Mandan (redirected from Mandan (people))

Mandan, indigenous people of North America

Mandan (măn`dăn, –dən), indigenous people of North America whose language belongs to the Siouan branch of the Hokan-Siouan linguistic stock (see Native American languages). The Mandan were a sedentary tribe of the Plains area and were culturally connected with their neighbors on the Missouri River, the Arikara and the Hidatsa. The Mandan had certain distinctive cultural traits, which included a myth of origin in which their ancestors climbed from beneath the earth on the roots of a grapevine. According to tradition, at one time the Mandan lived to the east, but their movements in historic times were westward up the Missouri River. By the mid-18th cent., they lived in nine villages near the mouth of the Heart River in S central North Dakota. After having suffered severely from smallpox and the attacks of the Assiniboin and the Sioux, the Mandan moved farther up the Missouri River to a point opposite the Arikara villages. Here the Mandan survivors merged into two villages on opposite sides of the Knife River. They were visited (1804) by Lewis and Clark, who said that they numbered some 1,250. In 1837, after an epidemic of smallpox and cholera, the Mandan were reduced to some 150, all dwelling in a single village. When the Hidatsa moved (1845) from the Knife River region N to the Fort Berthold trading post, the few Mandan joined them. A large reservation was set aside (1870) for the Mandan, the Hidatsa, and the Arikara in North Dakota (Fort Berthold Reservation). There were some 1,200 Mandan in the United States in 1990.

Bibliography

See G. Catlin, O-Kee-Pa, a Religious Ceremony, and Other Customs of the Mandans (1867, centennial ed. by J. C. Ewers, 1967).

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Mandan, city, United States

Mandan (măn`dăn, –dən), city (1990 pop. 15,177), seat of Morton co., S N.Dak., on the Missouri River opposite Bismarck; inc. 1881. A railroad division point, it is the distribution center for a grain, livestock, and dairy region. The city has a large cattle market and food-processing plants. Manufactures include wood and metal products and tile. Lewis and Clark wintered there (1804–5) in the Mandan Native American villages. A state industrial school is in the city, and a U.S. agricultural experiment station is nearby.

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Mandan

Bull Dance, Mandan O-kee-pa Ceremony, oil painting by George Catlin, …

(credit: National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.)

North American Plains Indian people living mostly in North Dakota, U.S. The Mandan language is of Siouan stock. According to 19th-century anthropologist Washington Matthews, the Mandan called themselves Numakiki (“people”). The Mandan traditionally lived in dome-shaped, earth-covered lodges clustered in stockaded villages, planted corn (maize), beans, pumpkins, and sunflowers, hunted buffalo, and made pottery and baskets. They held elaborate ceremonies, including the sun dance and the Bear Ceremony, a healing and war-preparation rite. They had age-graded warrior and women's societies as well as shamanistic societies. Nineteenth-century Mandan life was among the most recorded of Plains Indian traditions; tribal members depicted heroic deeds on buffalo robes, and artists George Catlin and Karl Bodmer portrayed Mandan life and people in a number of paintings. By the mid-19th century the tribe, reduced by smallpox, had moved to Fort Berthold for protection from the Sioux; the new settlement became the core of the Fort Berthold Reservation, where they live with the Hidatsa and the Arikara as the Three Affiliated Tribes. Population estimates indicated approximately 1,300 Mandan descendants in the early 21st century.