Elizabeth A. Fenn is an associate professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where she holds the Walter and Lucienne Driskill Chair in Western American History. She is the coauthor of Natives and Newcomers and the author of the award-winning Pox Americana (Hill & Wang, 2001). She lives in Longmont, Colorado.
Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People
Paperback
(Reprint)
- ISBN-13: 9780374535117
- Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
- Publication date: 03/17/2015
- Edition description: Reprint
- Pages: 480
- Product dimensions: 5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.40(d)
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Winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for History
Encounters at the Heart of the World concerns the Mandan Indians, iconic Plains people whose teeming, busy towns on the upper Missouri River were for centuries at the center of the North American universe. We know of them mostly because Lewis and Clark spent the winter of 1804-1805 with them, but why don't we know more? Who were they really? In this extraordinary book, Elizabeth A. Fenn retrieves their history by piecing together important new discoveries in archaeology, anthropology, geology, climatology, epidemiology, and nutritional science. Her boldly original interpretation of these diverse research findings offers us a 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 these Native American people thrived, and then 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.
A riveting account of Mandan history, landscapes, and people, Fenn's narrative is enriched and enlivened not only by science and research but by her own encounters at the heart of the world.
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“Elizabeth Fenn's Encounters at the Heart of the World is a book about those scrapsand about the author's personal encounters with them. It is a book of fragments or, as Ms. Fenn describes it, ‘a mosaic . . . pieced together out of stones from many quarries.' . . . Somehow the fragments cohere into a more compelling portrait than a more linear brush, and a less personally visible artist, could have painted . . . Ms. Fenn is most compelling when she applies her detective skills to things scientific, medical and ecological . . . Ms. Fenn's mosaic brilliantly overcomes the shortcomings of her written and archaeological sources . . . Readers who follow her toward, but never quite into, the heart of the Mandans' world will be richer for the journey.” Daniel K. Richter, The Wall Street Journal
“Relying on fragmentary documentary records, discoveries by archaeologists, imaginative detective work, evidence uncovered by anthropologists, geologists, climatologists and nutritional scientists, plus paintings and drawings by frontier artists George Catlin, Karl Bodmer and others, Fenn pieces together a rich and remarkably detailed history of this nearly forgotten tribe . . . The product of her work is this wonderfully interesting book that should finally help the Mandans claim their rightful place in history.” Steve Raymond, The Seattle Times
“Anyone who has seen the sensitive portraits of Mandan chiefs painted in the 1830s by George Catlin and Karl Bodmer will be captivated by Fenn's exhaustively researched history of the tribe that once thrived on the upper Missouri River in present-day North Dakotaat one time the center of northern Plains commerce. Peaking at a population of 12,000 by 1500, and still a vital presence when Lewis and Clark visited in 1804, the Mandans were besieged by a ‘daunting succession of challenges,' including Norway rats that decimated their corn stores, two waves of smallpox, whooping cough, and cholera, reducing their numbers to 300 by 1838. Piecing together the journals of white visitors to this then unmapped landfrom the French explorers Lahontan in 1688 and de la Vérendrye 50 years later, to Lewis and Clark, and later Prince Maximilian accompanied by Bodmer, the Swiss painterand the annual reports to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Fenn weaves the historical fabric of this proud people, enhanced by archaeological and climate studies tracing their migrations, food sources, and intertribal conflicts. Simultaneously scholarly and highly readable, Fenn's contribution enriches our understanding of not just Mandan history, but the history and culture of the prereservation northern Plains as well.” Deborah Donovan, Booklist (starred review)
“Historians thought this book could not be writtena history of a world far from document producing Europeans. Elizabeth A. Fenn has done it, and she has made it a page-turner. Her breathtaking accomplishment will make us see American history in an entirely new way.” Kathleen DuVal, University of North Carolina; author of The Native Ground
“In this innovative and illuminating book, Elizabeth A. Fenn reorients early American history toward the geographic center of the continent. There, long before the arrival of colonists on the Atlantic coast, the Mandan people built one of the most important and enduring trading centers in America. Using tools from archaeology, anthropology, and epidemiology, Fenn reconstructs their remarkable story and recounts it in absorbing and transparent prose.” Claudio Saunt, University of Georgia; author of West of the Revolution
“We have been conditioned to view early American history from coastal places inward, but what if we did the opposite and viewed developments from the deep interior outward? Elizabeth A. Fenn's engrossing new book does just thatand to stunning effect. The seemingly isolated Mandan villages in the center of North America emerge as pivotal places where many life-altering forces convergedfrom European trade and epidemics to the Lewis and Clark expedition. The Mandan history of struggle and resilience is filled with drama.” Pekka Hämäläinen, University of California, Santa Barbara; author of The Comanche Empire
“Following the Mandan people from their precolonial independence through their adaptation and survival against fierce odds, Elizabeth A. Fenn presents new dimensions of American life all the way from the fifteenth century to our own time. Her book offers a spectacular demonstration of how much is needed to understand just one place and one people, and how that understanding can then illuminate a very large world. Any reader with an interest in colonial, western, and Native American history will gain from reading Encounters at the Heart of the World.” Edward Countryman, Southern Methodist University; author of Enjoy the Same Liberty
“By recovering the history of a set of native villages at the very heart of our continent, Elizabeth A. Fenn brilliantly shows how we can rethink the past. Working from the native center rather than the colonial and coastal periphery, Fenn deftly reveals the haunting interplay of nature, humanity, loss, survival, and memory in the lives of the Mandans and their neighbors, who both shared and violently contested a demanding yet beautiful land.” Alan Taylor, University of California, Davis; author of American Colonies
“For almost three centuries, the Mandans' society of farmers and traders dominated one of North America's greatest networks of exchange, hosting and bartering with the French, English, and Spanish; with the Hidatsas, Arikaras, Assiniboines, and Lakota Sioux; and, later, with the hustlers, soldiers, hunters, and artists of the new United States. The Mandan saga is, like all human stories, replete with joy and tragedy, triumph and despair. Drawing on a staggering range of sources, Elizabeth A. Fenn has recovered it and brought this very American story to life.” Charles C. Mann, author of 1491 and 1493
Following the Mandan people from their precolonial independence through their adaptation and survival against fierce odds, Elizabeth A. Fenn presents new dimensions of American life all the way from the fifteenth century to our own time. Her book offers a spectacular demonstration of how much is needed to understand just one place and one people, and how that understanding can then illuminate a very large world. Any reader with an interest in colonial, western, and Native American history will gain from reading Encounters at the Heart of the World.
In this innovative and illuminating book, Elizabeth A. Fenn reorients early American history toward the geographic center of the continent. There, long before the arrival of colonists on the Atlantic coast, the Mandan people built one of the most important and enduring trading centers in America. Using tools from archaeology, anthropology, and epidemiology, Fenn reconstructs their remarkable story and recounts it in absorbing and transparent prose.
Historians thought this book could not be written--a history of a world far from document producing Europeans. Elizabeth A. Fenn has done it, and she has made it a page-turner. Her breathtaking accomplishment will make us see American history in an entirely new way.
On the northern plains, where the Heart River joins the Missouri, the Mandans made their home, flourishing due to their openness to others, their commercial canniness, and their agricultural skills. In this riveting chronicle, part history and part travelogue of trips to Mandan territory in 2002, historian Fenn (Pox Americana) traces the rise and fall of the Mandans as newcomers encroached on their domains. “Ancestral Mandans appeared in what is now South Dakota around 1000 CE,” occupying rich alluvial plains that enabled great agricultural diversity. By the middle of the 16th century, the Mandans had developed successful commercial trade among neighboring tribes, even though such interactions were often tense and hostile. By the 17th century, traders and explorers—from the French baron Lahontan and the Hudson Bay Company’s Henry Kelsey to Lewis and Clark—entered Mandan villages and territory, bringing not only commerce but also disease. Fenn illustrates how these “encounters”—including smallpox and whooping cough epidemics, and the infestation of Norway rats that destroyed their corn stores—reduced their populations to the low hundreds by the mid-19th century. Fenn brings to life and celebrates the customs and practices of the Mandans, while bemoaning the fate of this little-known North American tribe. (Mar.)
It has been decades since the Mandan, who inhabited the Northern Plains in what is now North Dakota, were the sole subjects of a scholarly study, probably owing to the dearth of pre-19th-century documentation. Using data-culled records across such diverse fields as anthropology, archaeology, climatology, and epidemiology, Fenn (Walter S. and Lucienne Driskill Chair in Western American History, Univ. of Colorado-Boulder; Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775–1782) has succeeded in reconstructing the history of the Mandan from approximately 1100 CE to the mid-1800s. She reveals their central role in the Native American trade networks of the Great Plains over centuries. During that time, they were usually very adaptable to their evolving surroundings, including to climate change and to invasive species (e.g., Norway rats) from Europe. But they also confronted introduced diseases, such as smallpox. Fenn vividly illustrates how the Mandan managed to thrive until the end of the 18th century and then explains how disease, rats, and American westward expansion led them to near total societal and population collapse over approximately 50 years. VERDICT This is the finest study on the Mandan available and is a must-read for those interested in Native American studies or American history.—John R. Burch, Campbellsville Univ. Lib., KY
A nonpolemical, engaging study of a once-thriving Indian nation of the American heartland whose origins and demise tell us much about ourselves. Along the Missouri River in North Dakota, the Mandan people flourished in the warming period between ice ages, circa A.D. 1000, drawn to the alluvial richness of the river as well as the bison hunting ranges of the Western grasslands. In her thorough mosaic of Mandan history and culture, Fenn (Western American History/Univ. of Colorado; Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775–82, 2001, etc.) writes that these were an immensely adaptable people, migrating upstream when weather patterns changed, mastering the cultivation of corn and other edibles and the art of trade, often in competition with other horticulturalist tribes nearby, like the Arikara and Lakota. Elaborate Mandan defense fortifications indicated a vulnerability to attack, perhaps by the fierce, nomadic Sioux. Mandan homes were sturdy and numerous, solid earthen lodges built by the women, who also cultivated the fields, dried the meat and tanned the hides, revealing a strong maternal society where the husbands and the children were shared by sisters in one house due to the scarcity of men, perhaps due to mortality from war and hunting. At the time of the Spanish conquistadors, Fenn estimates there were 12,000 Mandans in the upper Missouri River; it was "teeming with people." Gradually, contact with outsiders beginning in the 17th century and continuing with the famous interaction with Louis and Clark's expedition up the Missouri in 1804 led to Mandan decimation by disease as well as by the Norwegian rat, which devoured their corn stored in cache pits. In addition to her comprehensive narrative, Fenn intersperses throughout the narrative many helpful maps and poignant drawings by George Catlin and others. An excellent contribution to the truth telling of the American Indian story.