MANDANS

Steve Hilgrin

Oct. 17, 2015

(or maybe man-Danes?) 

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 When Lewis and Clark were exploring up the Missouri River they had noted the older earth lodge villages.  When they got to what is now the city of Mandan they were told that these were the Mandan’s older village as they had moved or had been driven farther upriver (North) by the Sioux.

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The Mandans also told them how they had come from the source of the great river, aka the Mississippi.

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The Mandans also told a story of when, during the earliest times, their ship had been stranded in a lake on a mountaintop after a great storm.

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In northern Minnesota, west of Roseau, there is the ancient Campbell Beach, which was the last stage of the recession of ancient Glacial Lake Agassiz.  Lake Agassiz existed before the glaciers had receded far enough north so the Red River now began to drain the remains of this ancient inland melt water sea into Hudson Bay. During road construction a hundred or so years ago earth lodges were found in the Campbell Beach formation.

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The native Michinok told the story of how during an ancient time the great sea had returned.  There had been a storm. There were ships wrecked. The few survivors had built the earth lodges.

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However only one adult male and five children had survived that wreck. His mother was one of their ancestors.

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Minnesota state archaeologist Eldon Johnson described the builders of the earth lodges as the ''Missouri River culture''.  They have been found in northern Minnesota and in central Minnesota near Lake Mill Lac (which the Chippewa claim as their great ''sprit lake.'')   The oldest earth lodges are near Flood wood, which is on the portage between the Red River/Upper Mississippi River and the St Louis River and east into Lake Superior.

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So you now say there were possibly ''white Indians at the falls of the Ohio too?

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So are these then also Mandans?

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We have them on the upper Missouri.

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We have them on the upper Mississippi.

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We have them on the upper Ohio.

Why not all three?

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Are they all Viking ancestors?

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So please think about this:

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In western Minnesota there is a long narrow strip of high ground (50 miles wide and 400 or more miles long) that was pushed up between two lobes of the glacier. It is called the Alexandria moraine and Leaf Mountains moraine. It is 500 or more feet higher than the Red River valley to its west and 600 or more hundred feet higher than the upper Mississippi river and Superior to the east.

The high ground was an island or long narrow peninsula 5000 to 10,000 years ago with glacial Lake Agassiz on its western shore and glacial Lake Wadena on the East shore.

The Mary Lake lodge sits on a bay of former glacial lake Wadena. Bare Knob is a peak on the eastern shore and five miles straight west of Mary Lake. 

What we in Minnesota call the source of the Mississippi River at Itasca was not considered the source a few hundred years ago. It was in western Minnesota and flowed down from this strip of high ground in western Minnesota where it also was the connection to the Red River water route to the north and the connection to the water route from Fish Lake (two miles west of Bare Knob) which is the source of the Chippewa River flowing south to the Minnesota River (and past Kensington Runestone Hill too).

So there are the puzzle pieces.  Put them ALL together.

During the warm period just over a thousand years ago and Hudson Bay opened early in the spring (or perhaps never froze over entirely), the Vikings (aka Greenlanders) sailed west from their outpost on Baffin Island and into western Hudson Bay and following the fresh water south down the Red River and into this remains of a vast ancient sea bed we now call the Red River Valley.

They followed the tributaries up river on to this strip of high ground. Here they found the great hardwood forests, the self-seeding grain and the wild grapes (I picked a few yesterday on Mary lake south shore).

So here I sit this morning as dawn breaks out side my window and over Mary Lake. Here in this small lake and on this mountain top on the eastern shore of this long narrow strip of high ground (the ''promontory of Winelandia''), aka “VINLAND of west'' (from the third line down on the KRS).

Here the children of the first settlers in this area told a story of remains of a ship they had found out in the lake bottom during the dry period of the late 1800's. It was also found a second time during the dry 1930's.

During a period about a thousand years ago the Greenland colony began to disappear or simply sailed away or flee or were caught in that great storm. 

A thousand years ago earth lodges begin appearing in Minnesota.

A thousand years ago Mandan’s aka Viking Greenlanders meet the natives on northern Minnesota and the eastern Dakotas and simply follow the annual fall migration down the Mississippi. 

A thousand years ago the wheels begin to start wobbling in Cahokia and some one builds Wood hinge next to monks mound. The main forces of the Mandan’s are driven out of Cahokia and up the Missouri, and, a few went UP the Ohio too. 

The Mandan’s had knowledge of perhaps how to build fire and make barrels or make fired clay pots to hold or carry water and build earth lodges etc.  This created an imbalance of powers of sorts. 

Why do they throw their metal articles away?

Did Leif Erikson sail west into Hudson Bay first and into this fresh water estuary and call THIS VINLAND? The sagas say they did not return to Vinland (of west) after 1086. Had they now begun to explore the east coast? Had the weather gotten colder and Hudson Bay remains frozen longer into the summer season too?

Did Leif Erikson intentionally deceive or tell his brother Thor about Vinland of the east, so he would not find or know where Vinland of the west was? Did the Mandan’s not want to be found?