Mandan

/man"dan, -deuhn/, n.

1. a member of a Siouan people of North Dakota.

2. the Siouan language of the Mandan Indians.

/man"deuhn/, n.

a city in S North Dakota, near Bismarck. 15,513.

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North American Plains Indian people living mostly in North Dakota, U.S. Their name is probably of French derivation.

The Mandan language, which is Siouan, is nearly extinct. The Mandan, who lived in dome-shaped, earth-covered lodges clustered in stockaded villages, planted corn, beans, pumpkins, and sunflowers, hunted buffalo, and made pottery and baskets. They held elaborate ceremonies, including the sun dance and the bear ceremony, a healing and war-preparation rite. They had age-graded warrior societies as well as shamanistic and women's societies. Artists depicted heroic deeds on buffalo robes. George Catlin portrayed Mandan life and people in a series of paintings. According to him, they called themselves Seepohskahnumahkahkee, meaning "People of the Pheasant." By the mid-19th century the Mandan, reduced by smallpox, were removed to North Dakota's Fort Berthold Reservation, where they live with the Hidatsa and the Arikara as the Three Affiliated Tribes. Some 350 people claimed sole Mandan descent in the 2000 U.S. census.

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▪ North Dakota, United States

      city, seat (1881) of Morton county, south-central North Dakota, U.S. It lies across the Missouri River from Bismarck, the state capital. The Lewis and Clark Expedition passed through the area in 1804–05. The settlement was established in 1873 with the survey for the Northern Pacific Railway (Northern Pacific Railway Company) and was named for the Mandan, a local Native American tribe. A railroad bridge was built across the river from Bismarck to Mandan in 1883. The community developed as an agricultural and railroad centre. Today oil, gas, and coal production are major factors in the city's economy, and a refinery is located there. Health care, government, and business services are important; meatpacking, dairy processing, and the railroad industry also contribute to the local economy. Mandan lies in a major livestock- and dairy-producing region, and wheat, hay, oats, barley, and sunflowers are grown. The Northern Great Plains Research Laboratory, an agricultural research facility, is just south of the city. Mandan is on the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail. Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park, 7 miles (11 km) to the south, includes reconstructed buildings of Fort Lincoln, which was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer (Custer, George Armstrong) before his “last stand” at the Battle of the Little Bighorn (Little Bighorn, Battle of the) (June 25, 1876), and On-a-Slant Village, the site of a former Mandan village. The Standing Rock Sioux reservation is about 30 miles (50 km) south. Inc. village, 1881; city, 1883. Pop. (1990) 15,177; (2000) 16,718.

▪ people

self-name  Numakiki 

 North American Plains Indians (Plains Indian) who traditionally lived in semipermanent villages along the Missouri River in what is now North Dakota. They spoke a Siouan language (Siouan languages), and their oral traditions suggest that they once lived in eastern North America. According to 19th-century anthropologist Washington Matthews, the name Numakiki means “people,”

 In the 19th century the Mandan lived in dome-shaped earth lodges clustered in stockaded villages; their economy centred on raising corn (maize), beans, pumpkins, sunflowers, and tobacco and on hunting buffalo, fishing, and trading with nomadic Plains tribes. The Mandan also made a variety of utilitarian and decorative items, including pottery, baskets, and painted buffalo robes depicting the heroic deeds of the tribe or of individuals. At this time Mandan culture was one of the richest of the Plains; the tribe hosted many prominent European and American travelers, including American explorers Lewis and Clark (Lewis and Clark Expedition), Prussian scientist Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied (Wied-Neuwied, Maximilian, Prinz zu), and artists Karl Bodmer and George Catlin (Catlin, George).

 Traditional Mandan villages consisted of 12 to 100 or more earth lodges. Each village generally had three chiefs: one for war, one for peace, and one as the day-to-day village leader. Mandan social organization was built upon the ties of kinship and of age sets. It included a wide variety of age- and gender-based societies in which membership was obtained by apprenticeship or purchase; these included social, shamanistic, warrior, harvest, and other groups.

      Mandan religion included many ceremonies and rituals that were performed by the various societies. The Okipa was the most complex of these; a four-day ritual requiring lengthy preparation and self-sacrifice by participants, it was an elaboration of the Sun Dance common to many Plains tribes. The Okipa had at least three equally important purposes: to commemorate the tribe's divine salvation from a primordial flood, to call the buffalo and other creatures through communication with their spirit avatars, and to provide a vehicle through which individuals could complete vows made to the Almighty (e.g., in thanks or exchange for curing the sick or preventing death in childbirth or battle). It emphasized community prayer and was punctuated by a series of performances (some ribald) to call powerful spirit-beings to the ritual locale, by self-sacrifice through fasting, exertion, and piercing, and by the giving of gifts from supplicants to their spiritual mentors.

      In 1750 there were nine large Mandan villages, but recurrent epidemics of smallpox, pertussis, and other diseases introduced through colonization reduced the tribe to two villages by 1800. In 1837 another smallpox epidemic left only 100 to 150 Mandan survivors. Some of these accompanied the Hidatsa to a new settlement near Fort Berthold in 1845; others followed later, as did members of the Arikara tribe. The Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara eventually became known as the Three Affiliated Tribes.

      In the mid-20th century, the Three Affiliated Tribes lost a considerable portion of their reservation to the waters of Lake Sakakawea, which rose behind the newly built Garrison Dam. With the flooding of the river bottoms, on which had been the best agricultural land, many tribal members shifted from agriculture to ranching or off-reservation pursuits.

      Population estimates indicated approximately 1,300 Mandan descendants in the early 21st century.

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