Mandan Earth Lodges on the Missouri River

One of the main attractions at Fort Abraham Lincoln is a reconstructed Mandan village. Between 1550 and 1780 (dates are approximate) there was a Native American village on this site. It has a proud but sad history and experiencing the reconstructed village caused me to think about the many ways Europeans ravaged this country.

When Louis and Clark came up the Missouri river they camped at this spot and wrote about it. The village had already been abandoned because a smallpox epidemic had wiped out three-quarters of the tribe. The people who were left went upriver to join another tribe who had experienced the same devastation.

Archeologists have worked at this site to study the Mandan people who had  a thriving culture. They managed to survive the harsh North Dakota winters by building round earth lodges. The construction of these buildings is amazing. They used huge cottonwood trees, which grow by the river, for supporting beams. Then the lodges are covered with grasses and finally sealed with river mud. The walls were about two feet thick. Cool in the summer and warm in the winter these lodges are an architectural delight. I loved the strong lines that are formed by the lodge construction and the way the light comes through the smoke hole. Each lodge even had a foyer to keep the cold air out when someone was entering.

The Mandan people were wise about where they placed their village. They built on a high hill above the floodplain of the Missouri River. The river was in front, two large ditches ran on either side and a tall palisade wall to the back protected the village from attacks.

The Mandan were farmers who used the rich soil of the river bottoms to grow the three sisters; corn, beans, squash and tobacco. They had 13 different varieties of corn including pop-corn. They hunted and fished – all was dried or salted and put in bell shaped caches (like farm root cellars) that were dug in the ground inside the lodges. They also used their crops to trade with the plains people who didn’t grow food.

The site I visited once had over a hundred lodges in the village. They did not survive to the present but North Dakota State Park commission worked with surviving Mandans to reconstruct five lodges as close as possible to what they were like in the 1700’s. Four of the lodges resemble the family homes and one is a larger tribal lodge for meetings and special events.

After the tour was over I asked permission to sit alone in the great tribal lodge. I marveled over the construction and enjoyed the light streaming through the smoke hole in the roof. The place was special – it gave me a very peaceful feeling, a feeling of being rooted to the earth. There were dozens of barn swallows swooping in and out of the lodge. I watched their graceful moves and wondered if maybe they were the spirits of the people who once lived by this majestic river.