The 750 acres of Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park lie on the west bluffs of the Missouri River, encompassing three sites of historical and archeological interest—a Mandan Indian village and two old military posts. The park is being developed by the State Historical Society of North Dakota in cooperation with the National Park Service.
As the roadway enters the park, the bluffs rise steeply to the right, while below on the left is spread a beautiful view of the Missouri winding away to the distant hills, tracing the outlines of Sibley Island, the Heart River below, flowing into the Missouri, and Bismarck and the capitol set against the background of the valley rising on the other side of the river.
Fort McKeen is on the river bluffs, and the Indian village is below on the river bank, slightly higher than Fort Abraham Lincoln, the cavalry post, on the broad ancient plain near the mouth of the Heart.
Left as the highway enters the park is a crude log palisade that guards the old SLANT VILLAGE. Before these prairies saw the invasion of the white men, perhaps two centuries ago, a group of Mandan Indians, seeking a new location in their advance up the Missouri Valley, selected this narrow point of land which had such excellent natural protection. On the east was the Heart River and on the south a deep coulee. Along the exposed sides the Indians built a palisade and dug a moat to secure their little town.
Depressions in the earth show that the settlement contained 68 lodges. Five have been restored by the park administration, four of them homes and the other the large ceremonial lodge. All have been placed as nearly as possible on their original sites, and in some cases the locations made by park workers were so accurate that remains of the old lodges were found in excavating for the restoration work. The five lodges have been carefully reproduced in every detail. (A general description of the construction and equipment of the typical Indian earth lodge will be found under Indians and Their Predecessors.)
Crude tools such as the inhabitants of this town used in domestic and agricultural work are on display in one lodge. Hoes and shovels were flat bones fastened to wooden handles, and brooms were bunches of brush bound together. A short post with a hollowed center served as a mortar, a club about the size of a baseball bat as a pestle, and with this apparatus corn was ground for meal.
Furnishings in the lodge include the horse corrals, beds, and altars which were part of the domestic scene. There are specimens of dog and horse travois, and an Indian bullboat, made by stretching a green buffalo hide over a wooden frame and drying it. The result resembled nothing so much as an ungainly washtub, but the awkward-looking craft would carry two or three persons quite safely across the treacherous currents of the Missouri.
The ceremonial lodge, with a diameter of 84 feet, has been restored in its original position in the center of the village court, and the interior of this surprisingly large building furnishes an index of the architectural advancement of these supposedly savage people. In this lodge tribal ceremonies were held, and the site doubtless witnessed many enactments of the most holy Mandan religious service, in which the young men of the tribe were inducted into manhood with bloody and gruesome torture rites.
Right of the highway, almost opposite the entrance to the village, the restored and graveled military road branches steeply upward to where FORT McKEEN commands a far view of the plains and the twisting Missouri. Although Bismarck, the two bridges across the river, and many other marks of settlement are now part of the scene, the entire view from this point was one wild, untouched, verdant picture when Army engineers came from Fort Rice in 1872 in search of a location for an infantry post to protect the surveyors, engineers, and workmen who prepared the way for the gleaming intrusion of the Northern Pacific rails. This site was selected, as the Mandan 200 years before had selected the one below, for its natural protection. The fort was built in 1872, and was named for Col. Henry Boyd McKeen of the Eighty-first Pennsylvania Volunteers, but on November 19, 1872, the name was officially changed to Fort Abraham Lincoln in honor of the martyred President. A triangular area was fortified, with a blockhouse at each corner and palisade walls connecting them on two sides. The steep face of the bluff protected the remaining side. Within the stockade were officers' quarters, barracks, kitchens, hospital, and laundry. The scouts' headquarters and the laundry were built of cottonwood logs cut along the river, while most of the other buildings were of lumber.