Mandan In Other Languages

The designation Mandan has been borrowed into English from the languages of the eastern tribes who first provided second-hand information about a powerful tribe living in large towns on the banks of Missouri. The Lakota and Yanktonai miwatani, Yankton and Omaha-Ponca mawatani, and Assiniboine mayatani is an ancient term whose exact meaning is forgotten, but it is likely that it may have meant ‘the people of the river bank.’

            The Hidatsa name for Mandan is aroxbagua or aroxbagua ruxbaaga.

There are two interpretations of the word aroxbagua.

            The first interpretation is fairly straightforward and means ‘people at the confluence.’ Since a confluence is a place where two rivers join to become one, it clearly refers to the area around the mouth of the Heart River where the different subdivision of the Mandan people used to live. These towns were abandoned after the smallpox epidemic of 1781 when the survivors moved upriver to the Knife River.

            The original territory of the Mandan around the Heart River has been overtaken by the urban sprawl of Bismarck and Mandan (the city), but the remains of the original Mandan towns are still clearly visible in the area.

            The second interpretation of the term aroxbagua refers to the Hidatsa migration story.

            Carol Ann Fredericks Newman heard the story from her grandfather Charlie Snow. According to Charlie Snow, a long time ago the Hidatsa and Mandan were one people who lived in the south. At some point the people started migrating northwards. During this process, which took hundreds of years, small groups finally started arriving in their present-day location in North Dakota. When the last groups arrived, they said that they were aru’axbi, or ‘all that remains’. Over the centuries, their way of speaking had diverged to the point that one group of dialects became known as the Hidatsa and the second group as the Mandan.

            The Pawnee name for Mandan is piitakariitu’, literally ‘stone men’. The Arikara have shortened this name to kanit ‘stone’.

            In many other languages the name that designates the Mandan refers to the earthlodges that set them apart from the nomadic tribes. The Blackfoot, Cheyenne, and Chippewa all call the Mandan ‘earthlodge dwellers’. The Crow and the Kiowa designation is ‘lodges at the end’.

            There are several ways to describe the Mandan in the Plains sign language. It is possible that the different signs originally referred to the various subdivisions of the Mandan people.

            The most common sign, which is made by scratching motion from the lower lip to the chin, as if painting vertical stripes there, may have originally been a designation reserved for the Istope, or Tattooed Faces subdivision of the Mandan people.

            Both the Arikara and Mandan are often described by a sign that indicates shelling corn. This is not surprising considering that prior to the smallpox epidemic of 1781, the southernmost Mandan and northernmost Arikara lived in close proximity to each other, were heavily intermarried, and shared many cultural practices.

            Another sign, which is exclusively used by the Crow, also suggests a historical and cultural affinity between the Mandan and the Arikara. The Crow name for the Arikara is ahparroopise ‘big ear holes’, but in the sign language they use the sign ‘big holes in the ears made for wearing earrings’ for the Mandan.