North Dakota Archives - Lewis & Clark Research Database

Bird’s-eye View of the Mandan Village, 1800 Miles above St. Louis

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 18:46:26 +0000

Catlin’s painting presents an elevated, oblique view of an earthlodge village on a bluff above the Missouri River. Dozens of domed earthen lodges are packed within a circular palisade of vertical timbers, with a central open plaza where a cedar post stands enclosed by a plank shrine—the focal point of the Okipa ceremony. Scaffolds for drying meat and hides rise between the lodges, and the rooftops themselves serve as gathering places, dotted with seated figures, bullboats stored upside down, and racks of weapons and shields. Outside the palisade, the bluff drops to the river, where canoes are pulled up on the bank and a procession of villagers moves along a path. Catlin worked in oil with the rapid, slightly flattened handling typical of his field-based ethnographic pictures, prioritizing the legibility of cultural detail over atmospheric finish.

Catlin visited the Mandan villages in the summer of 1832, traveling upriver on the American Fur Company steamboat Yellow Stone. The view records the larger of the two principal Mandan towns near the mouth of the Knife River, the same complex of villages where Lewis and Clark had wintered in 1804–1805 at nearby Fort Mandan. Catlin returned east with hundreds of sketches and studies, and worked them up into finished canvases between 1837 and 1839 for exhibition in his traveling Indian Gallery. The timing was consequential: a smallpox epidemic in 1837 destroyed the Mandan population Catlin had documented only five years earlier, giving his Mandan paintings a sudden documentary weight he had not anticipated.

Catlin (1796–1872) built his career on the premise that Plains Indian life was vanishing and required pictorial recording, and the Mandan series—portraits of Mato-Tope, scenes of the Okipa, and overviews like this one—remains the most cited portion of his output. The Indian Gallery toured American and European cities through the 1840s before financial collapse forced its sale. Joseph Harrison, Jr., a Philadelphia industrialist, purchased the collection in 1852; his widow’s gift transferred it to what is now the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The bird’s-eye view has been reproduced repeatedly in studies of Mandan architecture, in Lewis and Clark scholarship concerned with the expedition’s winter quarters, and in the ethnohistorical literature on the pre-epidemic upper Missouri.

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Dakota Goodhouse on Universal Languages and Plains Indian History

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:35:52 +0000

to the ten and many voices how is everyone doing today good I’m glad to hear you’re in good spirits it’s great to be here in my city let me introduce our next speaker we have Dakota good house who is a national park ranger from Knife River Indian village which is in Stanton North Dakota if you have not yet been there I do encourage you folks to take a trip over there out of the state to North Dakota that is allegedly where lisis and Clark met sagaa along their Journey she came from an Indian village around the area we’ll ask dcoa to uh go into depth about that a little bit more but for right now he’s going to be talking about the universal language on the planes and let’s give him a nice warm welcome here in the the town of my city give them a round of applause and with saying that we’ll turn it over to Dakota thank you all right well first thing I’d like to say is uh is in the hza language I thank you and I greet you is uh I work at the enemy Village so I should know their language also at Knife River there are the mandans and they would greet you like as a as a man would greet people I would Sayes so I thank you you’ve made me feel good it’s warm day today and I’m glad you folks have come out anyways uh my presentation is about universal language and we have three of them earlier today some of you might have seen uh sign language right has anyone seen that today yeah some nodding heads some heads rattling out there right all right well um I’ll be doing a little bit of that but the other two languages are art and this is one form of our universal language um and it’s a man’s language so when you talk about uh art amongst our Plains Indian people we have two of them just like many of us also have two dialects in our languages men speak a way and women speak another right yeah it seems odd and you can always tell when a man has been taught by his grandma or by his mom when he speaks Lota or any of our languages back home cuz you can tell he’s been raised by a woman and you can tell if a girls talks like a man so if anyone watches Dances with Wolves go back check it out he actually talks like a woman yeah anyways uh it was interesting you can understand him though if you speak Lota anyways so this is a man’s language this is intended to be it’s just practical it’s intended to be looked at it’s intended to be read easily um a few examples up here that I know all of you could relate to and just know what it is is this one right here right basketall well this type of painting is called a winter count in my language we call that w w we’re keeping a track of the winters counting them off so anyways each one of these pictures represents a year one significant event took place a couple years back what do you suppose this standing there we go this guy knows he yeah Standing Rock Warriors took State title back in North Dakota yeah um we have a couple other things even a year before that there was a uh a large we called it a large star passed across the northern part of the sky if anyone saw that a couple years back that would would be hail Bop that Comet anyone see that yeah see it uh these events are are known uh through Indian Country it pleases me that when uh another Nation can look up here and see and recognize these too like uh like uh my my Mii my Mandan Elder my Mandan Uncle he looked up here and he was looking at this and he said oh I know what these are and he was going off oh that was that year L LA Joe died that down down in Standing Rock that’s a year couple years back when for the first time in about 150 years all of the bands of Lakota got together and met for the first time at Washington DC all of our bands and all of our all of our tribes were represented there uh what else do we got here he recognized this one 1988 the Eiffel Tower you might be wondering what’s that up there well Eiffel Tower is up there because um that year the French acknowledged American Indians efforts during World War II so we fought that war to in fact they they recognize some of our native code talkers and you’ve heard of The Da the Navajo code talkers they really get a lot of press they really they should be getting a lot of credit right yeah but uh a little known story is that during World War I there were Lota code talkers too and we have here some uh Lota involvement during World War I in fact back where I’m from the first North Theoden to die was from my reservation and and there was uh six languages used as as a weapon during World War I lot beanan and there were at least 13 languages used during World War II Lota again being it so anyways it’s really neat um some of my my my relatives and other tribes can look at this especially back home so you folks out here even if we had other nations represented they might not get some of these but this one here is pretty big news what’s that it looks like a foot exactly L it’s conven just as it should be intended it’s big it’s Bigfoot actually cuz that was that year back in uh 1974 or 1976 we saw Bigfoot on Standing Rock has anyone seen Bigfoot only one other person besides me here I likeed yeah in fact this made such big news that NBC CBS ABC all these major news networks they came to Standing Rock to look for bigfoot now here’s what happened cuz I I like to say that Bigfoot talks L yeah he speaks he speaks l so anyways um there’s some people were washing dishes after the day and this woman was just talking to her husband right I’m trying to find out which family this was anyways The Story Goes she was talking taking care of those dishes you know you know I my hands are kind of can’t I can can someone help me with my hands and you know she’s doing dishes right she’s asking for some help asking for a hand anyways all and then she hears hears someone talk back to her and she says Mees you know like I just said that you know cuz she heard back to her being talked back to her someone asking her the same thing daku NAU will you know can you give me a hand or where’s your hands or something like this anyway so she said you know nich okay you know I just said this again anyway she turns around she looks up from she’s doing the dishes there and uh here’s this big figure looking in at her and that figure was talking Lota back at her so anyways I Bigfoot if you hear him say how how how like she hey there’re my friend my relative because he he like to say he talks lot anyways that’s just something for you we keep track of things here that uh some of them of a very serious nature some of them very humorous nature too like Bigfoot uh want to jump around here real quick and then I want to get to the meat of my program um this one too this is the year before George kuster got it right we’re not so far from that anyways um some of my people served as Scouts under him too so we you know uh it’s funny thing funny thing that year that’s another presentation in itself but he had Lota Scouts who uh left from Fort Lincoln with him to to go fight anyways the year before that happened we say that was a year we had a good time if anyone can I know this is this is big but you can’t might you might not be able to see all the images back there but this is a uh it’s a whiskey barrel yeah that’s the year we had a good time now this uh I throw this in here because even when I’m showing this to my my native relatives I want them to look at it and say Hey you know there’s this is a year we actually practiced some uh some self-control we made that barrel of whiskey last the entire winter yeah see it kind of breaks that stereotype back 100 150 years ago that uh you know a drunk Indian no many of us practiced self-control so anyway that’s the year we had a good time there’s nothing to be ashamed of I tell my native people that we had good times back then today we just call them kigers no hey yeah anyways uh this winter count it goes back to um about 9001 I have some um events up here that go back that far some of them are of a mythological nature um my ancestors winter count started with a long time ago a spirit woman came to us and we say in Lota long time ago winteral AI this White Buffalo Calf Woman came to us that’s when she brought a covenant to us with a higher power so if we want a date for that you go to another winter count I actually brought it with me today too the first time I remembered to bring it ever since I worked at these guys but it’s found in this book picture writing of the American Indian that event that I pointed out up there in this book you can look it up it took place at 9001 a so it’s a Baptista good winter count so we have history that goes back real long ways but unfortunately many of some of many of some of our native people we just you know even my own my own colleagues my some of my own people my age it’s very sad some of us never heard of winter counts and here that’s our own history you know anyways but we’re recovering it and I think you know not too soon or not too late either anyways uh so that’s one one language it’s a language it’s uh it’s uh practical it’s meant to be read and interpreted as such another way and unfortunately I don’t have it with me but I’m sure you’ve seen them they’re called par fleshes has anyone seen them or heard of them a par flesh is like a folded in painted Rawhide box yeah you seen them all right and you just put whatever you want inside there whatever is most cherished uh or whatever you value the most you stick them in this box right anyways um if you look at those par fleshes I like to say that’s the perfect example of how women think you know because even our in our native culture we have the two dialects but you really see how they think and we put that down on those par fleshes you know I see they’re symmetrical for one they’re balanced they’re they’re uh and I think well uh you really have to look at them to interpret what the use might be for if the if the shape might indicate uh what it’s used for or what tribe it belongs ons to or who it belongs to and and what they use it for you can get a lot out of a par flesh and uh I think well that’s that’s uh that’s kind of how women talk right men really have to sit and really think of what did she say yeah that’s what those parlers are like too so no no bashing here it’s just a it’s just a really really is a part of our culture anyways the other universal language is called singing or a song Everybody sings right yeah and and you have vocables too even in English we have these things called vocables uh one of the most ones I I hear a lot is during Christmas when when you hear fall la la right goes with one of those Christmas songs yeah see we have we have songs too that have just things in them doesn’t have to be a word right so the funny thing that cracks me up is when our non native relatives come to our pow and they think we’re we’re just singing hey yaah hey yaah right oh well they come and sing with us yeah it could be just that too but it’s a vocable anyways that third language you can tell by the Cadence of a song or how it’s sung CU we all have flag songs and when a native hears a flag song at a Pawa where there’s inner tribals hundreds of other tribes there they all know they all get up they all get up they all stand and they know a memorial song too you know it’s just slower they’re singing the honors if you know that person’s name oh you know you take your hat off and you pay them some respect so anyways the song I want to share with you is another type of song and this would be known by other tribes other tribes women those Mandan hsas even a crow out this way and Cheyenne too they would hear these songs and they would know oh boy I know who is singing it oh that Sue boy is singing it he must want a wife yeah this one takes place along the Missouri River and uh you folks like that River I I really find it a beautiful River but one time before we cross the river and this contradicts what my own makota people say cuz we say we’ve always been here but you ask these other tribes out here they’ll tell you that we forced them and pushed them and fought them just to say we could we were always here but anyways we didn’t even even cross this River here this Missouri and that would be along South Dakota side until maybe 1740 so we’re not always here but this song takes place when one of our young men crossed the Missouri River right and he went to go gather some some Furs some meat he went to gather some gifts CU he was going to present them to a girl he really liked a young woman and uh he was courting her a long time ago a man did not buy a wife he assembled all of these gifts so that when he went to her parents if they approved they see they look at all these gifts and they they know this is a good man because he’s going to take care of our daughter he’s not buying a wife he’s he he he’s showing it’s it’s providing proof that he’s going to get her food he’s going to take care of her so if they approve of that and they look at their daughter too they arrange marriages they might even let him let him marry her daughter you know without her consenting but often times too we’d have consenting marriages so this song involves a young man doing just that Gathering materials crossing the river in a springtime no less and we warned him no don’t go across that River firstly toas live over there the enemies the strangers and uh still went across the river and here the Ice broke up and a long time ago we believ there’s a dragon that lived in the water in the springtime that Dragon came to life came through and broke that ice so we believe that man was over there across the river and Missouri river is dangerous now some of you might have heard of of accidents people have in a river even today back then it was was dangerous unpredictable no dams back then anyway so we did not want him to swimming back so we hollered across you know just stay over there wait for a time when you can come back so he still goes out there and he’s still doing his Gathering his his uh Gathering gifts anyways he comes to the River’s Edge one day and he starts singing iic day tonic so and all of the blue he hears someone singing back to him and here it’s that girl across the river she’s singing back to him so this universal language she couldn’t hear the word being so far away but she made it out one day the wind carried the words and here I’ll tell you in English it was uh she sang back to him is what it was as a words uh no matter how far you travel no matter how far you travel over this Earth You may go about no matter how far I will wait for you my mother approves right that’s really important some of you guys out there right yeah must really like your in-laws they really quiet no right I’ll stop so anyways we have that third universal language that song so I’m not saying we can all understand each other but we hear some songs and we we can know them by by their Cadence or by or or just by OB observing if that person stands or or if that man is singing Because I’ve seen it happen where a guy was singing serenading a woman you know it does it still happens anyways um the rest of my presentation I wanted to share something else with you folks and that was the horse um when did the horse come back to North America anyone have a guess out there oh by the Spanish right right yeah about 1520 the horse came back yeah why do I say came back reintroduced as a horse used to be here and we could argue and say oh Paleo Indians my ancestors they hunted that horse to Extinction killed it off it’s possible um another argument I’ve heard was the weather changed so drastically the horse couldn’t adap and so it died off I mean that’s possible too who knows we don’t know really anyways when that horse came back to North America it wouldn’t be until maybe the late 1600 1682 to 1690 to that Indians actually got horses why the big gap firstly we have to look at where the horse came from when the Spanish brought the horse over we have to look at the society the horse horse came out of who owned the horse in fuel Europe someone tell me land owners right landlords Church hierarchy Nobles right people who had a stake people who had the right to have a say how their countries run yeah kind of like today right I like to have a say that’s why I vote anyways yeah that’s for those non voters out there no anyways uh so this horse is a symbol it’s a status symbol right you need to control it because if you let the Indians get it two things will change and that’s hunting and warfare and we saw this horse for what it was many of us didn’t didn’t didn’t know what it was we saw a man on a horse and we thought oh it’s one person it’s one being and then many of us many are southern relatives they saw a man get off and they oh it’s two right it’s two so we saw this animal many of us have words like tashunka it’s like a big dog or he shunka like it must be like an elk dog or a uhh what’s another one shunka W that one is uh like a sacred dog anyway the implication is that it’s big something big and sacred big sacred animal um we never saw these things before then one day our relatives in the southwest the peblo had a Revolt you might wonder what is that history down there have anything to do with up here well it really does a lot anyways in 1680 they had a Revolt they got tired of being converted enslaved you know call it what you will and they picked one day to revolt the publo Revolt of 1680 in those Spanish journals they write Indians got the horses Indians took us by surprise I don’t speak Spanish my wife does so she was telling me so anyway yeah so Indians finally got horses within one dozen years we see the horse on the Great Plains in 1692 not just here in this area this Yellowstone Powder River area up into Alberta too how do I know this winter counts sure sure these very two winter counts I have with me today copies of them and they’re inside here with text and bibliography too so 1692 according to the bare winter count that’s in here and in 1706 almost as soon as the horses appeared on the planes according to the Batista good winter count my people go and we borrow some horses from other tribes yeah that’s too bad some of our our Crow relatives aren here today they could tell you how we would borrow each other’s horses ma’am oh Liberate the horse okay yeah all these words listen to yeah yeah we had some run-ins with them too he’s an all right guy though anyways uh yeah so 1706 we saw horse stealing take place now many of our many of our native relatives will many of our elders will tell you too you ask any tribe about this issue they have all their stories about it um and my people are no different we like to say we’re The Originators of this one thing and that’s counting coup right anyone heard of that out here yeah where you touch the enemy don’t even have to kill an enemy just touch the enemy right this one act of war is actually has everything to do do with the horse before that horse in the dog days we when we’re on foot and the enemy was 10 miles away well that’s a that’s 10 miles is is really far if you’re on foot you know you might make war but if you’re on horse 10 miles you could uh enemy could come within within the hour yeah so anyways uh how did this counting coup come to be according to Batista good there there came a day when the enemy came into our camp while our men were away and they were out hunting these in our camp we leave behind our elders our our women our children those boys who are on the verge of becoming men that they stay behind you know maintain the village keep it clean repair you know all kinds of stuff anyways some of our women are are out Gathering some berries right just picking some berries probably this time of year because it’s August Buffalo berries are ready to be picked so they’re out there picking these berries here comes the enemy and in their minds you have to think is when you have a state of of War right things happen killing kidnapping rape even you know according to bti uh uh John K Bearer The Winter count I have there you know we annihilated an entire band of people you know we say children are so sacred to us but we killed not just their Warriors of this we chosan people there a tribe that don’t even exist you don’t even hear about them anymore we killed them to the last person all that happened on the planes too so our women are thinking that this is the same time period our women are thinking you know death you know rape murder you know kidnap and their minds are going through all these things what’s going to happen to my children what’s going to happen to my husband what’s going to happen to my brothers my sisters enemy comes in they get off their horse and you expect something to happen while they push them just push them and here they all start laughing enemy starts laughing haha you know and then they get back on their horses and run off same time period here um enemy also comes into our camp according to Batista good and he’s carrying a lance now my people have been called PR kns before I never would have believed it unless I unless I read it from our own account I I would just chalk it up oh the the French you know how they elaborate right they’re they’re saying that we’re Knights and we’re all this and all that well a man crafted a lance and came in on his horse and he was coming into the camp and we all look out you know our sentries are calling out you know you know uh toah the enemies coming coming you know making everyone take to arms so everyone comes out of their Lodge they’re getting ready to for a fight here’s just one man and he has that Lance and we’re all looking at him D daku de you know what’s that you know I don’t know you know and he rides through the village and goes right out and we all stand around you know what just happened we don’t know the next year this man comes into our camp again with the Lance oh this time he actually touches someone he gets a he he touches a boy and he rides off and this combined with those enemies touching our women and pushing him and laughing you know to me that’s an indication with the appearance of the horse this is when we begin to count CP and it didn’t it’s not a Lota origin either so my Lota relative you know I don’t mean to offend them if they ever hear this or ever see this recording I don’t mean to offend them it’s just this is how it is how it appear to me with our own histories yeah so I I challenged my relatives one day I said if you disagree with me make one yeah it was it was a very quiet audience too I don’t think they were expecting some of the things I had to share anyways uh getting back to this horse the other thing that appeared at the same time on the planes in 1706 that same year as horse doing took place the gun appeared metal trade goods appeared on the Missouri River most historians will use Pierre lavendre now there’s nothing wrong with that come on right if you’re a historian use more than one source I always like to use that with historians too yeah so anyways verify your fact before the French came out here go to many different winter counts and you’ll see there were trade items out here the gun metal knives magnifying glasses now the worth of a metal knife a trade knife was equal to a horse right up there so my Mandan relatives they know who brought them the horse and I know when so I share that with him any at every opportunity because they many of us too use non-native resources for history there’s nothing wrong with that well let’s let’s put our histories right together with it we can actually come up with some earlier dates and we can verify lavendre right see if the French are right anyways though hope there’s no French out there hey no no it wouldn’t be the Spanish because my people the lot on my father’s side I’m ihana Dakota we’ve been getting our trade goods from the French French and the English since 1635 at at where where we know Chicago is today makan 1635 we’ve been getting our trade goods since then yeah from English and French not the Spanish um um me we’re getting into another subject here though but the Spanish came up the Missouri River too our our Southern relatives like to say oh we protected you you Northern Indians from this from The Conquistadors I think well come on you guys did pretty good they still came up the river and that was in the 1790s as soon as they came up the river here comes the English so um where I’m at Knife River where I where I work at that’s actually the cut off point when we look at Lewis and Clark’s journals they didn’t use uh I’m sure they ma they did their own cartography but they used um John Evans and Pier dorian’s notes and maps all the way up to that point they only mapped half the journey after Knife River to to Fort clat up anyways I think well we give him a little too credit a little too much credit anyways though um getting back to the horse here because we have all kinds of horse stealing events um my people we were left out of the trade any type of trade where I’m from those mandans Hadas and Aras with their Earth Lodge Villages they were rich and Powerful fortified villages we did not want to attack them but when the horse and the gun came we saw those two things and they need it to be controlled it’s this time period that makes me think of the horse as as Horses of mass destruction yeah seriously we need to control it because what if they get it what if they get those things it’s going to upset our balance right it’s going to upset how we live right yeah see our Lota people our native people we really think alike like like everyone else today we have to control it can’t let those enemies get it right yeah anyway so so 1700s saw the horse um our economy changed too we were Traders but our native people say oh we’re horse cultures and I think well that’s true we are but uh more than that we’re horse economy so all those horse stealing events throughout the early 1700s just filled with horse stealing because we had to control our economy was that horse stealing it’s horses made us hunt and War better we need to control it anyways uh I want to draw some quick parallels here for you folks and then uh and then I’ll take some questions but our our American Revolution what was that conflict about someone tell me Freedom what’s that oh okay okay all all right no other guesses that man well yeah control is part of it yeah um we all pay taxes right yeah taxes stamps um whatever yeah there’s other things too but uh when you get hit hard in the pocket you take notice of things right yeah you like paying $3 a gallon only one guy does okay yeah all no yeah anyways yeah when you when you get hit hard in the pocket it makes you take notice so we make war yeah and then freedom and and freedom of press freedom to to bear arms those are secondary reasons you know we all pay income tax here right who pays income tax that’s something our founding fathers would frown on seriously anyways so what else do we got here um a Civil War what was that conflict about slavery okay well we could say it became an issue of slavery after after Abraham Lincoln’s second term what’s that sir states rights okay so we have the early 1800s that’s beginning to diversify its economy for our United States right weren’t expecting this type of lecture today yeah so you have people on the North who kind of leaning towards industrialization right yeah and you have the South that’s still Agricultural and so you have people who who have these economic differences and sure slavery is a part of it was a part of it well you have people who think differently about money they balance it differently they spend it differently they just budget everything differently and today we call those Democrats and Republicans right no no Jabs to anyone no no I’m just saying it’s a historical fact come on anyways though so uh during the 1830s you see a change and how our dollar is backed we see the decline of the fur trade um our dollar is backed by gold right yeah so this draws me to a conclusion now because in the 1800s you have so much of our of our Indian history documented with a lot of conflict and so everything leading up to the Civil War is kind of our since we’re having this Divergent economy it it really is all money it’s all money um what am I trying to say here the the Plains Indian Wars took place during our gold and silver rushes because our dollar was backed by gold and during a depressed economy you need to acquire that resource to stimulate it right yeah I’ll stop with with this history right here anything else is modern so anyways we have just a few few minutes here I’d be I’d be really glad to take some questions please raise your hand if you have a question I’ll come by with the microphone so you can be heard do you have any questions for Dakota good house yes any time in that upper part of that drawing that that yellow group appears is that a gathering of many nations everyone this right here yeah this right here is is one of of the mythological events that takes place a long time ago we say there’s no set date to this but this is where our our spirits come from we believe um from the heavens above like the um the Milky Way we call it the Milky Way today but if we go back to the old Hebrew text of it if we study Aramaic in Hebrew it’s actually called the Breath of God the holy Breath of God we know it also as the the Breath of God the holy Road the spirit Road it’s almost literally word for word translation but that’s where we believe our our spirits come from and that’s where we’re going to go back to you see it see something to that effect further up here right here yeah yeah this is when um we had a meeting to decide about what to do with the horses and guns so this is around around 1735 1740 or no 1635 1640 say uh the uh Jesuits came to meet with us back in 1640 good question oh we have a yeah right here now is the spirit male in the earth is Mother you mean that’s how we regard it m like uh like the great spirit well that would be uh generally above being a male or female yeah but we have a word for the sky and that’s tunila or dka and those have masculine applications uh the Earth is generally regarded un Mak Maki or unima grandmother Earth but generally yeah that’s true that the Earth is regarded as in the feminine and the sky is masculine but uh but this one mystery this one creator that moved everything uh that is regarded as being just above above being masculine or feminine okay one more here we go uh on your calendar up there do you have a year for when uh say small small pox was introduced to your tribe oh yeah yeah we have uh some small pox uh there was uh measles that struck us before the year Lewis and Clark came out in 1803 um there’s one more up here um and this one right here I was really surprised because Mandan hadat say they don’t have winter counts however they have real powerful oral history and they say in the mid 1700s they were struck by small pox well there was no French out here to to verify that fact and then when I Came Upon This entry of of small pox in 1755 I want to say I’ll have to chook these winter counts out here was in 1750s that we saw small pox strike and I think you know they’re they’re they’re accurate for oral tradition and just to give you folks a quick example and that’s that game telephone where someone Whispers in your ear right at the end usually it’s something different and that’s a bad example of oral history here’s the good example the way it should be someone is repeating the same thing over and over for five minutes in that same game and making sure that person hears it right that person tells the next one for five minutes and they’re going to hear it right and so everyone takes five minutes the game is going to last a long time but at the end it’s going to come back almost the exact same as how it started with these Mandan and Hada oral Traditions I found they have compacted um five years so their oral tradition is about 195 years for about 200 years it’s really accurate very accurate but some good questions here nothing else sir over here chance for a last question in and then cuz we want to give everyone a chance to uh see your winter count and get a little closer view of that there were many uh tribes all all over the states here in Canada did they all have a religion of some type or was it the same one oh I guess we uh we all I don’t want to speak for every other tribe but we all acknowledge one Creator and it depends on who you’re talking to and I I feel I can say this with some confidence you’re asking a theology major um so anyways uh there’s some of us who are uh who you might call polytheists and um the Hada 100 years ago would say that they were polytheists they believed in one more than one but I can’t say that today because you talk to some and they do acknowledge only one but you talk to another tribe like Den the naval and I don’t want to speak for them either but to to me when I hear them acknowledge sacred ones it’s singular and plural at once there’s people out there that are above us and there’s one but ones it’s almost like the the sacred mystery of the of the Holy Trinity if you want to talk if you want to equate it like that but uh no there is no one set religion uh I would say that our beliefs are flexible enough that I will not I will I will I I don’t tell you how to live your life according to whatever beliefs I I cherish we all value certain beliefs like generosity respect fortitude patience kindness goodness gentleness it can look those things up too in in the in Ecclesiastes anyways how we execute those is different our native people value generosity how do we carry this out usually with the giveaway so I I I I can’t honestly answer your question I I hope I was able to kind of answer it there so I see you nod in your head all right all right um good questions here and I would like to invite everyone up to have a look if you want of my winter count I wish to end our presentation by just adding for for for your own frame of Minds that uh our native people when it comes to thinking a certain way we just say it differently we actually have a lot of the same impulses as anyone else and this this is one proof of it it’s a Lota proof of it I can’t speak for any other tribe but this is a this is a way that that we all think alike anyways in my language we say pilo I thank you very much in the Mandan language goes you I thank you and hza M I thank you so uh I appreciate your time thanks for coming out on this warm day um again anyone come on up check it out look through my books here awesome thank you very much Dakota ladies and gentlemen Dakota good house will be up here to explain his winter cow so we invite you guys to come on up if you’re interested in having a little closer look at this he’ll explain it to you coming up at the top of the hour we do have another program called the risky return with it’s all about of Louis of Clark being and on the Yellowstone River what we’re doing here today and that’s given by our very own park ranger Laura Clifford so please stay tuned that’s our last program of the day thank you

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Monica May: Medicine, Lewis and Clark, and Mandan Health

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:35:48 +0000

I know you can’t see the slides very well but uh I’m can you see them at all okay good my name is Monica May and uh my Indian name is H SES and I’m an enrolled member of the three affiliated tribes the Mandan hiad and orara was born and raised here on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation attended schools here all my life I’m the oldest daughter of Avis Baker mayor and the oldest granddaughter of May Howard coffee and it’s proper for us to introduce ourselves through our mother’s lineage because of the matriarchal uh lineage uh Heritage and uh you might wonder why a physician would be interested in the Lewis and Clark well back when I was attending school here when we all went to school you would check a book out with writing your name on a white card on the inside cover of the book well they don’t do that anymore they scan them him and a young girl came up to my house about 10 years ago and she had this book um that somebody had signed on in 1972 and it had my name on there that was the last person that signed that book out and the title of the book was the upper Missouri River Indians and Lewis and Clark so I guess I’ve been reading about this time this topic for a very very long time and I became very interested in my personal history and bought every book I could get on the three phil8 tribes and we are intimately tied with the lwis and Clark it’s hard to separate us so then of course I got all the journals and read the journals in fact I have the Gary Molton Edition the the one that’s like $3,000 that I don’t let anybody touch and I’m very obsessive compulsive about that’s my primary um my primary source that I use to obtain most of my information but you know books are wonderful things because they can change our lives and I I think young people don’t read as much as we did here in this in this room because of their access to computers and so forth but certainly my medical books have changed my life dramatically but also I think the Lewis and Clark as well has as as well as just understanding my personal history which you know I do every day as a physician here in New Town and when I left here in 1978 I couldn’t decide what I wanted to be when I grew up so I got an associate of arts and education or business management after accounting to I decided that’s enough of that so I became a school teacher and taught high school for a while and came back after my father had passed away and me and my two younger sisters uh all went to the University of North Dakota and I received my doctorate there and while I was there I joined the army to be all that I could be and get my school paid for and uh was 6 years in the military my youngest sister I finished my doctorate there and my younger sister Holly who works here in New Town is the director of Public Health nursing and she received her Nursing degree and my baby sister Renee uh is the tribal Social Services director here and received her masters in social work so our mother was very um obsessive compulsive too about reading and going to school and so forth so and it wasn’t good enough to go to school you had to come back home home with your skills and practice here so I’m very honored and privileged to practice medicine here I’ve been in New Town for8 years I worked for Trinity Medical Center out of minet and run my own clinic in the city of Newtown where it’s a real opportunity to take take care of all people in our community so I think it makes perfect sense that somebody like me would be interested in lwis and Clark from a historical from an educational from a medical standpoint of view and so that’s where my interest lied and and with that I’m going to go ahead and go into the PowerPoint presentation I entitled it we proceeded on let’s take a quick look at the general overview in the medical world and how they got ready and come up the Missouri to North Dakota and by the way for those of you not from North Dakota I am a staunch North Dakota I don’t really care what lisis and Clark did before North Dakota or did after North Dakota just in North Dakota I didn’t mean to be insultive to anybody on that at any rate let’s take a quick overview of Lewis and Clark this will be like history 101 and we’re going to go really really fast today because we’re on a shorttime schedule cuz I thought I was on at 11:30 so I apologize for being late let’s take a look at Thomas Jefferson Maryweather Lewis and William Clark and you know it Thomas Jefferson was such an interesting man brilliant and a Visionary of this whole entire United States and he was raised by a physician and carried many many different hats but he was most proud of his authorship of the Declaration of Independence which is a wonderful document if you have not read it and he you know his beloved monello he entertained people and so forth like that and you know Thomas Jefferson he created the first photocopy machine he wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote with his quill he took a piece of wood and hooked it to another quill so every time he’d write he’d have a photocopy of the document that he had and he wrote tens of thousands of documents and um what a wonderful scientist and Visionary he was and he he was controversial in the fact that he did have an affair after his wife had passed away he never remarried and her name was Sally hemings who fathered four children four sons and um do do you all remember the Bill Clinton Monica Lewinsky ordeal no I really loved my name Monica until that Monica Lewinsky went and blew it for all of us you know had Thomas Jefferson in his time had the media and the and the newspapers and the radio and so forth his legacy may not have been what it was you know today had um that been available in his time but Congress knew about it and they persecuted him for that because it was a very big issue of his time at any rate he failed four times before he got this off and I always tell young people it’s in our failures that we become successful and when he finally became president he had the vision to purchase the Louisiana Purchase territories if you’ll take a look and I don’t know how well you can see but the purple area is the Louisiana purchased territories owned by France then Spain and then back to France in 1800 at that time Napoleon was the emperor of France you know they got that little man syndrome that’s him in United States if you look the people were crossing over that Mississippi River and coming into the Louisiana purchased territory areas and and Napoleon didn’t like that and so he gathered 28,000 soldiers to come across and stop those colonists and build a new Viva France and a new world power cuz he wanted to be the emperor of the world not just France but the world now just look at that I if if he’d had those 28,000 soldiers reach New Orleans we’re sitting on what would be French territories y all would be having some sort of lunch like cinjun me meal today if he’d had been successful right well fortunately for us he wasn’t he um put those 28,000 people on ships and just imagine what what that had to be like and they got to the South tip of Florida where one of their territory Santa Domingo was a rebellion going on and out of those 28,000 soldiers less than a thousand returned to France and they never did get to New Orleans why not Weaponry small poox malaria yellow fever so disease sets the stage and changes the course of history and it’s it’s a very interesting story and uh this is Napoleon he looks very little man doesn’t he so we sum it up this way you know and Jefferson wanted this land he was going to take it by force but preferably by and so when those 28,000 soldiers were decimated by disease um it annihilated basically uh Napoleon’s Army so he sold it because he didn’t want great Britain to have it who he was Waring with seems like Great Britain wared with everybody huh at any rate he sold this land for 15 million Acres at 3 cents an acre the Bess that’ll be the best real estate deal ever to go down on the planet Earth huh and so he purchases the territory and he leaves St Louis he has to get ready and of course he goes to Congress to get the money he had to fangle this because you know the Congress didn’t they didn’t think this was a good idea to buy this Louisiana purchased territory and then of course he had Sally hemings hanging over his back but he got $2,500 to get started but you know how the federal government is they inflated it up to $38,000 so and he summed his Louisiana Purchase territory in a document he wrote in 1805 this way we shall delate with correctness the great arteries of this country and those who come after us will extend the ramifications as they become acquainted with them and fill up the canvas We Begin and we’re all doing that today let’s take a look at these two fellows Lewis Clark Lewis was a Virginia he actually was raised to do a plantation and he was taught a lot about plants and herbs to his mother who was a herbologist in Virginia he was only 29 when he went on this Expedition pretty young he was described as melanine which is a bipolar dis disease such as we know today as manic depressive and he was a very very heavy drinker and very controversial in that was his death a suicide or was it homicide and I think a lot of you know that’s the glory of History we really never know you can kind of deduced from your own deductions and evidence and documentation you read but I I think most historians would agree that he did commit suicide primarily because he was prone to depression he had large gaps in his journals that probably where he cycled in depression he drank very heavily and he was ordered by the president to produce his journals and he did not have them he was on his way to present them to M uh Thomas Jefferson at Montello when he died and further more uh he was broke you know after this Expedition everybody got paid and you know just imagine when when our astronauts went to the moon we kind of had a pretty good idea what was up there and when they came back we had great big parades and parties in Washington I’m sure these guys did too and he partied like a monster for a year and spent all his money so he’s broke he’s prone to heavy drinking prone to depression and didn’t have his journals and I think that’s the evidence that most people look at and most likely he contributed to his probable suicide whereas William Clark he was more of the muscle Lewis was the brain Clark was the muscle known as redhead by the Indians and he had brought his slave uh York with him and he lived a full long successful political life I put the core Discovery men up here and you can’t see it very well but Sergeant Ordway Patrick gas and Joseph White House are all highlighted because these three individuals could read and write the rest of them couldn’t besides Lewis and Clark and if you look at the very bottom on the left side I have highlighted here private Thomas Howard now private Thomas Howard I highlighted that if you recall I introduced myself as being the oldest granddaughter of May Howard coffee and you know it’s all in the mind of the reader uh December 11 1804 the journals enter this private Thomas Howard he jumped the fort fence to get back in because the doors closed that night and three Mandan warriors were with him and he got caught by lwis and Clark and he was punished for doing such an act and showing these mam Warriors how to get get in and 100 flocks well you know again it’s all in the mind of the reader interpretation so I’m thinking to myself okay December cold winter in North Dakota what is a man doing out in the middle of nowhere and takes 100 Vlogs for it yeah this is a fast crowd right some crowds just don’t they don’t follow me with that well I have an aunt who works as the public relations for our tribe Glenda Embry I’m sure she’s around here taking pictures her and I were just fascinated with that passage and I read it over and over we tried to trace that but you know at the end of the Expedition everybody got paid and they signed their letter X and many of the men returned back to the bandan villages we cannot prove it but I have a very sneaky hunch that I’m probably a descendant of the core Discovery as well as the mha people now every nobody got paid on this Expedition except for one person sakaka the only female yeah yeah all the girls in the crowd I always say and all the women oh you know anyway medicine back then they didn’t have anything basically nothing no school no journals no trained doctors and if you got sick it’s because you have a bad spirit in your body and so we got to make you throw it up poop it out or bleed you you know and that’s kind of interesting because you know George Washington most historians by its description he had strep throat but he believed in this bleeding process so Faithfully that he actually died from hemorrhaging and so you know I always wonder gosh you know this guy down here he might be too not very ill so I think I’ll take a half a pint from him but oh gosh this guy over here you know three or four pints and so you know Thomas Jefferson just did not like the way they practice medicine he had a great disdain for it and he had his own medicine chest which incidentally this picture it’s upside down but he summed up medicine this way 200 years ago when they practiced medicine thus fullness of the stomach we relieve by a Medics disease of balls by Purge inflammation by bleeding being syphilis by Mercury and if you don’t know what’s going on give him a little bit of opium well you know some of us still do that I think now the Army didn’t know much more they didn’t have any doctors and lots of diseases and you know poor hospitals but they knew about fevers and everything was called a fever Camp fever yellow fever jail fever you catch diseases drink clean water put your toilet Downstream and bury your bodies away from the camp but they did not know about bacteria and basic hygiene diet nutrition and preventive medicine that were just starting to kind of really try to grasp now in a new Millen New Millennium and interesting about basic hygiene the men of Lewis and Clark were very very astonished to find that the Indian people would clean every day and bathe and wash themselves and put grease in their hair you know the men of leis and Clark did not bathe that frequently and you know interestingly here in North Dakota in 1910 when they homesteaded our great state it was unchristian-like to take a bath more than once a week and so that’s a very interesting aspect that they documented and wrote down and the colonists didn’t know much either more than that you know 200 years ago only five medical schools or only 250 people with a degree 100 years ago only 100 only one in 10 doctors had a degree you wouldn’t even think about coming to see me if I wasn’t through medical school with a residency trained and board certified and years of experience you know you just you wouldn’t so we’ve come a very long way in a short distance now just imagine yourselves getting ready for this Expedition what are you going to take I see Dr Nordell in the back and her and I go to the Caribbean once a year ask two women to pack for 10 days hello try packing for 2 and A2 years what are you going to take and you don’t got no doctor so you know Jefferson had to consult with Dr Benjamin Rush who who by the way did have a degree and he was one of five doctors that signed this declaration of independence and he carried a lot of titles you know he was one of these the bleeder they called him you know he’d go around cutting everybody and bleeding them cuz they have a bad spirit in their body and he wrote 10 healthc care Commandments and I put them up just the way he had them flannel worn next to the skin especially in the winter always take a little raw Spirits after being very wet or much fatigued and as little as possible at any other time when you feel the indisposition fasting and resting diluting drinks for a few hours take a sweat and if caused of take Purge of two pills every 4 hours until you operate freely all right we got to stop for a second here they didn’t have pills back then Dr Rush created a pill and if you’ve ever had a yogurt covered peanut that’s what they look like kind of these big round white nuggets if you went downtown to our local you know drugstore bought a box of xlxs took that whole box at one time that would equal one of Dr Rush’s pills it was made of jalup and cill a little mercury and another ingredient so uh This Crowd can understand that concept of the potency that these pills had and you know again it’s in the mind’s reader again just think those poor guys if you imagine yourselves as being the men on the Lewis and Clark Trail you got to go up the Missouri it’s hot cuz you leave in May and it’s you know June July August mosquitoes and flies and you’re sore and you’re tired and you’re only eating meat with flour and salt pork and no fruits and vegetables you got boils and denter and scurvy and you go up to Captain Clark you say Oh Captain Clark I don’t feel very good and so he says to you here take a Dr Rush’s pill boy those poor guys they must have pooped all the way up to Missouri and all the way back down huh un usual positiveness is often a sign of disease and when you feel it take one or two of the pills where salt cannot be had with your meat steap it a day or two in common line difficult prizes eat sparingly more safe to your health wash your feet with Spirit when chilled and molasses with your drinks shoes without heels and lay down when you’re tired I cataloged all the medicines here and um listed all of the them by name and how much they took we still use a lot of these medicines today and take a look there’s 50 dozen of Dr Rush’s pills for five bucks $969 for 29 people for 2 and a half years today if you got sick I gave you an antibiotic augmenting for 10 days $120 one person 10 days that’s inflation medicines up there say four penis Duo and I had gone through each one of these to figure out what they utilized them for while they had a it it looks like a pen syringe and the men had pretty rampant veneral disease and they would insert this pen and put inject mercury in there for the STDs and the men in the crowd always go ooh and the women look at him and I don’t feel sorry for you so here you go you’re men on the Lewis and Clark Trail you got to gather all this information and you’re going up this River it’s hot you leave at 5: every morning you’re only eating 9 to 10 pounds of meat a day with no you know no fruits and vegetables You Got Scurvy boils on your skin because you don’t have the proper vitamins and you enter North Dakota in sad pitiful poor shape and you meet a well-known group of people the banda hiza and Aika two Mandan villag and three HDs of villages each while one had about 4 or 6,000 people no flushing toilets and matrial lineal primarily and in North Dakota it’s located at these sites here a little bit south of our reservation and incidentally you know um small pox hit in 1837 after Lewis and Clark left the villages were burned down to the ground Chief forbears Jed July 30th 1837 from small pox our casino and our Bridge our name in his honor and they traveled further up to like a fishook village which pox then infested them and then eventually up to Alba woods and Independence and then the Garrison diversion project in the ‘ 50s flooded us out and here we are today this is a beautiful picture that I’m sure you can’t see but George Catlin painted Us in 1833 3234 and this is a picture of sakuya’s Village and how grateful we are for the picture to see what we look like how we lived how we dressed and the Earth lodges were very well constructed and an architectural genius owned by the women the land was owned by her the children were owned by her she took their they took her last name and she owned the crop and there was lots of friendly exchange between them and you know just to say hello to one another you know there was mandan’s language hiza there was Rika there was Shi there was French there was English so just to say hello had to be a very difficult process to do and black moccasin 30 years later when George Catlin was painting him said please say hello to redhead my friend and they remembered that 30 years later I thought that was very interesting and this is Chief forbears he was just a boy when Lis and Clark came and white coyote was one of the principal Chiefs at the time and there was again like I said lots of friendly exchange and here’s a picture of the replica of the fort down in um Stanton Washburn area and I looked at that and I thought wow that’s a big tall fence that uh private Thomas Howard had to jump in the earth Lodge they’re very well constructed and um were very famous for these architectural Geniuses designed by the women and there was a child that had an absis on his back that a mother um took to men leis and Clark who made a scalpel amputated his toes the mother was so grateful she carried a 100 pound of corn on her back to thank him and that soup was turned into corn soup vitamins and minerals rich in many many uh sources and so there was lots of friendly exchanges uh that went on there including the assistant of sakaka delivering her child and when they left when they entered North Dakota they were pitifully poor health scurvy boils and when they left they left in a perfect state of health according to this document he wrote and for the sake of time I’m going to end my PowerPoint with um not only plants did we share and uh other contribution of sweats and the corn but also um The Daily bathing and medicinal herbs and plants that we utilize that were so fascinating that led the door open for besides bleeding people to um utilize the plants and herbs that we use today and I think that’s how they survived and I’ll end it with this they made an 8,000 M Journey it was more than a well stocked Medicine Chest it was it’s my personal opinion it was their devoted attention to healthc care that contributed most to the success and their diplomatic Su success is how they devoted health care and attention to the Indian people as well 200 years ago Lewis and Clark arrived here and met our ancestors here in North Dakota and they met the well-known group of people the Mandan the hza and the rarra whose way of life would be recorded by many and they shared their ideas their Foods their medicines and knowledge freely with the core in a spirit of cooperation peace and mutual productivity if two cultures can do that 200 years ago most certainly we can do it once again today my name is good medicine thank you very much for listening to me and thank our ancestors for I’m sure they are all with us today and I’ll conclude my presentation with we proceeded on thank you very much thank you Dr mayor thank you very much ently we have run out of time for Dr mayor but to let her and and mic’s still on all right to allow you to H answer your questions that I’m sure you have for Dr mayor we will set her table up outside of our Tena many voices to the left there and she can have a more of a one-on-one conversation with you all if you have further questions about the mesons of the Expedition or um or further in her program of for PowerPoint coming up next we have uh gentleman Fred Baker who’s going to be talking about Mand and had Mandan Hada culture in history and they’ll be here in about 10 minutes so please allow us to uh to gather Dr mayor’s stuff and bring it outside e

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