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Chapter 3. The Mandans: Ecology, Population, and Adaptation on the Northern Plains
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PART II Spaces and Landscapes This page intentionally left blank [18.188.175.182] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 06:48 GMT) chapter 3 The Mandans: Ecology, Population, and Adaptation on the Northern Plains Elizabeth Fenn In 1906–1907, a Mandan Indian man named Sitting Rabbit (also known as Little Owl) created a map illustrating more than six hundred years of his people’s spatial and spiritual history.1 In a segment-by-segment progression , Sitting Rabbit’s painting portrays the sweeping, three-hundred-mile arc of the Missouri River in what we now know as western North Dakota. The work is so big—twenty-three feet long and eighteen inches wide—that only a small portion can be reproduced here (see Plate 1).2 Size and provenance are just two of the map’s salient features. Also of note are the iconic earth lodges—domed, log-and-earth Indian homes— that line the circuitous turns of the Missouri River. The lodges indicate towns that were occupied by the Mandans or their Hidatsa and Arikara neighbors in both real and spiritual time. Some designate places where foundational events and origin stories unfolded. Eagle Nose Village, for example, was where Lone Man, the Mandan culture hero, once barricaded the Mandans against rising floodwaters.3 And Village Where Turtle Went Back—possibly the fourteenth-century site called Shermer by archaeologists today—was where the Mandans got the ‘‘turtle’’ drums used in their most sacred ceremony.4 Other settlements on the map include Yellow Bank Village, known famously as Double Ditch today, part of an impressive cluster of towns near where the Heart River flows into the Missouri from the west. Some distance upstream, the map portrays a side-by-side array of ‘‘Five Villages’’—two Mandan and three Hidatsa—at the mouth of the Knife River, which enters the Missouri from the same direction. So, too, 96 Elizabeth Fenn we see communities still farther north and west, including one labeled ‘‘Fishhook house.’’ There are other symbols as well: rectilinear grids for non-earth-lodge settlements; a log cabin for a trading post; a knife indicating the Knife River (leading to flint quarries upstream); even hunters and a herd of bison representing a buffalo surround. Everything about the map is compelling. It is a striking portrayal of Mandan space—or at least a significant part of it—in a collapsed chronological frame. Indeed, the conflation of time and space suited Sitting Rabbit ’s purposes. But for readers unfamiliar with the landscape, its features, and its meaning, there is something missing. The Mandan story, compressed so economically in Sitting Rabbit’s images, fairly begs to be told. In the years between 1500 and 1838, the Mandan people—Plains horticulturalists on the upper Missouri River—confronted a series of ecological challenges. First and foremost were the challenges of the land they occupied. In a region characterized by short growing seasons, sparse rain, and cruel winters, the Mandans built a horticultural and commercial juggernaut, with bountiful gardens and specialized craft production that supplied themselves and others through far-reaching trade connections.5 But in the late 1500s and the centuries that followed, changing conditions undermined their success. Drought tested the horticultural skill of Mandan women, and population densities may have tested the sustainability of Mandan settlement patterns. Foreign peoples and species created new difficulties and opportunities that highlighted the extent and limits of Mandan social, cultural, and horticultural adaptability. During three centuries of contestation with human and environmental variables, the Mandans rearranged the villages they occupied and the physical spaces they claimed. They also reorganized clan configurations, craft production, and the bundle lines that governed ceremonial and spiritual powers. By allowing the Mandans to stay put, these changes reinforced the horticultural sedentism that brought their early success. The Mandans and their ancestors had made their homes near the con- fluence of the Heart and Missouri rivers since approximately 1300 ce.6 The location is roughly one hundred and fifty miles south of the present Canadian border, in the area where Bismarck and Mandan, North Dakota, sit today. Like the modern-day residents of those towns, the Mandans occupied large, permanent villages on the banks of the Missouri River. They also occupied a distinctive ecological niche. They grew corn in tremendous quantities despite living at the northern limit of maize cultivation and Mandans 97 beyond the hundredth meridian, the widely accepted western boundary of nonirrigated agriculture.7 The Mandans also harvested meat—especially...