Encounters at the Heart of the World

A History of the Mandan People

Elizabeth A. Fenn

• Publisher: Hill and Wang
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780374711078
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

This Pulitzer Prize–winning work pieces together the lost history of the Mandan Native Americans and their thriving society on the Upper Missouri River. The Mandan people's bustling towns in present-day North Dakota were at the center of the North American universe for centuries. Yet their history has been nearly forgotten, maintained in fragmentary documents and the journals of white visitors such as Lewis and Clark. In this extraordinary book, Elizabeth A. Fenn pieces together those fragments along with important new discoveries in archaeology, anthropology, geology, climatology, epidemiology, and nutritional science. The result is a bold new perspective on early American history, a new interpretation of the American past. By 1500, more than twelve thousand Mandans were established on the northern Plains, and their commercial prowess, agricultural skills, and reputation for hospitality became famous. Recent archaeological discoveries show how they thrived—and how they collapsed. The damage wrought by imported diseases like smallpox and the havoc caused by the arrival of horses and steamboats were tragic for the Mandans, yet, as Fenn makes clear, their sense of themselves as a people with distinctive traditions endured.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Notice
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Maps
• Preface
• Part I: Discovering the Heart of the World
• Part II: Inventions and Reinventions
• Part III: At the Heart of Many Worlds
• Part IV: New Adversities
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• Index
• Illustration Credits
• About the Author
• Also by Elizabeth A. Fenn
• Copyright