Savages. The term commonly heard when referring to the people who were inhabiting the Americas when European travelers began their exploration. Down the road a little, after the Europeans made their way into the New World, they began to set up their own posts to establish a trade system among these so called savages, or Native Americans. One Native American tribe that was well known among the fur traders, and over the years gave shelter to many traders on their journey along the Missouri River, was the Mandan. Traders who took shelter with these Native Americans during their journey learned much of their culture. Some of them even recorded what they learned in journals. This ethnography is the result of an analysis of information extracted from those journals, and will give insight to the lesser known people behind the fur trade. This analysis will not only provide information on the Mandan tribe, but also the Hidatsa tribe that lived upriver from the Mandan and shared many customs with them. This information comes from a collection of journals by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, Alexander Henry, Henry Marie Brackenridge, the letter journal of Pierre Gaultier de Varennes de La Verendrye, and a narrative by David Thompson based off his own journals written during his explorations.