June 19 - Ft Mandan, North Dakota

We had a nice breakfast before driving about 60 miles north to the Fort Mandan Visitors Center, which is essentially an exhibit center cum museum devoted to Lewis & Clark's 1803-1806 voyage, focusing on their over winter stay in the Mandan village. We spent about 2 hours there, reading pretty much every word and also watching a 10 minute film clip narrated by Stephen Ambrose who wrote "Undaunted Courage", a very readable account of Lewis & Clark's epic journey. Some of the exploits mentioned in the museum, like being chased by a grizzly bear almost dying of exposure, were quite gripping, but Sakakawewa (the spelling of her name varies!) carrying a newborn son all the way to the Pacific coast and back has to take the cake. Good heavens.

A detached part of the museum is a complete and accurate reconstruction of the expedition's 1804-1805 winter quarters about 2 miles down the road. On our way over we stopped off for lunch, but it was delayed by really lousy service--the restaurant is the only one for miles in any direction and the service was about what you would expect from any monopoly. Fortunately the reconstructed fort could be easily seen in 1/2 hour or so. The basic structure was a triangular stockade in the shape of an "A" with rooms along two sides. The room for Lewis and Clark, as you might expect, were the nicest if only in that they shared it while the other men were bunked 8 to a room, 6 sleeping upstairs in the loft area while 2 slept downstairs.

As we drove back to the south we passed the Knife River Indian Village National Historic Site and paused for a visit. At first we thought we were just in the nick of time to catch the last tour of the day of a reconstructed Hidatsa earth lodge, but it turned out they were on Mountain time so we had an extra hour. This gave us time to take the tour, walk the loop down to the Knife River, and look at the exhibits in the one room museum area in the Visitors Center. The Hidatsa culture was very close to the Mandan culture and their languages were also similar. Nevertheless, there were a few ways in which the cultures differed, such as the Hidatsa keeping their best horse in the earth lodge with them while the Mandans kept theirs in a separate area (a paleolithic version of house with attached garage versus detached garage, I guess). Also, the Mandans had a separate ceremonial earth lodge whereas the Hidatsa had ceremonial sacred area near the center areas of each earth lodge and a sweat lodge off to one side. After smallpox all but wiped out the Mandan, however, the cultural similarities were enough that the survivors consolidated with the Hidatsa, an arrangement that persists to this day on the nearby reservation.

The walking path circled the site of two of the early 1800s villages, marked now only by a set of circular depressions in the earth that made it look something like the dimples on the surface of a gigantic golf ball. Still, you could get an idea how chock a block this area was with earth lodges in its heyday. It was rather haunting to think of all the generations of parents and children that had lived there in the past and were now gone almost without a trace. One of the exhibits in the museum room was some of the exploits of a Hidatsa called "Four Bears", and he was quite a ferocious warrior indeed, surviving numerous battles with 8 bullet wounds and I expect numerous other injuries. The story of how he faced down an attacking party of 60 Assiniboine all by himself after his comrades fled was almost unbelievable, and his other feats were likewise astonishing. After that battle, in fact, is was the Assiniboine who said that he had fought as ferociously as 4 bears, giving him his moniker. You could say that these tales were merely bragging, not true acts., but I got the impression that in this case, at least, it was basically true. He came to the same sad end as most of the tribe, however, dying in a smallpox epidemic in the 1830s.

From the historic site we wandered back to the city of Mandan on country byways and I drove slowly so I could see some of the scenery myself. Thus it was that we didn't get back until after 7 p.m. and Monika was famished, so she cooked a quick dinner of eggs and "bacon" (low fat strips of pressed chicken that kind of taste like bacon would if it were a chicken!). I finished up the evening printing some of our pictures out for Terry to take with on his trip home. While I did that, Monika showed him our photo albums from Wanderung 4 and a trip to Williamsburg with Lois last December just before Christmas. We also discussed the best route for him to drive to U.S. 85 on his way south to Albuquerque, and then all finally said good night and turned in.