Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People by Elizabeth A. Fenn (review)

Unlike the Cahokians or the Chacoans, the Mandans’ archaeological “footprint” is light. Their traditional homeland along the upper Missouri River in what is today North Dakota only reveals depressions and ditches, not breathtaking mounds and stone edifices. In national memory, these Siouan-speaking horticulturalists have sunk to near historical oblivion, eclipsed by their equestrian neighbors, such as the Lakotas.

In this Pulitzer-award winning monograph, Elizabeth Fenn restores the Mandans to their rightful place in history. As she reminds us, their ancestral homeland may seem today desolate and inhospitable but it was once “one of the most dynamic centers of interaction in North America” (132). At their height (1500–1782), Mandan villages not only seethed with people; they were “vibrant social and commercial hubs” (xiii). A productive agricultural oasis, their territory annually attracted thousands of nomads eager to obtain the foodstuff they lacked, making it a fulcrum of exchange and diplomacy. Its prominence was such that, in 1804, Lewis and Clark still recognized this region as a gateway into the American West. No wonder the Mandans called their homeland “the Heart of the World.” By adopting this perspective in her book, Fenn joins a long list of Native Americanists “Facing East from Indian Country,” to take up Daniel Richter’s book title. What emerges in the process is “an alternative view of American life…” (xv), that shifts our conventional frame of reference. In Fenn’s book, the traditional centers of power (Philadelphia, Quebec City, etc.) fade away, replaced by new locales (On-a-Slant Village, York Factory, etc.) and a new cast of actors (Sheheke, Mato-Tope, etc.) underrepresented in national memory. Once the narrative is thus recast, familiar historical events in America resonate differently. As Fenn shows, for instance, two decades after the Louisiana Purchase, the “‘supremacy’ of the United States” over the Mandans was still theoretical (285). The territorial encroachment of the Lakotas was more palpable than the hegemonic aspirations of distant American leaders.

While Fenn focuses on an understudied topic, her work echoes many themes in New Indian History. Notably, she strives to present the Mandans as agents in their history, which was lacking in Roy W. Meyer’s The Village Indians of the Upper Missouri: The Mandans, the Hidatsas, and the Arikaras (1977). This goal is particularly noticeable when she documents the Mandan responses to the scourges afflicting their communities after 1781. Despite devastating epidemics, Lakota expansionism, droughts, and the proliferation of voracious Norway rats, the Mandans (like Karim Tiro’s Oneidas and Pekka Hamalainen’s Comanches) were never passive victims. They elaborated creative strategies to confront cataclysm. They drew on their rich ritual traditions, for example, to reestablish moorings in this “new world.” By studying the history of the Mandans from 1000 C.E. to the mid-1800s, Fenn traces the roots of their resiliency deep in time. Their dynamic pre-contact experience gave them the tools to confront the deleterious effects of the Columbian exchange. Clearly, “the Heart of the World” pulsated long before 1492!

Framing her work in such a broad historical continuum proved challenging since very few written sources deal directly with the Mandans before 1800. As is increasingly the case in New Indian History, Fenn supplements her meticulous reading of the ethno-historic evidence with knowledge gleaned from archaeology, ethnography, climatology, dendrochronology, epidemiology, and thermal imaging. Fenn even visited “The Heart of the World” in 2002 and her observations and impressions figure prominently in the text. After all, the lightly interpreted Mandan sites stimulate “the imagination in ways that places like Colonial Williamsburg never will” (3). Just like New Western Historians, Fenn also recognizes that life west of the 98^th meridian reflected local environmental specificities. After all, “geography shaped every aspect of Mandan existence” (4). Fenn’s creative narrative structure, especially for the pre-contact period, is also noteworthy. She alternates vignettes of indigenous life before 1800 with relevant descriptions of her...