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Published: September 14th 2023
When I start planning a journey, there is often one overarching goal. This journey was no exception. Chuck, Lucie, and I had never been to North Dakota, and it was the one state that still eluded us. Today we fixed that 50th state oversight.
As I think I have mentioned before, one of the most important things upon which to concentrate when studying the L&C trip is the Native American tribes they encountered. Establishing trade with the various tribes, and forming relationships that would facilitate other trade were two of the prime goals of the expedition. Among the Native American tribes, through whose lands the expedition passed, intertribal relationships tended to be some fluid and disjointed. Today's enemy could be tomorrow's ally, and one band of a tribe might be far different in their approach than another. Keeping track of the shifting alliances, confederations, and conflagrations is difficult, and I don't claim to be any kind of expert, but I think this is a decent compilation of the tribes most involved in their journey:
Lakota, or Teton Sioux - these include at least 7 or more distinct groups, including the Mineconjous, the Hunkpapas, the Oglalas, and others. They include
such famous names as Sitting Bull, Red Shirt, Crazy Horse, and more recently Pappy Boyington, World War II Medal of Honor winner. The Sioux tribes were the ones most involved in the conflicts that led up to the Battle of the Little Bighorn and the subsequent massacre at Wounded Knee Creek.
Cheyenne-Arapaho - These were historically distinct tribes, but have been co-inhabitants of a single reservation in Oklahoma since about 1867, and formed a single tribal government in 1937. The tribes have produced several notable artists, including Merlin Little Thunder and Harvey Pratt.
Mandan/Arikara/Hidatsa - these tribes have been closely connected for centuries, and are now federally recognized as a single tribe. They Hidatsas originated from the prehistoric mound-builders (such as at Cahokia), then moved northward. The Mandans and Arikara have always been closely associated but with different tribal traditions. The Hidatsas joined later. These tribes tended to be much more agrarian, but also hunted buffalo. The Mandans were the tribe with the okipa ceremony made famous by Richard Harris in a movie, in which volunteer warriors were pierced through their skin with skewers and then suspended by these until they fainted. When they returned to consciousness they
offered their left hand and the left little finger was severed with a hatchet.
Shoshone - tribes of the Great Basin and Pacific Northwest. Often co-located with the Northern Paiutes. One group migrated southward and became the Comanches.
Nez Perce - the dominant people of the Columbia Plateau for centuries. Notable for an unusually high dependence on plant roots in their diet. Occupied the non-coastal areas of British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest.
Our first stop on our trip today took us to the co-located monuments to Sitting Bull and Sacagawea. Sitting Bull was a Hunkpapa Sioux who originally was named "Slow" because of his careful and unhurried nature. After he was successful in counting coup against a surprised Crow warrior during a raid by the Sioux to steal Crow horses, his father re-named him to the father's own name, which literally translated means "Buffalo Who Sits Down", and the father changed his own name to Jumping Buffalo. Buffalo Who Sits Down soon became Sitting Bull in translation. After he saw a vision of US Cavalry soldiers falling upside down from the sky, the gathered Sioux tribes attacked Gen. George Custer's forces at a place they called
Greasy Grass, but which became known in popular US parlance as the Battle of the Little Bighorn (June 1876). While the name of Sitting Bull is frequently associated with this action, he did not serve as a war chief then, only as a spiritual chief. Nonetheless, when the US Army sent in thousands of more troops, Sitting Bull took his tribe up into Saskatchewan, where they remained until 1881, at which point they returned to their old lands and surrendered to US forces. Sitting Bull then spent four months as a popular, famous, and prosperous member of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, becoming a close friend of Annie Oakley. He then returned to the Standing Rock Agency. When the Northern Pacific Railroad was completed, Sitting Bull wrote out a speech which the translator read, while in fact he was calling all white men thieves and liars, including president Grant who was present. Fearing that the influential chief would become involved in the Ghost Dance movement, the local Indian Agent ordered him arrested, and during the botched arrest attempt Sitting Bull was shot twice and killed. He was buried at Ft. Yates, but in 1953 his descendants had what was thought
to be his remains exhumed and re-buried at his birthplace near present day Mobridge SD. A large monument was erected at the site of his burial. IT was carved by the Polish sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski, later famous for the Crazy Horse Monument in the Black Hills, which he started and his family continues to carve.
Nearby there is a monument to the remarkable Native American woman Sacagawea. She was born near present day Salmon ID in a Lemhi Shoshone tribe, but was stolen at about age 12 by raiding Hidatsas. About a year later she was sold into involuntary marriage to a Quebecois trapper named Toussaint Charbonneau. (some sources suggest he won her while gambling.) The story of her role in the Journey of Discovery will come out as we go along. Other than that brief time, her history is largely unknown. The best information suggests that she died in 1812 from "putrid fever", which could have meant one of several diseases, including epidemic typhus. Some uncorroborated sources have her living into old age with more children. She definitely had a little boy named Jean Baptiste, who was born at Ft. Mandan while the Corps of Discovery was wintering
over there. She also had a little girl after the expedition, named Lizette, whom William Clark adopted. Lizette is not mentioned in his later records, and this has prompted the speculation that she died in early childhood. Although the Shoshone claim that Sacagawea's name came from two Shoshone words meaning "boat puller", most of the evidence points to her name being from Hidatsa "tsakakai" meaning "bird" and "wea" meaning "woman". Charbonneau told Captains Lewis and Clark that her name meant Bird Woman. The Hidatsa language does not contain a sound like a "j" or soft "g", and officially her name should now be spelled Sakakawea. Her son that was born at Ft. Mandan was also adopted by Cape. Clark and sent to good schools. He lived in Germany for a few years, returned and served as a guide for the Mormon Battalion during the laying out of the first road to south California, was magistrate for Mission San Luis Rey, spent 6 years as a hotel clerk in the gold rush town of Auburn CA, then decided to go to Montana to seek his fortune in gold mining. He was 61 years old. During the journey he fell into the
Owyhee River, contracted pneumonia, and died in what is now the ghost town of Danner OR where he is buried. A monument to Sakakawea was erected just yards from the Sitting Bull Monument, using funds raised by Mobridge schoolchildren. She is believed to have died at Ft. Manuel about 30 miles away.
Meriwether: "Our journey would have been much harder without her. Sad to know she died without any fame in her lifetime."
Me: "Some people today think she acted as your guide."
Meriwether: "No. Capt. Clark indicated to me that on the return trip from the Great Ocean she had pointed out a pass that shortened their journey, but on our journey to the coast she was valuable as a translator, and of course there was that crazy moment when we first met some Shoshones and the chief turned out to be her brother. Sure made it easier to get horses, which got us through the mountains."
Our journey today took us into the lands of the Mandans/Arikaras/Hidatsas. Our second stop was at the Huff Indian Village State Historic Site (ND). This much studied prehistoric Mandan site was a town of about 12.5 acres containing
over a hundred lodges. Carbon dating puts it at about 1450 CE, but examination of trash piles and other evidence suggest it was only occupied for about 20 years. It was densely populated with about 1000 inhabitants, and was surrounded by a protective ditch and earthen wall with at least 10 well-defined bastions. Current thinking is that it was built that way for protection against Arikaras who were moving into the area about that time. Another interesting facet is that the lodges were all built in a roughly rectangular shape, although somewhat wider at the entrance than at the rear. A single lodge showed rounded corners, and may have been a transitional structure in the move toward round lodges that subsequently became the norm. There is evidence of farming at the location. In 1960 the shoreline of Lake Oahe (Missouri River impound) was stabilized and the site is now a National Historic Landmark. All that can been seen today is a number of well-defined depressions in the earth marking the site of lodges. One that has been particularly well studied shows signs of having burned to the ground, raising interesting speculations as to the relationship of that event and the
abandonment of the settlement.
Next on our agenda was Ft. Abraham Lincoln, across and slightly down the Missouri River from Bismarck ND. There was an antecedent fort established here in 1872, but in 1870 the Northern Pacific Railway had begun construction on an ambitious project to build a railroad connecting Minnesota and the Pacific Northwest. Raids conducted against railroad surveyors and construction crews indicated a need for Army protection from Native Americans, and so in late 1872 the first was enlarged to hold up to 9 cavalry companies and re-named Ft. Abraham Lincoln. The 7th Cavalry, under command of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer, moved into the fort in time to start providing protection by the time the railroad construction reached the Missouri River at Edwinton (now Bismarck), just across the river from the fort. Custer remained the commanding officer until his death in 1876, and it was from Ft. Abraham Lincoln that elements of the 7th Cavalry went to their disaster at Little Bighorn. The fort was later abandoned and eventually turned over to the state. In 1934 the Civilian Conservation Corps came in and built a few visitor structures as well as military blockhouse replicas. They marked
the locations of the original buildings with cornerstones. In 1989 the state of North Dakota built a replica of the commanding officer's quarters as well as replicas of a granary, a barracks, and the commissary, which now serves as a visitor center. The first commanding officer's quarters had burned, and a second was constructed according to plans by Custer and his wife. It is this second house that was replicated in 1989. We visited it with a guide who gave us an excellent presentation of the house and its period furnishings.
Also at this park is On-A-Slant Indian Village, a replica of a Mandan village first established on the spot in about 1575. It was one of about 7 Mandan villages scattered along this stretch of the Missouri River. In 1781 the Mandan population was reduced by over 50% in a smallpox epidemic, and the village was abandoned. Today the site contains replicas of the earthen huts used by the Mandans.
From Ft. Lincoln we proceeded north to Ft. Mandan State Historic Site. On October 31 1804 the Corps of Discovery reached the area of the Mandan and Hidatsa villages near the junction of the Knife River with
the Missouri.
Meriwether: "When we got here it was already getting cold. The river level had been dropping for some time, and by the time we got here it was pretty low. We needed to talk with the Mandans anyway, so we determined to build a log fort here not too far from the Indian villages, close enough to reach them but not so close that they were next to us all the time. That winter was awful cold. Sometimes we had to have soldiers stand watch for only half an hour at a time, particularly at night. This also was a fortuitous place to stop because we were able to engage that crazy Frenchman trapper. He was the worst boatman I have ever seen, but his wife was a huge help. Like I said , she was a language help in talking with the Snakes and really saved us that time the boat went sideways and she gathered up all the stuff before it could float off. We did not have a lot to do over the winter. The men were busy standing watch and gathering firewood and hunting, but Capt. Clark
and I were able to work on our record-keeping. He worked on his maps, and I worked on the scientific specimens I had obtained along the way. We were sending the keel boat back downriver in the spring, and they would take the specimens and maps. This area was already known, but from here on we would be on land never before trod by civilized men."
Meriwether got all that out between bites of his first ever Big Mac. Incredible to watch his face.
Ft Mandan burned virtually totally even before the expedition returned this way in August of 1806. The exact site is now unknown, but there is enough information to confidently place it very near to where the current replica stands. The replica has all of the rooms the original fort had, and is reconstructed from drawings from the Journey.
Our final stop of the day was at the Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site. Unfortunately for us, Bothe the time required at other stops and a change in time zones had us arrive at the Knife River Villages after the visitor center had closed. We were still able to visit the replicated lodges
and displays of growing foodstuffs.
Our refuge for the night was Dickinson. I have one good thing to say about Dickinson - it is better than our next nightly stop, Williston.
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2023 Lewis and Clark trip 299 Sakakawea Monument Mobridge SD 071523
