Important Topics of Lewis & Clark Cylinder

St. Louis, sometimes written Saint Louis, encompasses an independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri (the "City of St. Louis") and its metropolitan area (Greater St. Louis).

It is the second largest city in Missouri after Kansas City, but has the state's largest metropolitan area population. In relation to the Midwest region, the City of St. Louis is the

10th largest city in population (between Minneapolis,

Minnesota and Wichita, Kansas).

The city, which is named after Louis IX of France, is adjacent to, but not part of, St. Louis County, Missouri and has a population of 352,572. The Greater St. Louis area, which includes counties in the states of Missouri and Illinois, is the 18th largest in the United States, with a total population of 2,698,672 as of the 2000 census. According to the St. Louis RCGA, the 2004 population is at 2,764,054.

The city has several common nicknames, including the "Gateway City", "Gateway to the West", "Baseball City USA", and "Mound City". St. Louis is also sometimes called "St. Louie", "River City" or "Baseball Heaven".

Alternatively, many young people who live in St. Louis have begun to call it "The 'Lou" or "The STL" (perhaps in reference to the long-standing use of an interlocked S, T and L by the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team, or the airport code for Lambert-St. Louis International Airport).

Born in Caroline County, Virginia, Clark moved with his family to Louisville, Kentucky in 1785. After his brother George joined the army, William Clark followed, and participated in several local militia campaigns.

He was commissioned a lieutenant in the regular army in 1792, and was assigned to Anthony Wayne's Legion of the United States, where he served a four-year tour and participated in the Battle of Fallen Timbers. Also during this

period, one of the men briefly under his command was Meriwether Lewis.

Clark left the army in 1796, spending time at his estate in Louisville and traveling from time to time. In 1803 he was asked by Lewis to share command of the newly-formed Corps of Discovery. Clark spent three years on the expedition, and although technically subordinate to Lewis in rank, exercised equal authority at Lewis's insistence.

He concentrated chiefly on the drawing of maps, the management of the expedition's supplies, and the identification of native flora and fauna, and after returning in 1806 spent a great deal of time consolidating the information collected.

Clark was appointed a brigadier general of the militia and made superintendent of Indian affairs in the Louisiana Territory in 1807. He set up his headquarters for this in St. Louis, Missouri. When the Missouri Territory was formed in 1813 Clark was appointed governor. During the War of 1812 he led several campaigns, and established the first post in what is now Wisconsin.

After the war Clark returned to the administration of Indian affairs, employing various diplomatic and military measures in response to several uprisings in the area, such as the Black Hawk War. He also worked as a surveyor. His years as superintendent for Indian Affairs were very important.

Clark's decisions on a daily basis as Indian Superintendent had an impact on individual lives far greater than his explorations. His region of influence in the 1830's was immense.

Clark married Julia Hancock on January 5, 1808 and had five children with her: Meriwether Lewis Clark named after his good friend Meriwether Lewis (1809-1881), William Preston Clark (1811-1840), Mary Margaret Clark (1814-1821), George Rogers Hancock Clark (1816-1858), and John Julius Clark (1818-1831).

After Julia's death in 1820 he married her first cousin Harriet Kennerly Radford and had three children with her: Jefferson Kearny Clark (1824-1900), Edmund Clark (1826-1827) and Harriet Clark (dates unknown died as child). His second wife Harriet died in 1831.

Clark died in St. Louis and was buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery, where a 35-foot gray granite obelisk was erected to mark his grave. Although his family had established endowments to maintain the site, by the late 20th century the grave site had fallen into disrepair.

His descendants raised $100,000 to rehabilitate the obelisk, and celebrated the rededication with a ceremony May 21, 2004, on the bicentennial of the start of his famous expedition. The ceremony was attended by the largest gathering of his descendants, re-enactors in period dress, and leaders from the Osage Nation, and the Lemhi band of the Shoshone Native American peoples.

The western American plant genus Clarkia (in the Evening primrose family Onagraceae), is named after him, as is the Western cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarki). Several states have named a county in his honor: Arkansas, Idaho, Missouri, Montana, and Washington. He also has a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.

Life

Lewis was born in Albemarle County, Virginia (near Charlottesville) to William and Lucy (Meriwether) Lewis. He moved with his family to Georgia when he was ten. At thirteen he was sent back to Virginia for education by private tutors.

He had also joined the Virginia militia, and in 1794 was sent as part of a detachment involved in putting down the

Whiskey Rebellion. The next year he joined the regular army and served to 1801, at one point as a member of his future associate William Clark's detachment. He achieved the rank of captain before leaving the army.

He was appointed as private secretary to President Thomas Jefferson in 1801 and was intimately involved in the planning of the expedition, being sent by Jefferson to Philadelphia to be schooled in map making and other necessary skills.

After returning from the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Lewis received a reward of 1500 acres (6 km²) of land and was appointed governor of Missouri; he settled in St. Louis, Missouri. He died of a gunshot wound at a tavern called Grinder's Inn about 70 miles (110 km) from Nashville, Tennessee, on the Natchez Trace, while enroute to Washington; his wrists had been cut, and he

had been shot in the head and chest. Whether his death was from suicide (as is widely believed) or murder (as contended by his family) has never been conclusively determined; however, it was reported that he was extremely depressed and had attempted to jump into the Mississippi River and drown shortly before his death.

Legacy

The alpine plant Lewisia (family Portulacaceae), popular in rock gardens, is named after him. Lewis County, Tennessee, Lewiston, Idaho and the U.S. Army installation, Fort Lewis in Washington state, were named in his honor. In 1941, a United States Liberty ship named the SS Meriwether Lewis was launched. She was torpeoded and sunk in 1943.

Birth

Sacagawea was born to a tribe of Shoshone near what is now Lemhi County, Idaho. However, in 1800, when she was about 11 or 12, she was kidnapped by a group of Hidatsa, and taken to their village near the present Washburn, North Dakota.

She therefore grew up culturally affiliated with this tribe; some believe her name is taken from the Hidatsa phrase for "bird woman." She was named so because when she

was born a flock of white birds flew overhead. The origins and proper pronunciation of her name has become a great point of controversy and contention among interested historians and her brother Cameahwait's descendants (Sacagawea has no known direct descendants).

Family

At the age of about sixteen, Sacagawea married a French trapper, Toussaint Charbonneau, who was also currently married to another Shoshone woman. Two accounts survive of Charbonneau's acquirement of Sacagawea: (1) he purchased both from the Hidatsa as wives, and (2), her husband won her in a card game.

Sacagawea was pregnant with their first child, Jean Baptiste (nicknamed

"Pompy"), when the Corps of Discovery arrived in the area to spend the winter of 1804-1805.

Sacagawea also gave birth to a daughter, Lisette, shortly before her death from a fever. The child is not believed to have survived infancy.

Lewis and Clark

Lewis and Clark met Sacagawea when she was sixteen. Needing someone to interpret the Hidatsa language, Lewis and Clark interviewed Charbonneau for the job. Although they were not exactly impressed with him, the deal was sealed when they discovered that Sacagawea spoke Shoshone, a great advantage.

She would become valuable in her role as interpreter. Today many monuments are dedicated to Sacagawea. Also, several programs such as musicals are about Sacagawea's journey with Lewis and Clark.

Contrary to a common romantic view, Sacagawea did not "guide Lewis and Clark across the continent." She did offer some geographic guidance and confirmation in the Three Forks area where she had lived as a child, for instance, advising Clark to cross Bozeman Pass on his separate return journey.

Sacagawea also instructed Lewis on which plants were edible/useful to the party, translated when they met the Shoshone (the original purpose for which she was brought along), and served as a passive goodwill ambassador. The presence of a woman and child with the group would serve as a signal that the expedition, while armed, was an essentially peaceful undertaking.

In one noted act in 1805 as the expedition moved up the Missouri River, Sacagawea rescued items that had fallen out of a capsized boat, including the notes and records that Lewis and Clark were keeping. The corps commanders, who praised her quick action on this occasion, would name a river in her honor.

By August 17, 1805 the corps had located a Shoshone tribe and were attempting to trade for horses to cross the Rocky Mountains. Sacagawea was brought in to translate, and it was discovered the tribe's chief was her brother Cameahwait.

Myths and legends

Reliable historical information about Sacagawea is extremely limited and no contemporary portraits of her exist. Her role in the expedition and this lack of records have led to a number of myths surrounding the girl, most notably that she was romantically involved with Lewis or Clark during their expedition.

While the journals show that she was friendly with Clark and would often do favors for him, the idea of a liaison is believed to have been created by novelists who wrote about the expedition much later.

In the late 19th Century, a Shoshone woman claimed to be Sacagawea. She died at the Wind River Band reservation in Wyoming on April 9, 1884, and in 1963 a monument was erected near Lander, Wyoming on the basis of this claim.

Name

Sacagawea is the most widely used spelling of her name, and is properly pronounced . Up until the latter part of the 20th century, however, schools mostly taught her name as being Sacajawea or Sacajewea.

The confusion here almost certainly originated from the use of the "j" spelling by Nicholas Biddle, who annotated the expedition's journals in 1814. The error was compounded with the publication of the novel, The Conquest, written by Eva Emery Dye in 1902, in anticipation of the expedition's centennial.

It is likely Dye used Biddle's secondary source for the spelling, and her highly popular book made it ubiquitous throughout the United States (previously most non-scholars had never even heard of Sacagawea). Conversely, the journals themselves mention Sacagawea by name seventeen times, each time with the "g" spelling.

While the spelling Sacajawea has subsided from general use, the corresponding pronunciation persists in American culture. Sacagawea is the spelling adopted by the United States Mint for use with the dollar coin. (See Sacagawea Dollar.)

Sakakawea is the next most widely adopted spelling and pronunciation, and is the official spelling of her name according to the Three Affiliated Tribes, which include the Hidatsa. This spelling is widely used throughout North Dakota, notably in the naming of Lake Sakakawea.

However, some historians and linguists discount this version, alleging its development was based on faulty research that went into an 1877 US Government Printing Office Publication, Ethnography and Philology of the Hidatsa Indians, which transliterated "bird" as "tsa-ka-ka," and "woman" as "mia," "wia" or "bia."

Some advocates of this version prefer it because it approximates the generally accepted pronunciation but avoids the g/j confusion.

York, (c. 1770– c. 1831) was the only one of the Lewis and Clark Expedition to serve without choice in the matter: he was William Clark's slave, having been inherited from Clark's father.

He was about the same age as Clark and had been his companion from childhood, as was common in the South at the time. The journals present him as a large, strong man, who carried a gun and shared the duties and risks of the expedition in full.

After the Corps returned, York apparently asked Clark for his freedom based upon his good services during the expedition. Clark refused, claiming financial difficulties. York, who was married to a woman owned by a different master, pleaded with Clark to be allowed to return to the Louisville area where his wife's owner lived.

Clark's letters to his brother reveal increasing irritation with York. Feeling that York was being disobedient, Clark threatened to hire him out to a severe master; he also "gave him a Severe trouncing", and even had York jailed briefly. York was finally sent to Louisville and hired out to a

demanding master for at least two years.

Clark may have set York free sometime after 1816 and set him up in a freight business in Tennessee and Kentucky which later failed; he then tried to rejoin Clark in St. Louis, but died of cholera on the way.

There are, however, some doubts about this story; he may simply have been hired out to the owner of a freight business. At least one later account suggests he may have escaped to live on the frontier.

Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 N.S. – July 4, 1826) was the third President of the United States (1801–1809), principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776), and one of the most influential founders of the United States.

Major events during his presidency include the Louisiana Purchase (1803), the Embargo Act of 1807, and the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–1806).

A political philosopher who promoted classical liberalism, republicanism, and the separation of church and state, he was the author of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1779, 1786), which was the basis of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

He was the eponym of Jeffersonian democracy and the founder and leader of the Democratic-Republican Party which dominated American politics for over a quarter-century and was the precursor to today's Democratic Party. Jefferson served as the second Governor of Virginia (1779–1781), first United States Secretary of State (1789–1793), and second Vice President (1797–1801).

In addition to his political career, Jefferson was an agriculturalist, horticulturist, architect, etymologist, archaeologist, mathematician, cryptographer, surveyor, paleontologist, author, lawyer, inventor, violinist, and the founder of the University of Virginia.

Many people consider Jefferson to be among the most brilliant men ever to occupy the Presidency. President John F. Kennedy welcomed forty-nine Nobel Prize winners to the White House in 1962, saying, "I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever

been gathered at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.

Early life and education

Jefferson was born on April 2, 1743 according to the Julian calendar ("old style") used at the time, but under the Gregorian calendar ("new style") adopted during his lifetime, he was born on April 13.

Jefferson was born into a prosperous Virginia family. Third of ten children (two of them were stillborn), his father was Peter Jefferson, a planter and surveyor who owned a plantation in Albemarle County called Shadwell. His mother was Jane Randolph – a cousin of Peyton Randolph. Both parents were from families that had been settled in Virginia for several generations.

At the age of nine, Jefferson began studying the classical languages of Latin and Greek as well as French. In 1757, when Jefferson was 14 years old, his father died. Jefferson inherited about 5,000 acres (20 km²) of land and dozens of slaves. He built his home there, which eventually became known as Monticello.

After his father's death, he was taught at the school of the learned James Maury, a reverend, from 1758 to 1760. The school was in Fredericksburg parish, twelve miles (19 km) from Shadwell, and Jefferson boarded with Maury's family. There he received a classical education and studied history and natural science.

Jefferson entered the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg at the age of 16 and spent two years there, from 1760 to 1762. He entered philosophy school. There Jefferson studied mathematics, metaphysics, and philosophy under professor William Small, who introduced the enthusiastic Jefferson to the writings of British Empiricists, including John Locke, Francis Bacon, and Sir Isaac Newton (Jefferson would later refer to them as the "three greatest men the world had ever produced" ).

At William and Mary, he reportedly studied 15 hours a day, perfected French, carried his Greek grammar book wherever he went, practiced the violin, and favored Tacitus and Homer.

In college, Jefferson was a member of the secret Flat Hat Club, now the namesake of the William & Mary daily student newspaper. After graduating in 1762 with highest honors, Jefferson studied law with his friend and mentor, George Wythe, and was admitted to the Virginia bar in 1767.

In 1772, he married a widow, Martha Wayles Skelton (1748-82). They had six children: Martha Jefferson Randolph (1772-1836), Jane Randolph (1774-1775), a stillborn or unnamed son (1777-1777), Mary Wayles (1778-1804), Lucy Elizabeth (1780-1781), and Lucy Elizabeth (1782-1785). Martha Wayles Skelton died September 6, 1782, and Thomas Jefferson never remarried.

Political career from 1774 to 1800

Rudolph Evans' statue of Jefferson with the Declaration of Independence preamble to the rightJefferson practiced law and served in the Virginia House of Burgesses. In 1774, he wrote A Summary View of the Rights of British America which was intended as instructions for the Virginia delegates to a national congress.

The pamphlet was a powerful argument of American terms for a settlement with Britain, helped speed the way to independence, and marked Jefferson as one of the most thoughtful patriot spokesmen.

Jefferson was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence and a contributor to American political and civil culture. The Continental Congress delegated the task of writing the Declaration to a committee that unanimously solicited Jefferson to prepare the draft of the Declaration alone.

In September 1776, Jefferson returned to Virginia and was elected to the new Virginia House of Delegates. During his term in the House, Jefferson set out to reform and update Virginia's system of laws to reflect its new status as a democratic state.

He drafted 126 bills in three years, including laws to abolish primogeniture, establish freedom of religion, and streamline the judicial system. In 1778, Jefferson's "Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge" led to several academic reforms at his alma mater, including an elective system of study — the first in an American university.

Jefferson served as governor of Virginia from 1779-1781. As governor, he oversaw the transfer of the state capitol from Williamsburg to Richmond in 1780. He continued to advocate educational reforms at the College of William and Mary, including the nation's first student-policed honor code. In 1779, at Jefferson's behest, William and Mary appointed George Wythe to be the first professor of law in an American university.

Dissatisfied with the rate of changes he wanted to push through, he would go on later in life to become the "father" and founder of the University of Virginia, which was the first university at which higher education was completely separate from religious doctrine.

Virginia was invaded twice by the British during Jefferson's term as governor. He was almost captured by a British cavalry column raiding Charlottesville, but he managed to escape. Public outrage nearly ruined his future political prospects but waned after the siege of Yorktown.

From 1785–1789, Jefferson served as minister to France. He did not attend the Constitutional Convention. He did generally support the new Constitution, although he thought the document flawed for lack of a Bill of Rights.

After returning from France, Jefferson served as the first Secretary of State under George Washington (1789–1793). Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton began sparring over national fiscal policy, specifically deficit spending in 1790. In further sparring with the Federalists, Jefferson came to equate Hamilton and the rest of the extreme Federalist as Tories.

In the late 1790's he worried that "Hamiltonianism" was taking hold. He equated this with "Royalism", and made a point to state that "Hamiltonians were panting after...and itching for crowns, coronets and mitres". Jefferson and James Madison founded and led the original Democratic-Republican Party (then called the "Republican Party" and what some consider to be the precursor of the modern Democratic Party).

He worked with Madison and his campaign manager John J. Beckley to build what historians call the First Party System. Jefferson strongly supported France against Britain when war broke out between those nations in 1793. However, when the Jay Treaty proved that Washington and Hamilton supported Britain, Jefferson retired to Monticello. He was later elected Vice President (1797–1801)

Jefferson interpreted the Alien and Sedition Acts as an attack on his party more than on dangerous enemy aliens. He and Madison rallied support by anonymously writing the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions that declared that the Constitution only established an agreement between the central government and the states, and that the federal government had no right to exercise powers not specifically delegated to it.

Should the federal government assume such powers, its acts under them could be voided by a state. The Resolutions' importance lies in being the first statements of the states' rights theory that led to the later concepts of nullification and interposition.

1801 Federalist cartoon shows the devil helping Jefferson pull down the pillar of American governmentWorking closely with Aaron Burr of New York, Jefferson rallied his party, attacking the new taxes especially, and ran for the Presidency in 1800. Federalists counterattacked Jefferson, a Deist, as an atheist and enemy of Christianity. He tied with Burr for first place in the Electoral College, leaving the House of Representatives (where the Federalists still had some power) to decide the election.

After lengthy debate within the Federalist-controlled House, Hamilton convinced his party that Jefferson would be a lesser political evil than Burr and that such scandal within the electoral process would undermine the still-young regime. The issue was resolved by the House, on February 17, 1801, when Jefferson was elected President and Burr Vice President.

Presidency 1801-1809

Policies

Jefferson's Presidency, from 1801 to 1809, was the first to start and end in the White House; it was also the first Democratic-Republican Presidency. Jefferson is the only Vice President to later win an election and serve two full terms as President of the United States.

Jefferson's term was marked by his belief in agrarianism, individual liberty, and limited government, sparking the development of a distinct American identity defined by republicanism. However, despite his stated goals of limited government, Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase and commissioned the Lewis and Clark Expedition during his first term. Jefferson was re-elected in the 1804 election. His second term was dominated by foreign policy concerns, as American neutrality was imperiled by war between Britain and France.

Jefferson was a strict constructionist who compromised on his original principles during his Presidency. He strayed from the principles of keeping a small navy, agrarian economy, strict constructionism, and a small and weak government. A group called the tertium quids criticised Jefferson for his abandonment of his early principles.

Events during his Presidency

The Louisiana Purchase doubled the size of the United StatesFirst Barbary War (1801-1805)

Louisiana Purchase (1803)

Marbury v. Madison (1803)

Creation of the Orleans Territory (1804)

The Burr Conspiracy (1805)

Land Act of 1804

Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified (1804)

Lewis and Clark expedition (1804-1806)

Creation of the Louisiana Territory (later renamed the Missouri Territory) in 1805

Tertium quids create a divide in the Democratic-Republican Party

Embargo Act of 1807, an attempt to force respect for U.S. neutrality by ending trade with the belligerents in the Napoleonic War

Abolition of the external slave trade in 1808

Administration and Cabinet

President Thomas Jefferson 1801–1809

Vice President Aaron Burr 1801–1805

George Clinton 1805–1809

Secretary of State James Madison 1801–1809

Secretary of the Treasury Samuel Dexter 1801

Albert Gallatin 1801–1809

Secretary of War Henry Dearborn 1801–1809

Attorney General Levi Lincoln 1801–1804

Robert Smith 1805

John Breckinridge 1805–1806

Caesar A. Rodney 1807–1809

Postmaster General Joseph Habersham 1801

Gideon Granger 1801–1809

Secretary of the Navy Benjamin Stoddert 1801

Robert Smith 1801–1810

Supreme Court appointments

Jefferson appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States:

William Johnson – 1804

Henry Brockholst Livingston – 1807

Thomas Todd – 1807

States admitted to the Union

Ohio – 1803

Father of a university

The Rotunda, University of VirginiaAfter leaving the Presidency, Jefferson continued to be active in public affairs. He also became increasingly obsessed with founding a new institution of higher learning, specifically one free of church influences where students could specialize in many new areas not offered at other universities. A letter to Joseph Priestley, in January 1800, indicated that he had been planning the university for decades before its establishment.

His dream was realized in 1819, with the founding of the University of Virginia. Upon its opening in 1825, it was then the first university to offer a full slate of elective courses to its students. One of the largest construction projects to that time in North America, it was notable for being centered about a library rather than a church. In fact, no campus chapel was included in his original plans. Until his death, he invited university students and faculty of the school to his home; Edgar Allan Poe was among them.

The university was designed as the capstone of the educational system of Virginia. In his vision, any citizen of the state could attend school with the sole criterion being ability.

Jefferson's death

Jefferson died on the Fourth of July, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, the same day as John Adams' death. Thomas Jefferson was in very high debt when he died. His possessions were sold at an auction on Monticello. In 1831, Jefferson's 552 acres (223 hect) were sold for $7,000 to James T. Barclay. In 1836, Barclay sold the estate and 218 acres (88 hect) of land to United States Navy Lieutenant Uriah P. Levy for $2,700.

Levy then bought the surrounding land and started to purchase original furnishings. Lieutenant Levy is called "the Savior of Monticello" because of this. Levy died in 1862 as a result of the Civil War. In his will, he left the Monticello to the United States to be used as a school for orphans of navy officers. Thomas Jefferson is buried on his Monticello estate. His epitaph, written by him with an insistence that only his words and "not a word more" be inscribed, reads:

HERE WAS BURIED THOMAS JEFFERSON

AUTHOR OF THE DECLARATION

OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE

OF THE STATUTE OF VIRGINIA

FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

AND FATHER OF THE

UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

Jefferson's grave site

Appearance and temperament

Jefferson was six feet, two-and-one-half inches (189 cm) in height, slender, erect and sinewy. He had angular features, a very ruddy complexion, strawberry blond hair and hazel-flecked, grey eyes. In later years, he was negligent in dress and loose in bearing. He was a poor public speaker who mumbled through his most important addresses.

There was grace, nevertheless, in his manners; and his frank and earnest address, his quick sympathy (though he seemed cold to strangers), and his vivacious, desultory, informing talk gave him an engaging charm. Beneath a quiet surface, he was fairly aglow with intense convictions and a very emotional temperament.

Yet he seems to have acted habitually, in great and little things, on system. He deliberately insulted the British minister in 1801—and he responded by creating a center of intrigue in Washington.

Though it is a biographical tradition that he lacked wit, Don Quixote and the works of Molière seem to have been his favorites; and though the utilitarian wholly crowds romanticism out of his writings, he had enough of that quality in youth to prepare to learn Gaelic in order to translate Ossian, and send to James Macpherson for the originals.

As President, he discontinued the practice of delivering the State of the Union Address in person, instead sending the address to Congress in writing (the practice was eventually revived by Woodrow Wilson); he gave only two public speeches during his Presidency. He burned all of his letters between himself and his wife at her death, creating the portrait of a man who at times could be very private.

More recently, Norm Ledgin in his book Diagnosing Jefferson, has suggested that Thomas Jefferson had Asperger syndrome. Some historians have attacked the work as they feel attributing the disease "would diminish Jefferson's greatness". Many in the psychological community, however, regard the personality characteristics portrayed in the book as highly consistent with those of Aspergians (Ledgin 2000).

Interests and activities

MonticelloJefferson was an accomplished architect who was extremely influential in bringing the Neo-Palladian style—popular among the Whig aristocracy of Britain—to the United States. The style was associated with Enlightenment ideas of republican civic virtue and political liberty. Jefferson designed his famous home, Monticello, near Charlottesville, Virginia; it included automatic doors, the first swivel chair, and other convenient devices invented by Jefferson.

Nearby is the only university ever to have been founded by a President, the University of Virginia, of which the original curriculum and architecture Jefferson designed. Today, Monticello and the University of Virginia are together one of only four man-made World Heritage Sites in the United States of America.

Jefferson is also credited with the architectural design of the Virginia State Capitol building, which was modeled after the Maison Carrée at Nîmes in southern France, an ancient Roman temple. Jefferson's buildings helped initiate the ensuing American fashion for Federal style architecture.

Jefferson's interests included archaeology, a discipline then in its infancy. He has sometimes been called the "father of archeology" in recognition of his role in developing excavation techniques.

When exploring an Indian burial mound on his Virginia estate in 1784, Jefferson avoided the common practice of simply digging downwards until something turned up. Instead, he cut a wedge out of the mound so that he could walk into it, look at the layers of occupation, and draw conclusions from them.

Thomas Jefferson enjoyed his fish pond at Monticello. It was around three feet (1 m) deep and mortar lined. He used the pond to keep fish that were recently caught as well as to keep eels fresh. This pond has been restored and can be seen from the west side of Monticello.

Jefferson was an avid wine lover and noted gourmet. During his years in France (1784-1789) he took extensive trips through French and other European wine regions and sent the best back home. He is noted for the bold pronouncement: "We could in the United States make as great a variety of wines as are made in Europe, not exactly of the same kinds, but doubtless as good."

While there were extensive vineyards planted at Monticello, a significant portion were of the European wine grape Vitis vinifera and did not survive the many vine diseases native to the Americas.

In 1812, he wrote A Manual of Parliamentary Practice that is still in use.

After the British burned Washington, D.C. and the Library of Congress in August 1814, Jefferson offered his own collection to the nation. In January 1815, Congress accepted his offer, appropriating $23,950 for his 6,487 books, and the foundation was laid for a great national library. Today, the Library of Congress' website for federal legislative information is named THOMAS, in honor of Jefferson.

For many years he was President of the American Philosophical Society.

Political philosophy

In his May 28, 1818 letter to Mordecai Manuel Noah, Jefferson expresses his faith in humankind and views on the nature of democracy.Jefferson's vision for America was that of an agricultural nation of yeoman farmers minding their own affairs. It stood in contrast to the vision of Alexander Hamilton, who envisioned a nation of commerce and manufacturing. Jefferson was a great believer in the uniqueness and the potential of America and can be seen as the father of American exceptionalism.

In particular, he was confident that an underpopulated America could avoid what he considered the horrors of class-divided, industrialized Europe. Jefferson was influenced heavily by the ideas of many European Enlightenment thinkers.

His political principles were heavily influenced by John Locke (particularly relating to the principles of inalienable rights and popular sovereignty) and Thomas Paine's Common Sense. Political theorists have also compared Jefferson's thought to that of his French contemporary, Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Jefferson believed that each individual has "certain inalienable rights." That is, these rights exist with or without government; man cannot create, take, or give them away. It is the right of "liberty" on which Jefferson is most notable for expounding. He defines it by saying "rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.

I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’, because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." Hence, for Jefferson, though government cannot create a right to liberty, it can indeed violate it.

And the limit of an individual's rightful liberty is not what law says it is but is simply a matter of stopping short of prohibiting other individuals from having the same liberty. A proper government, for Jefferson, is one that not only prohibits individuals in society from infringing on the liberty of other individuals, but also restrains itself from diminishing individual liberty.

Jefferson's commitment to equality was expressed in his successful efforts to abolish primogeniture in Virginia, that is the rule by which the first born son inherited all the land. He explained his views in an October 1785, letter to Madison:

I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable. But the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for sub-dividing property, only taking care to let their subdivision go hand in hand with the natural affections of the human mind.

The descent of property of every kind therefore to all the children, or to all the brothers and sisters, or other relations in equal degree is a politic measure, and a practicable one. Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise.

Whenever there is in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock to man to labour and live on. If, for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment be permitted to those excluded from the appropriation.

If we do not, the fundamental right to labor the earth returns to the unemployed.... It is too soon in our country to say that every man who cannot find employment but who can find uncultivated land, shall be at liberty to cultivate it, paying a moderate rent, but it is not too soon to provide by every possible means that as few as possible shall be without a little portion of land. The small landholders are the most precious part of a state.

Jefferson believed that individuals have an innate sense of morality that prescribes right from wrong when dealing with other individuals—that whether they choose to restrain themselves or not, they have an innate sense of the natural rights of others. He even believed that moral sense to be reliable enough that an anarchist society could function well, provided that it was reasonably small. On several occasions he expressed admiration for the non-government society of the Native Americans:

He said in a letter to Colonel Carrington: "I am convinced that those societies (as the Indians) which live without government, enjoy in their general mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those who live under the European governments." However, Jefferson believed anarchism to be "inconsistent with any great degree of population." Hence, he did advocate government for the American expanse provided that it exists by "consent of the governed."

In the Preamble to his original draft of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote:

We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these ends, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government shall become destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, & to institute new government, laying it's foundation on such principles & organising it's powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety & happiness.

Jefferson's dedication to "consent of the governed" was so thorough that he believed that individuals could not be morally bound by the actions of preceding generations. This included debts as well as law. He said that "no society can make a perpetual constitution or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation." He even calculated what he believed to be the proper cycle of legal revolution: "Every constitution then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years.

If it is to be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right." He arrived at 19 years through calculations with expectancy of life tables, taking into account what he believed to be the age of "maturity"—when an individual is able to reason for himself. He also advocated that the National Debt should be eliminated. He did not believe that living individuals had a moral obligation to repay the debts of previous generations. He said that repaying such debts was "a question of generosity and not of right".

Jefferson's very strong defense of States' Rights, especially in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798, set the tone for hostility to expansion of federal powers. However, some of his foreign policies did in fact strengthen the government.

Most important was the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, when he used the implied powers to annex a huge foreign territory and all its French and Indian inhabitants. His enforcement of the Embargo Act, while it failed in terms of foreign policy, demonstrated that the federal government could intervene with great force at the local level in controlling trade that might lead to war.

Views on the judiciary

Although trained as a lawyer, Jefferson was never comfortable in court. He believed that judges should be technical specialists but should not set policy. He denounced the 1801 Supreme Court ruling in Marbury v. Madison as a violation of democracy, but he did not have enough support in Congress to propose a Constitutional amendment to overturn it. He continued to oppose the doctrine of judicial review:

To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps.

Their maxim is boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem [good justice is broad jurisdiction], and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves.

Religious views

The Declaration of Independence incorporates concepts from Deism.On matters of religion, Jefferson in 1800 was accused by his political opponents of being an atheist and enemy of religion. But Jefferson wrote at length on religion and most of his biographers agree he was a deist, a common position held by European intellectuals in the late 18th century.

As Avery Cardinal Dulles, a leading Roman Catholic theologian reports, "In his college years at William and Mary he [Jefferson] came to admire Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, and John Locke as three great paragons of wisdom. Under the influence of several professors he converted to the deist philosophy." Dulles concludes:

In summary, then, Jefferson was a deist because he believed in one God, in divine providence, in the divine moral law, and in rewards and punishments after death; but did not believe in supernatural revelation. He was a Christian deist because he saw Christianity as the highest expression of natural religion and Jesus as an incomparably great moral teacher.

He was not an orthodox Christian because he rejected, among other things, the doctrines that Jesus was the promised Messiah and the incarnate Son of God. Jefferson's religion is fairly typical of the American form of deism in his day.

Biographer Peterson summarizes Jefferson's theology:

First, that the Christianity of the churches was unreasonable, therefore unbelievable, but that stripped of priestly mystery, ritual, and dogma, reinterpreted in the light of historical evidence and human experience, and substituting the Newtonian cosmology for the discredited Biblical one, Christianity could be conformed to reason.

Second, morality required no divine sanction or inspiration, no appeal beyond reason and nature, perhaps not even the hope of heaven or the fear of hell; and so the whole edifice of Christian revelation came tumbling to the ground. "

Jefferson used deist terminology in repeatedly stating his belief in a creator, and in the United States Declaration of Independence used the terms "Creator", "Nature's God". Jefferson believed, furthermore, it was this Creator that endowed humanity with a number of inalienable rights, such as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". His experience in France just before the Revolution made him deeply suspicious of (Catholic) priests and bishops as a force for reaction and ignorance.

Jefferson was raised in the Church of England, at a time when it was the established church in Virginia and only denomination funded by Virginia tax money. Before the Revolution, Jefferson was a vestryman in his local church, a lay position that was part of political office at the time. Jefferson later expressed general agreement with his friend Joseph Priestley's Unitarianism.

In a letter to a pioneer in Ohio he wrote, "I rejoice that in this blessed country of free inquiry and belief, which has surrendered its conscience to neither kings or priests, the genuine doctrine of only one God is reviving, and I trust that there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian."

Jefferson did not believe in the divinity of Jesus, but he had high esteem for Jesus' moral teachings, which he viewed as the "principles of a pure deism, and juster notions of the attributes of God, to reform [prior Jewish] moral doctrines to the standard of reason, justice & philanthropy, and to inculcate the belief of a future state."

Like other deists, Jefferson did not believe in miracles. He made his own condensed version of the Gospels, primarily leaving only Jesus' moral philosophy, of which he approved. This compilation was published after his death and became known as the Jefferson Bible.

"...[I]t [the Jefferson Bible] is a document in proof that I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus, very different from the Platonists, who call me infidel and themselves Christians and preachers of the gospel, while they draw all their characteristic dogmas from what its author never said nor saw." [18]

Church and state

During the Revolution, Jefferson played a leading role in implementing the separation of church and state in Virginia. Previously the Anglican Church had tax support. As he wrote in his Notes on Virginia, a law was in effect in Virginia that "if a person brought up a Christian denies the being of a God, or the Trinity …he is punishable on the first offense by incapacity to hold any office …; on the second by a disability to sue, to take any gift or legacy …, and by three year' imprisonment."

Prospective officer-holders, presumably including Jefferson, were required to swear that they did not believe in the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. In 1779 Jefferson drafted "A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom," and he regarded passage of this bill as a high achievement. For Jefferson, separation of church and state was not an abstract right but a necessary reform of the religious "tyranny" of one Christian sect over many other Christians.

From 1784 to 1786, Jefferson and James Madison worked together to oppose Patrick Henry's attempts to again assess taxes in Virginia to support churches. Instead, in 1786, the Virginia General Assembly passed Jefferson's Bill for Religious Freedom, which he had first submitted in 1779 and was one of only three accomplishments he put in his own epitaph. The law read:

"No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burdened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities."

Jefferson sought what he called a "wall of separation between Church and State", which he believed was a principle expressed by the First Amendment. This phrase has been cited several times by the Supreme Court in its interpretation of the Establishment Clause. In an 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, he wrote:

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between church and State"

He used the phrase "wall of separation" again in an 1808 letter to Virginia Baptists:

"Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. State churches that use government power to support themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths undermine all our civil rights.

Moreover, state support of the church tends to make the clergy unresponsive to the people and leads to corruption within religion. Erecting the 'wall of separation between church and state,' therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.

"We have solved ... the great and interesting question whether freedom of religion is compatible with order in government and obedience to the laws. And we have experienced the quiet as well as the comfort which results from leaving every one to profess freely and openly those principles of religion which are the inductions of his own reason and the serious convictions of his own inquiries."

During his Presidency, Jefferson refused to issue proclamations calling for days of prayer and thanksgiving. Moreover, his private letters indicate he was skeptical of too much interference by clergy in matters of civil government. His letters contain the following observations: "History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government", and, "In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty.

He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own."

"May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government". Jefferson's harshest comments however, seemed to have been directed toward the spiritual descendants of John Calvin:

"The serious enemies are the priests of the different religious sects, to whose spells on the human mind it's improvement is ominous. Their pulpits are now resounding with denunciations against the appointment of Dr. Cooper whom they charge as Monarchist in opposition to their tritheism.

Hostile as these sects are in every other point, to one another, they unite in maintaining their mystical theology against those who believe there is one God only. The Presbyterian clergy are the loudest.

The most intolerant of all sects, the most tyrannical, and ambitious; ready at the word of the lawgiver, if such a word could be now obtained, to put the torch to the pile, and to rekindle in this virgin hemisphere, the flames in which their oracle Calvin consumed the poor Servetus ..."

Jefferson's desire to erect a "wall of separation" did not include a desire to inhibit the personal religious lives of public officials. Jefferson himself attended certain public Christian services, including at times the weekly church services held in the House of Representatives, during his Presidency.

He also had friends who were clergy, and he supported some churches financially. Moreover, he personally believed, as did Deist John Locke, that human rights were endowed by a God: "Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever" .

Jefferson and slavery

Jefferson is commemorated on the U.S. Nickel.Jefferson's personal records show he owned more than 650 slaves in his lifetime, some of whom were inherited from his parents and through his wife. Some find it hypocritical that he owned slaves and yet was publicly outspoken in his belief that slavery was immoral. Many of his slaves were considered property that was held as a lien for his many accumulated debts.

His ambivalence regarding slavery can be seen, for example, in the first draft of the Declaration of Independence, which Jefferson wrote, in which he condemned the British crown for sponsoring the importation of slavery to the colonies, charging that the crown "has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere..."

This language was dropped from the Declaration at the request of delegates from South Carolina and Georgia. In 1769, as a member of the Virginia state legislature, Jefferson proposed for that body to emancipate slaves in Virginia, but he was unsuccessful. In 1778, the legislature passed a bill he proposed to ban further importation of slaves into Virginia; although this did not bring complete emancipation, in his words, it "stopped the increase of the evil by importation, leaving to future efforts its final eradication."

The Sally Hemings controversy

A subject of considerable controversy since Jefferson's time is whether he was the father of any of the children of his slave Sally Hemings. In a Richmond, Virginia newspaper in 1802, Journalist James Callender claimed that Hemings was rumored to have been the daughter of John Wayles, Jefferson's former father-in-law, and thus the half sister of Jefferson's deceased wife Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson.

Three studies were released in the early 2000s, following the publication of the DNA evidence. A study by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation which runs Monticello states that "it is very unlikely that...any Jefferson other than Thomas Jefferson was the father of her children."

A study[http://www.tjheritage.org/scholars.htmlcommissioned by the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society] and conducted by an independent 13-member Scholars Commission concludes that the Jefferson paternity thesis is not persuasive. The National Genealogical Society Quarterly then published articles reviewing the evidence from a genealogical perspective and concluding that the link between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings was valid.

Grizzly Bears reach weights of 180-680 kg (400-1500 lb); the male is on average 1.8 times as heavy as the female, an example of sexual dimorphism. Their coloring ranges widely across geographic areas, from blond to deep brown or black. These differences, once attributed to

subspeciation, are now thought to be primarily due to the different environments these bears inhabit, particularly with regard to diet and temperature.

The Grizzly has a large hump over the shoulders which is a muscle mass used to power the forelimbs in digging. The head is large and round with a concave facial profile. In spite of their massive size, these bears can run at speeds of up to 55 km/h (35 mph).

Normally a solitary, nocturnally active animal, in coastal areas the Grizzly congregates alongside streams and rivers during the salmon spawn. Every other year females (sows) produce 1-4 young (most commonly 2) which are small and weigh only about 500 g (1 pound). Sows are very protective of their offspring.

The current range of the Grizzly Bear extends from Alaska, down through much of Western Canada, and into the upper Northwestern United States including Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.

Diet

Being omnivores, grizzlies feed on a variety of plants and berries including roots or sprouts and fungi, as well as fish, insects and small mammals. The larger bears have been known to prey on large mammals such as moose, sheep and caribou. Bears with access to a protein-rich diet, such as the coastal bears which feed on salmon, can grow much larger than their herbivorous cousins.

In preparation for winter, bears will gain hundreds of kilograms of fat before going into a state of false hibernation. There is some debate amongst professionals as to whether or not Grizzly Bears technically hibernate. Much of this debate revolves around body temperature and the ability for the bears to move around during hibernation on occasion.

One interesting adaptation is that Grizzly Bears have the ability to partially recycle their body wastes during this period. In some areas where food is plentiful all year round, Grizzly Bears will forgo hibernation altogether.

Legal status

Grizzly bear in Denali National ParkThe Grizzly Bear is listed as threatened in the contiguous United States, and endangered in parts of Canada. It is currently slowly repopulating areas where it was previously extirpated. On January 9, 2006, the US Fish and Wildlife service proposed to remove Yellow stone grizzlies from the list of threatened and protected species.

Some biologists have argued that the word horribilis should be removed from the bear's taxonomic name, as its negative connotations may hinder conservation efforts. This change would not be permitted by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature.

In case of bear attack

The best way to avoid injury from a bear attack is to avoid being attacked. If you see a bear, leave it alone and leave the area. Do not disturb or approach it.

However, if the bear advances upon you, it can be difficult to evade. Bears can run much faster than humans. Some travelers in bear country carry pepper spray or large caliber firearms to repel or kill an attacking bear. Grizzly bear cubs are excellent tree climbers, but after one year of age, grizzlies do not climb trees, and climbing a tree is the best defense if flight is not an option.

Note that black bears (much smaller than grizzlies) are very good tree climbers, and climbing a tree to avoid a black bear should never be attempted.

A frequent reason for a sow to attack a human is that the sow thinks the human is threatening its cubs. In this case, the sow will attack to disable the threat and then typically leave. Laying very still and feigning death has preserved the lives of people caught in such a situation. Hungry or ill bears may attack humans for other reasons and should be expected to behave differently.

Bison is a taxonomic genus containing six species of large even-toed ungulates within the subfamily Bovinae. Only two species are still extant—the American and European bisons. The bison is often mistakenly called "buffalo", but true buffalo are native only to Asia (see Water Buffalo) and Africa (see African Buffalo).

Species

Long-horned Bison - Bison latifrons - extinct

Ancient Bison - Bison antiquus - extinct

Asian Bison - Bison occidentalis - extinct

Steppe Bison or Steppe Wisent - Bison priscus - extinct

American Bison - Bison bison

Plains (Prairie) Bison - Bison bison bison

Wood Bison - Bison bison athabascae

European Bison or Wisent - Bison bonasus

Lowland Bison - Bison bonasus bonasus

Caucasus Bison - Bison bonasus caucasicus - extinct

Hungarian (Carpathian) Bison - Bison bonasus hungarorum - extinct

The cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarki)

is a species of freshwater fish in the salmon family (family Salmonidae) of order Salmoniformes. It is one of the many trouts.

Cutthroat trout are native to western North America. Some populations will live in the Pacific Ocean as adults and return to fresh water to spawn in the spring. These sea-run cutthroat trouts are very sought after in fly fishing.

Cutthroat are similar to rainbow trout and will readily interbreed. Cutthroat trout have greenish backs with black spots and red marks in the bottom of their jaws.

There are about 14 separate subspecies of cutthroat trout, including:

Alvord cutthroat trout Oncorhynchus clarki subsp. (un-named; extinct)

Bonneville cutthroat trout Oncorhynchus clarki utah

Coastal cutthroat trout Oncorhynchus clarki clarki

Colorado River cutthroat trout Oncorhynchus clarki plutriticus

Greenback cutthroat trout Oncorhynchus clarki stomias

Lahontan cutthroat trout Oncorhynchus clarki henshawi

Rio Grande cutthroat trout Oncorhynchus clarki virginalis

Snake River fine-spotted cutthroat trout Oncorhynchus clarki subsp. (un-named; possibly synonymous with O. c. bouvieri)

Westslope cutthroat trout Oncorhynchus clarki lewisi

Yellowfin cutthroat trout Oncorhynchus clarki macdonaldi

Yellowstone cutthroat trout Oncorhynchus clarki bouvieri

about 2,315 mi (3,725 km) in length, it drains approximately one-sixth of the North American continent. Depending on whether its length is reckoned from the headwaters of its sources (as the Mississippi's length is reckoned from Lake Itasca, Minnesota), or from their confluence where the Missouri is first so-named (at Three Forks, Montana), it is currently either the longest or second-longest river in the United States.

Prior to the Pick-Sloan Program and channelization, it was unquestionably the longest river in the US. The combined Missouri-Mississippi river system is the fourth longest river in the world. At its confluence with the upper Mississippi, the Missouri carries less than half the volume of the upper Mississippi. Its volume on average is also less than that of the Ohio River, another tributary of the Mississippi.

Description

The headwaters of the Missouri are in the Rocky Mountains of southwestern Montana, near the continental divide. The river rises in the Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin rivers, which converge near Three Forks, Montana to form the Missouri. It flows north, through mountainous canyons, emerging from the mountains near Great Falls, where a large cataract historically marked the navigable limit of the river.

It flows east across the plains of Montana into North Dakota, then turns southeast, flowing into South Dakota, and along the north and eastern edge of Nebraska, forming part of its border with South Dakota and all of its border with Iowa, flowing past Sioux City and Omaha.

It forms the entire boundary between Nebraska and Missouri, and part of the boundary between Missouri and Kansas. At Kansas City, it turns generally eastward, flowing across Missouri where it joins the Mississippi just north of St. Louis.

The river is nicknamed "Big Muddy" because of the high silt content in its flow, a feature that is highly visible at its confluence with the Mississippi. The river was of great importance in the westward expansion of the United States.

During the 18th century, the river was used by fur traders under the flags of Spain and France. The entire Missouri River watershed was acquired from the French by the United States in 1803 as part of the Louisiana Purchase and explored by the Lewis and Clark Expedition, which successfully used the river in exploring for a route to the Pacific Ocean.

During the middle and late-19th century, the river was a primary means of transportation of goods and passengers before the spread of the railroads. The extensive use of paddle steamers on the upper river helped facilitate European settlement of the Dakotas and Montana, serving to spark several of the most intense Indian Wars in the region.

In the 20th century, the upper Missouri was extensively dammed for flood control, irrigation, and hydroelectric power. After President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Flood Control Act of 1944, the Pick-Sloan Plan turned the Missouri River into the largest reservoir system in North America.

There are six dams in three states: Fort Peck in Montana; Garrison in North Dakota; Oahe, Big Bend, and Fort Randall in South Dakota, and Gavins Point on the South Dakota-Nebraska border.

These dams were constructed without locks, so commercial navigation on the Missouri cannot proceed above the Gavins Point Dam. The Corps of Engineers maintains a 9-foot deep (3 meter) navigation channel for 735 miles (1183 km) between Sioux City, Iowa and St. Louis. The dams aid navigation on the lower river by reducing fluctuations in water levels.

The only significant stretch of free-flowing stream on the lower Missouri is the Missouri National Recreational River section between Gavins Point Dam and Ponca State Park, Nebraska. This federally-designated "Wild and Scenic River" is among the last unspoiled stretches of the Missouri, and exhibits the islands, bars, chutes and snags that once characterized the "Mighty Mo".

The extensive system of tributaries drain nearly all the semi-arid northern Great Plains of the United States. A very small portion of southern Alberta, Canada is also drained by the river through its tributary, the Milk.

The river's course roughly follows the edge of the glaciation during the last ice age. Most of the river's longer tributaries stretch away from this edge, with their origins towards the west, draining portions of the eastern Rockies.

Popular depictions

George Caleb Bingham "Fur Traders on Missouri River", c. 1845.

Karl Bodmer "Fort Pierre and the Adjacent Prairie", c. 1833The American painter George Catlin traveled up the Missouri in the 1830s, making portraits of individuals and tribes of Native Americans. He also painted several Missouri River landscapes, notably "Floyd's Bluff" and "Brick Kilns", both from 1832.

The Swiss painter Karl Bodmer accompanied German explorer Prince Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied from 1832 through 1834 on his Missouri River expedition. Bodmer was hired as an artist by Maximilian for the purpose of recording images of the Native American tribes that they encountered in the American West.

In 1843, the American painter and naturalist John James Audubon traveled west to the upper Missouri River and the Dakota Territory to do fieldwork for his final major opus, Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America. A typical example from this folio is "American Bison".

Missouri painter George Caleb Bingham immortalized the fur traders and flatboatmen who plied the Missouri River in the early 1800s; these same boatmen were known for their river chanties, including the haunting American folk song "Oh Shenandoah". Each verse of "Oh Shenandoah" ends with the line, "...'cross the wide Missouri."

The river is notable for being the setting of the Pete Seeger song Waist Deep in the Big Muddy. The song is set in 1942, during training for World War II, but its image of a foolish captain who pushes his men further and further into a hopeless situation was clearly meant to parallel the Vietnam War.

In the song, a captain leading a squad on training maneuvers insists on crossing the titular river, insisting that it is safe to cross. The captain sinks into the mud, drowns, and his squad turns back.

Tributaries

Montana

Jefferson River

Madison River

Gallatin River

Sixteenmile Creek

Dearborn River

Smith River

Sun River

Belt Creek

Marias River

Arrow Creek

Judith River

Cow Creek

Musselshell River

Milk River

Redwater River

Poplar River

Big Muddy Creek

North Dakota

Yellowstone River

Little Muddy Creek

Tobacco Garden Creek

Little Missouri River

Knife River

Heart River

Cannonball River

South Dakota

Grand River

Moreau River

Cheyenne River

Bad River

White River

James River

Vermillion River

Big Sioux River (Iowa border)

Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri

Niobrara River (Nebraska)

Platte River (Nebraska)

Little Nemaha River (Nebraska)

Big Nemaha River (Nebraska)

Perry Creek (Iowa)

Floyd River (Iowa)

Little Sioux River (Iowa)

Soldier River (Iowa)

Boyer River (Iowa)

Mosquito Creek (Iowa)

Nishnabotna River (Iowa)

Kansas River (Kansas)

Blue River

Osage River (Missouri)

Platte River, Missouri (Missouri)

Major cities along the river

For a full list, see List of cities and towns along the Missouri River

Great Falls, Montana

Bismarck, North Dakota (capital)

Pierre, South Dakota (capital)

Sioux City, Iowa

Council Bluffs, Iowa

Omaha, Nebraska

Saint Joseph, Missouri

Kansas City, Kansas

Kansas City, Missouri

Jefferson City, Missouri (capital)

Saint Charles, Missouri

Animals

Mammals

PronghornDiscovered:

Black-tailed Prairie Dog (Cynomys ludovicianus)

Bushy-tailed Woodrat (Neotoma cinerea)

Grizzly Bear (Ursus arctos horribilis or Ursus ferox)

Mule Deer (Odocoileus hemionus)

Pronghorn (Antilocapra americana)

Swift Fox (Vulpes velox)

White-tailed Jackrabbit (Lepus townsendii)

Described:

American Badger (Taxidea taxus)

Beaver (Castor canadensis)

Bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis auduboni)

Bison (Bison bison)

Black Bear (Ursus americanus)

Columbian Ground Squirrel (Spermophilus columbianus)

Coyote (Canis latrans)

Eastern Cottontail Sylvilagus floridanus)

Eastern Fox Squirrel (Sciurus niger)

Elk (Cervus elaphus)

Eastern Gray Squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis)

Gray Wolf (Canis lupus or Canis nubilis)

Long-tailed Weasel (Mustela frenata)

Muskrat (Fiber zibethicus)

Mountain Lion (Puma concolor)

Northern Pocket Gopher (Thomomys talpoides)

Northern River Otter (Lontra canadensis)

Northern Short-tailed Shrew (Blarina brevicauda)

Pacific-slope Black-tailed Deer

Porcupine (Erethizon dorsatum)

Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes)

Richardson's Ground Squirrel or Flickertail (Spermophilus richardsonii)

Striped Skunk (Mephitis mephitis)

Thirteen-lined ground squirrel (Spermophilus tridecemlineatus)

White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus)

Birds

Greater Sage GrouseDiscovered:

Black-billed Magpie (Pica hudsonia)

Common Poorwill (Phalaenoptilus nuttallii)

Greater Sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus)

Interior Least Tern (Sterna antillarum athalassos)

Lewis's Woodpecker (Melanerpes lewis)

McCown's Longspur (Calcarius mccownii)

Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator)

Described:

American Avocet (Recurvirostra americana)

American Bittern (Botaurus lentiginosus)

American Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos)

American Goldfinch (Carduelis tristis)

American Kestrel (Falco sparverius)

American Robin (Turdus migratorius)

American White Pelican (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos)

Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus)

Bank Swallow (Riparia riparia)

Belted Kingfisher (Ceryle alcyon)

Black-bellied Plover (Pluvialis squatarola)

Blue Grouse (Dendragapus obscurus)

Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata)

Brewer's Blackbird (Euphagus cyanocephalus)

Brown-headed Cowbird (Molothrus ater)

Canada Goose (Branta canadensis)

Carolina Parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis)

Cedar Waxwing (Bombycilla cedrorum)

Cliff Swallow (Hirundo pyrrhonota or Petrochelidon pyrrhonota)

Common Nighthawk (Chordeiles minor)

Common Raven (Corvus corax)

Eastern Kingbird (Tyrannus tyrannus)

Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias)

Great Egret (Ardea alba)

Greater Prairie-chicken (Tympanuchus cupido pinnatus)

Golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos)

Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus)

Hairy Woodpecker (Picoides villosus)

Horned Lark (Eremophila alpestris)

Killdeer (Charadrius vociferus)

Lark sparrow (Chondestes grammacus)

Loggerhead Shrike (Lanius ludovicianus)

Long-billed Curlew (Numenius americanus)

Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos)

Merganser (Mergus serrator)

Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura)

Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus)

Northern Harrier (Circus cyaneus) - tentative

Osprey (Pandion haliaetus)

Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius)

Pinyon jay (Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus)

Piping plover (Charadrius melodus)

Plains Sharp-tailed grouse (Tympanuchus phasianellus jamesi)

Red-headed Woodpecker (Melanerpes erythrocephalus)

Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis)

Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus)

Ruffed Grouse (Bonasa umbellus)

Sandhill Crane (Grus canadensis)

Snow Goose (Chen caerulescens)

Sprague's Pipit (Anthus spragueii)

Upland Sandpiper (Bartramia longicauda)

Western Juniper Sparrow ([[]])

Western meadowlark (Sturnella neglecta)

Whip-poor-will (Caprimulgus vociferus)

Whooping crane (Grus americana)

Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo)

Willet (Catoptrophorus semipalmatus)

Wood Duck (Aix sponsa)

Reptiles

Discovered:

Western rattlesnake (Crotalus viridis)

Western hognose snake (Heterodon nasicus)

Described:

Bullsnake (Pituophis catenifer)

Softshell Turtle (Apalone spinifera)

Western Garter Snake (Thamnophis elegans vagrans)

Fish

Blue catfishDiscovered:

Blue catfish (Ictalurus furcatus)

Channel catfish (Ictalurus punctatus)

Cutthroat trout (Salmo clarki or Onchorhynchus clarki)

Goldeye (Hiodon alosoides)

Mountain sucker (Prosopium williamsoni)

Described:

Common Northern Sucker (Catastomus catostomus)

Sauger (Stizostedion canadensis)

Plants

Discovered:

Black greasewood (Sarcobatus vermiculatus)

Blue Flax (Linum lewisii)

Buffaloberry (Shepherdia argentea)

Curly-top gumweed (Grindelia squarrosa)

Fringed sagebrush (Artemisia ludoviciana)

Gumbo evening primrose (Oenothera caespitosa)

Indian tobacco (Nicotiana quadrivalvus)

Lanceleaf sage (Salvia reflexa)

Red false mallow (Sphaeralcea coccinea)

Salt sage ([[]])

Shadscale (Atriplex canescens)

Silver-leaf Scurfpea (Psoralea argophylla or Pediomelum argophylla)

Snow-on-the-mountain (Euphorbia marginata)

White Milkwort (Polygala alba)

Wild Alfalfa (Psoralidium tenuiflora or Psoralea tenuiflora)

Described:

Antelope bush (Purshia tridentata)

Aromatic Aster (Aster oblongifolius)

Aromatic Sumac aka Squaw bush (Rhus aromatica)

Bearberry aka Kinnikinnick (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi)

Bur Oak (Quercus macrocarpa)

Broom Snakeweed (Gutierrezia sarothrae)

Canada Milk-vetch (Astragalus canadensis)

Common Horsetail, aka Scouring Rush (Equisetum arvense)

Common Juniper (Juniperus communis)

Common Monkey-flower (Mimulus guttatus)

Creeping Juniper (Juniperus horizontalis)

Dwarf Sagebrush (Artemisia cana)

Eastern Cottonwood (Populus deltoides)

False Indigo (Amorpha fruticosa)

Fire-on-the-Mountain (Euphorbia cyathophora)

Golden currant (Ribes aureum)

Large-flowered Clammyweed (Polanisia dodecandra trachysperma)

Long-leaved Sagebrush aka Mugwort (Artemisia longifolia)

Meadow Anemone (Anemone canadensis)

Missouri milk-vetch (Astragalus missouriensis)

Moundscale (Atriplex gardneri)

Needle-and-thread Grass aka Porcupine Grass (Stipa comata)

Pasture sagewort (Artemisia frigida)

Pin Cherry (Prunus pennsylvanica)

Ponderosa Pine (Pinus ponderosa)

Purple Coneflower (Echinacea angustifolia)

Purple Prairie-clover (Petalostemon purpurea or Dalea purpurea)

Rabbitbrush (Ericameria nauseosa; formerly Chrysothamnus nauseosus)

Raccoon Grape (Ampelopsis cordata)

Rigid Goldenrod (Solidago rigida)

Rocky Mountain Beeplant (Cleome serrulata)

Rough Gayfeather aka Large Button Snakeroot (Liatris aspera)

Silky Wormwood (Artemisia dracunculus)

Spiny Goldenweed (Machaeranthera pinnatifida or Haplopappus spinulosus))

Thick-spike Gayfeather aka Prairie Button Snakeroot (Liatris pycnostachya)

Western Red Cedar aka Rocky Mountain Juniper (Juniperus scopulorum)

Wild Four-o'clock (Mirabilis nyctaginea)

Wild Rice (Zizania palustris)

Wild Rose (Rosa arkansana)

The Grizzly Bear, sometimes called the Silvertip Bear, has traditionally been treated as a subspecies, Ursus arctos horribilis, of the brown bear living in North America. However, DNA analysis has recently revealed that the subspecies of brown bears, both Eurasian and North American, are genetically quite homogeneous, and that their genetic phylogeography does not correspond to their traditional taxonomy.

Therefore, the common name Grizzly Bear can be appropriately used to refer to interior North American Brown Bears, whereas the coastal bears of North America are referred to as Kodiak Bears or Kodiak Brown Bears, and those of Europe, the European Brown Bear.

The cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarki)

is a species of freshwater fish in the salmon family (family Salmonidae) of order Salmoniformes. It is one of the many trouts.

Cutthroat trout are native to western North America. Some populations will live in the Pacific Ocean as adults and return to fresh water to spawn in the spring. These sea-run cutthroat trouts are very sought after in fly fishing.

Cutthroat are similar to rainbow trout and will readily interbreed. Cutthroat trout have greenish backs with black spots and red marks in the bottom of their jaws.

There are about 14 separate subspecies of cutthroat trout, including:

Alvord cutthroat trout Oncorhynchus clarki subsp. (un-named; extinct)

Bonneville cutthroat trout Oncorhynchus clarki utah

Coastal cutthroat trout Oncorhynchus clarki clarki

Colorado River cutthroat trout Oncorhynchus clarki plutriticus

Greenback cutthroat trout Oncorhynchus clarki stomias

Lahontan cutthroat trout Oncorhynchus clarki henshawi

Rio Grande cutthroat trout Oncorhynchus clarki virginalis

Snake River fine-spotted cutthroat trout Oncorhynchus clarki subsp. (un-named; possibly synonymous with O. c. bouvieri)

Westslope cutthroat trout Oncorhynchus clarki lewisi

Yellowfin cutthroat trout Oncorhynchus clarki macdonaldi

Yellowstone cutthroat trout Oncorhynchus clarki bouvieri

Native Americans in the United States (also known as Indians, American Indians, Amerindians, Amerinds, or Indigenous or Aboriginal peoples or Americans) are the indigenous peoples within the territory that is now encompassed by the continental United States, including parts of Alaska, and their descendants in modern times.

This collective term encompasses a large number of distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of them still enduring as political communities. See Classification of Native Americans for a list of many Native American ethnic groups.

The U.S. states and several of the inhabited insular areas which do not form part of the continental U.S. territory also contain indigenous groups. Some of these other indigenous

peoples in the United States are not generally designated as "Native Americans". By convention, the Inuit, Yupik Eskimoes, and Aleuts are not usually counted as Native Americans.

Nor are Native Hawaiians (also known as Kanaka Maoli and Kanaka 'Oiwi) or various other Pacific Islander peoples such as the Chamorros.

There is some controversy surrounding the names used to describe these peoples. U.S. specific teminology considerations are also covered in the Terminology differences section, below.

It is worth noting that many Aboriginal peoples or "Indians" of North and South America reject theories about their "arrival" in the western hemisphere.

They maintain instead that they have always lived here (at least for ten thousand years). All scientific evidence points to the ancient origin of Amerindians compared to other immigrants.

Any theory that holds otherwise is likely to be perceived by most Aboriginal peoples as irrelevant; by some, as racist; and by many, as merely a politically-motivated effort to classify Aboriginal American peoples ultimately as immigrants.

Such a position would hold that, if they're "really" immigrants just like everybody who came after 1492, they cannot have any special historical claims in regard to the land.

Of course, because Amerindians have lived in Americas for 10-20 thousand years, in contrast to the recent post-

Colombian colonization wave, they have undoubtedly more right to be called "native" than any other group.

It cannot be ignored, however, that many, if not most, descendants of people who immigrated from Europe, Asia, and Africa since 1492 consider themselves to be just as native as the "Natives", especially if they have lived their entire lives in the United States. In many cases, ten generations or more have lived their entire lives in the USA. It is considered offensive by millions to discard the newer Natives' claim to be true natives.

The Bering Strait Land Bridge theory

Considerable anthropological and genetic evidence shows that most Native Americans descend from people who migrated from Siberia across the Bering Strait. The migration occurred between 15,000 and 9,000 BC, where the Bering Strait is today.

The traditional theory has held that this migration was via the Bering Land Bridge, a land mass present due to the ice age and a lower level of ocean. The exact epoch and route are still a matter of controversy. Continual challenges are issued to this model, which are described in detail at Models of migration to the New World.

Settling down

By 1500 B.C, many tribes had settled into small indigenous communities. In several regions, temporary hunter-gatherer settlements were transformed into small permanent or semi-permanent settlements and villages, frequently established in regions, such as river valleys, which were conducive to the raising of crops. Several such societies and communities, over time, intensified this practice of established settlements, and grew to support sizeable and concentrated populations.

Examples include those of the Mississippian culture and the Pueblo peoples (Anasazi). They constructed large and complex earthworks, and were particularly skilled at small stone sculptures and engravings on shell and copper. Agriculture was independently developed in what is now the eastern United States by 2500 BCE, based on the domestication of indigenous sunflower, squash and goosefoot.

Eventually, in the last eleven hundred years, the Mexican crops of corn and beans were adapted to the shorter summers of eastern North America and replaced the indigenous crops.

The large pueblos, or villages, built on top of rocky talleland or mesas of Southwest around 700 CE, were a complicated aggregate of family apartments. Towns were one large complex of buildings, with multistoried houses arranged around courtyards or plazas. Wooden ladders provided access to upper levels. Under the courtyards, subterranean kivas, or ceremonial structures, served as meeting rooms for religious societies.

While exhibiting widely divergent social, cultural, and artistic expressions, all Native American groups worked with materials available to them and employed social arrangements that augmented their means of subsistence and survival.

European colonization

Initial impacts

The European colonization of the Americas changed the lives and cultures of the Native Americans. In the 15th to 19th century, their populations were ravaged by displacement, disease, warfare with the Europeans, and enslavement.

The first Native American group encountered by Christopher Columbus in 1492, the 250,000 to 1,000,000 Island Arawaks (more properly called the Taino) of Haiti Quisqueya, Cubanacan (Cuba) and Boriquen Puerto Rico, were enslaved.

It is said that only 500 survived by the year 1550, and the group was considered extinct before 1650. Yet DNA studies show that the genetic contribution of the Taino to that region continues, and the mitochondrial DNA studies of the Taino are said to show relationships to the Northern Indigenous Nations, such as Inuit (Eskimo) and others.

In the 15th century, Spaniards and other Europeans brought horses to the Americas. Some of these animals escaped and began to breed and increase their numbers in the wild. Ironically, the horse had originally evolved in the Americas, but the early American horses were game for early human hunters, and went extinct about 7,000 BC, just after the end of the last ice age.

The re-introduction of the horse had a profound impact on Native American culture in the Great Plains of North America. This new mode of travel made it possible for some tribes to greatly expand their territories, exchange goods with neighboring tribes, and more easily capture game.

Europeans also brought diseases, against which the Native Americans had no immunity. Chicken pox and measles, though common and rarely fatal among Europeans, often proved fatal to Native Americans, and more dangerous diseases such as smallpox were especially deadly to Native American populations.

It is difficult to estimate the total percentage of the Native American population killed by these diseases. Epidemics often immediately followed European exploration, sometimes destroying entire villages. Some historians estimate that up to 80% of some Native populations may have died due to European diseases.

Early relations

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In 1620, a group of Puritans, who were heading for Virginia, got blown off-course and landed at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts, instead. In the autumn of 1621, they celebrated a three-day thanksgiving feast with the native Wampanoag people, without whom they would not have survived the winter of 1620.

Slowly, the American colonies spread, taking away more and more Indian land on the East coast

In the Spanish sphere, many of the Pueblo people harbored hostility toward the Spanish, primarily due to their denigration and prohibition of the traditional religion. The traditional economies of the pueblos were likewise disrupted, the people having been forced to labor on the encomiendas of the colonists. However, the Spanish had introduced new farming implements and provided some measure of security against Navajo and Apache raiding parties.

As a result, they lived in relative peace with the Spanish following the founding of the Northern New Mexican colony in 1598. In the 1670s, however, drought swept the region, which not only caused famine among the Pueblo, but also provoked increased attacks from neighboring nomadic tribes--attacks against which Spanish soldiers were unable to defend.

At the same time, European-introduced diseases were ravaging the natives, greatly decreasing their numbers. Unsatisfied with the protective powers of the Spanish crown and the god of the church it imposed, the Pueblo revolted in 1680. In 1692, Spanish control was reasserted, but under much more lenient terms.

Relations during and after the American Revolutionary war

During the American Revolutionary War, the newly proclaimed United States competed with the British for the allegiance of Native American nations east of the Mississippi River. Most Native Americans who joined the struggle sided with the British, hoping to use the war to halt colonial expansion onto American Indian land.

Many native communities were divided over which side to support in the war. For the Iroquois Confederacy, the American Revolution resulted in civil war. Cherokees split into a neutral (or pro-American) faction and the anti-American Chickamaugas, led by Dragging Canoe. Many other communities were similarly divided.

Frontier warfare during the American Revolution was particularly brutal, and numerous atrocities were committed on both sides. Noncombatants of both races suffered greatly during the war, and villages and food supplies were frequently destroyed during military expeditions.

The largest of these expeditions was the Sullivan Expedition of 1779, which destroyed more than 40 Iroquois villages in order to neutralize Iroquois raids in upstate New York. The expedition failed to have the desired effect: American Indian activity became even more determined.

The British made peace with the Americans in the Treaty of Paris (1783), and had ceded a vast amount of American Indian territory to the United States without informing the American Indians. The United States initially treated the American Indians who had fought with the British as a conquered people who had lost their land.

When this proved impossible to enforce (the Indians had lost the war on paper, not on the battlefield), the policy was abandoned. The United States was eager to expand, and the national government initially sought to do so only by purchasing Native American land in treaties. The states and settlers were frequently at odds with this policy.

Removal and reservations

Shoshone tipis, about 1900In the 19th century, the incessant Westward expansion of the United States incrementally compelled large numbers of Native Americans to resettle further west, sometimes by force, almost always reluctantly. Under President Andrew Jackson, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which authorized the President to conduct treaties to exchange Indian land east of the Mississippi River for lands west of the river.

As many as 100,000 American Indians eventually relocated in the West as a result of this Indian Removal policy. In theory, relocation was supposed to be voluntary (and many Indians did remain in the East), but in practice great pressure was put on American Indian leaders to sign removal treaties.

Arguably the most egregious violation of the stated intention of the removal policy was the Treaty of New Echota, which was signed by a dissident faction of Cherokees, but not the elected leadership. The treaty was brutally enforced by President Martin Van Buren, which resulted in the deaths of an estimated 4,000 Cherokees (mostly from disease) on the Trail of Tears.

Conflicts, generally known as "Indian Wars", broke out between U.S. forces and many different tribes. U.S. government authorities entered numerous treaties during this period, but later abrogated many for various reasons. Well-known military engagements include the Native American victory at the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876, and the massacre of Native Americans at Wounded Knee in 1890.

On January 31, 1876, the United States government ordered all remaining Native Americans to move into reservations or reserves. This, together with the near-extinction of the American Bison that many tribes had lived on, set about the downturn of Prairie Culture that had developed around the use of the horse for hunting, travel and trading.

Students at the Bismarck Indian School in the early 20th centuryAmerican policy toward Native Americans has been an evolving process. In the late nineteenth century, reformers, in efforts to "civilize" Indians, adapted the practice of educating native children in Indian Boarding Schools.

These schools, which were primarily run by Christians, proved traumatic to Indian children, who were forbidden to speak their native languages, taught Christianity instead of their native religions and in numerous other ways forced to abandon their Indian identity and adopt European-American culture. There are also many documented cases of sexual, physical and mental abuses occurring at these schools.

Current status

There are 563 Federally recognized tribal governments in the United States. The United States recognizes the right of these tribes to self-government and supports their tribal sovereignty and self-determination.

These tribes possess the right to form their own government, to enforce laws (both civil and criminal), to tax, to establish membership, to license and regulate activities, to zone and to exclude persons from tribal territories. Limitations on tribal powers of self-government include the same limitations applicable to states; for example, neither tribes nor states have the power to make war, engage in foreign relations, or coin money.

According to 2003 United States Census Bureau estimates, a little over one third of the 2,786,652 Native Americans in the United States live in three states: California at 413,382, Arizona at 294,137 and Oklahoma at 279,559.

As of 2000, the largest tribes in the U.S. by population were Cherokee, Navajo, Choctaw, Sioux, Chippewa, Apache, Lumbee, Blackfeet, Iroquois, and Pueblo. In 2000 eight of ten Americans with Native American ancestry were of mixed blood. It is estimated that by 2100 that figure will rise to nine of ten. In addition, there are a number of tribes that are recognized by individual states, but not by the federal government. The rights and benefits associated with state recognition vary from state to state.

Then there are Tribal Nations that have been denied recognition such as the Muwekma Ohlone and the Miami tribe of Indiana. Many of the smaller eastern tribes have been trying to gain official recognition of their tribal status. The recognition confers some benefits, including the right to label arts and crafts as Native American and they can apply for grants that are specifically reserved for Native Americans.

But gaining recognition as a tribe is extremely difficult because of a Catch-22 in the process. To be established as a tribal groups, members have to submit extensive genealogical proof of tribal descent, yet in past years many Native Americans denied their Native American heritage, because it would have deprived them of many rights, such as the right of probate.

Military defeat, cultural pressure, confinement on reservations, forced cultural assimilation, outlawing of native languages and culture, termination policies of the 1950s and 1960s as well as slavery have had deleterious effects on Native Americans' mental and physical health. Contemporary health problems include poverty, alcoholism, heart disease, diabetes, and New World Syndrome.

As recently as the 1970s, the Bureau of Indian Affairs was still actively pursuing a policy of "assimilation", the goal of which was to eliminate the reservations and steer Indians into mainstream U.S. culture. In July 2000 the Washington state GOP [13] adopted a resolution of "termination" for tribal governments. As of 2004, there are still claims of theft of Indian land for the coal and uranium it contains.

In the state of Virginia, Native Americans face a unique problem. Virginia has no federally recognized tribes, largely due to Walter Ashby Plecker. In 1912, Plecker became the first registrar of the state's Bureau of Vital Statistics, serving until 1946. Plecker believed that the state's Native Americans had been "mongrelized" with its African American population.

A law passed by the state's General Assembly recognized only two races, "white" and "colored". Plecker pressured local governments into reclassifying all Native Americans in the state as "colored", leading to the destruction of records on the state's Native American community.

This Census Bureau map depicts the locations of Native Americans in the United States as of 2000.In order to receive federal recognition and the benefits it confers, tribes must prove their continuous existence since 1900. The federal government has so far refused to bend on this bureaucratic requirement.

A bill currently before U.S. Congress to ease this requirement has been favorably reported out of a key Senate committee, being supported by both of Virginia's senators, George Allen and John Warner, but faces opposition in the House from Representative Virgil Goode, who has expressed concerns that federal recognition could open the door to gambling in the state.

In the early 21st century, Native American communities remain an enduring fixture on the United States landscape, in the American economy, and in the lives of Native Americans. Communities have consistently formed governments that administer services like firefighting, natural resource management, and law enforcement.

Most Native American communities have established court systems to adjudicate matters related to local ordinances, and most also look to various forms of moral and social authority vested in traditional affiliations within the community. To address the housing needs of Native Americans, Congress passed the Native American Housing and Self Determination Act (NAHASDA) in 1996. This legislation replaced public housing, and other 1937 Housing Act programs directed towards Indian Housing Authorities, with a block grant program directed towards Tribes.

Gambling has become a leading industry. Casinos operated by many Native American governments in the United States are creating a stream of gambling revenue that some communities are beginning to use as leverage to build diversified economies. Native American communities have waged and prevailed in legal battles to assure recognition of rights to self-determination and to use of natural resources. Some of those rights, known as treaty rights are enumerated in early treaties signed with the young United States government.

Tribal sovereignty has become a cornerstone of American jurisprudence, and at least on the surface, in national legislative policies. Although many Native American tribes have casinos, they are a source of conflict. Most tribes, especially small ones such as the Winnemem Wintu of Redding, California, feel that casinos and their proceeds destroy culture from the inside out. These tribes refuse to participate in the gaming industry.

The Massachusetts legislature repealed a disused 330-year-old law that barred Native Americans from entering Boston on May 19, 2005.

In August of 2005 the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) banned the use of "hostile and abusive" Native American mascots from postseason tournaments. The use of Native American themed team names in American professional sports is widespread and often controversial, with examples such as Chief Wahoo of the Cleveland Indians and the Washington Redskins.

Blood Quanta

Historically, a number of tribes practiced the adoption of captives into their group to replace tribe members who had been killed in battle or captured. These captives came from rival tribes and later also from European settlers. Bands or entire tribes occasionally split or merged to form viable groups in reaction to the pressures of climate, disease and warfare. Some tribes also sheltered or adopted white traders and blacks, both runaway slaves and Indian-owned slaves. So a number of paths to genetic mixing existed.

However, to qualify for recognition and assistance from the U.S. federal government or for tribal money and services, Native Americans have to not only belong to a recognized tribal entity but also to qualify as members of that entity. This has taken a number of different forms as each tribal government makes its own rules while the federal government has separate standards in some areas as well.

In many cases, this is based on the percentage of Indian blood, or the "blood quanta". This has led to a number of disputes as groups are disallowed or membership restricted, sometimes in disputes over tribal casino income. Some tribes have even begun requiring genetic genealogy (DNA testing).

Requirements vary widely: the Cherokee require only a descent from an Indian listed on the early 20th century Dawes Rolls while federal scholarships require enrollment in a federally recognized tribe as well as a Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood card showing at least a one-quarter percentage of Indian descent. Tribal rules regarding recognition of members with Indian blood from multiple tribes are equally diverse and complex.

Tribal membership conflicts have led to a number of activist groups, legal disputes and even court cases. One example is the Cherokee Freedman, descendants of slaves owned by the Cherokees. The Cherokees had allied with the Confederate States of America in the American Civil War and, after the war, were forced by the federal government in an 1866 treaty to free their slaves and make them citizens. They were later disallowed as tribe members due to their not having "Indian blood". However, efforts to obtain membership continue.

"American Indian princesses"

In the 20th century, among white ethnic groups, it was popular to claim descent from an "American Indian princess", often a Cherokee. The prototypical "American Indian princess" was Pocahontas, and, in fact, descent from her is a frequent claim. However, the American Indian princess is a false concept, derived from the application of European concepts to Indians, as also seen in the naming of war chiefs as "kings". Descent from "Indian braves" is rarely claimed, in line with the racial prejudice that led to the fears of black men involved with white women.

This "safe" descent from Native Americans was seen as fashionable not only among whites claiming prestigious colonial descent but also among whites seeking to claim connection to groups with distinct folkways that would differentiate them from the mass culture. Large influxes of recent immigrants with unique social customs may have been partially an object of envy.

Among Latinos and African-Americans, the desire to be un-black was sometimes expressed in claims of Native American descent. Those passing as white might use the slightly more acceptable Native American ancestry to explain inconvenient details. In the PBS program "African American Lives", Oprah Winfrey described childhood taunting where being Indian was preferable to being all black. Genetic tests done for the program showed that she and Chris Tucker both probably had Native American ancestors.

Cultural aspects

Though cultural features, including language, garb, and customs vary enormously from one tribe to another, there are certain elements which are encountered frequently and shared by many tribes.

Early nomadic hunters forged stone weapons from around 10,000 years ago; as the age of metallurgy dawned, newer technologies were used and more efficient weapons produced. Prior to contact with Europeans, most tribes used similar weaponry. The most common implement were the bow and arrow, the war club, and the spear. Quality, material, and design varied widely.

Large mammals such as the mammoth were largely extinct by around 8,000 B.C., and the Native Americans were hunting their descendants, such as bison. The Great Plains tribes were still hunting the bison when they first encountered the Europeans. The acquisition of the horse and horsemanship from the Spanish in the 17th century greatly altered the natives' culture, changing the way in which these large creatures were hunted and making them a central feature of their lives.

The Iroquois, living around the Great Lakes and extending east and north, used strings or belts called wampum that served a dual function: the knots and beaded designs mnemonically chronicled tribal stories and legends, and further served as a medium of exchange and a unit of measure. The keepers of the articles were seen as tribal dignitaries.

Pueblo tribes crafted impressive items associated with their religious ceremonies. Kachina dancers wore elaborately painted and decorated masks as they ritually impersonated various ancestral spirits. Sculpture was not highly developed, but carved stone and wood fetishes were made for religious use. Superior weaving, embroided decorations, and rich dyes characterized the textile arts. Both turquoise and shell jewelry were created, as were high-quality pottery and formalized pictorial arts.

Navajo spirituality focused on the maintenance of a harmonious relationship with the spirit world, often achieved by ceremonial acts, usually incorporating sand paintings. The colors—made from sand, charcoal, cornmeal, and pollen—depicted specific spirits. These vivid, intricate, and colorful sand creations were erased at the end of the ceremony.

Religion

The most widespread religion at the present time is known as the Native American Church. It is a syncretistic church incorporating elements of native spiritual practice from a number of different tribes as well as symbolic elements from Christianity. Its main rite is the peyote ceremony. The church has had significant success in combatting many of the ills brought by colonization, such as alcoholism and crime.

In the American Southwest, especially New Mexico, a syncretism between the Catholicism brought by Spanish missionaries and the native religion is common; the religious drums, chants, and dances of the Pueblo people are regularly part of Masses at Santa Fe's Saint Francis Cathedral.

Gender roles

Most Native American tribes had traditional gender roles. In some tribes, such as the Iroquois nation, social and clan relationships were matrilinear and matriarchal but several different systems were in use. Men hunted, traded and made war, while women cared for the young and the elderly, fashioned clothing and instruments and cured meat. The cradle board was used by mothers to carry their baby whilst working or traveling. However, in some (but not all) tribes a kind of transgender was permited; see Two-Spirit.

Music and art

Mystic River Singers performing at a powwow in 1998Native American music is almost entirely monophonic, but there are notable exceptions. Traditional Native American music often includes drumming and/or the playing of rattles or other percussion instruments but little other instrumentation. Flutes and whistles made of wood, cane, or bone are also played, generally by individuals, but in former times also by large ensembles (as noted by Spanish conquistador de Soto).

The tuning of these flutes is not precise and depends on the length of the wood used and the hand span of the intended player, but the finger holes are most often around a whole step apart and, at least in Northern California, a flute was not used if it turned out to have an interval close to a half step.

Performers with Native American parentage have occasionally appeared in American popular music, most notably Shania Twain (ethnically European, but raised by a First Nations adoptive father), Buffy Sainte-Marie, Robbie Robertson, Rita Coolidge, Wayne Newton, Tori Amos and Redbone (band).

Some, such as John Trudell have used music to comment on life in Native America, and others, such as R. Carlos Nakai integrate traditional sounds with modern sounds in instrumental recordings. A variety of small and medium-sized recording companies offer an abundance of recent music by Native American performers young and old, ranging from pow-wow drum music to hard-driving rock-and-roll and rap.

The most widely practiced public musical form among Native Americans in the United States is that of the pow-wow. At pow-wows, such as the annual Gathering of Nations in Albuquerque, New Mexico, members of drum groups sit in a circle around a large drum. Drum groups play in unison while they sing in a native language and dancers in colorful regalia dance clockwise around the drum groups in the center.

Familiar pow-wow songs include honor songs, intertribal songs, crow-hops, sneak-up songs, grass-dances, two-steps, welcome songs, going-home songs, and war songs. Most indigenous communities in the United States also maintain traditional songs and ceremonies, some of which are shared and practiced exclusively within the community.

Native American art comprises a major category in the world art collection. Native American contributions include pottery, paintings, jewelry, weavings, sculptures, basketry, and carvings.

Hopi man weaving on traditional loomArtists have at times misrepresented themselves as having native parentage, most notably Johnny Cash, who traced his heritage to Scottish ancestors and admitted he fabricated a story that he was one-quarter Cherokee. The integrity of certain Native American artworks is now protected by an act of Congress that prohibits representation of art as Native American when it is not the product of an enrolled Native American artist.

Economy

The Inuit, or Eskimo, prepared and buried stocks of dried meat and fish. Pacific Northwest tribes crafted seafaring dugouts 40-50 feet long for fishing. Farmers in the Eastern Woodlands tended fields of maize with hoes and digging sticks, while their neighbors in the Southeast grew tobacco as well as food crops.

On the Plains, some tribes engaged in agriculture but also planned buffalo hunts in which herds were efficiently driven over bluffs. Dwellers of the Southwest deserts hunted small animals and gathered acorns to grind into a flour with which they baked wafer-thin bread on top of heated stones. Some groups on the region's mesas developed irrigation techniques, and filled storehouses with grain as protection against the area's frequent droughts.

As these native peoples encountered European explorers and settlers and engaged in trade, they exchanged food, crafts, and furs for trinkets, blankets, iron, and steel implements, horses, firearms, and alcoholic beverages.

Terminology differences

For more detail see, Native American name controversy

When Christopher Columbus arrived in the "New World", he described the people he encountered as Indians because he mistakenly believed that he had reached India, the original destination of his voyage. Despite Columbus's mistake, the name Indian (or American Indian) stuck, and for centuries the native people of the Americas were collectively called Indians in America, and similar terms in Europe.

The problem with this traditional term is that the peoples of India are, of course, also known as Indians. A usage in British English is to refer to natives of North America as 'Red Indians', though this is an old fashioned usage and considered insulting. The term is also problematic because it propagates the myth of discovery inherent in the Columbus story. Columbus did not discover a "New World" or new peoples. The place and people already existed and the people already had names for the place, themselves, and each other.

Common usage in the U.S.

The term Native American was originally introduced in the United States by anthropologists as a more accurate term for the indigenous people of the Americas, as distinguished from the people of India. Because of the widespread acceptance of this newer term in and outside of academic circles, some people believe that Indians was outdated or offensive. People from India (and their descendants) who are citizens of the United States are known as Indian Americans.

However, some American Indians have misgivings about the term Native American. Russell Means, a famous American Indian activist, opposes the term Native American because he believes it was imposed by the government without the consent of American Indians. Furthermore, some American Indians question the term Native American because, they argue, it serves to ease the conscience of "white America" with regard to past injustices done to American Indians by effectively eliminating "Indians" from the present.

Still others (both Indians and non-Indians) argue that Native American is problematic because "native of" literally means "born in," so any person born in the Americas could be considered "native". However, very often the compound "Native American" will be capitalized in order to differentiate this intended meaning from others.

Likewise, "native" (small 'n') can be further qualified by formulations such as "native-born" when the intended meaning is only to indicate place of birth or origin. However, neither of these two senses invalidates the other, so long as the intended sense is made clear by the context.

A 1996 survey [ revealed that more American Indians in the United States still preferred American Indian to Native American. Nonetheless, most American Indians are comfortable with Indian, American Indian, and Native American, and the terms are now used interchangeably. The continued usage of the traditional term is reflected in the name chosen for the National Museum of the American Indian, which opened in 2004 in Washington, D.C..

Recently, the U.S. Census introduced the "Asian Indian" category to more accurately sample the Indian American population. In practice, most Indian Americans and of course Indian nationals think of themselves as the "real" Indians. This guarantees that the terms and their usages will evolve over the next few decades.

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 practiced agriculture and established 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.

Unlike other tribes in the region which led a nomadic

existence following herds of buffalo, the Mandan developed a religious ceremony to bring the buffalo closer to their villages. This ceremony, known as the Okipa, served not only to attract buffalo but to renew the world for another year.

Archaeological research suggests the Mandan people migrated from the Ohio River valley to the banks of the Missouri River. They were first encountered by Europeans along the Missouri in 1738. The Mandan's friendliness and willingness to trade brought many traders and fur trappers to their villages over the next century.

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. Beginning in 1837, a major smallpox outbreak reduced the number of Mandan to approximately 125. With such meager numbers, the Mandan banded together with two

neighboring tribes, the Arikara and Hidatsa.

In an effort to establish good relations, the U.S. government founded the Fort Berthold Agency to care for the combined tribes. The Agency soon set up the Fort Berthold Reservation. 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.

Synonymy

The English name Mandan is derived from similar exonyms from surrounding Siouan languages, such as Teton Miwátani, Yanktonai Miwátani, Yankton Mawátani or Mawátani, Dakota Mawátana or Mawátada, etc. The Mandan have used several terms at different times to refer to themselves:

Ruwa´?ka·ki "men, people": before 1837 (transcribed by Westerners as Numakaki, Numangkake)

Wi´?ti U´tahakt "East Village" (after the village of the same name): late 19th century (transcribed by Westerners as Metutahanke or Mitutahankish)

Ru´?eta "ourselves, our people" (originally the name of a specific division): the currently-used term

The Mandan probably used Ruwa´?ka·ki to refer to a general tribal entity. Later, this word fell to disuse and instead two divisions names were used, Nuweta or Ruptare (i.e. Mandan Ru´?eta). Later the term, Ru´?eta was extended to refer to a general tribal entity. The name Mi-ah´ta-nes recorded by Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden in 1862 reportedly means "people on the river bank", but this is may be a folk etymology.

Various other terms and alternate spellings that occur in the literature including: Mayátana, Mayátani, Mawádani, Mawádadi, Huatanis, Mandani, Wahtani, Mantannes, Mantons, Mendanne, Mandanne, Mandians, Maw-dân, Meandans, les Mandals, Me-too´-ta-häk, Numakshi, Ruwa´?kši, Wíhwatann, Mevatan, Mevataneo. Gloria Jahoda in her book Trail of Tears states that they also call themselves the "Pheasant people."

Language

The Mandan language belongs to the Siouan language family. It was initially thought to be closely related to the languages of the Hidatsa and the Crow. However, since the Mandan language has been in contact with Hidatsa and Crow for many years, the exact relationship between Mandan and other Siouan languages (including Hidatsa and Crow) has been obscured and is currently undetermined. For this reason, Mandan is most often considered to be a separate branch of the Siouan family.

Mandan has two main dialects: Nuptare and Nuetare. Only the Nuptare variety survived into the 20th century, and all speakers were bilingual in Hidatsa. As of 1999, there were only six fluent speakers of Mandan still alive, though there are currently programs in local schools to encourage the use of the language. Linguist Mauricio Mixco of the University of Utah has been involved in fieldwork with remaining speakers since 1993.

The Mandan and their language received much attention from Euro-Americans because of their lighter skin color, which some speculated was due to an ultimate European origin. In the 1830s Prince Maximilian of Wied spent more time recording Mandan over all other Siouan languages and additionally prepared a comparison list of Mandan and Welsh words (he thought that the Mandan may be displaced Welsh).

The theory of the Mandan/Welsh connection, now discounted, was also supported by George Catlin. As the Mandans encouraged conjugal relations between their women and European and American explorers and fur-traders (probably in an attempt to incorporate their perception of a cultural advantage over enemy tribes), a "lighter skin color" would in time be a natural consequence.

The Journals of Lewis and Clark often refer to members of the expedition being invited to spend the night in the Mandan lodges, and it was likely there that several of these men contracted venereal diseases. Today the hunt for the original site of the expedition's next winter home at Fort Clatsop, Oregon, at the headwaters of the Columbia, relies on a search for the capsules of mercury which members of the expedition used to treat the disease.

Mandan has different grammatical forms that depend on gender of the addressee. Questions asked of men must use the suffix -o?ša while the suffix -o?ra is used when asking of women. Likewise the indicative suffix is -o?s when addressing men and -o?re when addressing women, and also for imperatives: -ta (male) , -ra (female).

Mandan, like many other North American languages, has elements of sound symbolism in their vocabulary. A /s/ sound often denotes smallness/less intensity, /?/ denotes medium-ness, /x/ denotes largeness/greater intensity:

síre "yellow"

šíre "tawny"

xíre "brown"

sró "tinkle"

xró "rattle"

Culture

Lodges and villages

Mandan lodge, circa 1908. Photographed by Edward S. Curtis.One of the most recognizable features of the Mandan was their permanent villages made up of earthen lodges. Each lodge was circular with a dome-like roof and a square hole at the apex of the dome through which smoke could escape. The exterior was covered with a matting made from reeds and twigs and then covered with hay and earth. The lodge also featured a portico-type structure at the entrance.

The interior had four large pillars upon which crossbeams supported the roof. These lodges were designed, built and owned by the women of the tribe, and ownership was passed through the female line. Lodges could hold up to 30 or 40 people and villages usually had around 120 lodges. Reconstructions of these lodges may be seen at Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park near Mandan, North Dakota, and the Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site.

Originally lodges were rectangular, but around 1500 CE, lodges began to be constructed in a circular form. Towards the end of the 19th century, the Mandan began constructing small log cabins, usually with two rooms. When traveling or hunting, the Mandan would use skin tipis. Today, Mandan live in modern dwellings.

Villages were usually oriented around a central plaza that was used for games and ceremonial purposes. In the center of the plaza was a tree surrounded by a wood enclosure representing the Lone Man, one of the main figures in Mandan mythology, who built a wooden wall thus saving the people of the world from a deluge. Villages were often situated on high bluffs over the river.

Often, villages would be constructed at the meeting of tributaries in order to use the water as a natural barrier. Where there were few or no natural barriers, the villages utilized some type of fortification including ditches and palisades.

Family life

The Mandan were originally divided into thirteen clans organized around successful hunters and their kin. Each clan was expected to care for its own, including orphans and the elderly, from birth to death. Clans held a sacred bundle, which consisted of a few gathered objects believed to hold sacred powers. Those in possession of the bundles were considered to have sacred powers bestowed to them by the spirits and thus were considered the leaders of the clan and tribe.

Children were named ten days after their birth in a naming ceremony, which also officially linked the child with their family and clan. Girls would be taught domestic duties, farming, and how to keep a home, while boys were taught hunting and fishing, and would begin fasting at the age of ten or eleven. Marriage among the Mandan was generally arranged by members of one's own clan, though occasionally it would take place without the approval of the couple's parents. Divorce could be easily obtained.

Snow scene of a modern reconstruction of a Mandan lodge at the Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site, North Dakota.Upon the death of a family member, a scaffold would be erected near the village to contain the body. The body would be placed with the head towards the northwest and feet to the southeast. (Southeast is the direction of the Ohio River Valley, from whence the Mandan came.

The Mandan would not sleep in this orientation, because it invited death.) After a ceremony to send the spirit away, the family would mourn at the scaffold for four days. After the body rotted and the scaffold collapsed, the bones would be gathered up and buried except for the skull, which was placed in a circle near the village.

Family members would visit the skulls and talk to them, sometimes bearing their problems or regaling the dead with jokes. After the Mandan moved onto the Fort Berthold Reservation, they resorted to placing the bodies in boxes or trunks or wrapped them in fur robes and placed them in rocky crevices.

Subsistence

A Mandan hunter with his sacred buffalo skull, circa 1909. Photograph by Edward S. Curtis.The Mandan survived by hunting, farming and gathering wild plants, though some food came from trade. Mandan gardens were often located near river banks, where annual flooding would leave the most fertile soil, sometimes in locations miles from villages. The gardens were owned and tended by the women, and they would plant corn, beans and squash, usually enough to last a single year.

The buffalo which the Mandan hunted played an important part in Mandan rituals; calling the buffalo near to the village being one of the main objectives of the Okipa ceremony at the beginning of each summer. In addition to eating the flesh, the Mandan used all remaining parts of the buffalo, so nothing went to waste.

The hides were used for buffalo-fur robes or were tanned, and the leather used for clothing and other uses. The Mandan were known for their painted buffalo hides that often recorded historic events. The bones would be carved into items such as needles and fish hooks.

Bones were also used in farming, such as the scapula, which was used as a hoe-like device for breaking the soil. Besides buffalo, the Mandan trapped small mammals for food and hunted deer. Deer antlers were used to create rake-like implements used in farming. Birds were hunted for feathers, which were used for adornment.

Dress

Mandan girls gathering berries, circa 1908. Photographed by Edward S. Curtis.Up until the late 19th century when they began adopting Western-style dress, the Mandan commonly wore clothing made from the hides of buffalo as well as deer and sheep. From the hides, tunics, dresses, buffalo-fur robes, moccasins, gloves, loincloths and leggings could be made. These items were often ornamented with quills and bird feathers and sometimes even the scalps of enemies.

Mandan women wore ankle-length dresses made of deerskin or sheepskin. This would often be girded at the waist with a wide belt. Sometimes the hem of the dress would be ornamented with pieces of buffalo hoof. Underneath the dress, leather leggings would be worn with ankle-high moccasins. Women's hair was worn straight down in braids.

A pair of Mandan men in a print by Karl Bodmer. Note the buffalo-fur robes, moccasins, and the treatment of the hair.During the winter months, men would commonly wear deerskin tunics and leggings with moccasins. They also kept themselves warm by wearing a robe of buffalo fur. During the summer months, however, a loincloth of deerskin or sheepskin would often suffice. Unlike the women, men would wear various ornaments in their hair.

The hair was parted across the top with three sections hanging down in front. Sometimes the hair would hang down the nose and would be curled upwards with a curling stick. The hair would hang to the shoulders on the side, and the back portion would sometimes reach to the waist. The long hair in the back would create a tail-like feature, as it would be gathered into braids then smeared with clay and spruce gum then tied with cords of deerskin. Headdresses of feathers were often worn as well.

Religion

Of the tribes living on the Great Plains, the Mandan's religion was one of the more complex. Much of their mythology centered on a figure known as Lone Man. Lone Man was involved in many of the creation myths as well as one of the deluge myths. In their creation myth, the world was created by two rival deities, the First Creator and the Lone Man. The Missouri River divided the two worlds that the beings created.

First Creator created the lands to the south of the river with hills, valleys, trees, buffalo, antelope and snakes. To the north of the river, Lone Man created the Great Plains, domesticated animals, birds, fish and humans.

The first humans lived underground near a large lake. Some of the more adventurous humans climbed a grapevine to the surface and discovered the two worlds. After returning underground they shared their findings and decided to return with many others. As they were climbing the grapevine it broke and half of the Mandan were left underground.

According to pre-Christian Mandan beliefs, each person possessed four different, immortal souls. The first soul was white and often seen as a shooting star. The second soul was colored a light brown and was seen in the form of the meadowlark. The third soul, called the lodge spirit, remained at the site of the lodge after death and would remain there forever. The final soul was black and after death would travel away from the village. These final souls existed as did living people; residing in their own villages, farming and hunting.

The okipa ceremony as witnessed by George Catlin, circa 1835.One notable feature of the Mandan’s religious life was the Okipa, which was first recorded by George Catlin. The ceremony opened with a Bison Dance followed by a variety of torturous ordeals through which warriors proved their courage and gained the approval of the spirits. The Okipa began with the warriors sitting with smiling faces while the skin of their chest was pierced with sticks.

Using the sticks to support the weight of their bodies, the warriors would be suspended from the roof of the lodge and would hang there until they fainted. After fainting, the warrior would be pulled down and the men (women were not allowed to attend this ceremony) would watch the warrior until he awoke, proving the spirits' approval. After awakening, the warrior would sacrifice the little finger on both hands, each finger being severed by a medicine man with a knife.

Finally, the warrior would be taken outside where he would run around the central plaza of the village a number of times. Those finishing the ceremony were seen as being honored by the spirits; those completing the ceremony twice would gain everlasting fame among the tribe. Chief Four Bears or Ma-to-toh-pe completed this ceremony twice.

The last Okipa ceremony was performed in 1889 but the ceremony was resurrected in a somewhat different form in 1983.[14] The version of the Okipa as practiced by the Lakota may be seen in the 1970 film A Man Called Horse starring Richard Harris.

History

Origins and early history

Like all Native American peoples, the exact origins and early history of the Mandan is unknown. Early studies by linguists gave evidence that the Mandan language may have been closely related to the language of the Ho-Chunk or Winnebago people of present-day Wisconsin, which has given rise to the theory that they may have settled in the region at one time. This idea is possibly confirmed in their mythology, where reference is made to having come from an eastern location near a lake.

Ethnologists and scholars studying the Mandan subscribe to the theory that, like other Sioux people (possibly including the Hidatsa), they originated in the area of the upper Mississippi River and the Ohio River in present-day Ohio.

If this is the case, the Mandan would have migrated north towards the Missouri River valley and its tributary the Heart River in present-day North Dakota, where Europeans first encountered them. This migration is believed to have occurred possibly as early as the 7th century but probably between 1000 CE and the 13th century.

After their arrival on the banks of the Heart River, the Mandan constructed nine villages, two on the east side of the river and seven on the west side. At some point during this time, the Hidatsa people also moved into the region. Mandan tradition states that the Hidatsa were a nomadic tribe until their encounter with the Mandan, who taught them to build stationary villages and agriculture. The Hidatsa continued to maintain amicable relations with the Mandan and constructed villages north of them on the Knife River.

European encounter

Painting of a Mandan village by George Catlin. Circa 1833.The first encounter with Europeans occurred with the visit of the French Canadian trader Sieur de la Verendrye in 1738. It is estimated that at the time of his visit there were approximately 15,000 Mandan residing in the nine villages on the Heart River.

Horses were acquired by the Mandan in the mid-18th century and were used for transportation and hunting. The horses helped with the expansion of Mandan hunting territory. The encounter with the French in the 18th century created a trading link between the French and the Native Americans of the region with the Mandan serving as middlemen in the of trade in furs, horses, guns, crops and buffalo products.

In 1796 the Mandan were visited by the Welsh explorer John Evans, who was hoping to find proof that their language contained Welsh words. Evans spent the winter of 1796-7 with the Mandan, but found no evidence of any Welsh influence.

By 1804 when Lewis and Clark visited the tribe, the number of Mandan had been greatly reduced due to smallpox epidemics and warring bands of Assiniboins, Lakotas and Arikaras (whom they would later join together with to fight against the Lakota). The nine villages at this point had consolidated into two villages. The Lewis and Clark expedition met with such hospitality in the Upper Missouri River villages that the expedition stopped there for the winter.

In honor of their hosts, the expedition dubbed the settlement they constructed Fort Mandan. It was here that Lewis and Clark first met Sakakawea, a Shoshone woman who had been captured by the Hidatsa. Sakakawea guided the expedition westward towards the Pacific Ocean. Upon their return to the Mandan villages, Lewis and Clark took the Mandan Chief Sheheke (Coyote or Big White) to Washington to meet with President Thomas Jefferson. Chief Sheheke died in Washington, D.C. in 1806.

In 1833, artist George Catlin visited the Mandan. Catlin painted and drew scenes of Mandan life as well as portraits of chiefs including Four Bears or Ma-to-toh-pe. His skill at rendering so impressed Four Bears that Catlin was the first man of European descent to be allowed to watch the Okipa ceremony.

Catlin believed the Mandan were the "Welsh Indians" of folklore, the descendants Prince Madoc and his followers who had emigrated to America from Wales circa 1170, a view that was then popular but is not accepted by the bulk of scholarship today.[18] The winter months of 1833 and 1834 brought Maximilian, Prince of Wied-Neuwied and Swiss artist Karl Bodmer to stay with the Mandan.

Smallpox epidemic of 1837–38

Mandan Chief Ma-to-toh-pe or Four Bears, by George CatlinThe Mandan were first plagued by smallpox in the 16th century and had been hit by similar epidemics every few decades. Between 1837 and 1838, another smallpox epidemic swept the region. In June 1837, an American Fur Company steamboat traveled westward up the Missouri River from St. Louis. Its passengers and traders aboard infected the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara tribes.

There were approximately 1,600 Mandan living in the two villages at that time. The disease effectively destroyed the Mandan settlements. Almost all the tribal members, including the chief, Four Bears, died. Estimates of the number of survivors vary from only 27 individuals to up to 150, though most sources usually give the number 125. The survivors banded together with the nearby Hidatsa in 1845 and created Like-a-Fishhook Village.

Late 19th and the 20th centuries

Dance lodge from the Elbowoods area on the Fort Berthold Reservation. This is a wooden version of the classic Mandan lodge built in 1923. This area was flooded in 1951. From the Historic American Engineering Record collection, Library of Congress.The Mandan joined with the Arikara in 1862. By this time, Like-a-Fishhook Village had become a major center of trade in the region. By the 1880s, though, the village was abandoned.

With the second half of the 19th century there was a gradual decrease in the holdings of the Three Affiliated Tribes (the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara). The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 recognized 12 million acres (49,000 km²) of land in the territory owned jointly by these tribes.

With the creation of the Fort Berthold Reservation by Executive Order on 12 April 1870, the federal government recognized the holdings as only being 8 million acres (32,000 km²). On 1 July 1880, another executive order deprived the tribes of 7 million acres (28,000 km²) lying outside the boundaries of the reservation.

With the arrival of the 20th century, the government seized more land, and by 1910, the reservation had shrunk to a mere 900,000 acres (3,600 km²).[19] This land is located in Dunn, McKenzie, McLean, Mercer, Mountrail and Ward counties in North Dakota. In 1951, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began construction of Garrison Dam on the Missouri River.

This dam created Lake Sakakawea, which flooded portions of the Fort Berthold Reservation including the villages of Fort Berthold and Elbowoods as well as a number of other villages. The former residents of these villages were moved and New Town was established for them.

While a new town was constructed for the displaced tribal members, much damage was done to the social and economic foundations of the reservation. The flooding claimed approximately one quarter of the reservations land. This land contained some of the most fertile agricultural land upon which the agricultural economy had been constructed. In addition, the flooding claimed the sites of historic villages and archaeological sites.

Present day

The Mandan and the two related tribes while being combined have intermarried but do maintain, as a whole, the varied traditions of their ancestors. The last full-blood Mandan died in 1971. The tribal residents have recovered from the trauma of their displacement in the 1950s and part of their recovery has been aided by two recent additions to New Town. The Four Bears Casino and Lodge was constructed in 1993 drawing tourists and money to the impoverished reservation.

The most recent addition to the New Town area has been the new Four Bears Bridge, which was built in a joint effort between the three tribes and the North Dakota Department of Transportation. The bridge, spanning the Missouri River, replaces an older Four Bears Bridge that was built in 1955.

The new bridge—the largest bridge in the state of North Dakota—is decorated with medallions celebrating the cultures of the three tribes. The bridge was opened to traffic 2 September 2005 and was officially opened in a ceremony on the 3 October.

Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation, also known as the Three Affiliated Tribes, are a Native American group comprising a union of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara peoples, whose native lands ranged across the Missouri River basin in the Dakotas.

Hardship, and forced relocations brought them together in the late 19th century. Today, the group is based out of the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota.

The current tribal chairman is Tex G. Hall, who assumed office in 1998.

Mandan

The Mandan are a Native American tribe currently part of the Three Affiliated Tribes in North Dakota. At the height of their culture, the Mandan were prosperous and peaceful

farmers and traders, noted for their excellent maize and Knife River flint. Lewis and Clark stayed with the Mandan when they passed through the

region, including five months in the winter of 1804-1805. Sacagawea, a Shoshone who had been kidnapped by the Hidatsa at an early age, their native guide whose picture adorns the U.S. dollar coin, joined them there. On their return trip, they brought a Mandan chief to Washington.

The smallpox epidemic of 1837-1838 decimated the Mandan, leaving approximately 125 alive, forcing them to band together with the Hidatsa to survive. Later, the Arikara were forced northward by wars with the Lakota, and also settled with the Mandan. When white settlers began arriving in the late 1800s the three tribes were placed on the Fort Berthold Reservation.

The level of technical skill the Mandan demonstrated with their agricultural and earthen lodge villages set them in stark contrast with other, more nomadic tribes on the Great Plains. This and anecdotal accounts of some explorers seeing European features in the people and their buildings led a few people to the speculative and unproven conclusion the Mandan were, in part, descended from pre-1492 lost European settlers. See Kensington Runestone and Madoc.

Hidatsa

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Pehriska-Ruhpa of the Dog Band of the Hidatsa.The Hidatsa, called Moennitarri by their allies the Mandan, are a Siouan people. The Hidatsa name for themselves is Nuxbaaga ("Original People"). The name Hidatsa, said to mean "willows," was formerly borne by one of the tribal villages.

When the villages consolidated, the name was adopted for the tribe as a whole. Their language is related to that of the [[Crow tribe|Crows], and they are often considered a parent tribe to the modern Crow in Montana. Occasionally they have also been confused with the Gros Ventre in Montana.

Accounts of recorded history in the early 18th century identify three closely related village groups to which the term Hidatsa is applied. What is now known as the Hidatsa tribe is the amalgamation of these three groups, the Hidatsa proper, the Awatixa, and the Awaxawi (or Amahami) (Bowers 1965). These groups had different histories and the three Hidatsa village groups spoke distinct dialects and only came together after they settled on the Missouri.

The Amahami have a tradition similar to that of the Mandan, where they emerged from the earth, long ago, far to the southeast. Like the Mandan, they traveled northward, where they settled at Devil's Lake. Later they moved westward to the Painted Woods (near Square Buttes) and settled near a village of Mandans and another of Awatixa.

The Awatixa originated not from the earth, but from the sky, led by Charred Body (Wood and Hanson 1986:34). According to their tradition, their first people lived near Painted Woods, "where they were created" (Bowers 1948:17-18). After that they always lived between the Heart and Knife Rivers along the Missouri.

The Hidatsa proper, largest of the three, still with those who would become the River Crow, separated from the Amahami in what is now western Minnesota. First they settled to the north, then later moved south to Devil's Lake. In their travels they met the Mandans and then moved westward and settled with these distant relatives north of the Knife River. Later they moved to the mouth of Knife River.

The Hidatsa originally lived in Miniwakan, the Devil's Lake region of North Dakota, before being pushed southwestward by the Lakota. As they migrated west, the Hidatsa came across the Mandan at the mouth of the Heart River. The two groups formed an alliance, and settled into an amiable division of territory along the area's rivers.

In 1804, Lewis and Clark found the Hidatsa in three villages at the mouth of the Knife River, and the Mandans in two villages a few miles lower down on the Missouri River. Tribal appearance and customs have been documented by the visits of two artists of the American west.

The allied tribes were first visited by George Catlin, who remained with them several months in 1832, and later by Karl Bodmer, a Swiss painter, who accompanied German explorer Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied on a Missouri River expedition from 1832 to 1834. Catlin and Bodmer's work are a unique record of a lifestyle which was quickly impacted and changed by disease and government regulation.

The smallpox epidemic of 1837-1838 reduced the Hidatsa to about 500 people. The remaining Mandan and Hidatsa united, and moved farther up the Missouri in 1845. They eventually settled at Like-a-fishhook bend near Fort Berthold. They were joined there by the Arikara in 1862.

The Hidatsa are a matrilineal people, with descent determined through the maternal line. As the early Mandan and Hidatsa heavily intermarried, children were taught to speak the language of their mother, but understand the dialect of either tribe. A short description of Hidatsa-Mandan culture, including a grammar and vocabulary of the Hidatsa language, was published in 1877 by Washington Matthews, a government physician assigned to the Fort Berthold Reservation.

Arikara

The Arikara were forced into Mandan territory by the Lakota (Sioux), between the Arikara War and the white settlement in the 1870s. The Arikara, who lived for many years near the Ft. Clark trading post/Knife River, joined the Hidatsa and Mandan at Like-a-Fishhook Village, near the Ft. Berthold trading post, in 1862. For protection and also for jobs, the Arikara men scouted for the U. S. Army, stationed at nearby Ft. Stevenson.

In 1874, the Arikara scouts guided Custer on his Black Hills Expedition. In 1876, a large group of Arikara men led by Soldier accompanied Custer and the 7th Cavalry, this time on the Little Big Horn Expedition. It was the Arikara scouts who were in the lead when the village was attacked. Several scouts drove off Lakota horses, as they had been ordered, and others fought valiantly alongside the troopers.

Three Arikara men were killed: Little Brave, Bobtail Bull, and Bloody Knife. During the subsequent confusion, the scouts were cut off from the troopers, and returned to the base camp as they had been directed. After the battle, in which Custer and some 260 others on the U.S. side were killed, the search for scapegoats resulted in undeserved smears directed at the scouts.

The Sioux (also: Lakota) are a Native American people.

The term describes any of three divisions of seven tribes (the Seven Council Fires; also referred to as the Great Sioux Nation), speaking four distinct dialects of the Sioux language, including the Lakota (also known as Teton), Assiniboine, Santee, and Nakota/Yankton-Yanktonai.

The Lakota name for "the Nation" is Oceti Sakowin, meaning "Seven Council Fires".

Those Seven Council Fires, or tribes, are the Mdewakanton, Wahpeton, Wahpekute, Sisseton, Yankton, Yanktonai, and Teton. There are three geographic/dialectic divisions of the Sioux:

Dakota--the easternmost, also known as the Santee, comprising the first four council fires, and situated between the forks of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers.

Nakota--comprising the Yankton and Yanktonai, and who migrated west from Minnesota to the area between the

Missouri and James Rivers

Lakota--the Teton, Lakota meaning "prairie dwellers", a warrior/hunter society on the Great Plains, further divided into seven bands: Oglala, Brulé, Minniconjou, Sans Arcs, Oohenopa, Sihasapa, and Hunkpapa

Symbols

The dreamcatcher is a symbol of the spirit world in the Sioux religion.

Synonymy and Etymology

The name Sioux is an abbreviated form of Nadouessioux borrowed into French Canadian from Nadoüessioüak from the early Ottawa exonym: na·towe·ssiwak "Sioux". The Proto-Algonquian form *natowewa meaning "Northern Iroquoian" has reflexes in several daughter languages that refer to a small rattlesnake (massasauga, Sistrurus).

This information was interpreted by some that the Ottawa borrowing was an insult. However, this proto-Algonquian term most likely is ultimately derived from a form *-atowe meaning simply "speak foreign language", which was later extended in meaning in some Algonquian languages to refer to the massasauga. Thus, contrary to many accounts, the Ottawa word na·towe·ssiwak never equated the Sioux with snakes.

Today, many of the tribes continue to officially call themselves Sioux which the Federal Government of the United States applied to all Yankton/Yanktonai/Santee/Lakota people in the 19th and 20th centuries. However, some of the tribes have formally or informally adopted traditional names: the Rosebud Sioux Tribe is also known as the Sicangu Oyate (Brule Nation), and the Oglala often use the name Oglala Lakota Oyate, rather than the English "Oglala Sioux Tribe" or OST. (The alternate English spelling of Ogallala is not considered proper.)

The earlier linguistic 3-way division of the Dakotan branch of the Siouan family identified Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota as dialects of a single language, where Lakota = Teton, Dakota = Santee & Yankton, Nakota = Yanktonai & Assiniboine. This classification was based in large part on each group's particular pronunciation of the autonym Dakhóta-Lakhóta-Nakhóta.

However, more recent research has shown that Assiniboine (and also Stoney) are not mutually intelligible with the Sioux groups, while the Yankton-Yanktonai, Santee, and Teton groups all spoke mutually intelligible varieties of a Sioux idiom.

This more recent classification identifies Assiniboine and Stoney as two separate languages with Sioux being the third language that has three similar dialects: Teton, Santee-Sisseton, Yankton-Yanktonai. Furthermore, the Yankton-Yanktonai never referred to themselves with the using the pronunciation Nakhóta but rather pronounced it the same as the Santee (i.e. Dakhóta). (Assiniboine and Stoney speakers use the pronunciation Nakhóta or Nakhóda.)

The term Dakota has also been applied by anthropologists and governmental departments to refer to all Sioux groups, resulting in names such as Teton Dakota, Santee Dakota, etc. This was due in large part to the misrepresented translation of the Ottawa word from which Sioux is derived (supposedly meaning "snake", see above).

The Yankton, Yanktonai, Santee, and Lakota have names for their own subdivisions. The "Yankton" received this name which meant 'people from the villages of far away'. The "Santee" received this name from camping for long periods in a place where they collected stone for making knives.

The "Tetonwan" were known as people who moved west with the coming of the horse (which was apparently not 'native' to North America, but instead was brought by the Spaniards to the New World) to live and hunt buffalo on the prairie. From these three principal groups, came seven sub-tribes.

Social divisions

The Yankton-Yanktonai, the smallest division, reside on the Yankton reservation in South Dakota and the Northern portion of Standing Rock Reservation, while the Santee live mostly in Minnesota and Nebraska, but include bands in the Sisseton-Wahpeton, Flandreau, and Crow Creek Reservations in South Dakota. The Lakota are the westernmost of the three groups, occupying lands in both North and South Dakota.

Yankton-Yanktonai (Nakota)

The Yankton-Yanktonai are a branch of Sioux peoples who moved into northern Minnesota. They originally constituted two main tribes: the Yankton ("campers at the end") and Yanktonai ("lesser campers at the end"). Economically, they were involved in quarrying pipestone.

During the 19th Century, these people migrated or were forced west into Santee Territory, and today, the Yankton Sioux Tribe occupies a reservation "without boundaries" on the east bank of the Missouri in south-central South Dakota. The Yanktonai are scattered in a number of reservations in North and South Dakota.

It should be remembered that the 'divisions' of the old political organization of the Dakota Nations, collectively referred to as the Seven Council Fires, or Océti Sakówi? (pronounced ‘Oh-CHET-ee SHACK-oh-wee’), is used to index the entire Dakota collective. The word koda in Dakota (and kola in Lakota for example) means ‘friend’ or ‘ally.’ Therefore, “Dakota means an alliance of friends. The root word is frequently come upon in the Siouan language, as in okodakiciye, meaning society, association, republic. The tribe consists of seven bands closely related, springing from one parent stock [sic] and still joined in alliance for mutual protection” (Doane Robinson 1904 [1952]:19).

The three 'divisions' are somewhat arbitrary and are based primarily on relatively minor dialectical differences; there are many kinship ties throughout the three groups, since these 'groups' were historically (and are probably today as well) much more fluid than discrete. Furthermore, due to land expropriation and massive social upheavals caused by the "Dakota-U.S. Wars" (circa 1862-1890), some members of all three groups fled to Rupert's Land, later the Northwest Territories of Canada (est. 1870).

Their descendents reside on eight small Dakota Reserves in Canada, four of which are located in Manitoba (Sioux Valley, Long Plain [Dakota Tipi], Birdtail Creek, and Oak Lake [Pipestone]) and the remaining four (Standing Buffalo, Moose Woods [White Cap], Round Plain [Wahpeton], and Wood Mountain) in Saskatchewan.

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Santee (Dakota)

A Dakota warriorThe Santee people migrated north and westward from the south and east into Ohio then to Minnesota. The Santee were a woodland people who thrived on hunting, fishing and subsistence farming. Migrations of Anishinaabe/Chippewa people from the east in the 17th and 18th centuries, with rifles supplied by the French and English, pushed the Santee further into Minnesota and west and southward, giving the name "Dakota Territory" to the northern expanse west of the Mississippi and up to its headwaters.

The western Santee obtained horses, probably in the 17th century (although some historians date the arrival of horses in South Dakota to 1720), and moved further west, onto the Great Plains, becoming the Titonwan tribe, subsisting on the buffalo herds and corn-trade with their linguistic cousins, the Mandan and Hidatsa along the Missouri.

According to the journal kept by Jedediah Strong Smith, the fur-trapper, hunter and explorer who effectively opened up the West for later white settlement and gold prospecting, as reported by author Maurice Sullivan: "...[W]hen he first saw the proud Sioux,...[who] as Diah observed, were rovers,...[t]heir intelligence, superior morals, stature and manner of living...[were such] that here, in the Sioux nation, aboriginal life was most attractive." (pp. 16, 17)

"The distant appearance of these lodges, when many Indians are encamped together, cannot fail of pleasing. Clustered together with their yellow sides and painted tops, the children playing around in the intervals between them, the men going out or coming in from hunting, the horses feeding on the neighboring prairie, the dogs sleeping or playing in the sun or shade, the squaws at their several labors,

and the boys at their several sports--these, taken in conjunction with a beautiful mingling of prairie and woodland, or some undulation of the land, or some bend of the great River that brings them all at once to view, and above all, eyes that are not accustomed to such a sight, would almost persuade a man to renounce the world, take the lodge, and live the careless, lazy life of an Indian!" (p. 16)

"The lodges of the Sioux, he recorded, were gaudily decorated with paintings of the buffalo hunt, battles and other events of historical importance to the occupants. Outside a warrior's lodge, on a tripod made of decorated poles, was hung the medicine sack of the owner, and over the sack a piece of scarlet blanket or the skin of a white wolf. Within, the squaw was busy with her household labors,

while the master of the lodge was seated, 'leaning back, with no borrowed dignity', against a mat made of peeled willows supported by a tripod of sticks....In the moral scale, as their appearance would indicate, they rank above the mass of Indians." (p. 17) (see Bibliography below) Such was the approving opinion of at least one white mountain man of the time and indeed, many of these mountain men attempted to live in some fashion among the 'Indians'.

Forced Relocation of the Sioux by the United States Government

Later in the 19th century, as the railroads hired hunters to exterminate the buffalo herds, the Indians' primary food supply, in order to force all tribes into sedentary habitations, the Santee and Lakota were forced to accept white-defined reservations in exchange for the rest of their lands, and domestic cattle and corn in exchange for buffalo, becoming dependent upon annual federal payments guaranteed by treaty.

The 1862 Sioux Uprising

In 1862, after a failed crop the year before and a winter starvation, the federal payment was late to arrive. The local traders would not issue any more credit to the Santee and the local federal agent told the Santee that they were 'free to eat grass'. As a result, on August 17, 1862 the Sioux Uprising began when a few Santee men murdered a white farmer and most of his family, igniting further attacks on white settlements along the Minnesota River.

No one knows the exact number but between 500 to 1000 civilian men, women, and children, mostly German immigrants, were massacred until state and federal forces put down the revolt . Courts-martial tried and condemned 303 Santee for 'war crimes'. Numerous first-hand accounts describe rapes and murders of the whites by the Santee. (Relatively recently published are the first hand accounts of two German-American women who describe the murders they observed of family and friends.)

On November 5, 1862 in Minnesota, in courts-martial, 303 Santee Sioux were found guilty of rape and murder of hundreds of white farmers and were sentenced to hang. President Abraham Lincoln remanded the death sentence of 285 of the warriors, signing off on the execution of 38 Santee men by hanging on December 29, 1862 in Mankato, Minnesota, the largest mass-execution in US history.

During and after the revolt, many Santee and their kin fled Minnesota and Eastern Dakota, joining their relatives in the West, or settling in the James River Valley in a short-lived reservation before being forced to move to Crow Creek Reservation on the east bank of the Missouri.

Others were able to remain in Minnesota and the east, in small reservations existing into the 21st Century, including Sisseton-Wahpeton, Flandreau, and Devils Lake (Spirit Lake or Fort Totten) Reservations in the Dakotas. Some ended up eventually in Nebraska, where the Santee Sioux Tribe today has a reservation on the south bank of the Missouri.

The sioux are devided into tribes, the larger of which are divided into sub-tribes, and further branched into bands.

Santee division

Mdewakantonwan

Sisitonwan (Sisseton)

Wahpekute

Wahpetonwan

Yankton-Yanktonai

Ihanktonwan (Yankton, "End Village")

Ihanktonwana (Yanktonai, "Little End Village")

Stoney (Canada)

Assiniboine (Canada)

Lakota (Teton)

Oglala ("Those who Scatter their own")

notable persons: Tasunka witko, Mahpyia-luta, Hehaka Sapa and Billy Mills (Olympian)

Hunkpapa (meaning "Those who Camp by the Door" or "Wanderers")

notable persons: Tatanka Iyotake

Sihasapa ("Blackfoot")

Minniconjou ("Those who Plant by the Stream")

Sicangu (French: Brulé) ("Burnt Thighs")

Itazipacola (French: Sans Arcs "Without Bows")

Oohenonpa ("Two Kettles" or "Two Boilings")

Reservations

Today, one half of all Enrolled Sioux live off the Reservation.

Lakota reservations established by the US government include:

Oglala (Pine Ridge Indian Reservation)

Sicangu (Rosebud Indian Reservation)

Hunkpapa (Standing Rock/Cheyenne River)

Minniconjou (Cheyenne River)

Sans Arc (Cheyenne River)

Two Kettles (Cheyenne River)

Santee

Yanktonai (Yankton)

Flandreau

Sisseton-Wahpehton

Lower Sioux

Upper Sioux

Shakopee-Mdewakanton

Prairie Island

Derived placenames

The U.S. states of North Dakota and South Dakota are named after the Dakota tribe. Two other U.S. states have names of Siouan origin: Minnesota is named from mni ("water") plus sota ("hazy/smoky, not clear"), while Nebraska is named from a language close to Santee, in which mni plus blaska ("flat") refers to the Platte (French for "flat") River.

Also, the states Kansas, Iowa, and Missouri are named for cousin Siouan tribes, the Kansa, Iowa, and Missouri, respectively, as are the cities Omaha, Nebraska and Ponca City, Oklahoma. The names vividly demonstrate the wide dispersion of the Siouan peoples across the Midwest U.S.

More directly, several Midwestern municipalities utilize Sioux in their names, including Sioux City (IA), Sioux Center (IA) and Sioux Falls (SD). Midwestern rivers include the Little Sioux River in Iowa and Big Sioux River along the Iowa/South Dakota border.

Many smaller towns and geographic features in the Northern Plains retain their Sioux names or bear English translations of those names, including Wasta, Owanka, Oacoma, Hot Springs (Minnelusa), Minnehaha County, Belle Fourche (Mniwasta, or "Good water"), Inyan Kara, and others.

Fort Mandan was the name of the encampment at which the Lewis and Clark Expedition wintered in 1804-1805. The encampment was located on the Missouri River approximately twelve miles fromWashburn, North Dakota, though the precise location is not known for certain and may be under the nearby river.

The fort was built of cottonwood lumber cut from the riverbanks. It was triangular in shape, with high walls on all sides and a gate facing the riverbank. The Corps of Discovery started the fort on November 2, 1804, and remained in the area until April 7, 1805. They built the fort slightly down river from the nearby Mandan tribe's village.

The Mandan were a tribe that Lewis was specifically told to trade with by then President Thomas Jefferson.

When the Corps passed back through the area in August of 1806 on their return journey home, the fort had burnt to the ground; the reason is unknown. Since that time, the Missouri River has slowly erroded its bank and has shifted to the east, covering up what remained of the charred fort.

A replica stands along the river, 2.5 miles from the intersection of Alternate 200A and Highway 83. It is located near the North Dakota Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center.

Dipnet Fishing at Celilo FallsLocated between the states of Oregon and Washington, Celilo Falls (Chinookan: Wyam -- "echo of falling water" or "sound of water upon the rocks") was a unique natural feature formed by the relentless push of the Columbia River through basalt-laden narrows east of the Cascade Mountains, onward towards the Pacific Ocean—the final leg of the river's 1,152 mile (1,857 km) journey.

During periods of high water or flood, it was noted that nearly one million cubic feet (28,000 m³) of water per second would pass over the falls, creating a tremendous roar that could be heard many miles away. For comparison,

the flow of Niagara Falls, between New York State and Ontario, Canada, averages approximately 200,000 ft³/s (7,000 m³/s). Celilo Falls itself was part of a series of abrupt drops and undulations along what was called Five Mile Rapids, an area stretching from Celilo Village to The Dalles.

For millennia native peoples had come to Celilo to fish and trade goods. Artifacts retrieved from the original village site suggest that tribes from as far away as the Great Plains, Southwestern United States, and Alaska gathered here, and that the site had been occupied continuously for at least 10,000 years.

When Lewis and Clark passed through in 1805 they were struck by the variety of peoples gathered at Celilo, noting a "great emporium...where all the neighboring nations assemble". They also wrote of the high population density in this region, which exceeded anything they had seen prior on their journey west.

Appropriately, many historians liken the area around Celilo as once being the “Wall Street of the West”. A mere fifty years after Lewis and Clark wrote of the falls, immigrants on wooden barges

loaded with wagons traversed the waters of the Columbia; many lost their lives in the violent currents near Celilo.

The 20th century brought great changes, not only for the falls but those who had come to rely on them as a source of livelihood. The first such change came in 1913 when the Army Corps of Engineers built the Dalles-Celilo canal, a portage circumventing the turbulent falls.

As river traffic increased during the 1930’s on the Columbia, so did the push for creation of a faster more navigable route through the Celilo area. After a series of Congressional hearings, it was decided that treaties set forth in 1855 protecting tribal fishing rites would not be impinged upon by a plan to increase water level by constructing a dam below Celilo. Subsequently, a monetary settlement was reached between the U.S. government and the affected tribes.

In 1952 the Army Corps of Engineers commenced work on The Dalles Dam, completing it by early 1957. On March 10, 1957 under a placid blue sky, as hundreds of observers looked on, a rising Lake Celilo rapidly silenced the falls, submerged fishing platforms, and consumed the village of Celilo, ending an age-old existence for those who lived there. (The tiny present day Native American community of Celilo Village persists nearby.)

The Dalles Dam was often touted as providing much needed power for industry (predominantly aluminum plants) and surplus power for an ever growing post-war population of the Northwestern United States. And, indeed, it has reached that end—now an important member of the Bonneville Power Administration’s network of hydroelectric dams, which supply electricity to places as far away as Southern California.

However, the original driving force for the placement of a dam above The Dalles was not energy production, but rather the creation of slackwater for barges moving goods from interior regions of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho to the Pacific.

Elevation: 11,249 feet (3,429 metres)

Location: Oregon, USA

Range: Cascades

Coordinates: 45°22'24.65?N, 121°41'45.31?WCoordinates: 45°22'24.65?N, 121°41'45.31?W

Topo map: USGS Mount Hood

Type: Stratovolcano

Age of rock: < 500,000 years

Last eruption: 1790s (exact year unknown)

First ascent: 1845 by Sam Barlow and party

Easiest route: rock/glacier climb

Mount Hood is an active stratovolcano in northern Oregon, in the Pacific

Northwest region of the United States. It is located about 60 miles (100 km) east of the city of Portland. Its snow-covered peak rises on the border between Clackamas and Hood River counties. It is the highest mountain in Oregon and the fourth-highest in the Cascade Range. It can be seen easily from both Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington.

Mount Hood is second only to Japan's Mt. Fuji in the number of climbers reaching the summit. It is part of the Mount Hood National Forest, which has 1.2 million acres (4,900 km²), four designated wilderness areas and more than 1,900 km (1,200 mi) of hiking trails.

The popularity and relative ease of the climb has led to some carelessness and tragedies, especially climbers in late-spring when the glaciers tend to soften. Avalanches haven taken their toll from time to time.

And in a partly live-televised incident on May 30, 2002, several climbers were killed and others injured when they fell into a crevasse in the "hogsback" that connects the crater rock with the summit ridge. Most unusual was the startling crash-and-roll of a rescue helicopter whose rotors clipped the sloping ice bridge.

The mountain has five ski areas, including the only ski area in North America that's open 12 months of the year. Timberline Lodge is a National Historic Landmark located on the southern flank of Mt. Hood. The Palmer Glacier, uphill from the lodge at about the 8,000 foot level, has been used for summer practice by the Olympic skiing team from time to time. The other areas are Mt. Hood Meadows, Ski Bowl, Cooper Spur, Snow Bunny and Summit.

Geology

The glacially eroded summit area consists of several andesitic or dacitic lava domes; Pleistocene collapses produced avalanches and lahars (rapidly moving mudflows) that traveled across the Columbia River to the north. The eroded volcano has had at least four major eruptive periods during the past 15,000 years.

The last three occurred within the past 1,800 years from vents high on the SW flank and produced deposits that were distributed primarily to the south and west along the Sandy and Zigzag rivers.

The last eruptive period took place around 170 to 220 years ago, when dacitic lava domes, pyroclastic flows and mudflows were produced without major explosive eruptions. The prominent Crater Rock just below the summit is believed to be the remnants of a dacite dome from the last eruptive period.

The last major eruption occurred in 1781-1782, with the most recent episode ending shortly before the arrival of Lewis and Clark in 1805. It is considered an active volcano, but no major eruptive events have been catalogued since systematic record keeping began in the 1820s.

Twelve glaciers cling to the mountain's rocky slopes; these may be a source of potentially dangerous lahars when the mountain next erupts. Although dormant, there are vents near the summit which are known for emitting noxious gasses such as carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide. Climbers have occasionally ventured too close and were suffocated.

Origin of its name

The Native American name for Mount Hood is Wy'East. Legend has it that the name Wy'east comes from a chief of the Multnomah tribe, the tribe after which Multnomah County was named. The chief competed for the attention of a woman who was also loved by the chief of the Klickitat tribe.

The anger that the competition generated led to all three of them being turned into volcanoes, with the Klickitat chief becoming nearby Mount Adams and the target of their affection becoming Mount St. Helens.

It was given its present name on October 29, 1792 by Lt. William Broughton, a member of Captain George Vancouver's discovery expedition. It was named after a British admiral, Samuel Hood.

The Rocky Mountains, often called the Rockies, are a broad mountain range in western North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch more than 3,000 miles (4,800 kilometers) from British Columbia, in Canada, to New Mexico, in the United States.

The highest peak is Mount Elbert, in Colorado, which is

14,440 feet (4,401 meters) above sea level. Mount Robson, at 12,972 feet (3,954 meters) is the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies.

The Rocky Mountain System is a United States physiographic region. In the United States the most prominent eastern edge is the Front Range near Denver, Colorado, which forms the border of the mountains and the Great Plains, and the western edge called the Wasatch Range near Salt Lake City, Utah, which divides the Great Basin from the mountains.

Geography and geology

Teton Range in Grand Teton National Park, WyomingThe Rocky Mountains are commonly defined to stretch from the Liard River in British Columbia, down to the Rio Grande in New Mexico. The mountains can also be considered to run to Alaska or Mexico, but usually those mountains are considered to be part of the entire American cordillera, rather than part of the Rockies.

The younger ranges of the Rocky Mountains uplifted during the late Cretaceous period (140 million-65 million years ago), although some portions of the southern mountains date from uplifts during the Precambrian (3,980 million-600 million years ago).

The mountains' geology is a complex of igneous and metamorphic rock; younger sedimentary rock occurs along the margins of the southern Rocky Mountains, and volcanic rock from the Tertiary (65 million-1.8 million years ago) occurs in the San Juan Mountains and in other areas.

Millennia of severe erosion in the Wyoming Basin transformed intermountain basins into a relatively flat terrain. The Tetons and other north-central ranges are magnificent granitic intrusions of folded and faulted rocks of Paleozoic and Mesozoic age (Peterson 1986; Knight 1994).

Periods of glaciation occurred from the Pleistocene Epoch (1.8 million-70,000 years ago) to the Holocene Epoch (fewer than 11,000 years ago). Recent episodes included the Bull Lake Glaciation that began about 150,000 years ago and the Pinedale Glaciation that probably remained at full glaciation until 15,000-20,000 years ago (Pierce 1979).

Ninety percent of Yellowstone National Park was covered by ice during the Pinedale Glaciation (Knight 1994). The "little ice age" was a period of glacial advance that lasted a few centuries from about 1550 to 1860. For example, the Agassiz and Jackson glaciers in Glacier National Park reached their most forward positions about 1860 during the little ice age (Grove 1990).

Water in its many forms sculpted the present Rocky Mountain landscape (Athearn 1960). Runoff and snowmelt from the peaks feed Rocky Mountain rivers and lakes with the water supply for one-quarter of the United States. The rivers that flow from the Rocky Mountains eventually drain into three of the world's five Oceans: the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, and the Arctic Ocean. These rivers include:

Arkansas River

Athabasca River

Colorado River

Columbia River

Fraser River

Kootenay River

Missouri River

Peace River

Platte River

Rio Grande

Saskatchewan River

Snake River

Yellowstone River

The Continental Divide is located in the Rocky Mountains and designates the line at which waters flow either to the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans. Triple Divide Peak (8020 feet/2444 m) in Glacier National Park (US) is so named due to the fact that water which falls on the mountain reaches not only the Atlantic and Pacific, but the Arctic Ocean as well.

Human history

Since the last great Ice Age, the Rocky Mountains were a sacred home first to Paleo-Indians and then to the Native American tribes of the Apache, Arapaho, Bannock, Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Crow. Flathead, Shoshoni, Sioux, Ute, and others (Johnson 1994). Paleo-Indians hunted the now-extinct mammoth and ancient bison (an animal 20% larger than modern bison) in the foothills and valleys of the mountains.

Like the modern tribes that followed them, Paleo-Indians probably migrated to the plains in fall and winter for bison and to the mountains in spring and summer for fish, deer, elk, roots, and berries. In Colorado, along the crest of the Continental Divide, rock walls that Native Americans built for driving game date back 5,400-5,800 years (Buchholtz 1983). A growing body of scientific evidence indicates that Native Americans had significant effects on mammal populations by hunting and on vegetation patterns through deliberate burning (Kay 1994).

Recent human history of the Rocky Mountains is one of more rapid change (Lavender 1975; Knight 1994). The Spanish explorer Francisco Vásquez de Coronado — with a group of soldiers, missionaries, and African slaves — marched into the Rocky Mountain region from the south in 1540.

The introduction of the horse, metal tools, rifles, new diseases, and different cultures profoundly changed the Native American cultures. Native American populations were extirpated from most of their historical ranges by disease, warfare, habitat loss (eradication of the bison), and continued assaults on their culture.

The Lewis and Clark expedition (1804-1806) was the first scientific reconnaissance of the Rocky Mountains. Specimens were collected for contemporary botanists, zoologists, and geologists (Jackson 1962). The expedition was said to have paved the way to (and through) the Rocky Mountains for European-Americans from the East, although Lewis and Clark met at least 11 European-American mountain men during their travels.

Mountain men, primarily French, Spanish, and British roamed the Rocky Mountains from 1720 to 1800 seeking mineral deposits and furs. After 1802, American fur traders and explorers ushered in the first widespread white presence in the Rockies. The more famous of these include Americans included William Henry Ashley, Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, John Colter, Thomas Fitzpatrick, Andrew Henry, and Jedediah Smith. On July 24, 1832, Benjamin Bonneville led the first wagon train across the Rocky Mountains by using Wyoming's South Pass.

The Mormons began to settle near the Great Salt Lake in 1847. In 1859, gold was discovered near Cripple Creek, Colorado, and the regional economy of the Rocky Mountains was changed forever. The transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, and Yellowstone National Park was established in 1872. While settlers filled the valleys and mining towns, conservation and preservation ethics began to take hold.

President Harrison established several forest reserves in the Rocky Mountains in 1891-1892. In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt extended the Medicine Bow Forest Reserve to include the area now managed as Rocky Mountain National Park (Buchholtz 1983).

Economic development began to center on mining, forestry, agriculture, and recreation, as well as on the service industries that support them (Lavender 1975). Tents and camps became ranches and farms, forts and train stations became towns, and some towns became cities.

Industry and development

Economic resources of the Rocky Mountains are varied and abundant. Minerals found in the Rocky Mountains include significant deposits of copper, gold, lead, molybdenum, silver, tungsten, and zinc. The Wyoming Basin and several smaller areas contain significant reserves of coal, natural gas, oil shale, and petroleum. For example, the Climax mine, located near Leadville, Colorado, was the largest producer of Molybdenum in the world.

Molybdenum is used in heat-resistant steel in such things as cars and planes. The Climax mine employed over 3,000 workers. The Coeur d’Alene mine of northern Idaho produces silver, lead, and zinc. Canada's largest coal mines are in the Crowsnest Pass near Sparwood, British Columbia and Elkford, British Columbia; additional coal mines exist near Hinton, Alberta.

Abandoned mines with their wakes of mine tailings and toxic wastes dot the Rocky Mountain landscape. In one major example, eighty years of zinc mining profoundly polluted the river and bank near Eagle River in north-central Colorado. High concentrations of the metal carried by spring runoff harmed algae, moss, and trout populations.

An economic analysis of mining effects at this site revealed declining property values, degraded water quality, and the loss of recreational opportunities. The analysis also revealed that cleanup of the river could yield $2.3 million in additional revenue from recreation. In 1983, the former owner of the zinc mine was sued by the Colorado Attorney General for the $4.8 million cleanup costs; 5 years later, ecological recovery was considerable (Brandt 1993).

Agriculture and forestry are major industries. Agriculture includes dryland and irrigated farming and livestock grazing. Livestock are frequently moved between high-elevation summer pastures and low-elevation winter pastures, a practice known as transhumance.

Human population is not very dense in the Rocky Mountains, with an average of four people per square kilometer (10 per square mile) and few cities with over 50,000 people. However, the human population grew rapidly in the Rocky Mountain states between 1950 and 1990.

The 40-year statewide increases in population range from 35% in Montana to about 150% in Utah and Colorado. The populations of several mountain towns and communities have doubled in the last 40 years. Jackson Hole, Wyoming, increased 260%, from 1,244 to 4,472 residents, in 40 years.

Tourism

Every year the scenic areas and recreational opportunities of the Rocky Mountains draw millions of tourists. The main language of the Rocky Mountains is English. But there are also linguistic pockets of Spanish and Native American languages.

People from all over the world visit the sites to hike, camp, or engage in mountain sports. In the summer, main tourist attractions are

Pikes Peak

Royal Gorge

Rocky Mountain National Park

Yellowstone National Park

Grand Teton National Park

Glacier National Park (U.S.)

Canadian National Parks in the mountain range are

Banff National Park

Jasper National Park

Kootenay National Park

Waterton Lakes National Park

Yoho National Park

Glacier National Park (U.S.) and Waterton Lakes National Park border each other on the U.S./Canadian border and collectively are known as the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park. (See also International Peace Park.)

In the winter, skiing is the main attraction. The major ski resorts are:

Colorado:

Aspen

Vail

Keystone

Breckenridge

Utah:

Alta

Snowbird

Park City

Brighton

Sun Valley, Idaho

Montana:

Big Mountain

Big Sky

Alberta:

Lake Louise

Sunshine Village

Fernie, British Columbia

The adjacent Columbia Mountains in British Columbia and Idaho contain major resorts such as Schweitzer, Panorama and Kicking Horse.

Climate

Aerial view of the Colorado Rocky Mountains in summer

Aerial view of the Colorado Rocky Mountains in winter

The Rocky Mountains have a highland climate. The average temperature in the Rockies per year is 43 °F (6 °C). July is the hottest month with an average temperature of 82 °F (28 °C). In January, the average monthly temperature is 7 °F (-14 °C), making it the coldest month in the Rockies. The average precipitation per year is approximately 14 inches (360 mm).

The summers in the Rockies are warm and dry, because the western fronts impede the advancing of water-carrying storm systems. The average temperature in summer is 59 °F (15 °C) and the average precipitation is 5.9 inches (150 mm). Winter is usually wet and very cold, with an average temperature of 28 °F (-2 °C) and average snowfall of 11.4 inches (29.0 cm).

In spring, the average temperature is 40 °F (4 °C) and the average precipitation is 4.2 inches (107 mm). And in the fall, the average precipitation is 2.6 inches (66 mm) and the average temperature is 44 °F (7 °C).

The Clearwater River is a river in northern Idaho, the North Fork of which flows from the Idaho-Montana border westward to join the Snake River at Lewiston. The Lewis and Clark Expedition went down the North Fork just northwest of Lolo Pass. The Clearwater breaks into several separate forks:

Clearwater River (Orofino to Lewiston-Snake River)

North Fork Clearwater River (stream, Clearwater County - 46°29'59?N, 116°19'49?W; headwaters near Illinois Peak to Orofino)

Little North Fork Clearwater River (stream, Shoshone & Clearwater Counties; headwaters in south-central Shoshone County, join the North Fork in the Dworshak Reservoir)

Middle Fork Clearwater River (stream, Idaho County - 46°08'43?N, 115°58'56?W; formed by the formation of the Selway and Lochsa; Lowell, Idaho to near Kooskia, Idaho)

South Fork Clearwater River (stream, Idaho County - 46°08'44?N, 115°58'56?W; headwaters near Red River Hot Springs to Kooskia)

Little Clearwater River (stream, Idaho County - 45°45'11?N, 114°46'31?W; near Three Prong Mountain to near Spot Mountain)

The Dworshak Reservoir is the only major lake on the Clearwater system, created from the Dworshak Dam.

The Columbia River (French: fleuve Columbia) is a river situated in British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest of the United States.

It is the largest river in volume flowing into the Pacific Ocean from the Western Hemisphere, and is the fourth

largest by volume in North America behind the Mississippi, the St Lawrence, and the Mackenzie rivers. In rare years, the river's flow may actually exceed that of the Mississippi. The mean total flow is 262,000 ft3/s (7400 m3/s). It is the largest hydroelectric power producing river in North America.

From its headwaters to the Pacific Ocean it flows 1,232 miles (2,044 km), and drains 258,000 square miles (415,211 km²). Because of it large water volume, it has the nickname 'the Mighty Columbia.'

Geography

Columbia Lake forms the Columbia's headwaters in the Canadian Rockies of southern British Columbia. The river then flows through Windermere Lake

and the town of Invermere, then northwest to Golden and into Kinbasket Lake. The river then turns (the "Big Bend") south through Revelstoke Lake and the Arrow Lakes to the BC–Washington border.

The river then flows through the east-central portion of Washington State. The last 300 miles (480 km) of the Columbia form the Washington-Oregon boundary. The river goes into the Pacific Ocean at Ilwaco, Washington and Astoria, Oregon forming the Columbia Bar.

For its first 200 miles (320 km) the Columbia flows northwest; it then bends to the south, crossing from Canada into the United States, where the river meets the Clark Fork. The Clark Fork River begins near Butte, Montana and flows through western Montana before entering Pend Oreille Lake.

Water draining from the lake forms the Pend Oreille River, which flows across the Idaho panhandle to Washington's northeastern corner where it meets the northern Canadian fork.

The river then runs south-southwest through the Columbia Plateau, changing to a southeasterly direction near the confluence of the Wenatchee River in central Washington. The river continues southeast, past The Gorge Amphitheatre (a prominent concert venue in the Northwest), and then past the Hanford Nuclear Reservation just before it reaches the Snake River. The Columbia then makes a sharp bend to the west where it begins to form the Washington-Oregon border.

Near the town of Hood River, Oregon, the river begins cutting through the Cascade Mountains at the entrance to the Columbia River Gorge. The west side of the gorge is marked by Crown Point. Constant winds of 15 to 35 mph (25 to 55 km/h) blow through this wide straight gorge. It was here in Hood River County, Oregon that windsurfing was originated.

The Columbia River is the largest river in the world that has no delta. The river continues west with one small north-northwesterly-directed stretch near Portland; Vancouver, Washington; and the confluence with the Willamette River. On this sharp bend the river's flow slows considerably and it drops the sediment that would normally form a delta.

Major tributaries

Major tributaries, downstream from British Columbia to the Pacific Ocean:

Kootenai River

Pend Oreille River

Yakima River

Snake River

John Day River

Deschutes River

Klickitat River

Hood River

Sandy River

Willamette River

Missoula Floods

The Columbia River and its drainage basin has experienced some of the world's greatest known floods. Towards the end of the last ice age, the rupturing of ice dams at glacial Lake Missoula resulted in a discharge rates ten times the combined flow of all the rivers of the world .

Water levels resulting from the Missoula Floods have been estimated to be 1250 feet at the Wallula gap, 830 feet at Bonneville Dam, and 400 feet over current day Portland, Oregon. In addition to their temporary inundation of the lower Columbia basin, these floods are responsible for many geological features still visible on the Columbia Plateau.

History

On May 11, 1792, Captain Robert Gray became the first white man to see the Columbia River. Gray traveled to the Pacific Northwest to trade for fur in a privately-owned vessel named Columbia; he named the river after the ship. Gray's discovery of the Columbia established a stronger belief that Americans had more of a "right" to the Oregon Country, which was also claimed by Russians, British, Spanish, and other nations.

"Ouragan" is the original name for the Columbia River. Native American and First Nations stories hold the "Ouragan" as a very spiritual place.

Lewis and Clark's overland expedition explored the vast, unmapped lands west of the Missouri River. On the last stretch of their expedition they traveled down the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean. The expedition led the way in settling the west.

In 1825, on behalf of the Hudson's Bay Company, Dr. John McLoughlin established Fort Vancouver (currently Vancouver, Washington) on the banks of the Columbia as a fur trading headquarters in the region. The fort was by far the largest western settlement of its time.

Every year ships would come from London (via the Pacific) to drop off supplies and trade goods in exchange for the furs. For many settlers the fort became the last stop on the Oregon Trail to buy supplies and land before starting their homestead. Because of its access to the Columbia river, Fort Vancouver's influence reached from Alaska to California and from the Rocky Mountains to the Hawaiian Islands.

Hydroelectric dams

The mainstream of the Columbia River has 11 dams and 8 locks. Nearly half of all hydroelectricity in the United States comes from the Columbia and its tributaries. The largest of the 150 hydroelectric projects, the Grand Coulee Dam and the Chief Joseph Dam, are also the largest in the United States. The Grand Coulee Dam is the third largest hydroelectric dam in the world. The dams also provide a secondary benefit in flood control and irrigation.

On its north-south stretch through Eastern Washington, the Columbia spans a large desert created by the Cascade Mountains' rain shadow. The dams provide water for the Columbia Basin Project, one of the most extensive irrigation projects in the western United States.

The project provides water to over 500,000 acres (2,000 km²) of fertile but arid lands in central Washington State. Water from the project has transformed the region from a wasteland barely able to produce subsistence levels of dry-land wheat crops to a major agricultural center. Important crops include apples, potatoes, alfalfa, wheat, corn (maize), barley, hops, beans, and sugar beets.

Although the dams provide clean, renewable energy, they drastically alter the landscape and ecosystem of the river. At one time the Columbia was one of the top salmon producing river systems in the world. Previously active fishing sites, like Celilo Falls in the eastern Columbia River Gorge highlight the relative decline in fishing along the Columbia during the last century.

The presence of dams coupled with over-fishing has played a major role in the reduction of salmon populations. Fish ladders have been installed to help the fish journey to spawning waters. Additionally each dams' reservoirs are closely regulated by the Bonneville Power Administration to ensure one dam is not hoarding water to the detriment of habitat for salmon and other fish.

Pollution

Contaminants have seeped into the Columbia River from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. This Reservation was established in 1940s as part of the Manhattan Project. It is located along the river in southeastern Washington on 586 mile² (1,520 km²) of some of the most fertile land in North America; at the time of its establishment, the area was considered a wasteland.

The site served as a plutonium production complex with nine nuclear reactors and related facilities. Most of the facilities were shut down in the 1960s. The site is currently under control of the Department of Energy, and is a Superfund site. The Superfund cleanup is expected to be completed in 2030.

There are also many more major problems with the Columbia, from raw sewage dumpage, to hundreds of tons of slag dumped daily. Because of the pollution problems, some people believe that the future health of the Columbia River does not look good. However, newspapers such as The Oregonian are calling attention to the problems of rivers, and there is hope that humans, industries, flora, fauna and safe water can be made to co-exist.

Fort Clatsop was the encampment of the Lewis and Clark Expedition in the Oregon Country near the mouth of the Columbia River during the winter of 1805-1806. Located along the Lewis and Clark River at the north end of the Clatsop Plains approximately 5 mi (8 km) southwest of Astoria, Oregon, the fort was the last encampment of the Corps of Discovery before embarking on their return trip east to St. Louis. The site is now protected as part of Lewis

and Clark National and State Historical Parks.

History

The fort was named after the local Clatsop tribe of Native Americans. The Corps of Discovery moved into the fort on December 25, 1805. The original stockade was a small cramped wooden structure, more of a barracks than a defensible structure. By their own accounts, the Corps members were

largely miserable during the damp cold winter on the Pacific Coast. Whereas the previous winter on the Great Plains they spent a great amount of time interacting with the local Native Americans, at Fort Clatsop their interaction with the local Clatsop was not social and was limited mostly to small-scale trading. The fort was opened to trading only 24 days during the entire winter.

The expedition's journals do not give a precise layout of the fort, and the two floorplans drawn Sergeant John Ordway and Captain William Clark differ. Clark's floorplan is the accepted version due to his rank and role in the construction work.

The area they had settled in was on the lands of the Clatsop tribe, one of the Lower Chinookan peoples. Prior to the expedition's arrival, the Clatsop had frequently traded with other European traders and explorers visiting the area by ship.

Because of their prior experience with traders, the Clatsop were shrewd at valuing the expedition's "indian trinkets". Despite this, the tribe interacted frequently with the expedition, trading goods, services, and information.

The camp site was selected by Captain Lewis and construction took place over the month of December, with the expedition moving in by Christmas Day, 1805. They remained there until March 23, 1806, when they abandoned it for their return home.

The original fort decayed in the wet climate of the region but was reconstructed in 1955 from sketches in the journals of William Clark. The site is currently operated by the National Park Service.

Recent fire has destroyed the re-created fort

On the late evening of October 3, 2005, a fire destroyed the replica fort; federal, state and community officials immediately pledged to rebuild it.

Contributing to the degree of damage sustained, was a 9-1-1 operator's insistence that the fire was little more than fog over the nearby Lewis and Clark River, delaying firefighters by almost a half-hour in arriving. Investigators concluded that the fire was an accident, and not the result of arson, as was initially thought.

The fire started in one of the enlisted men's quarters, known as the candle room. Earlier in the day there had been an open hearth fire burning in the room. Despite the tragedy, the fire has renewed archaeological interest in the site, as excavations were not possible while the replica was standing.

Additionally, the new replica will be built utilizing information on the original fort that was not available for the 1955 replica. The rebuilt replica will also have a fire detection system installed in it.