Mandan
The Mandan are a Native American tribe that belongs to the Siouan language family and originally migrated from the Ohio River region to the northern Great Plains around the early 1400s. Primarily located along the Big Bend of the Missouri River in North Dakota, the Mandan historically lived in permanent villages and cultivated crops such as corn, beans, squash, and tobacco. They relied heavily on buffalo hunts, which were traditionally conducted on foot until the introduction of horses in the mid-18th century. Their spiritual beliefs centered around a sun god and included significant rituals like the Sun Dance, which involved endurance tests and the seeking of visions for personal strength and power.
The Mandan faced immense challenges after their initial contact with European traders, particularly due to devastating smallpox epidemics in the 1830s that drastically reduced their population. By the late 19th century, the Mandan had been moved to a reservation and began to adapt to new living conditions, often intermarrying with other tribes like the Sioux and Chippewa. Today, the Mandan are part of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation, also known as the MHA Nation, and they continue to strive for the preservation of their culture, language, and history while engaging in economic development efforts.
On this Page
Subject Terms
Mandan
- CATEGORY: Tribe
- CULTURE AREA: Plains
- LANGUAGE GROUP: Siouan
- PRIMARY LOCATION: North Dakota
- POPULATION SIZE: 271 (Mandan alone - 2020: DEC Detailed Demographic and Housing Characteristics File A); 17,460 (2024: Total population of MHA Nation)
The Mandan, a branch of the Siouan language family, migrated from their original homes along the Ohio River to the northern Great Plains in the early 1400s. Since then, they have lived in the region around the Big Bend of the Missouri River.
Traditional Culture
The Mandan were called the “Prairie People” by other Indigenous Americans. They lived in permanent villages and grew corn, beans, squash, and tobacco. Once a year, hunting parties went into the prairies in search of buffalo, which, until the introduction of horses in the 1750s, were killed by warriors on foot driving the bison off high cliffs. After learning how to use horses, Mandan warriors went out more frequently on these hunts, but the killing methods did not change. Huge graveyards of buffalo bones have been found at the bottom of killing cliffs in North Dakota and eastern Montana. The Mandan depended on the buffalo for food, clothing, and shelter.
Mandan religious beliefs centered on a sun god and the yearly Sun Dance. Warriors performed the dance twice, before and then after the buffalo hunt. The eight-day ceremony included self-torture and mutilation. The event’s chief sponsor, the Okipa Maker, gave away large quantities of his wealth and was required to suffer more extreme tortures than anyone else. The ceremony began with a fast. Then, volunteers were brought into a sacred lodge and hung from leather thongs inserted into their arms and chests. The warriors who withstood the most pain without crying out were considered the bravest. After the torture, they ran around the lodge with buffalo skulls tied on ropes attached under the skin of their legs. Most men did this only once in their lives as part of an initiation ceremony, but others—holy men and great warriors—underwent this test of endurance many times. Warriors gained power from this torture, and the more often it was endured, the mightier they became. Young warriors often fasted and suffered until they had visions of a guardian spirit (manitou) who would become a personal god and guardian. This spirit could be called upon for strength and protection until the day the warrior died.
Power was also gained through being kind to older people, participating in religious rituals (including frequent fasts), learning the ancient language of the gods, being generous, and inviting an older man to have sexual relations with one’s wife. The older man’s power would be passed on to the wife, who would then pass it on to her husband. (This misunderstood practice caused much confusion among White merchants and fur traders, who accused the Mandan of being immoral.)
Mandan villages each had a sacred bundle containing items such as a buffalo skin and pipe that belonged to Good Furred Robe (an important god), a fox skin headdress, some white sage, a pair of moccasins, a clay pot, the heads of several blackbirds and a duck, and various food items grown in village gardens. This bundle was brought out only on certain important religious occasions and handed down intact from generation to generation. Individual warriors kept their own bundles, brought out only on holy days, and contained items considered sacred by them. These bundles were normally transferred to the eldest son upon the father's death.
Post-contact Life
The Mandan first made contact with Whites, mainly French fur trappers, in the mid-1700s. It was not until 1837 when the American Fur Company established a trading post along the Missouri River at Fort Clark, that a permanent relationship developed. Only a few months after the building of Fort Clark, a serious smallpox epidemic broke out. This disease, brought in by White merchants, killed thousands of Mandan people. The population, estimated at nine thousand in 1750, fell to less than two hundred after the devastation. The smell of dead bodies became so noxious that Fort Clark had to be abandoned temporarily. Two years later, many of the remaining Mandan villagers were slaughtered during a Sioux attack. After the killing, Sioux warriors burned the entire Mandan camp to the ground.
In 1874, a government census found 241 Mandan individuals living in North Dakota. Most were moved to a reservation, where they lived on land allotments provided by the General Allotment Act (Dawes Act) of 1887 and tried to survive on corn and beans. In the early 2020s, few full-blood Mandan members could be found, as there had been considerable intermarriage with Sioux and Chippewa (Ojibwa) at the Fort Berthold Reservation.
In the twenty-first century, most descendants of the Mandan people lived on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota as part of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation or MHA Nation. This federally-recognized Indigenous nation was also known as the Three Affiliated Tribes. The Mandan worked to preserve their history, culture, and language while also pursuing economic development opportunities.
Bibliography
Fenn, Elizabeth A. Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People. Hill and Wang, 2015.
Graybill, Andrew. "The Tribe at the Center of America: The Story of the Mandan." Daily Beast, 12 July 2017. www.thedailybeast.com/the-tribe-at-the-center-of-america-the-story-of-the-mandan. Accessed 29 Mar. 2023.
"MHA History." Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation, www.mhanation.com/history. Accessed 29 Oct. 2024.
MHA Nation, www.mhanation.com. Accessed 29 Oct. 2024.
"Northern Plains Tribes - Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site." US National Park Service, 27 Oct. 2020, www.nps.gov/fous/learn/historyculture/tribes.htm. Accessed 29 Oct. 2024.
Schenider, Mary Jane. "Encyclopedia of the Great Plains - Mandans." University of Nebraska–Lincoln Center for Great Plains Study, plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.na.061. Accessed 29 Oct. 2024.
"2020: DEC Detailed Demographic and Housing Characteristics File A: Mandan Alone." US Census Bureau, data.census.gov/table/DECENNIALDDHCA2020.T01001?q=mandan. Accessed 29 Oct. 2024.