The Mandan are a Native American tribe that historically lived along the banks of the Missouri River and its tributaries, the Heart and Knife rivers in the present-day North and South Dakotas. The Mandan were the only tribe in the Great Plains region to establish agricultural and permanent villages. These villages were composed of round earthen lodges surrounding a central plaza. In addition to farming, the Mandan gathered wild plants and berries and hunted buffalo. By the turn of the 19th century, because of attacks by neighboring tribes and epidemics of smallpox and whooping cough, the numbers of the Mandan had diminished dramatically. With such meager numbers, the Mandan banded together with two neighboring tribes, the Arikara and Hidatsa. With the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act, the Mandan officially merged with the Hidatsa and the Arikara into the "Three Affiliated Tribes," known as the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation. About half of the Mandan still reside in the area of the reservation, the rest residing around the United States and in Canada.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandan

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1897: Stage actress, journalist and leading suffragette Marguerite Durand founded the feminist newspaper La Fronde. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marguerite_Durand)

1905: Legislation on the separation of church and state in France was adopted, causing civil disobedience by French Catholics.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1905_French_law_on_the_separation_of_Church_and...)

1946: The Doctors' Trial, the trial for crimes committed in Nazi human experimentation during World War II, began in Nuremberg, Germany. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctors%27_Trial)

1958: The John Birch Society was founded to fight the perceived threat of communism in the United States. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Birch_Society)

1960: Coronation Street, the longest-running television soap opera in the United Kingdom, was first broadcast on ITV. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronation_Street)

_____________________ Wikiquote of the day:

"We take men for what they are worth — and that is why we hate the government of man by man, and that we work with all our might — perhaps not strong enough — to put an end to it." -- Peter Kropotkin (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Peter_Kropotkin)