BUSHNELL] VILLAGES WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI 139 
How fortunate it was that Catlin and Maximilian chose to spend 
much time among the Mandan during the years 1832, 1833, and 1834. 
A few years later, in the spring of 1837, the dreaded smallpox swept 
away the greater part of this most interesting nation, and “ when the 
disease had abated, and when the remnant of this once powerful 
nation had recovered sufficiently to remove the decaying bodies from 
their cabins, the total number of grown men was twenty-three, of 
women forty, and of young persons sixty or seventy. These were all 
that were left of the eighteen hundred souls that composed the nation 
prior to the advent of that terrific disease, and even those that re- 
covered were so disfigured as scarcely to be recognized.” (Hayden, 
(1), p. 433.) Soon those who survived deserted their old village near 
Fort Clark and removed a few miles above, and the town was, about 
this time, occupied by the Arikara. It is interesting to know that 
the small remnant of the Mandan continued to follow their own 
peculiar customs and to maintain their tribal unity although so 
reduced in numbers. It will not be necessary in the present sketch to 
trace the later history of the tribe. 
In recent years the State Historical Society of North Dakota has 
caused surveys to be made of the more important village sites in that 
State. In addition to the plans of the sites, showing the position of 
the earth lodges, they have been fortunate in obtaining drawings of 
the Mandan and Hidatsa villages, made by a Mandan living on the 
Fort Berthold Reservation. In writing of the picture and plan of 
the “ most important historical site of the Mandan tribe in the state, 
the one visited and described by Lewis and Clark, Catlin, and Maxi- 
milian,” Libby said: “The Indian chart and the map of the village 
as it appears to-day are here shown. It is seen that the two repre- 
sentations are not essentially unlike. The grouping of the houses 
about a common center, at one side of which is the holy tepee, is the 
predominating characteristic of each.” The Indian drawing, al- 
though crude, shows some details omitted by Catlin in his many 
sketches; but the map (fig. 10) is of the greatest interest. It shows 
the site near Fort Clark as it appeared about the year 1908, and to 
quote from the description: “ In the center of the tepees, on the space 
devoted by the old Mandans to the ‘big canoe’ and cedar post of the 
‘elder man,’ stands now a large tepee (shown in dotted outline) 
which was placed there by the Arikara who occupied the village after 
the small-pox scourge of 1837 had killed or driven away the original 
inhabitants.” The structures surrounding the open space were occu- 
pied by the principal men of the village, and the names as given by 
Libby were secured by him from “Bad Gun, Rushing War Eagle, 
son of the Ma-ta-to-pe or Four Bears, whose portrait Catlin painted.” 
In the list of names “'Tepee No. 1 was the holy tepee and was also 
