Maanaagi'iisodagish

Maanaagi'iisodagish lay in the prairie and river country of the upper Missouri, where the river bends through cottonwood bottoms and open grassland. Mandan villages of earth lodges stood on the high terraces, and the people grew corn, beans and squash in the floodplain, trading the surplus with neighbouring peoples and with visiting traders. A smallpox epidemic in 1781 devastated the Missouri villages, and the Mandan survivors moved upriver to live closer to the Hidatsa. When Lewis and Clark wintered near the Mandan villages in 1804, they recorded the trade fairs that drew nations from across the plains.