THE MANDANS, THEIR APPEARANCE AND CUSTOMS. 



[Pictures Nos. 502, 504, 505, 506, and 507.] 



MANDAN VILLAGE. 



502. Mandan Village, a bird's-eye view of the, eighteen hundred miles above Saint 

 Louis, on the west bank of the Missouri River, now near Mandan, Dakota. 

 This is the main Mandan village, or largest one. Painted in 1832. 

 (Plate No. 47, page 87, vol. 1, Catlin's Eight Years.) 



The lodges are covered with earth, aud so compactly fixed by long use, that men, 

 women, aud children recline and play upon their tops in pleasant weather. 



These lodges vary in size from forty to fifty feet in diameter, and are all of a circu- 

 lar form. The village is protected in front by the river, with a bank forty feet high, 

 and on the back part by a picket of timber set firmly in the ground. Back of the 

 village, on the prairie, are seen the scaffolds on which their dead bodies are laid to 

 decay, being wrapped in several skins of buffalo, and tightly bandaged. 



In the middle of the village is an open area of one hundred and fifty feet in diam- 

 eter, in which their public games and festivals are held. In the center of that is 

 their big canoe, a curb made of planks, which is an object of religious veneration. 

 Over the medicine (or mystery) lodge are seen hanging on the tops of poles several 

 sacrifices to the Great Spirit of blue and black cloths, which have been bought at 

 great prices, and there left to hang and decay. 



In my last I gave some account of the village, and the customs and appearances 

 of this strange people — and I will now proceed to give further details on that subject. 



I have this morning perched myself upon the top of one of the earth-covered 

 lodges which I have before described, and having the whole village beneath and 

 about me (Plate 47), with its sachems, its warriors, its dogs, and its horses in motion, 

 its medicines (or mysteries) and scalp-poles waving over my head, its piquets, its green 

 fields and prairies, and river in full view, with the din and bustle of the thrilling 

 panorama that is about me I shall be able, I hope, to give some sketches more to 

 the life than I could have done from any effort of recollection. 



I said that the lodges or wigwams were covered with earth — were of 40 or 60 feet 

 in diameter, and so closely grouped that there was but just room enough to walk and 

 ride between them ; that they had a door by which to enter them, and a hole in the 

 top for the admission of light, and for the smoke to escape"; that the inmates were 

 at times grouped upon their tops in conversations and other amusements, &c. ; and 

 yet you know not exactly how they look, nor what is the precise appearance of the 

 strange world that is about me. There is really a newness and rudeness in every- 

 thing that is to be seen. There are several hundred houses or dwellings about me, 

 and they are purely unique, they are all covered with dirt, the people are all red, and 

 yet distinct from all other red folks I have seen. The horses are wild, every dog is a 

 wolf, the whole moving mass are strangers to me ; the living, in everything, carry 

 an air of intractable wildness about them, and the dead are not buried, but dried upon 

 scaffolds. 



The groups of lodges around me present a very curious and pleasing appearance, 

 resembling in shape (more nearly than anything else I can compare them to) so many 

 potash -kettles inverted. On the tops of these are to be seen groups standing and re- 

 clining, whose wild and picturesque appearance it would be difficult to describe. 

 Stern warriors, like statues, standing in dignified groups, wrapped in their painted 



349 



