Corps Reaches Fort Mandan on Oct. 27, 1804

NPS Map

The group from the Lewis and Clark Expedition who landed at Sheheke-Shote’s village of Mitutanka (Matootonha) on October 27, 1804 was very likely the largest party of non-Indians the Mandans had ever seen. Yet, since the Mandans were accustomed to annual visits by enormous bands of trading tribes, this was a very small group and they probably assumed that the white strangers had come to trade.

To the Native people’s dismay, they quickly learned the newcomers intended to continue traveling upriver. The boats stopped briefly at Mitutanka and neighboring Ruptare (Rooptahee), but the visitors kept going eventually stopping directly across from the Hidatsa villages farther upstream. William Clark wrote in that day’s journal entry, “Great numbers on both Sides flocked down to the bank to view us as wee passed.”

About a week later, the Corps would return downstream to build Fort Mandan on the eastern side of the Missouri, not far from Mitutanka. Here they would remain for the next 161 days, until April 7, 1805.