TWIN BUTTES N.D.
An effort to save the Mandan
language may rest on the shoulders of a 75-year-old horse rancher.
Experts believe Edwin Benson is the only person living who
speaks fluent Mandan, the language
of the American Indian tribe that became the host of Meriwether Lewis and
William Clark during the explorers’ winter encampment in North
Dakota more than 200 years ago.
For past three summers, in six-hour shifts, Benson and California
linguist Sara Trechter have camped out in a small office so he can speak into a
microphone while Trechter takes notes. The two recently finished transcribing
seven Mandan folk stories.
Benson’s grandfather insisted on keeping alive Mandan
traditions and language. Ben Benson forbid speaking English in his home, a log
cabin near the mouth of the Little Missouri River.
Trechter, who teaches at a university in Chico,
Calif., learned about efforts to preserve
the Mandan language from her
doctoral thesis adviser, a Siouan language expert at the University
of Kansas. She got in touch with
Calvin Grinnell, who works in the Mandan,
Hidatsa and Arikara cultural preservation office on North
Dakota’s Fort
Berthold reservation. Grinnell
directs the language preservation project with Joseph Jasztrembski, a history
professor at Minot State
University.
The effort started about seven years ago with a grant from
the National Park Service, which paid to videotape Benson telling folk stories
at the Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site near Stanton.
