The Mandan Indians
Uploaded by idbikebabe on Dec 04, 1999
The Mandan Indians were a small, peaceful tribe located at the mouth of the Knife River on the Missouri near present day Bismarck, North Dakota. The Mandan were most known for their friendliness and their homes, called earth lodges. The women of the Mandan tribe tended their gardens, prepared food, and maintained lodges while the men spent their time hunting or seeking spiritual knowledge. The Mandan Indians performed many ceremonies such as the Buffalo Dance and the Okipa Ceremony that have been the center of great interest to many historians. The Mandan are also an important part of history because Lewis and Clark spent their first winter with these people and met Sacagawea, who helped guide them for the rest of their journey west.
Mandan villages were the center of the social, spiritual, and economic lives of the Mandan Indians. Villages were strategically located on bluffs overlooking the river for defense purposes, limiting attacks to one land approach. The Mandan lived in earth lodges, which are extremely large, round huts that are 15 feet high and 40-60 feet in diameter. Each hut had a vestibule entrance, much like the pattern of an Eskimo igloo, and a square hole on top, which served as a smokestack. Each earth lodge housed 10-30 people and their belongings, and villages contained 50-120 earth lodges. The frame of an earth lodge was made from tree trunks, which were covered with criss-crossed willow branches. Over the branches they placed dirt and sod, which coined the term earth lodge. This type of construction made the roofs strong enough to support people on nights of good weather. The floors of earth lodges were made of dirt and the middle was dug out to make a bench around the outer edge of the lodge. Encompassing the village were stockades of poles as tall as six feet high to prevent enemy attacks. In the middle of a Mandan village was a large, circular, open space that was called the central plaza. In the middle of the plaza was a sacred cedar post that represented the Lone Man, a hero to the Mandan. At the North end of the plaza was the medicine or ceremonial lodge. The arrangement of earth lodges around the central plaza represented the social status of each...