NORTH DAKOTA: FORT MANDAN, FORT CLARK, AND INDIAN VILLAGES

September 13, 2019

North Dakota was a surprise in so many ways. It's one of the best examples of why you should "Travel America." There is always plenty to see and learn.  

We spent the good part of our first day in North Dakota learning about its history. I've already covered our visit to the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center. The next logical place to visit was Fort Mandan, where Lewis and Clark spent the winter of 1804-1805.

Looking from the fort towards the Missouri River

The original site was ten miles upriver but was unfortunately swallowed up the river at some point. A pretty faithful reproduction was built in 1972 in a more accessible location.

The fort is shaped like a triangle.

On December 17, 1804, William Clark recorded in his journal: "About 8 o'clock PM. The themometer fell to 74 degrees below the freesing pointe." [Unique spelling errors retained.] That means it was -42° F. Such extreme conditions necessitated that the band of explorers and their Native American neighbors work together to survive.

These log walls would have provided some protection, but it certainly wasn't warm inside.

On February 11, 1805, Sacajawea gave birth in a room like this.

Bob would make a good mountain man, wouldn't he?

The visitors center had a nice replica of Seaman, Meriwether Lewis's Newfoundland dog, and a table set with typical food. Was raw meat typical? I hope not.

Moving on, we made a quick stop at the Fort Clark Historic Site, where there was once a large earthlodge Mandan Indian village and a trading fort used by the American Fur Company. Named for Captain William Clark (of Lewis and Clark), Fort Clark was one of the three major American Fur Company posts on the upper Missouri River established to deal directly with various Indian tribes.

In 1837, a steamboat brought smallpox to the village and nearly annihilated the Mandan Tribe. Although another tribe moved in a year later, they abandoned this and another nearby village in the early 1860s. All that is left now is this stone shelter, constructed in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and the Works Progress Administration (WPA).

From what we could tell, the building serves primarily as a place to keep this guest sign-in book.

I know that September isn't a big month for tourism, but it was still surprising that we were one of the few cars on the road or in the parking lots of the various stops we made.

There were beautiful things to see everywhere we looked.

Our next stop was the Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site.  This is the place where every fourth grade class in this corner of the state must come to study North Dakota history, and in fact, two or three bus loads of kids pulled up as we were getting out of our car, so our goal was to stay ahead of them as we walked around the site.

It is hard to imagine living in an earthlodge, and even more so after seeing this reconstruction.

It is quite spacious inside . . . 

. . . although you might have to share the space with some varmints and critters.

Indian paintings . . .

. . . and drying herbs.

A hole in the ceiling let the smoke out (and the cold air in).

Still ahead of the school children, we got an opportunity to hunt some plastic deer and buffalo.

The spear was placed on a launching gizmo and then thrown at the animal.

Let's just say that if Bob and I had to feed ourselves with meat we procured in this way rather than at the grocery store, we wouldn't make it very long.

Gotta get moving. Here comes the first group of schoolkids!

By the time we got back to the Visitors Center, the last group of kids was outside. Perfect timing. Aren't those beautiful animal pelts? I just wanted to reach out and pet each one . . .

. . . which is exactly what I did.

These are beautiful embroidered vests . . . 

. . . but those are tiny beads, not yarn!

I would like to know more about the women. What a life they must have had. Don't they look regal?

We spent some time walking trails that took us along the Knife River, a 120-mile-long tributary of the Missouri River.

There had been several days of rain for almost a week straight right before we arrived, so the ground was wet and the grass was green.

This was the site of an Awatixa Village, a tribe that was more or less a contemporary of the Mandan tribe. It's hard to see in the photo, but each of those depressions represents one of the 52 earthlodges that used to dot this open field. (Actually, only 31 depressions remain; erosion and water have washed  away or partially destroyed 12, and modern farming has obliterated 12 others.)  Upwards of 400 people occupied this village from the late 1790s until 1834, when a Sioux raiding party burned the village down.

The self-taught American artist George Catlin visited the village in 1832 and painted this view from the opposite bank of the river. It is commonly believed that it was in this village where Sacajawea and her husband the French trader Toussaint Charbonneau were living when Lewis and Clark first met them.

We were the only people on the well-tended trails . . .

. . . but there were other creatures of a different species wandering in this area.

This photo doesn't do the scene justice, but if you look carefully you'll see that all those specks above the trees are birds, thousands of birds swooping in formation in and out of this deciduous forest.

As it was the end of summer, there were some interesting "fruits" along the pathway, some edible and some not . . .

. . . as well as some mushrooms.

Honestly, strolling along this peaceful wood with my favorite man was not a bad way to spend a 40th anniversary, not bad at all.

We made one more quick stop at a Hidatsa Indian Village. The dips and wrinkles were harder to see here, but information on-site said there were 113 earthlodges that housed up to 1,000 people and hundreds of dogs and horses. During the smallpox epidemic of 1837, half of the village population died. The survivors eventually moved to a different village in 1845.

It had been a very fun day. We had learned a lot about a state we had known almost nothing about. But we had two more things to learn:
               1.  Don't speed. 
               2. North Dakota Highway Patrol members are awfully nice, and if you're lucky, you'll get a warning instead of a ticket.

It isn't all that rare for Bob to get pulled over for speeding. We had one family vacation when he got four tickets in a few days, but it's VERY rare for him to get pulled over and just get a warning.

It was a very good day.