Encounters at the Heart of the World

November 18, 2013
On the northern plains, where the Heart River joins the Missouri, the Mandans made their home, flourishing due to their openness to others, their commercial canniness, and their agricultural skills. In this riveting chronicle, part history and part travelogue of trips to Mandan territory in 2002, historian Fenn (Pox Americana) traces the rise and fall of the Mandans as newcomers encroached on their domains. “Ancestral Mandans appeared in what is now South Dakota around 1000 CE,” occupying rich alluvial plains that enabled great agricultural diversity. By the middle of the 16th century, the Mandans had developed successful commercial trade among neighboring tribes, even though such interactions were often tense and hostile. By the 17th century, traders and explorers—from the French baron Lahontan and the Hudson Bay Company’s Henry Kelsey to Lewis and Clark—entered Mandan villages and territory, bringing not only commerce but also disease. Fenn illustrates how these “encounters”—including smallpox and whooping cough epidemics, and the infestation of Norway rats that destroyed their corn stores—reduced their populations to the low hundreds by the mid-19th century. Fenn brings to life and celebrates the customs and practices of the Mandans, while bemoaning the fate of this little-known North American tribe.

Starred review from January 15, 2014
A nonpolemical, engaging study of a once-thriving Indian nation of the American heartland whose origins and demise tell us much about ourselves. Along the Missouri River in North Dakota, the Mandan people flourished in the warming period between ice ages, circa A.D. 1000, drawn to the alluvial richness of the river as well as the bison hunting ranges of the Western grasslands. In her thorough mosaic of Mandan history and culture, Fenn (Western American History/Univ. of Colorado; Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82, 2001, etc.) writes that these were an immensely adaptable people, migrating upstream when weather patterns changed, mastering the cultivation of corn and other edibles and the art of trade, often in competition with other horticulturalist tribes nearby, like the Arikara and Lakota. Elaborate Mandan defense fortifications indicated a vulnerability to attack, perhaps by the fierce, nomadic Sioux. Mandan homes were sturdy and numerous, solid earthen lodges built by the women, who also cultivated the fields, dried the meat and tanned the hides, revealing a strong maternal society where the husbands and the children were shared by sisters in one house due to the scarcity of men, perhaps due to mortality from war and hunting. At the time of the Spanish conquistadors, Fenn estimates there were 12,000 Mandans in the upper Missouri River; it was "teeming with people." Gradually, contact with outsiders beginning in the 17th century and continuing with the famous interaction with Louis and Clark's expedition up the Missouri in 1804 led to Mandan decimation by disease as well as by the Norwegian rat, which devoured their corn stored in cache pits. In addition to her comprehensive narrative, Fenn intersperses throughout the narrative many helpful maps and poignant drawings by George Catlin and others. An excellent contribution to the truth telling of the American Indian story.

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March 1, 2014

It has been decades since the Mandan, who inhabited the Northern Plains in what is now North Dakota, were the sole subjects of a scholarly study, probably owing to the dearth of pre-19th-century documentation. Using data-culled records across such diverse fields as anthropology, archaeology, climatology, and epidemiology, Fenn (Walter S. and Lucienne Driskill Chair in Western American History, Univ. of Colorado-Boulder; Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-1782) has succeeded in reconstructing the history of the Mandan from approximately 1100 CE to the mid-1800s. She reveals their central role in the Native American trade networks of the Great Plains over centuries. During that time, they were usually very adaptable to their evolving surroundings, including to climate change and to invasive species (e.g., Norway rats) from Europe. But they also confronted introduced diseases, such as smallpox. Fenn vividly illustrates how the Mandan managed to thrive until the end of the 18th century and then explains how disease, rats, and American westward expansion led them to near total societal and population collapse over approximately 50 years. VERDICT This is the finest study on the Mandan available and is a must-read for those interested in Native American studies or American history.--John R. Burch, Campbellsville Univ. Lib., KY

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from January 1, 2014
Anyone who has seen the sensitive portraits of Mandan chiefs painted in the 1830s by George Catlin and Karl Bodmer will be captivated by Fenn's exhaustively researched history of the tribe that once thrived on the upper Missouri River in present-day North Dakotaat one time the center of northern Plains commerce. Peaking at a population of 12,000 by 1500, and still a vital presence when Lewis and Clark visited in 1804, the Mandans were besieged by a daunting succession of challenges, including Norway rats that decimated their corn stores, two waves of smallpox, whooping cough, and cholera, reducing their numbers to 300 by 1838. Piecing together the journals of white visitors to this then unmapped landfrom the French explorers Lahontan in 1688 and de la V'rendrye 50 years later, to Lewis and Clark, and later Prince Maximilian accompanied by Bodmer, the Swiss painterand the annual reports to the commissioner of Indian Affairs, Fenn weaves the historical fabric of this proud people, enhanced by archaeological and climate studies tracing their migrations, food sources, and intertribal conflicts. Simultaneously scholarly and highly readable, Fenn's contribution enriches our understanding of not just Mandan history but also the history and culture of the pre-reservation northern Plains as well.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)