Distant View of the Mandan Village

The Mandan village near Fort Clark in present-day North Dakota was a hub of commerce where agricultural products and manufactured goods obtained from whites were traded for furs, horses, and other commodities with Plains tribes. Though Catlin described them as “entirely in a state of primitive wildness,” the Mandan had been in direct recorded contact with Europeans since the 1730s; French and Spanish trade goods had reached them even earlier. Lewis and Clark spent the winter of 1804--05 with them, and Mandan chief Sheheke visited Washington, D.C., in 1806.