Two hundred years ago last Tuesday, Sheheke finally made it home.
Sheheke was the principal chief of the lower Mandan village who befriended Lewis and Clark during the long winter they spent at Fort Mandan in 1804-05. Nicknamed “Big White” (evidently he was a large man with a pale complexion), he became the focus of the captains’ diplomatic efforts with the Mandan tribe. Sheheke responded to Lewis and Clark’s gifts and attentions by welcoming the Corps of Discovery to the neighborhood. He extended the full warmth of his hospitality during that famously cold winter, telling the captains: “If we eat, you shall eat; if we starve, you must starve also.”
Upon their return to the Mandan villages in August 1806, Lewis and Clark invited Sheheke to return east with them, in keeping with Jefferson’s wish to give Indian leaders an in-person look at American might. Sheheke agreed to go, taking along his wife and son.
Portrait of Sheheke by Charles Saint-Mémin
Thus began a multi-year ordeal that would lead to disaster, not only for Sheheke but for several members of the Corps of Discovery. Sheheke and his family spent several months in the East, meeting Jefferson, wining and dining with dignitaries, and being suitably impressed with the civilization of their new “white father.” In March of 1807, Secretary of War Henry Dearborn sent instructions to Clark, asking him to see that Sheheke and his family were escorted back home. It proved easier said than done. The first attempt, led by Corps veteran Nathaniel Pryor, ended in a pitched battle with the Sioux and the Arikara on the Missouri River and had to turn back. Sheheke languished in St. Louis while the matter festered. As the problem dragged on into the summer of 1808, Territorial Governor Lewis received two pointed letters from Jefferson, pressing him on his plans for Sheheke’s return. “[It] is an object which presses on our justice & our honor,” Jefferson complained.
In February 1809, Lewis finally contracted with the St. Louis Missouri Fur Company – an enterprise in which he had an interest – to return Sheheke and his family to his home at the mouth of the Knife River. The new plan left nothing to chance, requiring the service of over 500 armed men, including militia, volunteers, and fur traders and trappers. The price tag of the enterprise was an astounding $20,000. Fortunately, it worked. The massive flotilla got Sheheke safely past the Sioux and the Arikara and delivered him home to the Mandan villages on September 22, 1809.
Ironically, Lewis and Sheheke both ended up on the losing end. Jefferson had left office, and new Secretary of War William Eustis rejected Lewis’s expense vouchers for the trip, scolding him for failing to get prior approval and for using the expedition to combine commercial and military ventures. As his finances collapsed, Lewis’s desperation was palpable. “An explaneation is all that is necessary I am sensible to put all matters right,” he wrote. Lewis died at Grinders Stand on October 9, 1809, on his way to Washington to attempt to straighten out the mess.
Sheheke fared little better. In the three years he had been away from his tribe, he lost much of his status and reputation. Some of the Mandans thought he was too friendly with white people, and others didn’t believe his fabulous stories of beautiful buildings and sailing ships he’d seen back east. He died in an intertribal conflict in his own village in 1812.
Photo of the storyboard, courtesy KFYR-TV
On Tuesday at the boat landing in Stanton, North Dakota, the anniversary of Sheheke’s return was celebrated with food, song, dancing and storytelling—like his own would have been on an autumn day 200 years ago. Many of Sheheke’s descendants were at the boat landing, some exploring the village site of their ancestor for the first time. A permanent storyboard was placed in honor of Sheheke by the Sakakawea Chapter of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation.
[...] easy to imagine the life of the people here. You can almost see Lewis and Clark sitting around with Sheheke, sharing a bowl of buffalo stew, just as they did a few miles up the river. Surrounding the [...]
[...] chided in a letter to Lewis dated July 17. After wanting to know what Lewis was going to do about returning the Indian chief Sheheke to the Mandan villages, he nagged: “We have no tidings yet of the forwardness of your printer. I hope the first part [...]
So often when Sheheke is discussed, it is only in terms of his adulthood, his leadership and his relationship with Lewis and Clark, and US government. He was born in On-A-Slant village, now inside the boundaries of Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park west of Mandan ND. At the time of his birth, the village was home to an estimated 10,000 people. Then smallpox hit, and 80% of the village died. Sheheke was sick, but survived. Along with the other survivors, he moved upstream to be closer to the Hidatsa, for additional protection from attacks by the Arikara (now allies of both the Mandan and Hidatsa) and other marauding tribes. He became a leader of his people, and he fostered the relationships with Lewis, Clark, and the US government for the good of his people. At the time, the Hidatsa were obtaining trade goods from British “factors” in Canada, and selling them to the Mandan for a profit. Sheheke rightly saw that if he could get the US on his side, he’d have his own source for trade goods from the whites, and that would increase the power of his people, as well as their wealth. He wasn’t being altruistic; he was nobody’s fool. He was a wise leader who did what he saw as a benefit to the remnants of what was once a relatively large nation.
And Lewis didn’t just “die;” most historians agree that he committed suicide. A tragic end for an intrepid explorer.
Lee
[...] and chaos of the frontier. Promoted to the rank of ensign, in 1807 he led a contingent assigned to return Mandan chief Sheheke, who had visited the east with Lewis and Clark, to his home in North Dakota. Hundreds of Arikara [...]
In the NuEta Language Ma det (mah det) means river
When first meeting early Europeans the NuEta expressed to them “Ma det, Unt de rop de” meaning we are the river dwellers. The explorers mispronounced river and shortened it to Mandan. The NuEta lived on both sides of the river. They were the Nuitdadi, and Nupitadi. NuEta was a term accepted by all Mandan people.
Shehek means Coyote in NuEta (Mandan) language.
Shehek Shote means White Coyote.
NuEta society operates on a clanship system. In one’s clan are clan brothers and clan sisters. Your clan brothers are ones to tease and correct your behaviors. They keep your feet on the ground so to speak.
In NuEta stories the coyote was a trickster and sly guy. Shehek Shote’s formal name was Great White Wolf. His clan brothers teasingly said “he is no wolf, he is a coyote.” This became somewhat of a nickname for shehek. Historians have called him: Big White, Big White Wolf, Sheheke, Shehek, Shehek Shote, but they are all the same person.
At the time of Sheheke Shote’s birth the Mandan’s were at the peak of their cultural and material wealth. They numbered over 10,000 and were living in perhaps 7 villages in the Mandan-Bismarck area.
While the On-A-Slant village remains and is protected along with three other Mandan villages, there are several more sites that are privately owned and as such are mined and pilfered at will. The irreplaceable information that could be discovered about the Mandans at the very peak of their cultural power is systematically destroyed with every pot and point that is removed to be sold to the highest bidder. Unfortunately, the only people who could protest this activity with any hope of success are the descendents of the Mandans themselves and they seem to have little interest in their old sites which, in the Mandan–Bismarck area, due to the smallpox epidemic of 1781, are also their cemeteries!