Part II · The Mandan Winter
Chapter 7
The Mandan Villages
The Mandan and Hidatsa villages, near present-day Washburn, North Dakota
In November 1804, while building Fort Mandan for the winter near present-day Washburn, North Dakota, the captains hired a French-Canadian trader, Toussaint Charbonneau, as an interpreter. His young Shoshone wife, Sacagawea, came too, because she could talk with the Shoshone people of the Rocky Mountains.
October 1804
Upriver from the Lakota live the Arikara, farmers who grow corn, beans, squash and tobacco on the rich land beside the river. They welcome the Corps kindly, and when the captains offer them whiskey, as they do everywhere, the Arikara politely say no.
What fascinates the Arikara most is York. None of them has ever seen a Black man. Clark writes that “all flocked around him & examind him from top to toe, he Carried on the joke and made himself more turribal than we wished him to doe.” York is a big, strong man, and he plays along, making himself look as fierce as he can. It is one of the few times in the journals that we see him enjoying himself.
24–26 October 1804
At the end of October the Corps reaches the end of the known river: the villages of the Mandan and their neighbours the Hidatsa, near the mouth of the Knife River. About 4,500 people live here in five villages of big round earth lodges, far more people than live in St. Louis.
This is a crossroads of the plains. Traders come from Canada to buy furs. The Crow, the Cheyenne and the Assiniboine come to swap horses, hides and meat for the villagers’ corn, and sometimes guns. Twenty years earlier, smallpox swept through and killed most of the Mandan people. The survivors moved up the river and live close together now for safety.
The Mandan chiefs Black Cat and Sheheke, whom the traders call Big White, welcome the captains. They will be good friends all winter.
2–4 November 1804
The captains choose a spot in a grove of cottonwood trees across the river from the lower Mandan village, and the men start building. Fort Mandan is two rows of log huts that meet in a point, with a high wall of pointed logs across the open side. It has to hold more than forty people through a northern winter.
On 4 November a French-Canadian trader named Toussaint Charbonneau comes to visit. He has lived among the Hidatsa for years, and he wants a job as an interpreter. He has two wives who are Shoshone, captured by Hidatsa raiders as girls in the Rocky Mountains.
The captains know they will need horses from the Shoshone to cross the mountains, and nobody else in the country speaks Shoshone. So they hire Charbonneau and agree that one of his wives will come too. Her name is Sacagawea. She is about sixteen, and she is expecting a baby.
November 1804
On 20 November the captains move into their hut. Fort Mandan becomes a busy place. Mandan and Hidatsa visitors come every day to look, talk, trade and eat. The captains ask them endless questions about the country to the west, and the Hidatsa, who have ridden to the mountains to raid the Shoshone, describe it: a great waterfall on the Missouri, three rivers joining in the mountains, and the Shoshone and their horses beyond.
In return the villages want goods, and one thing above all: ironwork. The Corps has two blacksmiths. All winter they hammer out axes and repair tools and guns, and the Mandan pay them in corn. That corn may be what keeps the Corps alive until spring.