by Paul Schrag
Vérendrye located the Mandan village in what is now MacLean County, North Dakota, between Minot and Bismarck. It was a large and well-fortified town with 130 houses laid out in streets. The fort’s palisades and ramparts were not unlike European battlements, with a dry moat around the perimeter. More remarkable, Vérendrye noted many of the Mandan had light skin, fair hair, and “European” features. Vérendrye described their houses as “large and spacious,” very clean, with separate rooms.
On August 24, 1784, the Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser reported that “a new nation of white people” had been discovered about two thousand miles to the west of the Appalachians, “acquainted with the principles of the Christian religion” and “extremely courteous and civilized.” The rumor spread, and somewhere along the line a possible connection of Welsh ancestry was suggested.
In 1796 Welsh explorer John Evans set out to search for the Mandan, hoping to find proof that their language contained Welsh words. Evans spent the winter of 1796–97 with a tribe of Mandan but found no evidence of any Welsh influence. In July 1797 Evans wrote a letter to a Dr. Samuel Jones that said, “Thus having explored and charted the Missurie for 1,800 miles and by my Communications with the Indians this side of the Pacific Ocean from 35 to 49 degrees of Latitude, I am able to inform you that there is no such People as the Welsh Indians.”
Evans’s conclusion was directly contradicted by Lewis and Clark in 1804 and again in 1832 by George Catlin, a lawyer, frontiersman, and pictorial historian who spent several months living among the Mandan.
It was through Catlin’s accounts and art that it was proved beyond what many could doubt that the Mandan indeed were a race descending from European ancestry. Some speculate that Evans may not have reached an actual Mandan settlement, claiming that the evidence provided by Catlin is indisputable.
When the Corps of Discovery entered the world of the Mandan in October 1804, the tribal leaders were receptive to the goals of the expedition. Lewis and Clark found the Mandan people to be extremely hospitable, and the Corps of Discovery prepared to winter on the Missouri River, building a log fort made of cottonwood tree trunks. The men in the expedition cut the lumber from the riverbanks, building a triangular fort facing the river just downstream from the nearby Mandan and Hidatsa villages. They called it Fort Mandan.
For the next five months the fort was a beehive of activity as the expedition made preparations for heading westward to the Pacific Ocean. While there Lewis and Clark interviewed several trappers who could assist as guides and interpreters. It was here that Lewis and Clark hired Toussaint Charbonneau, whose wife, Sacagawea, spoke the Shoshone language. The explorers knew they would need to communicate with the Shoshone tribes as they neared the headwaters of the Missouri River. Sacagawea, who was just fourteen years old, pregnant, and had been long separated from her tribe, would become essential to the success of the expedition. The Corps of Discovery stayed at Fort Mandan until early April, when they set out westward along the Missouri River, but not before documenting over a period of six months important details about the Mandan, their way of life, their sacred beliefs, and their astonishing “almost white” appearance.
With their Hidatsa friends and neighbors the Mandan lay at the center of trade along the upper Missouri River, inhabiting what is now central North Dakota. At the time of Lewis and Clark’s arrival, they lived in two villages, Matootonha and Rooptahee. Matootonha was located on the western bank of the Missouri, and Rooptahee was directly north, on the river’s eastern bank. The Corps of Discovery built Fort Mandan across the river from Matootonha.
In contrast to the relations of the corps with the aggressive Arikaras of the region, the corps and the Mandan were friendly throughout the duration of the expedition’s stay. The Mandan supplied the Americans with food throughout the winter at their newly constructed home, Fort Mandan, in exchange for a steady stream of trade goods. When food became scarce, members of the corps accompanied the Mandan on a buffalo hunt. Sheheke (Bigwhite) and Black Cat, chiefs from Matootonha and Roohaptee, met often with Lewis and Clark, and the corps participated in many of the Mandan ceremonial rituals. Lewis and Clark hoped to establish peace between the Mandan and the nearby Arikaras. In spite of arranging peace talks between the two tribes, conflict broke out again as winter approached.
Of their experience living among the Mandan, William Clark wrote this in his journal: “I set myself down with the bigwhite man Chiefe [Mandan Chief Bigwhite (Sheheke)] and made a number of enquiries into the tradition of his nation. . . . He told me his nation first came out of the ground . . . and saw Buffalow and every kind of animal also grapes, plumbs, c . . . and determined to go up and live upon earth, and great numbers . . . got upon earth, men womin and children.”4
In his investigation regarding the origins of the mysterious Mandan, Clark was told of the former’s belief in a future state after death, a belief that is also connected with the theory of their origin. The Mandan legend describes a whole nation that lived in one large village, underground, near a subterranean lake. A grapevine extended its roots down to their habitation and gave them a view of the light. Some of the more adventurous climbed up the vine, and were delighted with the sight of the earth, which they found covered with buffalo and rich with every kind of fruit.
They returned with the grapes they had gathered, and their countrymen were so pleased with the grapes’ taste that the whole nation resolved to leave their dull residence for the charms of the upper region. Men, women, and children ascended by means of the vine, but, when about half the nation had reached the surface of the earth, a corpulent woman who was clambering up the vine broke it with her weight, closing off from herself and the rest of the nation the light of the sun. When the Mandan died they expected to return to the original seats of their forefathers, the good reaching the ancient village by means of the lake, which the burden of the sins of the wicked would not enable them to cross.
This peculiar tradition can be interpreted to mean that the present nation at one time in the distant past lived in a large settlement underground, that is, beyond the land, in the sea, the sea being represented by “the subterranean lake.” The description of a vine that was used for people to reach the land of the “sun” and gather fruits and so on indicates the free movement of people back and forth between the North American continent and this other place the Mandan refer to as the “large village.” In the new continent the land was filled with buffalo and all kinds of fruits, and the land was colonized, or settled. Perhaps the building traditions from the original “large village” were also acquired, and there were actual cities with streets built in the new continent. And then something happened that cut these people off. Contact was not established again. Whatever happened that severed contact between the two lands was of catastrophic proportion.
During the 1860s Major James W. Lynd lived among the Dakotas and wrote a book about them before meeting a violent death at their hands. Lynd supports the aforementioned explanation with the fact that the legends of the Iowa natives, who were a branch of the Dakotas and relatives of the Mandan, relate that at one point in antiquity all the different tribes were originally one, and they all lived together on an island, or at least across a large body of water toward the east, or the sunrise. According to these legends they crossed this body of water in skin canoes, but they did not know how long the crossing took, or whether the water was salt or fresh.
These legends speak of “huge skiffs, in which their ancestors of long ago floated for weeks, finally gaining dry land.” This account is certainly a reference to ships and long sea voyages. The ceremonies further tell a story that “the world was once a great tortoise, borne on the waters, and covered with earth, and that when one day, in digging the soil, a tribe of white men, who had made holes in the earth to a great depth digging for badgers, at length pierced the shell of the tortoise, it sank, and the water covering it drowned all men with the exception of one, who saved himself in a boat; and when the earth
re-emerged, sent out a dove, who returned with a branch of willow in its beak.”5
Twenty-six years after the departure of the Corps of Discovery, George Catlin went in search of the Mandan, locating them and living among them for eight years. Before setting off on his journey Catlin met with then Governor William Clark, who told Catlin he would find the Mandan to be “a strange people and half-white.” Catlin describes the tribe as possessing strange hair colors and strange eye colors such as blue and hazel. He speculated at the time that the Mandan had descended from Celts, and that their appearance and atypical customs were perhaps the result of generations of intermarrying and breeding with Welsh explorers and their descendants. Later visitors noted that the languages of the Mandan and Welsh were so similar that the Mandan showed clear comprehension when spoken to in Welsh. Catlin described Mandan women as possessing strikingly Northern European features and found the Mandan in general to be “a very interesting and pleasing people in their personal appearance and manners, differing in many respects, both in looks and customs, from all the other tribes I have seen.”6
The more time he spent with the Mandan, the more curious Catlin considered them to be. He discovered, for example, that the Mandan claimed to be descended from a white man who arrived in a giant canoe after a flood had destroyed the earth. Oral tradition tells that his vessel became perched on a mountaintop and that a dove was sent out to seek land. It returned with a willow branch in its beak. Similarities to the biblical account of Noah are hard to deny.
An additional detail that adds veracity to the tales of the curious Mandan can be found in a statement made by then Governor William Clark to Catlin prior to his departure in search of the Mandan. Catlin mentions this during his general descriptions of his experience with the legendary tribe:
Their traditions, so far as I have learned them, afford us no information of their having had any knowledge of white men before the visit of Lewis and Clark. Since that time there have been but very few visits from white men to the place, and surely not enough to have changed the complexions and the customs of a nation. And I recollect perfectly well that Governor [William] Clark told me before I started for this place, that I would find the Mandan a strange people and half-white. So forcibly have I been struck with the peculiar ease and elegance of these people, together with their diversity of complexions, the various colours of their hair and eyes; the singularity of their language, and their peculiar and unaccountable customs, that I am fully convinced that they have sprung from some other origin than that of the other North American Tribes, or that they are an amalgam of natives with some civilized race.7
George Catlin was familiar with at least some of the Madoc stories, “which,” as he put it, “I will suppose everybody has read, rather than quote them at this time.” The Mandan, according to Catlin, “might possibly be the remains of this lost colony, amalgamated with a tribe, or part of a tribe, of the natives, which would account for the unusual appearances of this tribe of Indians, and also for the changed character and customs of the Welsh colonists, provided this be the remains of them.”8
During the years he lived with the Mandan, Catlin traced their old village sites down the Missouri and to the mouth of the Ohio River. During these explorations he found remains of fortified towns, some enclosing “a great many acres.”
There are many flood references in the Mandan legends and those of other tribes. Even more intriguing is that in the center of the religious ceremonies of the Mandan, we find that they kept an image of an ark, preserved from generation to generation, and performed ceremonies that refer plainly to the destruction of a land and to the arrival of one who survived the flood and brought to this new land the news of the catastrophic destruction. Catlin gives us a bird’s-eye view of this unique ceremony, which is no longer being danced.
In the centre of the village is an open space, or public square, 150 feet in diameter and circular in form, which is used for all public games and festivals, shows and exhibitions. The lodges around this open space front in, with their doors toward the centre; and in the middle of this stands an object of great religious veneration, on account of the importance it has in connection with the annual religious ceremonies. This object is in the form of a large hogshead, some eight or ten feet high, made of planks and hoops, containing within it some of their choicest mysteries or medicines. They call it the “Big Canoe.” On the day set apart for the commencement of the ceremonies a solitary figure is seen approaching the village. During the deafening din and confusion within the pickets of the village the figure discovered on the prairie continued to approach with a dignified step, and in a right line toward the village; all eyes were upon him, and he at length made his appearance within the pickets, and proceeded toward the centre of the village, where all the chiefs and braves stood ready to receive him, which they did in a cordial manner by shaking hands, recognizing him as an old acquaintance, and pronouncing his name, Nu-mohk-muck-a-nah (the first or only man). The body of this strange personage, which was chiefly naked, was painted with white clay, so as to resemble at a distance a white man. He enters the medicine lodge, and goes through certain mysterious ceremonies. During the whole of this day Nu-mohk-muck-anah (the first or only man) travelled through the village, stopping in front of each man’s lodge, and crying until the owner of the lodge came out and asked who he was, and what was the matter? To which be replied by narrating the sad catastrophe which had happened on the earth’s surface by the overflowing of the waters, saying that “he was the only person saved from the universal calamity”; that he landed his big canoe on a high mountain in the west, where he now resides; that he has come to open the medicine lodge, which must needs receive a present of an edged tool from the owner of every wigwam, that it may be sacrificed to the water; for, he says, “if this is not done there will be another flood, and no one will be saved, as it was with such tools that the big canoe was made.” Having visited every lodge in the village during the day, and having received such a present from each as a hatchet, a knife, etc. (which is undoubtedly always prepared ready for the occasion), he places them in the medicine lodge; and, on the last day of the ceremony, they are thrown into a deep place in the river—“sacrificed to the Spirit of the Waters.”9
Describing the dance performed by twelve men around the ark, Catlin says: “They arrange themselves according to the four cardinal points; two are painted perfectly black, two are vermilion color, some were painted partially white. They dance a dance called ‘Bel-lohck-napie,’” with horns on their heads, like those used in Europe as symbolic of Baal. “It would seem,” wrote George Catlin, “that these people must have had some proximity to some part of the civilized world; or that missionaries or others have been formerly among them, inculcating the Christian religion and the Mosaic account of the Flood.”10
It is a well-known fact that in the various philosophies and religions throughout the world, we find traces or mention of the flood. The Mandan legend describes the earth as a large tortoise. It moves slowly and carries a great deal of earth on its back. Long ago there was a nation of people who are now dead because their land sank into the water. All the people were drowned except for one man. Neither the Mandan nor Catlin had heard of Atlantis, making this account all the more intriguing.
In 1838 a steamboat belonging to the American Fur Company carried up the Missouri the end of the Mandans. A deadly wave of smallpox broke out from the infected crew during a stop at one of the Mandan villages. The tribe didn’t stand a chance. Those who weren’t killed immediately by the disease decided to take their own lives. During the next two months, the Mandan were decimated to near extinction. Adding insult to injury, the survivors were made slaves by their bitter enemies, the Sioux and Arikara.
Nearly thirty years later all the tribes were swindled out of most of their land and set up on reservations. In 1870 the remaining North Dakota tribes were huddled together and thrown onto a new reservation. Renamed the Three Affiliated Tribes, the surviving Arikara
s, Mandans, and Hidatsa were now mere shells of their former selves, less concerned with their ancient heritage and more interested in alcohol. The Condensed American Cyclopedia reported in 1877 that the Mandans “are now with the Riccarees (Arikaras) and Gros Ventres (Hidatsa) at Fort Berthold, Dakota. . . . They live partly by agriculture. They are lighter in complexion than most tribes.”
The last full-blooded Mandan passed away in 1973, ending the history of these mysterious people, whom George Catlin praised: “A better, more honest, hospitable and kind people, as a community, are not to be found in the world. No set of men that ever I associated with have better hearts than the Mandans, and none are quicker to embrace and welcome a white man than they are—none will press him closer to his bosom, that the pulsation of his heart may be felt, than a Mandan; and no man in any country will keep his word and guard his honour more closely.”11
Whether the Mandan descended from Scandinavians, or Madoc’s Welshmen, or Atlanteans we will never know. Lewis and Clark were in awe of the likeness in the Mandan legends to the biblical story of the flood. They also knew the Mandan were white, because blue eyes and blond-brunette hair are indisputable European features. These remarkable people have left in their wake a mystery that may never be solved.
Voyagers of the Pacific Coast and the Kennewick Man
After a cold and confounding winter with the Mandans, the Corps of Discovery were ready to step once again into the great unknown. The mighty Pacific Ocean and the untamed West were waiting for them. But deep in their guts they knew, somehow, this had all been explored before.