Charbonneau's windfall
by Kristopher K. Townsend
At Fort Mandan, Charbonneau returns with a large assortment of North West Company trade goods. A child is given Rush’s Thunderbolts, a strong laxative, and work on the new canoes continues.
Fort Mandan rain
by Kristopher K. Townsend
The residents of Fort Mandan receive their first rain since last November. Lewis and his recently returned hunters rest while the other enlisted men work to free the boats from the river’s snow and ice.
Deer and elk
by Kristopher K. Townsend
Lewis’s hunting party finds elk and deer as they work their way back to Fort Mandan below the Knife River Villages. At the fort, The Coal of Mitutanka and Charles McKenzie visit with Clark.
A happy resource
by Kristopher K. Townsend
Several Mandan men from Mitutanka briefly visit Fort Mandan, and Lewis describes the blacksmiths as a ‘happy resource’. Elsewhere, Clark’s large group hunts near present Square Butte Creek, North Dakota.
War medicine dance
by Kristopher K. Townsend
Posecopsahe (Black Cat) of Ruptáre and The Coal of Mitutanka visit Fort Mandan and spend the night. At Mitutanka village, several soldiers witness a war medicine dance—perhaps the Mandan Wolf Ceremony. In a lodge at a nearby Hidatsa village, trader François-Antoine Larocque‘s ink freezes.
Hewing and guttering
by Kristopher K. Townsend
At Fort Mandan, cottonwood logs are shaped with axes and adzes so that they can be used to cover cabin roofs. A Mandan-Arikara man and his wife cross the river in a bull boat with a load of buffalo meat.
This site is provided as a public service by the
Lewis and Clark Trail Alliance
with additional funding from the following:
