Wikipedia:Today's featured article/December 9, 2005



The Mandan are a Native American tribe that historically lived along the banks of the Missouri River and its tributaries, the Heart and Knife rivers in present-day North and South Dakota. Unlike many neighboring tribes in the Great Plains region, the Mandan established agriculture and permanent villages. These villages were composed of round earthen lodges surrounding a central plaza. In addition to farming, the Mandan gathered wild plants and berries and hunted buffalo. By the turn of the 19th century, because of attacks by neighboring tribes and epidemics of smallpox and whooping cough, the numbers of the Mandan had diminished dramatically. With such meager numbers, the Mandan banded together with two neighboring tribes, the Arikara and Hidatsa. With the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act, the Mandan officially merged with the Hidatsa and the Arikara into the "Three Affiliated Tribes," known as the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation. About half of the Mandan still reside in the area of the reservation, the rest residing around the United States and in Canada.

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