124 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 77 
On October 19, 1804, the Lewis and Clark party discovered the 
first of the ruined villages of the Mandan, evidently standing on the 
left bank of the Missouri, in the southern part of the present Bur- 
leigh County, North Dakota. It proved an interesting day. “In 
walking along the shore we counted fifty-two herds of buffaloe and 
three of elk, at a single view. Besides these we also observed elk, 
deer, pelicans, and wolves.” The ruined village had been protected 
by palisades and, according to the Arikara chief, who accompanied 
them, had been occupied by the Mandan. These, so they wrote, “are 
the first ruins which we have seen of that nation in ascending the 
Missouri.” During the night of October 19 the expedition encamped 
on the south, i. e., right, bank of the Missouri, evidently about 2 miles 
below the mouth of Little Heart River, which flows from the west- 
ward and joins the Missouri in the present Morton County, North 
Dakota. The following day they advanced 12 miles up the Missouri. 
October 21, 1804, was cold and bleak. Snow and ice covered the 
ground, and the wind blew strong from the northeast. “That day 
the expedition advanced only 7 miles. They passed the mouth of 
Big Heart River and the site of Bismarck, the present capital of 
the State. Two miles above their camp of the night previous, about 
opposite the mouth of the Big Heart, they reached “the ruins of a 
second Mandan village, which was in existence at the same time with 
that just mentioned. It is situated on the north at the foot of a 
hill in a beautiful and extensive plain, which is now covered with 
herds of buffaloes; nearly opposite are remains of a third village on 
the south of the Missouri, and there is another also about two miles 
further on the north, a little off the river. At the distance of seven 
miles we encamped on the south, and spent a cold night.” The next 
day, October 22, they discovered other ruined towns of the Mandan. 
“In the morning we passed an old Mandan village on the south, 
near our camp; at four miles another on the same side... At six 
we reached an island about one mile in length, at the head of which 
is a Mandan village on the north in ruins, and two miles beyond a 
bad sandbar. At eight miles are remains of another Mandan vil- 
lage on the south; and at twelve miles encamped on the south .. . 
These villages, which are nine in number, are scattered along each 
side of the river within a space of twenty miles; almost all that 
remains of them is the wall which surrounds them, the fallen heaps 
of earth which covered the houses, and occasionally human skulls 
and the teeth and bones of men, and different animals, which are 
scattered on the surface of the ground.” (Lewis and Clark, (1), 
I, pp. 112-114.) Other deserted villages were passed as they con- 
tinued ascending the Missouri, to arrive late on the 26th of October, 
at an old field of the Mandan, about one-half mile below the first of 
their then occupied villages. 
