ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am deeply indebted to the institutions and people who helped bring this book to life. I fell in love with history as a Duke University undergraduate from 1977 to 1981. Little did I know that I would return to teach at my alma mater more than two decades later. In the ten years that followed, the university was unflagging in its personal and financial support. My colleagues in the Department of History—especially Ed Balleisen, Sally Deutsch, Laura Edwards, Peter English, Margaret Humphreys, Jolie Olcott, Gunther Peck, Alex Roland, Pete Sigal, and John Thompson—cheerfully offered insights, suggestions, and support at every stage of this project. The former Duke graduate students Andrea Franzius (now at the University of Sussex) and Dan Tortora (now at Colby College) also helped at key moments. Thanks also go to four special undergraduates—Matt Gaske, Kate Wheelock, Brianna Nofil, and Luke Marchese—for offering valuable critiques of my work. Just as important were the contributions of the staff of the Duke University Library. I am especially grateful for the assistance of the librarians Carson Holloway, Kelley Lawton, Margaret Brill, and Elizabeth Dunn, who made my life easier on a daily basis. The same can be said for the anonymous, behind-the-scenes team in the library’s department of Document Delivery Services. To all of you, a special thanks. Additional help came from the Huntington Library, where Peter Blodgett and Roy Ritchie supported this work not just with enthusiasm but also with time, conversation, and knowledge. Thanks also go to the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies for fellowships that gave me precious time and intellectual space, perhaps the most valuable of all gifts to a scholar. I am especially glad to have had a wonderful dinner with the late Charles Ryskamp, a treasure in his own right, who funded the ACLS award I received. More recently, my new colleagues at the University of Colorado, Boulder, have enriched my life and supported me through the final stages of writing, revising, and proofreading.

My many trips to North Dakota brought a new landscape and a new constellation of friends and colleagues into my life. At Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park (which I prefer to think of as On-a-Slant Village), Tracy Potter made me feel welcome on my very first full day in North Dakota. His kindness and generosity have remained true ever since. As the keeper of a winter count, Dakota Goodhouse knows all too well the challenges historians face. I am honored to have him as a friend and to have lost myself in the sound of his flute. Michael Casler and the staff at Fort Union also welcomed me, answering questions and allowing me to hunker down in the post’s library for several days. At the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, I reveled in the company and wisdom of the Tribal Historic Preservation Office historian Calvin Grinnell. Marilyn Hudson, executive director of the Three Affiliated Tribes Museum, has steadfastly preserved Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara history for much of her life. For these efforts and for the kindness she showed this transient scholar, I am grateful. At the Knife River villages, Dorothy Cook became a special friend. She shared not just her knowledge of all things North Dakotan but also her enthusiasm for Duke basketball.

At the State Historical Society of North Dakota in Bismarck, I benefited from the wisdom, largesse, and collegiality of an exceptional and hardworking staff. Lisa Steckler, Mark Halvorson, and Sharon Silengo patiently responded to my queries in person and from a distance. State Archaeologist Paul Picha shared his knowledge and enthusiasm beginning with a phone call out of the blue many years ago. Michael Frohlich spent much of a morning going through aerial imagery with me, generously clipping still photos from his video flyover for me to use. And Fern Swenson, director of the society’s Archaeology and Historic Preservation Division, answered my persistent (and highly speculative) questions and gave me access to a treasure trove of material in the basement of the North Dakota Heritage Center. Her kindness and unfailing generosity gave me a new appreciation of the virtues of collaborative inquiry. Thank you, Fern. Together, we will figure it out.

The “Yale Westerners” who gather regularly at the Howard Lamar Center for the Study of Frontiers and Borders heard me out patiently and repeatedly as this project evolved. I am grateful for their gentle challenges and steadfast encouragement. Jay Gitlin, Ned Blackhawk, George Miles, and John Mack Faragher each nudged my thinking along the way. The members of the Triangle Early American History Seminar provided helpful suggestions for three different draft chapters. I have also benefited from discussions and correspondence with Wayne Lee, Tom Magnuson, Ken Bowling, Jim Daschuk, Kathleen DuVal, Ann Carlos, Doug Bamforth, and Woody Holton. Tim Hogan kindly provided me with a photograph of a prairie turnip, and Kenneth Kvamme generously shared his computer-generated images. For translation help, I am grateful to Douglas Parks. Thanks also go to Mark Mitchell, whose dissertation and book have influenced my thinking not just about relations among Mandan villages but also about relations among historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists. Mark’s book will sit beside that of Alfred Bowers as a classic in Mandan literature.

Special thanks go to Alan Taylor, James Brooks, Dan Richter, Ed Countryman, and John Mack Faragher, exemplary historians in their own right, for writing letters of support when I needed them. Four other scholars have made a different kind of contribution to this work. W. Raymond Wood is the reigning patriarch of Missouri River archaeology today. He generously shared his own unpublished manuscript with me; but beyond this, he and others of his generation laid the groundwork that made the present book possible. Everywhere I turned, I found that Ray had cleared my path. I have also benefited—albeit in a more subtle fashion—from the work of Colin Calloway, James Ronda, and Elliott West. In different ways, all three of these historians have shaped my thinking and ideas.

My editor, Elisabeth Sifton, has been more than patient with me over the years, standing by a book she believed in and guiding me with intelligence, wisdom, and skill. I may spend my days as a college teacher, but under her wing I am a student once again. Thanks also go to my agent, Lisa Adams, whose support never faltered.

Cedric Red Feather—the Red Feather Man—reached out to me across the Internet back in 2005. He has been a quiet, wise, and steadfast mentor ever since. Cedric insists he is just “a bug on the windshield,” but he is really much, much more. His vision and determination led to the first performance of the Mandan Okipa ceremony in more than a century. Like any Okipa Maker, he sacrificed much to make it happen. But the purpose of the Okipa is to bring good things to the people, and that it did: The Mandan Black Mouth, Goose, and White Buffalo Cow societies were all reborn along the way. To my little sisters in the Goose Society, especially Janet Mandan, Niko DeTuncq, and Cynthia Colvin, I am grateful for gifts at once physical, spiritual, and intellectual. My sisters in the White Buffalo Cow Society have touched me time and again with their kindness and grace. To Jan Barrett, Sharon Bell, Daniela Davila, Victoria Mandan Davis, Mettazee Morris, Martha Paquin, Denise Pahl-Jones, Pearl Skinner, Victoria Taylor, Monica Thompson, Diane Wagner, and Brenda Wiskirchen, I say thank you, from the bottom of my heart. To Janet Red Feather—drummer, singer, teacher, and friend—I say thanks as well. All of you have shaped this book profoundly, convincing me that the Mandan story is one of spirit, in every sense of the word.

It takes many friends to sustain an undertaking such as this one. Annie Nicholson-Weller let me hole up for a marvelous month at her house in Maine, where I monitored the tides, drafted early chapters, and grappled with the overall conceptualization of this book. Marjoleine Kars and Avery Rimer supported me with their steadfast friendship, as they have for years. Fellow gym rats Jimmy Holcomb, Fred Stewart, Kirk Harris, Rod Clayton, and David Cates kept me honest and kept me in shape, no small task given the duration of this project. The Hopper family—Kelly, Jeff, Cole, Julianna, and Scout—also did much for my physical and mental health. I thank all five of you for your ongoing love and friendship.

My father, Robert S. Fenn, died before I finished this book. But his kind and generous spirit suffuses its pages. Thanks go to my mother, Ann Fenn, and my brothers, Jon and Tim Fenn, for their love and patience over the years. I am especially grateful to Jon, to his wife, Annie, and to their sons, Jack and Nick, for sharing their Idaho ranch with me during a valuable month of thinking and writing.

Peter Wood has lived with this book since it was just a glimmer of an idea many years ago. Since then, he has tromped over village sites, pondered sentence structures, and marveled with me at a world we hardly know. He has even, like the Mandans, made a plains migration of his own. But my greatest gratitude is for the conversations we have shared. Peter’s clarity of vision, probing questions, and fiery challenges have stirred me for more than thirty years. Thank you, Peter. You have made all the difference.