During the eighteenth century, white explorers and trapppers heard legends of a small, peaceful Indian tribe, some of whom had blue eyes, blonde hair and spoke Welsh. Finally, traders came upon the tribe living in what is now western North Dakota. Blue eyes, blonde, even grey hair were, indeed, found among them and many of their words were pure Welsh. Strong evidence has allied this tribe with a Welsh settlement on the Ohio River in the mid-fourteenth century. The most distinguishing feature of the Mandans was by far their warmth and friendliness. Never hostile or the first to initiate an attack, they fiercely defended their villages. An aggressor always had the choice: the peace pipe..or the notched eagle feathers of war.

The Mandans have the tradition of having come from the east, up the Missouri River and into North Dakota and probably along with the Hidatsa brought farming with them. The Mandans were members of the Siouan family, which gets it's name from the Sioux. The Mandans were only one tribe of whom could be termed the 'Western Farmers' and this knowledge of farming came from Mexico into the Southeast and spread north and west, and continued westward until it came to a natural boundary where the average rainfall was less than 20 inches a year.

To the west of this boundary were the high planes where rainfall dropped to 15 inches and was precarious as farmland, never knowing if the average rainfall could be expected. The area inhabited by the Mandans shows a people who did considerable farming, hunting buffalo on the prairies and the high planes to the west. They also lived in large settled villages, made pottery, and were engergetic and lived well. These western farmers developed a short corn that would mature more quickly and with less rain than the long corn of the south. To this day all that modern farmers have been able to do is to increase the varieties of corn that the Indians had already developed, indeed some advanced breeders of hybrid corn have gone back to Indians for backcrosses to restore the aboriginal hardiness.

A young Mandan painted by A Caswell after Bodmer

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