nonfiction; native tribe history.

A fascinating and unvarnished look at the Mandans and related tribes in North and South Dakota. Fenn has done meticulous research for this book, and although sometimes the information content is a bit dense, it is still quite an enjoyable read. It is also a sad book, as the Mandans are one of the tribes that were nearly decimated from a combination of new diseases, small pox being the most prominent, but also including whooping cough, measles and cholera. By the middle of the 19th century they were a straggling band of survivors living in a single village. ( )

Encounters at the Heart of the World is a combination anthropological study and history of the Mandan people of what is now North Dakota, focusing on the period between the beginnings of history to the late 1830s when around seven-eights of the tribe died in a smallpox outbreak. The first half focuses on Mandan culture and how they (probably) came to arrive at the Missouri River, where White trappers and later Lewis and Clark later found them. The second half focuses more on history, particularly the Mandan's relations with various European and later American governments. Masters of commerce, they managed to hold on to a position of strength as the middle-men of the Upper Midwest for many years; however, ultimately technology and disease made them irrelevant. The epilogue brings the story from the 1830s to today, completing the circle.

Highly recommended for anyone interesting in Native American history or culture, Lewis & Clark, the Dakotas, or well-written non-fiction. It won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2015. ( )

A detailed well researched study on the Mandan native American tribe who once flourished in what is today South Dakota. This book graphically portrays the typical struggle that many tribes had to go through once they made contact with European white men. At first there is mutual optimism that these groups will both benefit - especially due to trade. There is much unique data unearthed by the author regarding tribal customs. Many ceremonies have a high degree of sexual content. Although this is a minor tribe among hundreds their experience is a blueprint to what happened to native Americans post European contact. ( )

I have to admit to being a bit disappointed in this 2015 Pulitzer prize winner for nonfiction. Fenn has written a history of the Mandan people, a Native American tribe mainly located in North Dakota, by the Missouri River.

A lot of the information was interesting. I had never heard of the Mandans so I was starting from zero. They were a settled people, living in towns and growing corn with bison hunting on the side. Fenn details their farming practices and daily life in pretty good detail, including their interactions with various tribes around them. She shows how this interior, settled tribe was at the center of a trading ring that stretched to both coasts. Most of the book, though, is centered on roughly 1780-1830, the time when they started having more regular interaction with European settler and traders and when their thriving towns radically declined due to diseases, warfare by other tribes (namely the Sioux) which not only killed them directly but also affected their willingness to hunt bison, and interruption of their way of life by European settlers through the introduction of rats that ate their corn stores and steamboats that decimated the already scant supply of wood.

All of this information was interesting to me, but I was hoping for more insight into their way of life before the interruption of Europeans. I suppose its still just not really available and may never be. That was disappointing though. However, my main complaint was not with the information provided but the writing style. Fenn has broken her book into tiny sections within each part, severely impacting the flow of the prose. Within each chapter, there are headings starting every few paragraphs, most of which I felt could have been summed up in a topic sentence rather than separating out so many ideas. I also didn't like that she inserted herself into the book, referencing her own experience researching the book several times. I have enjoyed other books that make the author's journey a part of the text (I'm thinking of Tony Horwitz), but she didn't commit to it enough for it to make sense. By throwing in a few references only to herself, she just confused the issue and interrupted the flow.

Overall, I think this is probably a good addition to the writings on the American Indians and I was glad to learn about a group of people I hadn't heard of, but the book had something lacking that made it rather unsatisfying to me. ( )