also chronicle the histories of the Mandans and the Arikaras before and during the occupation of the post and the village. The authors conclude by assessing the results—published here for the first time—of the archaeological program that investigated the fort and adjacent Indian villages at Fort Clark State Historic Site. By vividly depicting the conflict and cooperation in and around the fort, this book reveals the various cultures’ interdependence.

Thirty years after Meriwether Lewis and William Clark passed through the Mandan villages in present-day North Dakota, the Upper Missouri River region was being plied by fur traders. In 1834 Francis A. Chardon, a Philadelphian of French extraction, took charge of Fort Clark, a main post of the American Fur Company on the Upper Missouri. The journal that Chardon began that year offers a rare glimpse of daily life among the Mandan Indians, including the Arikaras, Yanktons, and Gros Ventres. In particular, it is a valuable and graphic record of the smallpox scourge that nearly destroyed the Mandans in 1837. Chardon describes much of historical interest, including such figures as the interpreter Charbonneau, Sacajawea's husband, and the fantastic James Dickson, "Liberator of all the Indians." By the time his account ends in 1839, the fur trade is already in decline. Chardon's journal was long lost, rediscovered, and finally edited and published in 1932 by Annie Heloise Abel, a distinguished scholar whose works, all available as Bison Books, included The American Indian As Slaveholder and Secessionist; The American Indian in the Civil War, 1862-1865; and The American Indian and the End of the Confederacy, 1863-1866. Her historical introduction provides background on the fur trade and on Chardon's life before and after his tenure at Fort Clark. William R. Swagerty is a history professor at the University of Idaho.