A Little History of North Dakota

Of course there were the Native Americans first:  Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Sioux, and Chippewa, to name a few.  The Mandan tribe, also known as the "White Indians," was perhaps of the greatest importance to future settlement by Europeans. 

Oral history says that the Mandan ancestors climbed up the roots of grapevine from deep in the earth.

Some say La Verendrye was the first European to visit the Dakota area; others hold to an account of a Welsh man,  Madog Owain, born at Dolwyddelan castle, coming to this area in the twelfth century.  (c. 1170 AD).  (That's over 300 years before Christopher Columbus!)  He apparently landed on the Gulf coast and came up through the Mississippi River valley.  I'm thinkin' he and his men turned west onto the Missouri and ended up with the Mandans.  In support of this account, some point to the unusually light skin coloring, hair coloring, hazel, blue or grey eyes, Welsh words and sentence structure in the Mandan language, and the use of implements such as coracles (skin covered boats) just as are used today in Wales.

La Verendrye visited the Mandan around 1738 and was much impressed by their level of development.  The permanent locations of the Mandan villages and the Mandan's friendliness with the Europeans aided in limited trade with Europeans throughout the remainder of the 1700's.  As they say in real estate, location, location, location...  The location of the villages at the northern end of the Missouri River gave the nearest portage to the Hudson River basis and, therefore, the quickest access to European traders (mostly French and British.)

By the mid-1700's the Mandan had settled nine villages in what is now south central North Dakota on the Heart River.  On the banks of the Missouri River, the famous Lewis and Clark Expedition encountered the Mandan in 1804, and here Sacagawea became a part of the quest for a northwest passage.  According to the Expedition, the Mandan's tribe numbered about 1,250 when Lewis and Clark were with them.

Between 1804 and 1837, an epidemic of smallpox and cholera broke out, and the Mandan's tribe was reduced to about 150 persons.  These diseases were inadvertently brought to Native Americas (but sometimes intentionally) by Europeans.  The Mandan had always been friends of the white man (Europeans), but not after watching their tribe decimated by white man's plagues.  They joined with the Hidatsa in 1845 when they moved from Knife River to the Forth Berthold trading post.  Subsequently, in 1870, a reservation was set aside for the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara in that area.

When Thomas Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 it extended from New Orleans north to the Canadian border along about the western border of today's Montana.  HUGE piece of land!!

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In 1812, when Louisiana became a state, the remainder of the Louisiana Purchase became known as the Missouri Territory.   Other states, including Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Indiana, Iowa and Minnesota were eventually carved out, and by 1861 the Dakota, Colorado, and Nebraska Territories came into being.

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Following the Civil War, in 1889, North Dakota gained statehood along with South Dakota, Montana, and Washington.

Hmmm.  What else was happening in 1889?  Well, the Johnstown Flood, killing thousands, was the biggest news story of the year.  The ever fun, always fascinating Oklahoma Land Rush, the first edition of the Washington Post was printed,and little noticed (but certainly recorded) was the melting of the Greenland ice.  That seems to happen (according to the geological record)  every 150 years or so.  (I've always wondered why everyone was getting all het up about "global warming."  Greenland didn't get it's name because it was always a white sheet of ice, for goodness sake!)

And so now we have our 39th state, North Dakota!