INDIAN TRIBES OF THE MISSOURI VALLEY. 427 
a reliable character was known in regard to the origin and early history of the Mandans. 
Col. D. D. Mitchell, in a letter to Mr. H. R. Schoolcraft, published in the third vo- 
lume of the “ History of the Indian Tribes,” refers to an early writer by the name of 
Mackintosh, who it seems was connected with a French trading company as early as 1772. 
From his own account, he left Montreal in the summer of 1773, crossed over the inter- 
vening country, and reached the Mandan villages on Christmas day. He says that at that 
time, the Mandans occupied nine large towns situated very near each other, and that at 
short notice they could muster 15,000 warriors. Col. Mitchell is of the opinion that this 
author exaggerates in his statistics, but that they were a formidable nation, the ruins of 
numerous villages along both sides of the Missouri bear ample testimony. In 1804, Lewis 
and Clarke speak of five distinct villages belonging to three distinct nations, viz., Mandans, 
Ahnahaways, and Minnitarees. They also allude to a lower Mandan village, called 
‘*Mahaha.” At the present time, the Mandans occupy a small village about three miles 
above Fort Clarke, and do not number over two hundred and fifty or three hundred 
souls. The Ahnahaways were undoubtedly a portion of the Mandan nation, but I cannot 
ascertain that any trace of them exists at this time. In 1838, at the time of the visit of 
Prince Neuwied to the Upper Missouri, two Mandan villages were standing, the southern 
village about three hundred paces above Fort Clarke, on the same side of the river, and 
the other about three miles higher up on the same bank. It is evident that the former 
is now occupied by the Arikaras, while the latter is in possession of the small remnant of 
the Mandan nation now living. At the time of the Prince Neuwied’s visit, the first village 
was composed of sixty-five huts, with about one hundred and fifty warriors, and the latter 
of thirty-eight huts, with eighty-three warriors, both villages, perhaps, possessing nine 
hundred to one thousand souls. 
Our knowledge of this nation, obtained from the American Fur Company, commences 
in the year 1829, when, through that Company, the fur trade on the Upper Missouri be- 
came established on a more solid basis than it had been by the French traders. Anterior 
to the above date, the latter had been trading with these Indians in their usual way, by 
building wintering houses, putting therein a trader and a few men, with a small supply 
of goods, and abandoning the post in the spring, taking with them down the river their 
returns of furs and skins. At that time the Mandans occupied the same village in which 
the Arikaras now live, and also had another a few miles up the river. The lower town 
consisted of two hundred cabins, and the upper of eighty, both built in every respect as 
described in the chapter relating to the Arikaras, the latter, at that time, occupying their 
own village near the mouth of Grand River. We thus see that the account given by the 
American Fur Company of the condition of the Mandans in 1829, does not differ mate- 
rially from that of the Prince Neuwied, as observed by him in 1834. In the year 1829, 
