Rogers Archaeology Lab

Garrison Dam Archaeology: 32ML1 – Fort Stevenson

By Lotte Govaerts

 

This post is part of a series on the historical archaeology of the River Basin Surveys (RBS). In this installment I discuss site 32ML1, Fort Stevenson. The site was a military post from 1867 until 1883. After its abandonment by the military, the buildings were used as an Indian school until 1894. Now submerged below the waters of Lake Sakakawea in present-day McLean County, Fort Stevenson was built on a level terrace that almost formed an island, between Garrison and Douglas Creeks, on the north side of the main channel of the Missouri, which at that point flowed eastward. The site is approximately 89 miles north of Bismarck (Mattison 1951, p. 53; Smith 1960, p. 168). As we’ve discussed previously, Garrison Creek was named for the garrison stationed at Fort Stevenson (Mattison 1951, p. 54).

I did not study this site for my dissertation; therefore, I do not have detailed information to share about its artifact assemblage, as I did for the other historical sites in the Garrison Dam area I discussed here. However, the excavation report (Smith 1960) includes a list of all excavated materials. A link to a digital version is included in the reference section below.

Figure 1: Some of the buildings at Fort Stevenson in an undated photo taken by an unknown photographer between 1870 and 1890 and labeled "Fort Stevenson, Dakota territory" in the photographic print collection of the State Historical Society of North Dakota. SHSND B0357.

History of the Site

Ray H. Mattison (1951) wrote a history of Fort Stevenson early in the Missouri Basin project; it was mainly based on archived documents, including letters sent from Fort Stevenson and records from the Surgeon General’s office and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Another primary source regarding the history of Fort Stevenson consulted in the writing of this history was the journal of Philippe Regis de Trobriand, a French aristocrat who moved to the United States and later served in the US military. He oversaw the fort from 1867 until 1869 and kept a journal during his time there (and elsewhere in the American West); he also made sketches of Forts Stevenson and Berthold (de Trobriand 1951).

Figure 2: Fort Stevenson Winter Quarters, by de Trobriand. State Historical Society of North Dakota SHSND 12470

As we previously discussed, US military presence in the northern plains increased in the second half of the nineteenth century. The growing number of US settlers passing through the area led to increased conflict with Indigenous populations. Fort Stevenson was one of many forts built during this period. After a conflict between the US and the Dakota in Minnesota in 1862, some of the Dakota left Minnesota and headed west. In 1863, the US government sent Generals Sibley and Sully to pursue them. They fought several other groups of Native people, but not did not find the Dakota they were after. Sully was sent on a second expedition in 1864. During this second expedition, he visited Fort Berthold, where he left the 6^th Iowa Cavalry. Fort Berthold was a trade post, operated by a private company, not a military establishment. However, 19^th century traders on the Upper Missouri had close ties to the government and regularly interacted with Indian agents and military personnel. Troops moved into Fort Berthold on September 3rd, but due to disagreements, moved outside the fort in April 1865 (Mattison, 1951, p. 56).

A suitable location was sought for a new fort, which was originally going to be called New Fort Berthold. Several factors were considered when deciding the new fort’s location: it was to be a link in the chain of forts from Minnesota to the gold mining areas to the west, it should be approximately midway between Fort Rice and Fort Buford, and it should be close enough to Fort Berthold to provide military assistance to the Three Tribes, but not close enough to cause conflict. The fort was also meant to serve as a base of supplies for Fort Totten. The most convenient location for that purpose would have been where the Missouri bends to the south, 5.5 miles from the eventual site of Fort Stevenson, but a lack of timber prevented those plans from being realized (Mattison 1951, p. 57–58).

In July 1867, departmental commander General Terry arrived to survey the site and start construction of the fort. He changed its name to Fort Stevenson, after the late Brigadier General Thomas G. Stevenson, a Union general killed in 1864 (Mattison 1951, p. 53, 58). It took until January 3, 1868, before the troops were completely housed. On June 10, 1868, the Fort Stevenson reservation was declared, measuring 71.7 square miles, 45,585.75 acres (Mattison 1951, p. 58, 61).

Figure 3: Stereograph of Fort Stevenson, 1870–1873 (State Historical Society of North Dakota 00670-036)

Fort Stevenson was a two-company infantry post, built for a maximum of 238 men. It appears that at no time the garrison was at its maximum strength, averaging approximately 110 men over the course of its lifetime (Mattison 1951, p. 75).

In his October 16, 1882 report, General William T. Sherman wrote that Fort Stevenson had become obsolete and recommended its abandonment. By this time, the region had changed. The Great Sioux Reservation had been created after the second Fort Laramie Treaty in 1868. Several bands of Indigenous people continued to resist the reservation life the US government tried to force on them, and the two sides continued to battle in the 1870s. However, due to large-scale US settlement and overhunting of the buffalo, these bands were no longer able to feed themselves. With the tribes confined to reservations and dependent on annuities, the US government no longer felt a need for a military presence in the region. Fort Stevenson was officially abandoned on August 31, 1883. The buildings were transferred to the Fort Berthold Agency, and the troops moved to Fort Buford. The Indian Agency continued to use the buildings until 1894, when a new school was built within the reservation, at Elbowoods. On February 14, 1894, the War Department formally transferred the land and the buildings to the Interior Department for disposal. Both were sold at public auction later that year (Mattison 1951, p. 77).

Archaeology

When the Missouri Basin Project undertook archaeological surveys in the area in the 1940s and early 1950s, they were very interested in locating Fort Stevenson, because they considered it an important site (Smith 1960, p. 163–164). This is reflected in its site number, 32ML1; the site of Fort Stevenson was the first archaeological site to receive a number in McLean County according to the Smithsonian’s trinomial system for assigning site numbers.

The area surrounding the site was under cultivation in 1951 and had been plowed and cultivated likely for over 40 years at that point. Field work started in early June of 1951, under the supervision of G. Hubert Smith, and lasted through late October of that same year.  The main aim was to obtain “a more detailed record of the surviving physical evidence of the post and its use” (Smith 1954, p. 128) The archaeologists were also interested in obtaining samples of objects left behind, through the use of systematic field methods (Smith 1954, p. 129).

Figure 4: Photos taken during the excavation of the Commanding Officer's Quarters at 32ML1 (Smith 1960, PL 47)

Certain buildings were completely excavated: the post hospital, a portion of one of the barracks, a portion of the commissary storehouse, and two of the officers’ quarters, including the commander’s quarters. The archaeologists found the documentary evidence to be largely accurate, though they did note some errors. In particular, the location of the post on the ground plan drawn December 10, 1879, was incorrect (Smith 1960, p. 167–168). In addition, while the measurements of individual buildings are accurate, the distance between them is not represented accurately on this plan (Smith 1960, p. 175–177).

The archaeologists investigating Fort Stevenson cataloged 6,099 specimens under 2,134 catalog numbers (Smith 1960, p. 211). Many of these objects are described in some detail in Smith’s 1960 report (p. 211–230). The report also includes an appendix written by Carlyle Smith, detailing the cartridges and bullets recovered from the site (p. 232–236) as well as several black and white plates depicting some of the recovered artifacts (PL. 50–54; see also fig. 5 below).

Figure 5: Some of the artifacts recovered from 32ML1 (Smith 1960, PL 50)

State Park

Although the site of Fort Stevenson was inundated by the waters of Lake Sakakawea, in 1974, Fort Stevenson State Park was established on the shore of the lake, in the town of Garrison (Conrad, 2014). The park includes facilities for camping, boating, hiking, and other activities. Visitors can also learn about the history of Fort Stevenson and the region via interpretive signs and events.

Figure 6: Interpretive signs at Fort Stevenson State Park. Photo by Mark Goebel, via Wikimedia Commons

A replica of the fort’s guardhouse was built at Fort Stevenson State Park in 2003. It houses an interpretive center where visitors can view records and artifacts related to military history.

Figure 7: The guardhouse replica at Fort Stevenson State Park. Photo: North Dakota Department of Parks and Recreation

Moving away from Garrison Dam

This brief overview of the history and archaeology of Fort Stevenson is the last post on the historical archaeology of the Garrison Dam area. We will continue our series about the historical archaeology of the Upper Missouri Basin by moving south to the Oahe Dam area. Stay tuned!

References and further reading

Conrad, Marc. 2014. “Historical Overview North Dakota Parks and Recreation Department”. North Dakota Parks and Recreation Department. Accessed Via Internet Archive WayBack Machine, https://web.archive.org/web/20171208003914/http://www.parkrec.nd.gov/50th/depthistory.html. Accessed March 10, 2023.

Mattison, Ray H. 1951. “Old Fort Stevenson, a Typical Missouri River Military Post.” North Dakota History 18 (2–3): 54–91.

North Dakota Parks and Recreation. Nd. Fort Stevenson State Park. https://www.parkrec.nd.gov/fort-stevenson-state-park. Accessed March 10, 2023.

Smith, G. Hubert. 1954. “Excavations at Fort Stevenson.” North Dakota History 21: 127–35.

Smith, G. Hubert. 1960. “Archaeological Investigations at the Site of Fort Stevenson (32ML1), Garrison Reservoir, North Dakota.” In River Basin Survey Papers 15 - 20. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 176. Washington D.C. https://repository.si.edu/bitstream/handle/10088/22114/bae_bulletin_176_1960_15_1-23.pdf. Accessed March 10, 2023.

Thompson, Clive. 2017. “Stereographs Were the Original Virtual Reality”, Smithsonian Magazine, October 2017.  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/sterographs-original-virtual-reality-180964771/. Accessed March 10, 2023.

Trobriand, Régis de. Military Life in Dakota; the Journal of Philippe Régis de Trobriand. Translated by Lucille M. Kane. Mississippi Valley Historical Association. Clarence Walworth Alvord Memorial Commission. Publications, v. 2. St. Paul: Alvord Memorial Commission, 1951.

 

Previous posts in this series

What is Historical Archaeology?

How the River Basin Surveys Shaped Historical Archaeology

The Upper Missouri River Basin in the Nineteenth Century: Fur Trade 

The Upper Missouri River Basin in the Nineteenth Century: Military Frontier

The Upper Missouri River Basin in the Nineteenth Century: Indian Agencies

Garrison Dam

Lake Sakakawea and the Woman it was Named After

Garrison Dam Archaeology: Village Sites

Garrison Dam Archaeology: 32MN1 - Fort Floyd

Garrison Dam Archaeology: 32ML2 – Like-A-Fishhook Village and Fort Berthold

Garrison Dam Archaeology: 32ML2 – Like-A-Fishhook Village and Fort Berthold

By Lotte Govaerts

 

This post is part of a series on the historical archaeology of the River Basin Surveys (RBS). In this installment I will discuss site 32ML2, which includes Like-A-Fishhook Village as well as Forts Berthold I and II, along with several other buildings associated with smaller-scale traders and Indian Agency buildings from a later period.

History of the Site

Site 32ML2, now under the waters of Lake Sakakawea, was located on the north side of the Missouri, opposite the mouth of L’Ours qui Dance (Dancing Bear Creek) in what is now McLean County. The village and first trade post were established there around 1845, on the first terrace above the floodplain.

 

Figure 1: Representation of Like-A-Fishhook Village, drawn from memory by Hidatsa historian Martin Bear’s Arm (photo: State Historical Society of North Dakota).

 

It is uncertain when exactly the village was founded, but it is clear that not long after the devastating 1837 epidemic,^[1] the surviving Mandan and Hidatsa moved north from their villages near Fort Clark (near present day Stanton, ND), to the region of 32ML2. It is also unclear if the trade post was built near the new village or the other way around, but evidence shows that by 1845, both a village and a functioning trade post existed at the site. The original founders of the village were probably Hidatsa, but it is possible the Mandan were also involved. At the very least they joined the Hidatsa shortly after its establishment (Smith 1972, p. 6–7). The Arikara did not move to the village until later. Around the time of the foundation of Like-A-Fishhook Village, they had taken over the abandoned village at Fort Clark to trade there with the United States. Frequent attacks by various Sioux tribes/bands and the traders’ abandonment of Fort Clark led them to leave that village in 1861 and establish a new one, Star Village, approximately two miles from Like-A-Fishhook, on the opposite bank of the Missouri. Star Village was short lived, however, for a series of attacks in 1861 (Like-A-Fishhook/Fort Berthold was also attacked at this time) caused the Arikara to abandon it and join the Mandan and Hidatsa at Like-A-Fishhook (Wood et al. 2011, p. 203–204).

 

Figure 2: Portrait of Maxi'diwiac, photographed ca. 1910. (Photo originally published in Wilson 1917. Reposted here via Wikimedia Commons)

 

The village at 32ML2 is referred to as “Fort Berthold Village” in fur trade and other euro-American documents produced during its occupation. During the salvage project, researchers started using the name Like-A-Fishhook, based on information they obtained from several sources, as described by Smith (1972, p. 8, 26). One such source is Maxi’diwiac (Buffalo-Bird Woman), a Hidatsa woman born around 1839, who lived in the village. Her memories were recorded in 1912. She stated that the name of the village was Mu’a-idu’ skupe-hi’ cec, which translates to Like-A-Fishhook Village, referring to a nearby hairpin bend in the river (Wilson 1917, 1934, p. 7–8). A similar name , Bua idutskupe hisa a tis (Fishhook House/Village) appears on a map painted in the early 20^th century by a Mandan man named Sitting Rabbit.^[2] Martin Bear’s Arm, Hidatsa tribal historian, also drew a representation of the village as he remembered it, sometime after its abandonment (See fig. 1).

 

Figure 3: Closeup of the map drawn by Sitting Rabbit (Image via Digital Horizons)

 

The first trade post at this location was probably constructed by James Kipp or Francis Chardon for the Upper Missouri Outfit.^[3] There are some references in the literature (see Smith 1972, p. 5) to a Fort James (presumably named after James Kipp). This was most likely an earlier name for Fort Berthold, rather than an earlier, temporary post. Letters and documents show that the name Fort Berthold was in general use by 1846. The name might be a reference to either Bartholomew Berthold (formerly partner of, and related by marriage to Pierre Chouteau, jr.) or his son, Pierre A. Berthold (nephew of Pierre Chouteau, Jr.) (Smith 1972, p. 5–6).

 

Figure 4: Painting of Fort Berthold II by Regis de Trobriand,^[4] ca. 1868. (Image: State Historical Society of North Dakota #12468)

 

In 1858, an opposition company named Frost, Todd, and Company built a second trade post at Like-A-Fishhook Village, called Fort Atkinson. It remained in business only briefly, and when the original Fort Berthold burned down after a Dakota raid on Christmas eve 1862 (Smith, 1972, p. 119; Wood 2008, p. 5), the UMO took over the abandoned fort Atkinson, renamed it Fort Berthold II, and continued doing business there.

 

Figure 5: Interior of Fort Berthold II, looking west. (Photo by S.J. Morrow, 1870. Reproduced from Caldwell and Smith 1952).

 

Military troops were stationed at the fort in 1864–1865. Although they stayed at the site through 1867 (when they moved to the newly constructed nearby Fort Stevenson), they were relocated to buildings outside the actual fort in April 1865. An Indian Agency was established at the location in 1868. Blacksmith and carpenter shops were built at this time, as well as saw- and grist mills. The agency moved to a new site a mile and a half away in 1875 because the original buildings were “vermin-infected” and “tumble down.”^[5] The Three Affiliated Tribes started to abandon the village in 1885, as they were being pressured to settle on individual farms by the Indian Agent. By 1888, only a few Mandan were left at Like-A-Fishhook (Meyer 1977, 134–135).

Archaeology at 32ML2

In 1950-52 and again in 1954, the State Historical Society of North Dakota undertook fieldwork at 32ML2. Smithsonian River Basin Survey crews conducted work there in 1952 and 1954. Several field reports were prepared describing this work, which were later synthesized by G. Hubert Smith in his 1972 volume on the site. Altogether, these crews excavated 20 earth lodges, parts of the original village stockade, the remains of Forts Berthold I (XU21) and II (XU30), and some other associated structures, including homes belonging to smaller-scale traders.

Like-A-Fishhook Village and the two posts covered a roughly circular area of approximately 40 acres (just over 16 hectares). The oldest section of the village was located between the two trade post locations. The first post burned around the same time the Arikara joined Like-A-Fishhook Village, and their new section of the village overlays the original post. The older section had a stockade surrounding it.

Investigators knew from Boller’s description (1868, p. 37)^[6] that the remains of Fort Berthold I should be on the northern site of the village, but could not locate the fort during the earlier stages of the excavation. However, during the excavation of House 20 in 1952, underlying features predating the house were noted. These turned out to be part of the stockade of Fort Berthold I, which was subsequently excavated as well.

 

Figure 6: Fort Berthold I excavation, looking east. (Reproduced from Smith 1972, p. 93).

 

It appears the post underwent some alterations over the course of its existence. The original construction measured approximately 80 feet square (24.4 meters), but the stockade was later extended to approximately 121 feet E–W by 110 feet N–S (36.9 x 33.5 meters).

Fort Atkinson/Fort Berthold II was built on the edge of the river terrace on the south side of the village. It was not oriented to cardinal directions, but rather with one side of the stockade paralleling a section of the village palisade. Here too was some evidence of later enlargement. Boller described Fort Atkinson in 1858 as measuring 100 x 120 feet (30.5 x 36.6 meters) (Boller 1868, p. 72; Wood 2008, p. 93). The maximum dimensions of the stockade line found during excavation, however, were approximately 140 X 180 feet (42.7 x 54.9 meters) (Smith 1972, p. 131). The remains of several buildings and pits were excavated inside the stockade.

 

Artifact assemblages

As I have described before, in my dissertation I compare the artifact assemblages from six different trade post sites on the Upper Missouri. The assemblages from Forts Berthold I and II are included in this comparison, even though both are problematic for different reasons.

The total artifact count from Fort Berthold I is suspiciously low. A total of approximately^[7] 3,680 objects was cataloged across 1,856 catalog numbers. Of those, I used 1,742 objects for analysis. Most likely, this number is low because the site was discovered late in the excavation process, and thus had to be excavated much faster than the rest of the area, in addition to the fact that the more recent section of the village intruded on the underlaying site. The excavation crews working on this site made an effort to distinguish intrusive features from features belonging to the fort occupation (Smith 1972, p. 95–96), and I have followed their judgment, subtracting features labeled as intrusive from my comparison sample. I used 1,742 objects from Fort Berthold I for my analysis. Almost half of those were glass beads (848). The next biggest categories were nails (238), glass containers (148) and imported ceramics (107).

 

Figure 7: "Glazed earthenware from Fort Berthold I" (reproduced from Smith 1972, p. 104)

 

Furthermore, Fort Berthold I is the only site in my comparison sample that burnt down while it was still occupied; all the other sites were intentionally abandoned. However, it does seem likely that the fort’s employees saved what they could and reused those items in the new fort, much like they did when intentionally abandoning a fort.

The artifacts from Fort Berthold I are curated by the State Historical Society of North Dakota. You can read more about the collection in a blog post by Meagan Schoenfelder, here. She has also written about artifacts collected from the village.

The problem with Fort Berthold II, by contrast, is that the general area as well as the actual fort buildings were occupied for a long time beyond the trade post occupation, and the artifacts from all occupations are mixed together, as is evident from the presence of artifacts such as coins that clearly postdate the trade post. Even so, some comparisons can still be made, as I will discuss in later installments. Approximately 24,500 objects were cataloged from the site, across 2,318 catalog numbers. Out of those, I used 20,761 objects for my analysis. Here too, the most plentiful object category was glass beads. I used 11,244 glass beads from Berthold II in my analysis. The next biggest categories here were imported ceramics (2,928), nails (1,967), glass containers (1,568), and windowglass (1,137).

 

Figure 8: Some of the many glass beads recovered from Fort Berthold II, painstakingly sorted by RBS crews and stored in our collections here at NMNH. (Photo Lotte Govaerts)

 

 

Figure 9: Imported ceramics recovered from Fort Berthold II. (Photo Lotte Govaerts)

 

Figure 10: Container glass from Fort Berthold II (Photos Lotte Govaerts)

 

Figure 11: Windowglass and imported ceramics recovered from Fort Berthold II (Photo Lotte Govaerts)

 

Figure 12: Some of the less common objects found at Fort Berthold II. Top left: metal number tags, probably used to label bales of skins. Top right: bone toothbrushes. Bottom left: finger ring. Bottom right: homemade domino. (Photos Lotte Govaerts)

 

In future installments of this series, I will write more about how I used these objects to compare the sites. But first, in our next post in this series, we’ll discuss one more site in the Garrison Dam area: Fort Stevenson, a military post that was in operation from 1867 to 1883.

 

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[1] The steamboat St. Peters carried smallpox up the Missouri in 1837, and the resulting epidemic killed an estimated 17,000 people across the region. The semi-sedentary tribes of the Missouri were hit especially hard, both because they had less opportunity to avoid the outbreak than the more nomadic tribes, and because the US government’s vaccination program did not include them. These populations had already suffered various earlier disease outbreaks. The Mandan sustained the greatest losses of all, losing an estimated 90 percent of their population. The differential outcomes of the epidemic shaped intertribal relations and territorial expansions well beyond the 1830s (Daschuk 2013, p. 66–67).

[2] This map of the upper Missouri Valley from the approximate North/South Dakota boundary to just above the mouth of the Yellowstone depicts various landmarks, place names, and pictorial devices. Many villages pictured on the map were long abandoned when the map was drawn in 1906–7? (see Thiessen et al. 1979 for more history on the map).

[3] As we have discussed previously, the Upper Missouri Outfit (UMO) was the name given to the former Columbia Fur Company after it was bought out by The American Fur Company. In 1834, John Jacob Astor sold the UMO to Pratte, Chouteau & Company, which was reorganized as Pierre Chouteau, Jr., & Company in 1839. It remained in business until it was sold to the Northwest Fur Company in 1865.

[4] Philippe Regis de Trobriand was a French aristocrat who moved to the United States and later served in the US military. He was the commander of Fort Stevenson (near Fort Berthold) in the late 1860s. While stationed in North Dakota, he painted a number of landscape scenes and portraits.

[5] “Those now in use for that purpose are old, vermin-infected, tumble-down log buildings erected many years ago by the North American Fur Company,” United States Office of Indian Affairs, Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for the year 1874 (United States Government Printing Office, 1874).

[6] Henry A. Boller (1836–1902) worked as a clerk for Frost, Todd, and Company and was employed at Fort Atkinson for two years (1858–1860) until the firm was absorbed by the American Fur Company (that would be Chouteau and company? Why is this so confusing??) He subsequently joined the newly created Larpenteur, Smith, and company as a junior partner, and returned to Like-A-Fishhook during the winter of 1860–61, until the company dissolved. Boller returned to St. Louis and retired from the fur trade. The journals he kept at Like-A-Fishhook offer valuable insight into life at the post. See Wood 2008.

[7] The total number is an approximation because the final object count for some artifacts is unknown and because some objects can’t be counted in the same way as others (for example, burned botanical remains).

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References:

Boller, Henry A. Among the Indians. Eight years in the far west: 1858–1866. Embracing sketches of Montana and Salt Lake. Philadelphia: T. Ellwood Zell, 1868.

Daschuk, James William. Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life. University of Regina Press, 2013.

Meyer, Roy W. The Village Indians of the Upper Missouri: The Mandans, Hidatsas, and Arikaras. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1977.

Smith, G. Hubert. “Archeological Work at 32ML2 (Like-A-Fishhook Village and Fort Berthold) Garrison Reservoir Area, North Dakota, 1950-1954.” Plains Anthropologist 2 (1954).

Thiessen, Thomas D., Wood, W. Raymond, and Wesley A. Jones, “The Sitting Rabbit 1907 Map of the Missouri River in North Dakota.” Plains Anthropologist 24, no. 84 (1979): 145–167.

Wilson, Gilbert L. Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians: An Indian Interpretation. Studies in the Social Sciences 9. University of Minnesota, 1917.

Wood, Raymond H. Twilight of the Upper Missouri River Fur Trade, The Journals of Henry A. Boller. Bismarck, N.D., 2008.

Wood, W. Raymond, W. F. Hunt, and Randy H. Williams. Fort Clark and Its Indian Neighbors: A Trading Post on the Upper Missouri. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2011.

 

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Previous posts in this series:

What is Historical Archaeology?

How the River Basin Surveys Shaped Historical Archaeology

The Upper Missouri River Basin in the Nineteenth Century: Fur Trade 

The Upper Missouri River Basin in the Nineteenth Century: Military Frontier

The Upper Missouri River Basin in the Nineteenth Century: Indian Agencies

Garrison Dam

Lake Sakakawea and the Woman it was Named After

Garrison Dam Archaeology: Village Sites

Garrison Dam Archaeology: 32MN1 - Fort Floyd

Fort Union Redux

Great Plains Travel Series

By J. Daniel Rogers

 

The mosquitoes were glad to see us.

If you remember a few posts back Lotte wrote about her visit to Fort Union, North Dakota during a cold spell in late Winter, 2017. By way of contrast I thought it might be interesting to make a few further comments and share a few images of the visit Garry Rogers and I paid to the fort on June 6, 2018 as part of our travels across the Plains. My summer images of green prairie and leafy trees are a nice contrast to Lotte’s frozen pictures of winter splendor. I haven’t written sooner about this visit because I intended to stop at the fort yet again in the summer of 2019. Unfortunately, I didn’t make it back to Fort Union—my route veered further to the west. I will mention some of the summer 2019 travels in a later post.

Fort Union was not a military fort. It was the headquarters of the Upper Missouri Outfit of the American Fur Company from 1828-1867. Perhaps the most striking thing about the landscape of Fort Union is that it sits on the edge of a low bluff along the meandering lowlands of the Missouri River. During the years the Fort was in use the river channel ran at the foot of the bluff, perhaps only 50 meters from the entrance. Today the channel has drifted several hundred meters south and left a marshland offering a remarkable habitat for wildlife, including swarms of mosquitoes. The mosquitoes were glad to see us that day. During my undergraduate years, as part of my minor in zoology, I took a course on the various species of mosquitoes. It did not give me an appreciation for these insects. I have trouble saying anything good about the creatures, except that they are annoyingly resilient and persistent.

With the river to the south, about a mile to the north the rolling uplands take over from the level plain around the fort. It was on this plain that bands of Crow, Cree, Assiniboine, Blackfoot, Hidatsa, Lakota, and others came in procession to trade at the fort and to pitch their teepees. Fort employees grazed their horses on this plain and occasionally chased bison. Famous Euro-American visitors at the fort included George Catlin, the painter, who visited in 1832 and went up to the low hills behind the fort to sketch and paint (Catlin 1973). The painter, Karl Bodmer, in the employ of Maximilian, prince of Wied-Neuwied, did the same, including painting several striking portraits of native visitors at the fort. On June 27th, 1833, Prince Maximilian described in his journal the arrival of an Assiniboine contingent of several hundred warriors, women, and children. The warriors sang and fired their guns in the air (Thwaites 1906). When the famous ornithologist, John James Audubon, visited in 1843 he spent several weeks at the fort describing the birds of the region (Harris 1951).

 

George Catlin painted this view of Fort Union and the teepees of the Native visitors in 1832. (Smithsonian American Art Museum, 1985.66.388)

 

Karl Bodmer painted this scene of Fort Union in 1833 from a location similar to the one chosen by George Catlin a few years before. Image from WikiArt.org.

 

The comings and goings at Fort Union established it as a hub of commerce on the Plains. Like Bent’s Fort in present-day Colorado it was a place everyone visited. Even with many visitors day-to-day life at the fort must have been very routine, although, there were also momentous days full of danger and tragedy. One of those times was the smallpox epidemic of 1837, which so devastated the native tribes that it forever changed the history of the region. The contagion also impacted the inhabitants of the fort. Although a vaccine was known, none was available and no one present really know how to make it. Charles Larpenteur, leader at the fort, began an ill-fated inoculation program that simply spread the disease faster. The head of the American Fur Company was informed that “at Fort Union all was wretchedness and despair—the Prairies covered with dead bodies, and the whole atmosphere tainted...” (Coues 1898:382).

 

 

Fort Union in Summer, 2018

In calmer and happier times my brother and I visited Fort Union. On the northern Plains the winters are long and the summers are short and glorious. Except perhaps on reenactment days, no modern images can capture the life of the fort. I took a few shots around the fort, as any visitor would do. Some are similar to Lotte’s 2017 images (see the earlier post).

 

The southwest block house at Fort Union and the newly mowed lawn, 2018. Photo by Dan Rogers

 

Closeup of the stonework on the block house, 2018. Photo by Dan Rogers

Inside the fort, 2018. Photo by Dan Rogers

A recreation of the painting by J.B. Moncravi that originally stood above the fort entrance, portraying the ideal of peaceful commerce, 2018. Photo by Dan Rogers

 

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References/Further reading

Barbour, Barton H. 2001. Fort Union and the Upper Missouri Fur Trade. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

Catlin, George. 1973. Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of the North American Indians: Written during Eight Years’ Travel (1832-1839) amongst the Wildest Tribes of Indians in North America. Edited by Marjorie Halpin.

Coues, Elliott, ed. 1898. Forty Years a Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri - The Personal Narrative of Charles Larpenteur 1833 - 1872. New York: Francis P. Harper.

Harris, Edward. 1951. Up the Missouri with Audubon: The Journal of Edward Harris. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press.

Thompson, Erwin N. 2003. Fort Union Trading Post: Fur Trade Empire on the Upper Missouri. Williston, N.D.: Fort Union Association.

Thwaites, Reuben Gold, ed. 1906. “Travels in the Interior of North America by Maximilian, Prince of Wied-Neuwied.” In Early Western Travels, 1748-1846. Vol. 22–24. Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark.

 

 

 

End of Year Update, Part I: Writing About the Aztec Empire

By J. Daniel Rogers

 

 

We have been neglecting our blog a bit this year, but we have been busy with various projects since our last update. In parts I and II of this post we’ll discuss some of the things we’ve been working on in the past few months.

 

 

Writing About the Aztec Empire

 

Over the last year, among other things, I wrote about the history of the first encounters between the Aztec empire and the Spanish.  A few years ago I began work on a book manuscript titled In the Age of Empires.  After getting off to a quick start writing bogged down as other obligations took precedence.  I took on administrative duties and began working on team-science projects involving computational modeling, especially Agent-Based Modeling (ABM).  Over the last year, as I moved into my second year of retirement, I’ve found a little time to pay attention to the Empires book.  During September and October I was in Santa Fe with access to a good library.  I decided to concentrate on the chapter about the Aztec empire.  This is one of the case studies that shows the diverse organization of empires, through the lens of culture contact.

 

The drama and peculiar circumstances of the encounter between the Spanish invaders and the most powerful state in Mesoamerica make for an unreal story.  Yet it was real.  In 1519 a small army of about 400 Spanish soldiers and their native allies marched from the coast of the Gulf of Mexico and were welcomed into the capital city of the Aztec empire, Teotihuacan.  Here they proceeded to take the emperor, Mochtizuma II, prisoner.  Although it seems strange, the emperor willingly went with the Spaniards, as his generals and guards backed away.  How could the motives of armed invaders be so misunderstood?  Spanish objectives were riches and conquest.  The Aztecs did not know this.  Instead, they believed the Spanish leader, Cortés, was the returning god Quetzalcóatl.  Here is some of what Mochtizuma said to Cortés, as later recorded by the Spanish priest de Sahagún (1978):

 

I [Mochtizuma] have been worried for a long time, looking toward the unknown from which you [Cortés] have come, the mysterious place.  For our rulers departed, saying that you would come to your city and sit upon your throne.  And now it has been fulfilled, you have returned.  Go enjoy your palace, rest your body.  [We] welcome our lords to this land.

 

Cortés’ arrival met several of the predictions about the return of Quetzalcóatl.  Whether men or gods, there was no denying the shocking appearance and great power of the Spaniards.  The Spanish also brought unseen weapons.  While Mochtizuma was still being held captive in his own palace epidemics never seen before began killing people in large numbers.  The first major smallpox epidemic hit in the fall of 1520.  Was it retribution from an angry god?  The priests, doctors, and administrators feared that it was.  Others took a more practical view.  Their emperor was being held captive.  It was time to free him or die trying.  In the following battle Mochtizuma was killed, probably by friendly fire.  The battle raged and Aztec losses were terrible, but the Spanish were eventually forced from the city.  The Spanish did not retreat very far.  They returned with their native allies and fought and burned as they went.  With the help of diseases like smallpox, Aztec resistance was weakened and the Spanish were eventually successful in their conquest. 

 

To me, great victories and great defeats are always tinged with a tragic quality.  The Spanish victors felt this as well.  They respected the bravery of the Aztec warriors and knew they had been part of something that would change the course of history.  Bernal Días del Castillo (1956:190-192), a sergeant in Cortes’ army, wrote about the city of Tenochtitlan:

 

I say again that I stood looking at it and thought that never in the world would there be discovered other lands such as these ....  Of all these wonders that I then beheld today all is over-thrown, and lost, nothing left standing.

 

The Aztec empire and all the peoples of Mexico became part of the Spanish colony of New Spain.  As unique as the story of the Aztec empire might seem, there is a structure to the encounter with the Spanish that can be compared to other examples of culture contact and the struggle between empires.  Revealing these structures is one of the points of my book project.  Stay tuned to see how it turns out.

SAR library and scholar program offices during a recent snow, October, 2019.  Photo by Dan Rogers.

 

As last year, the School for Advanced Research (SAR) was kind enough to make office space available during my fall visit to Santa Fe.  SAR has a long and distinguished history of sponsoring fellows conducting research on topics related to anthropology.  SAR also goes out of their way to help the random researcher who just shows up at the door—like me.  For this I thank Paul Ryer, Director of Scholar Programs and Katherine Wolf, Librarian of the Catherine McElvain Library.  Every day Ms. Wolf kindly assisted with my diverse requests, while making me feel welcome. 

 

 

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References/Further Reading

de Sahagún, Bernardino, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain  3. Vol. 2nd revised edition. Santa Fe and Salt Lake City: School of American Research and University of Utah, 1978.

del Castillo, Bernal Días, The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico. New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1956.

There are two important books that help us understand the Aztec perspective:

Carrasco, David, Quetzalcoatl and the Irony of Empire: Myths and Prophecies in the Aztec Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.

León Portilla, Miguel, ed., The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico. Expanded and Updated ed. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992.

The Great Plains

(Part of a continuing series of travel commentaries)

By J. Daniel Rogers

 

The Great Plains brings all landscapes down to their essence—earth and sky. No hills, no trees. It is not boring, or blank or incomplete, the prairie is the foundation, the prototype. For me, it is the place to start.

The essence of the Plains. Photo by Dan Rogers.

 

 

All simple and true things are oversimplifications. The Great Plains is not only flat land and ever-changing sky. There are rivers--sometimes very large rivers--and hills and valleys. Stands of trees and forest follow along the river and stream courses. The land is never really flat and sometimes mountains crop up (the Black Hills) while bare mesas define some regions. Today, wherever it is feasible agriculture defines the landscape of the Plains. In some areas new oilfields have popped up.

To the east grasslands give way to ever thicker forest. The Rocky Mountains rise up at the western edge of the plains. The landscape transition to the mountains is something of a shock. Almost no foothills, prairie becomes mountain with little warning. On a recent trip to the Great Plains I marveled at the first sight of the mountains. My traveling partner, Garry Rogers, a landscape ecologist specializing in arid lands, said, “look at the snow!” I couldn’t believe it. “Snow?” As we drove west across the sweltering plains on June 6 I just didn’t think it could be snow. Viewed from 50 miles away, I thought it must be haze or fog on the mountains. Garry was right and I was wrong, it was snow and lots of it. I have lived on the Southern Plains and traversed the Northern Plains, I have hiked prairies and mountains around the world, but mountains still surprise me.

A couple hundred years ago Lewis and Clark led their expedition up the Missouri River. On May 26, 1805 they saw the mountains for the first time. This is what Lewis wrote:

 

In the after part of the day I also walked out and ascended the river hills which I found sufficiently fortiegueing. on arriving to the summit one of the highest points in the neighbourhood I thought myself well repaid for any labour; as from this point I beheld the Rocky Mountains for the first time these points of the Rocky Mountains were covered with snow and the sun shone on it in such manner as to give me the most plain and satisfactory view. while I viewed these mountains I felt a secret plaesure in finding myself so near the head of the heretofore conceived boundless Missouri; but when I reflected on the difficulties which this snowy barrier would most probably throw in my way to the Pacific, and the sufferings and hardships of myself and party in them, it in some measure counterbalanced the joy I felt in the 1st moments in which I gazed on them; but as I have always held it a crime to anticipate evils I will believe it a good comfortable road untill I am compelled to believe differently. [Moulton 1983, Volume 4]

 

 A first glimpse of the Rocky Mountains. Photo by Dan Rogers.

 

I suspect that Lewis knew at that moment the dream of a water route to the Pacific was not even a remote possibility.  He must have known it before then.  He and Jefferson were aware of the Rocky Mountains and that the expedition would need to travel from the Missouri River across the mountains and to the Columbia River.  After all, how can you travel up a river and expect it to connect to an ocean (the Pacific)?  Rivers begin in a series of smaller and smaller streams, or sometimes emerge from a lake.  Perhaps there will be a westward flowing river system nearby, but access would certainly require portages and the eventual construction of a canal.  Two hundred years later it is easy to wonder what President Jefferson, Captain Lewis, and many others were thinking.

Of course, the contrast of prairie and mountain was nothing new to the Native tribes of the region.  The Blackfeet, the Assiniboine, the Crow, the Sioux, and others and many generations of their ancestors often traveled from grassland to forest, from plains to mountains.  And, indeed Native guides led the Lewis and Clark expedition from the Missouri River drainage to the Columbia River drainage and eventually to the Pacific.  The first view of the mountains that shocked Lewis was routine to others, including even a few European trappers who had traveled up the Missouri over the previous 30 years.  I have only twice seen that view, traveling from the east to the west.

On June 1st Garry and I met in St. Louis and began our drive along the Missouri River towards those mountains.  Everywhere we went we were reminded of the Lewis and Clark expedition, such as the L & C Ford/Lincoln dealership in Yankton, South Dakota or the L & C Cafe in Washburn, North Dakota, plus lots of monuments and points of interest.  In Nebraska City, Nebraska we stopped at the Lewis and Clark Visitor Center, a fine museum and activity center dedicated to the Corps of Discovery.  An exhibit about the flora and fauna along the river was especially interesting.  We both enjoyed the replica of the Lewis and Clark keel boat in front of the visitor’s center.  The original was designed by President Jefferson and Captain Lewis.  Presidents these days don’t set down and help design expedition equipment.  Mr. Jefferson was a scholar and intensely interested in the history, geology, flora, and fauna of unknown regions—not to mention making the U.S. a global power.  He did a lot more for the expedition than design equipment, he also intensely instructed Lewis on making scientific field observations.

Garry Rogers and the keel boat. This replica of the Lewis and Clark keel boat was made for an early 2000s documentary. The original has not survived. The expedition keel boat has its own commemorative history, having been featured on the US nickel during the early 2000s. Photo by Dan Rogers.

 

At the Lewis and Clark Visitor Center I picked out a couple postcards in the gift shop to send home.  I asked about stamps at the counter.  The staff person said, “Oh, I’m going by the post office later.  I’ll get stamps for you and mail the cards.  No charge.”  Welcome to the Great Plains!  Everywhere we went we met helpful and kind people curious about why we were visiting their town.

Paying attention to the Lewis and Clark expedition is a good way to reflect on what has changed and what has remained the same over the last 200 years.  For me the point of the trip was to visit some key places on the Great Plains and develop a sense of place.  Mountains are interesting, but prairie comes first for me.  After driving for a couple weeks about all I learned for sure is that I must come back.

____________

[A few months ago Lotte Govaerts wrote in this column about her travels in North Dakota to Fort Union and other important places.   In subsequent posts I will follow-up with my perspective on some of the same places.]

 

References/Further reading

Lewis and Clark Visitor Center

Gary E. Moulton, ed. 1983.  The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition., Volume 1, Atlas, and Volume 4, April 8 - July 27, 1805.  Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Christian, Shirley.  2009.   Before Lewis and Clark: The Story of the Chouteaus, the French Dynasty That Ruled America’s Frontier. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Ronda, James P.  1984.  Lewis and Clark Among the Indians.  Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Travels in North Dakota, Part V: Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site

By Lotte Govaerts

 

This is the fifth and last post about my recent trip to North Dakota. Previous posts in this series are here, here, here, and here. In this post, I describe our last stop in North Dakota: Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site (NPS). The park is located ca. 25 miles southwest of Williston, ND, near the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers, on the North Dakota/Montana state line.

 

History of the fort:

Fort Union was the longest-lived of the Upper Missouri trade posts. Established in 1828 by the American Fur Company’s new “Upper Missouri Outfit” (UMO), it operated continuously through 1867. As we’ve discussed in previous blog posts, John Jacob Astor sold the American Fur Company in 1834. The UMO was purchased by Pratte, Chouteau, and Company (later Pierre Chouteau Jr. and Company). Fort Union was built mainly for trade with the Assinboine, but many other Northern Plains tribes (Blackfeet, Chippewa, Cree, Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara) were also frequent trading partners at Fort Union over the years. The bison robe trade waned in the 1860s, and the company’s business turned mostly to hauling freight on their steamships and distributing annuities to the tribes. Military troops were stationed at the fort in its last few years. In 1865 the Chouteau company sold to the Northwest Fur Company, who in turn sold to the military in 1867. The military then dismantled the fort and used its materials at nearby Fort Buford.

Karl Bodmer: Fort Union on the Missouri. Aquatint from the book "Maximilian, Prince of Wied’s Travels in the Interior of North America, during the years 1832–1834" by Prince Maximilian of Wied (Publisher: Ackermann & Co., 1839). This image shows Fort Union during its earlier years. Image Source: Wikimedia Commons.

 

Because of its size, long life, and importance as UMO flagship post, Fort Union is the best documented of the Upper Missouri fur trade posts. Many records survive alongside writings and depictions by fort employees and famous visitors.

 

Painting of Fort Union by J.B. Moncravie [also spelled “Moncrevie” and “Moncrévier”]. J.B. Moncravie was an employee of the UMO who also had some artistic talent (see Hanson 1972 for more detail on what is known about J.B. Moncravie). He painted a treaty scene over one of the gates to the fort in the 1840s.That painting can be seen (with some effort) in the center of this image. Image Source: Original from the IX De Smetiana Collection, Midwest Jesuit Archives, St. Louis, Missouri. Reproduced here as a photo of the cover of Barbour 2001.

"Fort Union & distribution of Goods to the Assiniboins" watercolor with graphite underdrawing by John Mix Stanley, 1854. 

 

Historic Site Designation and Fort Reconstruction:

After the military dismantled the fort, the site lay abandoned for quite some time. Local interest in the history of the fort, however, led to its recognition as a landmark and the eventual reconstruction of the replica post. In 1961, Fort Union became North Dakota’s first National Historical Landmark. Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site was created in 1966. Archaeological field work took place at the site in 1968, 1969, 1970, and 1972. In 1985 a bill was passed in Congress funding a reconstruction of Fort Union. Prior to construction, more archaeological excavations took place, led by William Hunt between 1986 and 1988. Results of these excavations were used in the planning of the reconstruction. In the various 19^th century depictions of Fort Union included on this page, it can be clearly seen that many changes were made to the fort during its several decades of existence. As you can see in my photos below, the reconstructed Fort Union was built to look like the original fort did in its later years. Much more detail on the efforts preceding the establishment of Fort Union National Historic Site and the fort’s reconstruction can be found on the NPS’ page “Fort Union at Fifty, 1966-2016: An Online Exhibit.”

 

An 1865 drawing of Fort Union by Benjamin Franklin Griffin, a soldier stationed at Fort Union. Image Source: National Park Service, FOUS 568.

 

Our visit to the site:

Mat and I visited Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site after the blizzard we’d been traveling through had finally ended, though some fresh snow had fallen overnight which was still being cleared as we arrived. We visited the exhibit in the visitor center (located inside the Bourgeois House), and toured the grounds. We also chatted with the ranger on duty, Loren Yellow Bird. He provided us with much information about the site and the area. Below are some photos from our visit.

 

One of the bastions at reconstructed Fort Union. Note the bison weathervane. Photo: Lotte Govaerts.

The front entrance to the reconstructed Fort Union. Above the gate is a painting that can be seen in some depictions of the original Fort Union. The original was by J.B. Moncravie, who also did one of the paintings included above. On the right side of the photo is a wooden fur press. Photo: Lotte Govaerts.

Mat takes pictures of the reconstructed Bourgeois House, which houses the visitor center. Photo: Lotte Govaerts.

One of the exhibit cases inside the visitor center at Fort Union. Many of these cases include artifacts recovered during the archaeological excavations at the site, alongside snippets of text from journals of employees and visitors to the fort. Photo: Lotte Govaerts.

Mat was thrilled to find this hands-on part of the exhibit, including examples of different furs/hides that were traded at Fort Union. Photo: Lotte Govaerts

One of several sample bead sheets included in the exhibit inside Fort Union's visitor center (non-archaeological). These were distributed to traders by bead manufacturers. Many such beads were recovered during excavations at Fort Union. Photo: Lotte Govaerts.

 

We hope you enjoyed traveling through North Dakota with us! Stay tuned for new posts on different topics, or check out our blog index to see all our older posts.

 

 

References/Further reading:

Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site

Midwest Archaeological Center Featured Projects: Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site

Barbour, Barton H. 2001. Fort Union and the Upper Missouri Fur Trade. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

Hanson, Charles E. Jr. 1972. “J.B. Moncravie.” In Fur Traders, Trappers, and Mountain Men of the Upper Missouri, edited by LeRoy R. Hafen, 73–82. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press.

Kurz, Rudolf Friedrich, and J. N. B Hewitt. 2005. On the Upper Missouri the Journal of Rudolph Friederich Kurz, 1851-1852. Edited by Carla Kelly. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

Larpenteur, Charles. 1933. Forty Years a Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri: The Personal Narrative of Charles Larpenteur, 1833-1872. Chicago: Lakeside Press.

Thwaites, Reuben Gold, ed. 1906. “Travels in the Interior of North America, 1832-1834 by Alexander Philip Maximilian, Prince of Wied-Neuwied.” In Early Western Travels, 1748-1846. Vol. 22, 23, 24. Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark.

 

Travels in North Dakota, Part IV: Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site

By Lotte Govaerts

 

This post is part of a series on a recent trip to North Dakota. You can find previous installments here, here, and here.

 

Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site includes 1758 acres of National Park, just north of Stanton, North Dakota. Inside the park boundaries are over 50 archaeological sites, estimated to span a period of about 8000 years. The main points of interest are the remains of the large villages that gave the park its name.

 

A Map of Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site. Source: National Park Service.

 

Here is a Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site introductory video by the National Park Service:

 

Awatixa X’ie or “Lower Hidatsa” village was established by the Awatixa Hidatsa subgroup around 1525 , and was occupied until 1780-85. The village covered 10 acres and there were at least 50 earth lodges. Approximately 500 to 600 people lived here until the village was abandoned after the smallpox epidemic that struck the area in the early 1780s. The survivors temporarily moved away before returning to the area to establish Awatixa Village, which was occupied ca. 1790-1834. This village included approximately 60 lodges, though the population fluctuated over time. It was burned in a raid in 1834. Awatixa Village is also sometimes referred to as Sakakawea Village, because this is the village where Sakakawea lived before she joined the Lewis and Clark expedition. The site has partly eroded into the river. Hidatsa Village, or Big Hidatsa was founded by the Hidatsa-proper Hidatsa subgroup around 1600. This village covered approximately 15.5 acres, and included some 100 earth lodges. Population estimates for this village range between 830 and 1200. It was abandoned in 1845.

 

The entrance to the visitor center at Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site, in summertime. Mat and I were far too cold to take a picture of the exterior of the building when we visited during a blizzard. Photo: National Park Service.

 

When Mat and I visited Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site, it was still extremely cold and windy, so we did not walk any of the trails or see any of the village sites. Fortunately, there is a lot to see indoors at the visitor center, as well. The exhibits inside include artifacts recovered from the village sites, alongside decorative arts made by Northern Plains Indians and replicas of tools and other objects. Below are just a few examples.

 

 

An exhibit case showing tools made out of animal bone. Our archaeological collections here at NMNH include many of these bones without the wooden handles, as you may have seen in previous blog posts. Photo: Lotte Govaerts

 

An exhibit case showing some local artifacts, including Knife River flint, glass beads, and metal tinklers. Photo: Lotte Govaerts

An exhibit case showing porcupine quill decorations alongside glass bead decorations. Photo: Lotte Govaerts.

Another exhibit case showing quill- and bead work. Photo: Lotte Govaerts

A "bull boat" replica. These were made out of willow frames, covered with bison skin. Photo: Lotte Govaerts.

 

The ranger on duty also took us inside the earth lodge replica just outside the visitor center. The earth lodge is furnished, though wintertime displays are a bit more sparse than those you can see there during summer.

 

 

A photo of the outside of the earth lodge at Knife River Indian Villages, during nicer weather. Photo: National Park Service.

 

Inside the earth lodge. Mat listens to the ranger telling us many things about the park, the region, and their history. As you can see, there was no fire going, but we were sheltered from the wind inside, so we were able to stay out there for quite a while without freezing. Photo: Lotte Govaerts.

 

A diagram of the inside of an earthlodge. Source: National Park Service.

 

 

That concludes this post about our visit to Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site. Stay tuned for the next (and last) installment in this series, in which I will discuss my visit to Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site.

 

Further Reading:

Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site

Ahler, Stanley A., and Marvin Kay, eds. 2007. Plains Village Archaeology: Bison-Hunting Farmers in the Central and Northern Plains. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.

Ahler, Stanley A., Thomas D Thiessen, and Michael K Trimble. 1991. People of the Willows: The Prehistory and Early History of the Hidatsa Indians. Grand Forks, North Dakota: University of North Dakota Press.

 

 

 

Travels in North Dakota, Part II: Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center and Fort Mandan

By Lotte Govaerts

This is the second post in a blog series on my recent trip to North Dakota. Check my previous post for photos from Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park. The second stop my friend Mat and I made on this trip was at the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center in Washburn, North Dakota. It was snowing when we arrived there and the wind had picked up more, but the museum was open and we even got to tour the reconstructed Fort Mandan in the snow. Both are run by the Lewis and Clark Fort Mandan Foundation.

“A map of Lewis and Clark's track, across the western portion of North America from the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean: by order of the executive of the United States in 1804, 5 & 6.” (Image Source: Library of Congress G4126.S12 1814 .L4.)

 

Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center

After the United States acquired the Louisiana Territory in 1803, the government immediately set out to establish a presence in the area, explore, map, and attempt to find a river route to the Pacific. President Jefferson appointed Meriwether Lewis to lead an expedition into the new territory. He and William Clark, along with their “Corps of Discovery” traveled from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean (at the mouth of the Columbia River) and back again, between May 14, 1804 and September 23, 1806.

The Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center has exhibits illustrating different aspects of the Lewis and Clark expedition, as well as ones that illustrate local Native American and fur trade history. These exhibits include many archaeological artifacts, very similar to ones you may have seen in our various posts about our collections work.

Below are a few examples of exhibit cases at the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center:

Display of bone and ceramic artifacts at Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center (Photo Lotte Govaerts)

 

 

"Trade objects" display at Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center (Photo Lotte Govaerts)

 

A bison scapula hoe with wooden handle attached, sitting among other replica tools used for educational purposes. If you've been reading our River Basin Surveys collections posts, you might know that in archaeological contexts, we don't normally find those with the wooden handles still attached, so our photos look a bit different. (Photo Lotte Govaerts)

 

A reconstruction of what a trade room would have looked like, showing many of the items that were traded on the Upper Missouri in the 19th century. (Photo Lotte Govaerts)

 

Fort Mandan Reconstruction

Fort Mandan is the name of the fort Lewis and Clark (and the Corps of Discovery) constructed near the Mandan villages, where they stayed the winter of 1804-1805. The replica Fort Mandan (originally constructed by the McLean County Historical Society) is not in the exact location of the original Fort Mandan. That is because the site of the original Fort Mandan was never found. It is likely in/under the Missouri River now, as the river frequently shifted channels, and does not flow in the same place now as it did when the Corps of Discovery passed through.

Because of the uncharacteristically warm temperatures the area had seen in the days just before our arrival, ice and snow had melted inside the fort and then re-frozen. This made it impossible for the ranger who gave us the tour to open some of the doors and show us all the different rooms/exhibits, but we still got to see most of the fort. The blizzardy conditions seemed kind of appropriate for a winter fort visit.

Approaching the reconstructed Fort Mandan in the snow. The weather gave us some appreciation of what life must have been like at Fort Mandan, though it wasn't nearly as cold as the average temperature experienced during the winter of 1804-05! (see Burnette 2002 and Preston 2004 for information on weather conditions during the Lewis and Clark expedition)

 

Looking into the interior of Fort Mandan. The odd patterns in the soil are frozen footprints. It had been unseasonably warm for a few days, and melting snow and ice had made the fort interior very muddy. By the time we visited, all the mud had frozen again, leaving these patterns, and leaving some of the doors in the fort frozen shut.

 

 

"A reconstruction of Lewis and Clark's room at Fort Mandan.” Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

 

Inside the translator/fur trapper room. It was nicer than the enlisted men’s rooms, but not quite as nice as Lewis and Clark’s.

 

Stay tuned for the third part of this blog series, in which I describe a visit to Fort Clark Historic Site.

 

 

Bibliography & Further Reading:

Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center/Fort Mandan

Lewis and Clark Journals online at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln

Burnette, Dorian J. “Meteorological Reconstruction of the Lewis and Clark Expedition” Emporia State University, 2002.

Jackson, Donald. Thomas Jefferson & the Stony Mountains: Exploring the West from Monticello. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993.

Preston, Vernon. “The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition 1803-1806: Weather, Water & Climate” Weather Forecast Office, Pocatello: NOAA National Weather Service, 2004.

Ronda, James P. Lewis and Clark among the Indians. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002.

Travels in North Dakota, Part I: Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park

By Lotte Govaerts

I have been working with collections from the Upper Missouri basin in North and South Dakota for about four years now, here at the National Museum of Natural History, but I had never actually visited the area until this past spring (late winter, really). My good friend and frequent travel companion Mat and I had the opportunity to take a short road trip across the area in early March of this year. Unfortunately, we arrived in North Dakota at the very end of an uncharacteristically warm period, which was followed by a blizzard. Our travel was impeded somewhat by these blizzard conditions which persisted throughout our visit.

Because of the time of year and the weather, many parks and other attractions were closed or inaccessible when we passed through the area. Despite this, we were still able to see a lot of the sights, and had a great trip. In this blog series, I want to share some pictures from that trip, as well as some historic photos and other related images.

Three earth lodges at On-A-Slant Village, in Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park. (Photo Lotte Govaerts)

 

One of the first places Mat and I visited in North Dakota was Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park, located about seven miles south of Mandan.  The park does not close entirely for winter, but during the off-season, there are no interpretive services, no employees on site, and no exhibits, tours, or other activities. The visitor center is also closed.

 

On-A-Slant Village

One of the historic sites contained within Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park is On-A-Slant Village. On-A-Slant was a Mandan village occupied for approximately 200 years between the late 16^th and 18^th centuries. It was abandoned shortly after many of the village’s inhabitants were killed during the smallpox epidemic of 1781. The survivors moved north to the Knife River region. In the 1930s, five earth lodges were reconstructed on the site by Civilian Conservation Corps crews.

Tracks in the snow lead to the entrance of an earth lodge at On-A-Slant Village. (Photo Lotte Govaerts)

 

It was extremely cold when we visited, with an icy wind blowing. With no fire going, it wasn’t particularly warm inside these earth lodges, but we could appreciate how well-insulated they were, as the wind could not penetrate the walls at all.

Selfie inside an earth lodge at On-A-Slant Village. (Photo Lotte Govaerts)

 

 

Close-up of interior of roof of an earth lodge at On-A-Slant Village. (Photo Lotte Govaerts)

Interior of larger, ceremonial lodge at On-A-Slant Village. (Photo Lotte Govaerts)

 

Interior of the larger, ceremonial earth lodge at On-A-Slant Village. Human (me) for scale. (Photo Mathew Patterson)

 

 

Outside of an earth lodge at On-A-Slant Village. The Missouri river can just be seen on the right. (Photo Lotte Govaerts)

 

1930s photo of Civilian Conservation Corps crew working on the construction of an earth lodge at On-a-Slant Village. (Image source: North Dakota Parks and Recreation, 50^th Anniversary Photo Album)

 

 

Fort Abraham Lincoln

Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park of course also includes the site of the fort it was named for.

Almost a century after the Mandan left the area, in June 1872, an infantry post named Fort McKeen was established in this location. It was soon renamed Fort Abraham Lincoln. A cavalry post was added the next year. Fort Abraham Lincoln housed three companies of the 6th and 17th Infantries and six companies of the 7th Cavalry, making it one of the largest military forts in the Northern Plains. It is perhaps most famous for being the home base from which the 7^th Cavalry under Custer started out on the expedition that ended in their defeat at the Greasy Grass or Little Bighorn.

The house where George and Elizabeth Custer lived has been restored, along with the commissary storehouse, enlisted men's barracks, a granary, and a stable. Visitors can take tours, but not during the winter season when we visited.

Wide view of some of the reconstructed buildings at Fort Abraham Lincoln. (Photo Lotte Govaerts)

 

A close-up of the reconstructed Custer house, taken on a nicer day. (Image source: Wikimedia Commons)

 

Quite a few historical drawings and photographs exist of Fort Abraham Lincoln and the Custer house in particular.

 

View of Fort Abraham Lincoln, 1887. (Image Source: North Dakota State University Libraries, Institute for Regional Studies, Dakota Lithographs and Engravings Collection, Folio 102)

 

Officers and their wives at Fort Abraham Lincoln, 1876 or slightly earlier. (Image Source: State Historical Society of North Dakota 0022-H-0034. Via ND Studies)

 

Several people on the porch and steps of the Custer house, sometime between 1873 and 1876. (Image Source: State Historical Society of North Dakota 00260-03)

 

In the next post I will share photos from my visit to the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center and the reconstructed Fort Mandan. Stay tuned!

Further reading:

Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park website

MHA Nation history pages

Chambers, Lee. Fort Abraham Lincoln, Dakota Territory. Atglen, PA: Schiffer Pub., 2008.

Fenn, Elizabeth A. Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People. Macmillan, 2014.

Utley, Robert M. The Indian Frontier, 1846-1890. Rev. ed. Histories of the American Frontier Series. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2003.

Lake Sakakawea and the Woman It Was Named After

By Lotte Govaerts

 

This blog post is part of a series discussing my research on the historical archaeology of the River Basin Surveys (RBS). In my previous post I discussed the construction and impacts of Garrison Dam on the Upper Missouri in North Dakota. In this post I will discuss the name of the lake created by that dam, and the history of the woman it was named after. Like my last post in this series, this blog entry is also an edited version of a section of my recent paper on the transformative consequences of Garrison Dam (See Govaerts 2016 for the full version).

The reservoir created by the construction of Garrison Dam was originally referred to as Garrison Reservoir. Its name was eventually changed to Lake Sakakawea, after the Native woman who served as a translator on the famous expedition of Lewis and Clark.  Sakakawea is the official spelling of her name in North Dakota, but other variations are used elsewhere, including Sacagawea and Sacajawea. There is some debate on the correct spelling, pronunciation and etymology of the name (see Anderson 1999). Because Sacagawea is the most common spelling, I use it here when referring to the person.

 

Figure 1: A 1954 "Lewis and Clark Expedition" commemorative stamp. Sacagawea and Toussaint Charbonneau are included in the image with Lewis and Clark. Image Source: Smithsonian National Postal Museum.

What do we know about Sacagawea?

Sacagawea was a Shoshone¹ woman, born in the late 1780s in what is now northern Idaho. When she was around twelve years old, she was captured by a group of Hidatsa in a raid, and came to live in a Hidatsa village on the Upper Missouri. Sacagawea was later “to a fur trapper from Quebec named Toussaint Charbonneau, who lived among the Missouri River Indians.

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, charged with exploring and establishing travel routes across the western lands acquired in the Louisiana Purchase, spent the winter of 1804-1805 at Fort Mandan, near the Hidatsa village where Sacagawea lived. The Corps of Discovery (the specially-created unit of the United States Army led by Lewis and Clark on their expedition) employed Charbonneau as a guide for the expedition. Upon finding out that his wives were Shoshone, they suggested he bring one of them as an interpreter:

a french man by Name Chabonah, who Speaks the Big Belley language visit us, he wished to hire & informed us his 2 Squars were Snake Indians,  we engau him to go on with us and take one of his wives to interpet the Snake language. (William Clark’s journal entry for November 4, 1804)²

 

Thus Sacagawea and her newborn baby came to accompany the expedition. She is mentioned only intermittently in the Corps of Discovery’s journals.³ Usually on occasions where her actions directly impacted the progress of the expedition: Early on, she saved some precious supplies, including Clark’s journal and notes when a boat turned over on the river, Clark’s journal, May 14, 1805:

… about 6 oClock a Squawl of wind Struck our Sale broad Side and turned the perogue nearly over, and in this Situation the Perogue remained untill the Sale was Cut down in which time She nearly filed with water—    the articles which floated out was nearly all caught by the Squar who was in the rear. This accident had like to have cost us deerly; for in this perogue were embarked our papers, Instruments, books, medicine, a great proportion of our merchandize, and in short almost every article indispensibly necessary to further the views, or insure the success of the enterprize in which, we are now launched to the distance of 2,200 miles.

Lewis wrote (May 16):

… the Indian woman to whom I ascribe equal fortitude and resolution, with any person onboard at the time of the accedent, caught and preserved most of the light articles which were washed overboard. (Lewis’ May 14 entry includes more information about the incident, but does not mention Sacagawea).

Shortly thereafter, Lewis and Clark named a tributary of the river for her:“this stream we called Sâh-câ-gar me-âh or bird woman's River, after our interpreter the Snake woman” (Lewis, May 20, 1805).

Figure 2: Charles M. Russell, “Lewis and Clark on the Lower Columbia”, 1905. Watercolor on paper, 1961.195, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas (via Humanities Texas). The painting was inspired by Clark’s journal entry for October 28, 1805, in which he describes an encounter with local people in canoes on the lower Columbia River: “we had not been long on Shore before a Canoe came up with a man woman & 2 children, who had a fiew roots to Sell, Soon after maney others joined them from above, The wind which is the cause of our delay, does not retard the motions of those people at all, as their canoes are calculated to ride the highest waves, they are built of white cedar or Pine verry light wide in the middle and tapers at each end, with aperns, and heads of animals carved on the bow, which is generally raised.” The people in question were probably Wishram, as the encounters on the river took place near a village interpreted to be Nayakxa’tcix village, as described by Spier and Sapir (p. 166, see digital version of collected works of Sapir, p. 370). Charles Russell, however, was not familiar with the area or its inhabitants when he painted the scene. He likely based the design of clothes and canoes pictured here on collected objects from the Pacific coast, which he had recently seen. Thus, the style is not quite right for the area (Amon Carter Museum of American Art).

 

When the expedition reached the area where Sacagawea grew up, she was familiar with the landscape:

the Indian woman recognized the point of a high plain to our right which she informed us was not very distant from the summer retreat of her nation on a river beyond the mountains which runs to the west ...    she assures us that we shall either find her people on this river or on the river immediately west of it's source (Lewis, August 5, 1805).

Sacagawea’s family ties to the Shoshone they met there allowed for the purchase/trade of much-needed horses for the expedition: “The Great Chief of this nation proved to be the brother of the Woman with us and is a man of Influence Sence & easey & reserved manners, appears to possess a great deel of Cincerity.” (Lewis, August 17, 1805).

The anticipated need for horses to cross the mountains was the primary reason a Shoshone translator was included on the expedition. Lewis and Clark also opine in their journals that the presence of Sacagawea and her baby had a “calming” effect on various Native peoples they encountered, who might otherwise have been hostile: “The wife of Shabono our interpetr we find reconsiles all the Indians, as to our friendly intentions a woman with a party of men is a token of peace” (Clark, October 13, 1805).

From letters and other documents we know a little of her life after the expedition, and that she probably died at Fort Manuel in 1812 (Anderson 1976).

 

Figure 3: Statue of Sacagawea on the Capitol Grounds in Bismarck, North Dakota. Image source: State Historical Society of North Dakota (2013-P-024-0283

Legacy

Although little is known about Sacagawea’s life, she has become a popular figure in American History. The Lewis and Clark expedition is seen as an iconic event in US history, but during the 19th century, Sacagawea’s participation in it was rarely mentioned. This changed around the time of the expedition’s centennial celebration. The persona of a native teenage girl who carried her infant along the perilous journey captured the public’s imagination. Early 20th century white feminists were among the first groups to celebrate Sacagawea’s story, which they appropriated in their fight for the vote. From its beginning, the myth of Sacagawea outshone what was known about the actual person. Sacagawea’s story, or some embellished version of it, was frequently the topic of books and movies throughout the 20^th century. Over time, Sacagawea came to symbolize various ideas and concepts in dominant American culture such as manifest destiny or Native people’s innate ability to become “model citizens” as defined by white Americans.⁴

 

Although no contemporary portraits exist of her, there are more statues of Sacagawea in the United States than of any other woman, including one in the United States Capitol (Summit 2008, p. 109). In recognition of Sacagawea’s role in United States history, the United States Postal Service issued a Sacagawea stamp in 1994. The United States Mint issued a Sacagawea dollar coin in 2000. Many landscape features besides the Garrison Dam reservoir are named after her.

Figure 4: Left: Sacagawea stamp. Image source: Smithsonian National Postal Museum. Right: A somewhat well-worn Sacagawea dollar coin. Image Source: Lotte Govaerts

 

The lake’s name change

The idea of changing the name of the Garrison dam reservoir to commemorate Sacagawea was discussed as early as May 1955 at the North Dakota Federation of Women’s Clubs meeting in Bismarck (O’Brien 1955). Other groups and associations were also in favor of the name change, and the name was commonly used long before it became official in 1967. On July 4 of that year, Public Law 90-46 “An Act authorizing the change in name of certain water resource projects under jurisdiction of the Department of the Army” (United States 1968, p. 112) was signed, officially changing the name.

Figure 5: Article in The Billings County Pioneer, October 25, 1962 (via Google News Archives). Much discussion preceded the lake's name change from Garrison Reservoir to Lake Sakakawea. For more details, see Govaerts (2016).

 

Now that we’ve explored some of the history of Garrison Dam and Lake Sakakawea, in our next installment in this blog series, we’ll look at some of the archaeological sites investigated by the River Basin Surveys in that area before the dam was constructed.

 

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^{1. Sacagawea was born to a band of northern Shoshone called the Agaideka or “Salmon-eaters”. Later in the nineteenth century this band, along with the Tukudeka (Mountain Sheep-eaters) and Kusundica (Bison-eaters) would become known as the Lemhi Shoshone (see Campbell 2001).↩}

^{2. All text from the Corps of Discovery journals quoted here is from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln’s Electronic Text Center’s transcription. This transcription retains original spelling and capitalization as much as possible (see https://lewisandclarkjournals.unl.edu/item/lc.about.faq).↩}

^{3. For an overview of what is known about Sacagawea’s (and Toussaint Charbonneau’s) life, see Nelson (2003).↩}

^{4. For a detailed study of the Sacagawea myth, its genesis and evolution, see Kessler (1996).↩}

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 References:

Amon Carter Museum of American Art, “Remington and Russell, http://www.cartermuseum.org/artworks/339, accessed October 10, 2017.

Anderson, Irving W. “Fort Manuel, Its Historical Significance.” South Dakota History 6, no. 2 (1976): 131–51.

Anderson, Irving W. “History Commentary - The Sacagawea Mystique: Her Age, Name, Role, and Final Destiny.” Columbia Magazine 13, no. 3 (1999).

The Billings County Pioneer, “Need Suggestions for Naming Area,” October 25, 1962.

Campbell, Gregory R. “The Lemhi Shoshoni: Ethnogenesis, Sociological Transformations, and the Construction of a Tribal Nation.” The American Indian Quarterly 25, no. 4 (2001): 539–78.

Govaerts, Lotte E. “Transformative Consequences of Garrison Dam: Land, People, and the Practice of Archaeology.” Great Plains Quarterly 36, no. 4 (December 30, 2016): 281–308.

Kessler, Donna J. The Making of Sacagawea: A Euro-American Legend. Tuscaloosa, Ala.: University of Alabama Press, 1996.

Lewis, Meriwether, William Clark, et al., The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, ed. Gary Moulton, University of Nebraska Press / University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries-Electronic Text Center, Lincoln, 2005.

Nelson, W. Dale. Interpreters with Lewis and Clark: The Story of Sacagawea and Toussaint Charbonneau. Denton, Texas: University of North Texas Press, 2003.

O’Brien, Harry, “Short Stops”, Walsh County Press Park River North Dakota, May 19, 1955,.

Spier, Leslie, and Edward Sapir. Wishram Ethnography. Seattle, Wash.: University of Washington Press, 1930.

Summitt, April R. Sacagawea: A Biography. Westport, CT; London: Greenwood Press, 2008.

United States, United States Statutes at Large Containing the Laws and Concurrent Resolutions Enacted During the First Session of the Ninetieth Congress of the United States of America 1967 and Reorganization Plans, Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, and Proclamations, Volume 81 in one part, United States Government Printing Office, Washington, 1968).

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Previous posts in this series:

What is Historical Archaeology?

How the River Basin Surveys Shaped Historical Archaeology

The Upper Missouri River Basin in the Nineteenth Century: Fur Trade 

The Upper Missouri River Basin in the Nineteenth Century: Military Frontier

The Upper Missouri River Basin in the Nineteenth Century: Indian Agencies

Garrison Dam