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Touring the Mandan Winter Quarters

By: Falcon Guides

Touring the Mandan Winder Quarters

Washburn is 38 miles north of Bismarck via US 83. The town celebrates its trail heritage each June with the Lewis and Clark Days, which include a parade, buffalo barbecue, reenactments, lectures, and demonstrations. Nearby Cross Ranch State Park is one of North Dakota’s nicest, with its scenic riverside location. Cross Ranch and an adjacent 6,000-acre nature preserve have more than 15 miles of hiking trails, which become cross-country ski routes in winter. Fishing and camping are among the park’s other attractions. For a nice lodging alternative, call the state park reservations line at (800) 807-4723 and ask about reserving Cross Ranch’s handsome Centennial Cabin.

For a long time, Fort Mandan was the least-interpreted major site along the Lewis and Clark Trail. This was fully remedied by the 1997 opening of the North Dakota Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center at Washburn. In a few short years, this facility has scored several impressive interpretive coups. It is one of only a handful of museums anywhere to house a complete set of prints by Karl Bodmer, the Swiss artist who documented life along the Missouri River in the mid-1830s. (The originals, you’ll recall, are at the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha.) It also has had displays of two original documents from the Lewis and Clark Expedition: President Jefferson’s letter of instructions to the corps, and the letter Meriwether Lewis sent back to Washington, D.C., after the explorers’ Fort Mandan winter.

The permanent exhibits include a good overview of the expedition, with special attention paid to the Fort Mandan winter of 1804–1805 and Native American artifacts representing nearly every tribe the explorers encountered on the way west. Visitors can try on a buffalo robe or a weighted cradle board much like that Sacagawea used to carry her baby. You also learn that the corps members routinely ate 5 to 7 pounds of meat per man per day, and that axes made by John Shields during the Mandan winter were quickly traded around the West. (On the corps’ 1806 return trip, John Ordway reported seeing a Fort Mandan ax at a Nez Perce village 900 miles away.)

Here, too, is fine commentary on several questions that vex history students—why, for example, the corps ran into such trouble with the Teton Sioux in South Dakota when their dealings with tribes elsewhere went so well. As one exhibit explains, the Teton Sioux chief Partisan was offended because he had received fewer gifts than his rival chief, Black Buffalo. This incident demonstrated how the captains never really understood tribal ways and methods of leadership. Lewis and Clark wanted to deal with one leader whose word would be law among the tribe, but Indian leaders didn’t work that way. The chiefs’ power “lay in their ability to persuade others to follow,” the exhibit notes. “They needed time to hold councils and talk until the group reached an agreement.”

On Saturday mornings in the summer, school-age children are welcome to take part in the center’s Lewis and Clark Explorer’s Club. Free with admission, the club allows young visitors to pursue an activity that their nineteenth-century counterparts may have enjoyed. Past sessions have included doll making, basket weaving, and making “dream catchers.” Adults are welcome to participate too.

The center is located at the junction of US 83 and North Dakota 200A. From Memorial Day through Labor Day, it is open daily from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Central Time; the rest of the year, hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $2 for adults and $1 for students (kindergarten through college); members of the North Dakota Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Foundation, which operates the center, are admitted free. For more information, call (701) 462-8535.

After you’ve seen the center, plan a trip to the nearby reconstructed Fort Mandan site less than 2 miles away. The replica, approximately 10 miles downstream from the original fort site, was built in the 1970s by local volunteers. It’s now run under the auspices of the state bicentennial foundation, which is adding onsite interpretation and living history. This is also a good place to enjoy a picnic near the banks of the Missouri. Kids will enjoy the trading post, where souvenir offerings include string-your-own trade-bead necklaces. The fort is open all year, weather permitting. It’s staffed from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Memorial Day through Labor Day.

Since Lewis and Clark wintered here, you may wonder whether you might spend a frosty night at Fort Mandan, too. In general, no camping is allowed at Fort Mandan any time of year, but you might be able to tag along with a rendezvous group that sometimes plans winter visits. Contact the interpretive center in Washburn if you’re interested in that sort of thing—and if you don’t mind wind chills that regularly plunge to 20 degrees F below zero or colder.

Fort Mandan was the site of the corps’ first Christmas on the trail, and the captains reported their crew spent the day “merrily disposed.” “We fired the swivels at daybreak and each man fired one round,” wrote Sergeant Ordway. “Our officers gave the party a drink of (rum). We had the best to eat that could be had, and continued firing, dancing, and frolicking during the whole day. The savages did not trouble us as we had requested them not to come as it was a great medicine day with us. We enjoyed a merry Christmas during the day and evening until 9 o’clock—all in peace and quietness.”

On February 11, as Lewis noted, Sacagawea gave birth to her son, Jean Baptiste, the newest member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. “It is worthy of remark that this was the first child which this woman had borne, and as is common in such cases her labor was tedious and the pain violent,” Lewis wrote. Jessaume, the interpreter, suggested to Lewis that a small portion of rattlesnake’s rattle “never failed to produce the desired effect, that of hastening the birth of the child.” Lewis just happened to have a rattle in his possession and gave it to Jessaume. “Whether this medicine was truly the cause or not I shall not undertake to determine, but I was informed that she had not taken it more than 10 minutes before she brought forth.”

On April 7, 1805, the keelboat and 11 men were sent back downriver under the command of Corporal Richard Warfington and accompanied by a vast array of specimens for President Jefferson. Items shipped back included Indian artifacts, 60 plant specimens, many animal skins and skeletons, and four living magpies. Later that same day, the captains and the remainder of the party resumed the upriver trip in six newly built canoes and the two old pirogues