BUSHNELL] VILLAGES WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI Loo 
The expedition arrived among the Mandan November 28, 1738, 
after a journey of 46 days, but soon pushed forward to a larger 
village. Fortunately the journal contains references to the ways of 
life of the Mandan and a brief description of their fortified or pro- 
tected settlements. At that time the tribe was said to have had six 
villages, and evidently all were protected by encircling palisades. 
The village in which the French then rested consisted of 130 lodges, 
and “all the streets, squares and huts resembled each other.” The 
French were particularly interested in the manner in which the town 
was protected, but the account in the journal must exaggerate the 
streneth, or rather the size, of the ditch. The palisade was de- 
scribed as being 15 feet in height, and “At fifteen points doubled 
are green skins which are put for sheathing when required, fas- 
tened only above in the places needed, as in the bastion there are 
four at each curtain well flanked. The fort is built on a height in 
the open prairie with a ditch upwards of fifteen feet deep by fifteen ~ 
to eighteen feet wide. Their fort can only be gained by steps or 
posts which can be removed when threatened by an enemy. [f all 
their forts are alike, they may be called impregnable to Indians .. . 
Both men and women of this nation are very laborious; their 
huts are large and spacious, separated into several apartments by 
thick planks; nothing is left lying about; all their baggage is in 
large bags hung on posts; their beds made like tombs surrounded 
by skins ... Their fort is full of caves, in which are stored such 
articles as grain, food, fat, dressed robes, bear skins. They are 
well supplied with these; it is the money of the country . . . They 
make wicker work very neatly, flat and in baskets. They make use 
of earthen pots, which they use like many other nations for cooking 
their food.” (La Verendrye, (1), p. 21.) In addition to the six 
more important villages there appear to have been others, similar 
but smaller. Referring to these La Verendrye wrote (p. 23): “ We 
noticed that in the plain there were several small forts, of forty or 
fifty huts, built like the large ones, but no one was there at the time. 
They made us understand that they came inside for the summer to 
work their fields and that there was a large reserve of grain in their 
cellars.” Evidently these were nearer their cornfields, away from 
the river banks, and were occupied only parts of each year. 
From this all too brief account of the Mandan it is quite evident 
that when they were first encountered by the French, living in their 
earth lodges, their villages strongly palisaded, their caches filled 
with corn and other food supplies, buffalo robes and bear skins, 
they were in their most powerful and prosperous state. But what 
great changes they were destined to undergo during the next hun- 
dred years! 
