The expedition arrived among the Mandan November 28, 1738, after a journey of 46 days, but soon pushed forward to a larger village. Fortunately the journal contains references to the ways of life of the Mandan and a brief description of their fortified or protected settlements. At that time the tribe was said to have had six villages, and evidently all were protected by encircling palisades. The village in which the French then rested consisted of 130 lodges, and "all the streets, squares and huts resembled each other." The French were particularly interested in the manner in which the town was protected, but the account in the journal must exaggerate the strength, or rather the size, of the ditch. The palisade was described as being 15 feet in height, and "At fifteen points doubled are green skins which are put for sheathing when required, fastened only above in the places needed, as in the bastion there are four at each curtain well flanked. The fort is built on a height in the open prairie with a ditch upwards of fifteen feet deep by fifteen to eighteen feet wide. Their fort can only be gained by steps or posts which can be removed when threatened by an enemy. If all their forts are alike, they may be called impregnable to Indians.... Both men and women of this nation are very laborious; their huts are large and spacious, separated into several apartments by thick planks; nothing is left lying about; all their baggage is in large bags hung on posts; their beds made like tombs surrounded by skins.... Their fort is full of caves, in which are stored such articles as grain, food, fat, dressed robes, bear skins. They are well supplied with these; it is the money of the country.... They make wicker work very neatly, flat and in baskets. They make use of earthen pots, which they use like many other nations for cooking their food." (La Verendrye, (1), p. 21.) In addition to the six more important villages there appear to have been others, similar but smaller. Referring to these La Verendrye wrote (p. 23): "We noticed that in the plain there were several small forts, of forty or fifty huts, built like the large ones, but no one was there at the time. They made us understand that they came inside for the summer to work their fields and that there was a large reserve of grain in their cellars." Evidently these were nearer their cornfields, away from the river banks, and were occupied only parts of each year.
From this all too brief account of the Mandan it is quite evident that when they were first encountered by the French, living in their earth lodges, their villages strongly palisaded, their caches filled with corn and other food supplies, buffalo robes and bear skins, they were in their most powerful and prosperous state. But what great changes they were destined to undergo during the next hundred years!
On October 19, 1804, the Lewis and Clark party discovered the first of the ruined villages of the Mandan, evidently standing on the left bank of the Missouri, in the southern part of the present Burleigh County, North Dakota. It proved an interesting day. "In walking along the shore we counted fifty-two herds of buffaloe and three of elk, at a single view. Besides these we also observed elk, deer, pelicans, and wolves." The ruined village had been protected by palisades and, according to the Arikara chief, who accompanied them, had been occupied by the Mandan. These, so they wrote, "are the first ruins which we have seen of that nation in ascending the Missouri." During the night of October 19 the expedition encamped on the south, i. e., right, bank of the Missouri, evidently about 2 miles below the mouth of Little Heart River, which flows from the westward and joins the Missouri in the present Morton County, North Dakota. The following day they advanced 12 miles up the Missouri.
October 21, 1804, was cold and bleak. Snow and ice covered the ground, and the wind blew strong from the northeast. That day the expedition advanced only 7 miles. They passed the mouth of Big Heart River and the site of Bismarck, the present capital of the State. Two miles above their camp of the night previous, about opposite the mouth of the Big Heart, they reached "the ruins of a second Mandan village, which was in existence at the same time with that just mentioned. It is situated on the north at the foot of a hill in a beautiful and extensive plain, which is now covered with herds of buffaloes; nearly opposite are remains of a third village on the south of the Missouri, and there is another also about two miles further on the north, a little off the river. At the distance of seven miles we encamped on the south, and spent a cold night." The next day, October 22, they discovered other ruined towns of the Mandan. "In the morning we passed an old Mandan village on the south, near our camp; at four miles another on the same side.... At six we reached an island about one mile in length, at the head of which is a Mandan village on the north in ruins, and two miles beyond a bad sandbar. At eight miles are remains of another Mandan village on the south; and at twelve miles encamped on the south.... These villages, which are nine in number, are scattered along each side of the river within a space of twenty miles; almost all that remains of them is the wall which surrounds them, the fallen heaps of earth which covered the houses, and occasionally human skulls and the teeth and bones of men, and different animals, which are scattered on the surface of the ground." (Lewis and Clark, (1), I, pp. 112-114.) Other deserted villages were passed as they continued ascending the Missouri, to arrive late on the 26th of October, at an old field of the Mandan, about one-half mile below the first of their then occupied villages.
The winter encampment of the expedition, Fort Mandan, was situated on the left bank of the Missouri, about opposite the future Fort Clark, and some 7 or 8 miles below the mouth of Knife River, and consequently several miles from the first Mandan village. Here the expedition remained until April 7, 1805. The lower of the Mandan villages was "Matootonha," the second and smaller was "Rooptahee." The list continues and refers to "the third village which is called Mahawha, and where the Arwacahwas reside." "The fourth village where the Minnetarees live, and which is called Metaharta." A fifth village is mentioned but its name is not given. (Op. cit., pp. 120-121.) Referring to these more in detail the narrative tells something of their origin: November 21, 1804, "The villages near which we are established are five in number, and are the residence of three distinct nations: the Mandans, the Ahnahaways, and the Minnetarees. The history of the Mandans, as we received it from our interpreters and from the chiefs themselves, and as it is attested by existing monuments, illustrates more than that of any other nation the unsteady movements and the tottering fortunes of the American nations. Within the recollection of living witnesses, the Mandans were settled forty years ago in nine villages, the ruins of which we passed about eighty miles below, and situated seven on the west and two on the east side of the Missouri. The two finding themselves wasting away before the small-pox and the Sioux, united into one village, and moved up the river opposite to the Ricaras. The same causes reduced the remaining seven to five villages, till at length they emigrated in a body to the Ricara nation, where they formed themselves into two villages, and joined those of their countrymen who had gone before them. In their new residence they were still insecure, and at length the three villages ascended the Missouri to their present position. The two who had emigrated together still settled in the two villages on the northwest side of the Missouri, while the single village took a position on the southeast side. In this situation they were found by those who visited them in 1796; since which the two villages have united into one. They are now in two villages, one on the southeast of the Missouri, the other on the opposite side, and at the distance of three miles across. The first, in an open plain, contains about forty or fifty lodges, built in the same way as those of the Ricaras: the second, the same number, and both may raise about three hundred and fifty men.
"On the same side of the river, and at the distance of four miles from the lower Mandan village, is another called Mahaha. It is situated in a high plain at the mouth of the Knife river, and is the residence of the Ahnahaways. This nation, whose name indicated that they were 'people whose village is on a hill,' formerly resided on the Missouri, about thirty miles below where they now live. The Assiniboins and Sioux forced them to a spot five miles higher, where the greatest part of them were put to death, and the rest emigrated to their present situation, in order to obtain an asylum near the Minnetarees. They are called by the French, Soulier Noir or Shoe Indians; by the Mandans, Wattasoons, and their whole force is about fifty men.
"On the south side of the same Knife river, half a mile above the Mahaha and in the same open plain with it, is a village of the Minnetarees surnamed Metaharta, who are about one hundred and fifty men in number. On the opposite side of Knife river, and one and a half mile above this village is a second of Minnetarees, who may be considered as the proper Minnetaree nation. It is situated in a beautiful low plain, and contains four hundred and fifty warriors." (Op. cit., pp. 129-131.)
In their journal, kept while in winter quarters at Fort Mandan, are to be found many interesting references to the Mandan. To quote several of these will tend to shed light on the ways of life in the native village. On November 22, 1804, the Mandan sold to the members of the expedition "a quantity of corn of a mixed colour, which they dug up in ears from the holes made near the front of their lodges, in which it is buried during the winter." This had probably been gathered only a few weeks before the arrival of the party at the village, then deposited in the caches for future use. December 19 the weather had moderated, and the Indians were seen playing a game on the level space between the lodges of the first and second chiefs, a distance of about 50 yards. The entry for January 13, 1805, contains an interesting note: "We have a continuation of clear weather, and the cold has increased, the mercury having sunk to 34 below 0. Nearly one half of the Mandan nation passed down the river to hunt for several days; in these excursions men, women and children, with their dogs, all leave the village together, and after discovering a spot convenient for the game, fix their tents; all the family bear their part in the labour, and the game is equally divided among the families of the tribe." And on February 12, it was told how "The horses of the Mandans are so often stolen by the Sioux, Ricaras, and Assiniboins, that the invariable rule now is to put the horses every night in the same lodge with the family. In the summer they ramble in the plains in the vicinity of the camp, and feed on the grass, but during cold weather the squaws cut down the cottonwood trees as they are wanted, and the horses feed on the boughs and bark of the tender branches, which are also brought into the lodges at night and placed near them."
About the year 1797, and consequently a few years before the arrival of the Lewis and Clark expedition at the Mandan villages, John McDonnell, a partner of the North-West Company, made brief mention of the Mandan in his journal. He wrote: "These Indians live in settled villages, fortified with palisades, which they seldom ever abandon, and they are the best husbandman in the whole Northwest. They raise indian corn or maize, beans, pumpkins, squashes in considerable quantity, not only sufficient to supply their own wants, with the help of the buffalo, but also to sell and give away to all strangers that enter their villages." (McDonnell, (1), pp. 272-273.) And in 1804 another representative of the old North-West Company referred to the gardens of the Mandans and said in part:
"In the spring, as soon as the weather and the state of the ground will permit, the women repair to the fields, when they cut the stalks of the Indian corn of the preceding year and drop new seed into the socket of the remaining roots. A small kind of pumpkins which are very productive they plant with a dibble, and raise the ground into hillocks the same as those about Indian corn. Their kidney beans they plant in the same manner. They cultivate a tall kind of sunflower, the seed of which is reckoned good eating dry and pounded with fat and made into balls of three or four ounces; they are found excellent for long journeys." (Mackenzie, Charles, (1), pp. 338-339.) And the narrative continued: "The only implement used among the Mandanes for the purpose of agriculture is a hoe made from the shoulder blade of a buffalo and which is ingrafted upon a short crooked handle. With this crooked instrument they work very expeditiously, and soon do all that is required for their supplies."