Mih-Tutta-Hang-Kusch, a Mandan village
Engraved by Salathe Printed by Bougeard
Tableau 16. Mih-Tutta-Hang-Kusch, a Mandan village
$2,200.00

The Mandan had been dealing commercially with French and Anglo-American traders on the upper Missouri since 1738. Originally they had lived farther south, until smallpox and the Sioux forced them to move upriver to settle near the more populous Minatari or Hidatsa, who welcomed them because the Mandan were good farmers. Like the Arikara, the Mandan and the Hidatsa lived in large earth lodges within village compounds, usually fortified, which served as a central rnarketplace of the northern plains, where the Sioux, the Cheyenne, and the Crow exchanged horses and buffalo meat for vegetables and tobacco. The French and the English, and later the Americans, came to trade guns and manufactured goods for furs and hides.

Of the two Mandan villages located near Fort Clark in Bodmer's day, the summer village of Mih-Tutta-Hang-Kusch comprised approximately sixty-five earth lodges or family dwellings in the summer of 1833. Located on a high bluff steeply banked on three sides, with Fort Clark at its back, its position was regarded as easily defensible. In good weather, the Mandan used the roofs of their lodges for various daily activities. Numerous scaffolds near the lodges also were handy for drying corn and other crops. A palisade surrounding the village furnished additional protection from the depredations of wild animals or raids from hostile tribes, although this paling had fallen into disrepair when Bodmer sketched it.

In preparing the later aquatint of this scene, the engraver shortened the perspective of Bodmer's earlier study to bring the village into closer view. He also added the figures of several women with bullboats in the foreground, which are only faintly suggested in pencil in the sketch owned by the Joslyn Art Museum.

Of related interest, see Vignette XIV in this series.

Mandan subjects reproduced in the atlas include Vignettes XIV, XXIV, XXV, XXVIII, XXIX and Tableaux 13, 14, 16, 18 through 20, 22, and 25.

Text by David Hunt, Director, Stark Museum, Orange, Texas, USA

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