that spiral symbol represents bellyache which was one of the symptoms, early symptoms of smallpox. we know that they traded and rated with the mandan, but no account of such an outbreak exists among the mandan people. so where else can we look? the telltale evidence may well lie buried in ghost towns like double ditch. remember, by 1600 or so the mandan at double ditch had ensconced themselves behind the 2nd fortification rate , the outermost ring that we can still see today. now, at some point the villagers contracted again, taking shelter behind the innermost ditch and palisade the cause may well have been a smallpox epidemic of 1734 to 35. double ditch in 1500 had contained a hundred and 60 homes, 2,000 people. by the mid-1700sby the mid- 17 hundreds there were just 32 homes and no more than 400 people. hunkered down inside the smallest is that you see here. and then it happened again. 1781 smallpox made its way to the upper missouri river from spanish settlements to the south. the precise route followed is not here. but fleet footed horses made its transit easy. and this struck the entire north american continent. so with the population depleted and the threat of violence growing by way of attack from the lakota, the mandan now sought safety in numbers. and they accomplish this by moving. they moved 40 or 50 miles north and build new towns beside a neighboring people known as the head nonsense. this was at the confluence of the knife river and the missouri. and those hard river villages, traditional villages, once home to thousands became ghost towns. lewis and clark passed through 23 years after this epidemic, and they map the empty town sites as they traveled upstream. so essentially what happened is that the mandan and then northerly neighbors round of living in a configuration of towns of the practice to a configuration of townsfolk like this. and the mandan now numbered approximately 1500 people and all. that is 90 percent decline. now in the years that followed born diseases coursed across the planes. whooping cough struck the villages in the summer of 1806, possibly again in 1813 or 14, and then again in 1818 and 19. filling the air with hacking coughs and that desperate whistle like leasing that it gives the infection its name. the 1818 1819 whooping cough epidemic came hand-in-hand with an outbreak of measles. to diseases circulating at once. and the focal points of trade and commerce, the knife river villages, feet mandan villages also became focal points of contagion. there werecontagion. there were reports of infection that were abundant for the peoples with whom they traded and rated. now, thereafter more challenges can quickly as the st. louis for trade extended its reach northward now, there is a little critter called the deer mouse that had been a perennial problem in the mandan earth lodges. residents of the mandan town complained that deer mice were very destructive and that they nod clothing and other manufacturers to pieces in a lamentable manner. but deer mice rarely borough so deer mice left those underground rain caches alone. in 1825 a visiting keelboat brought another new species. this was a species that put the deer mouse, a native species, and perspective. the new creature was the norway rat, also called the brown rat. there is your deer mouse. here is the lovely rat. for the mandan, the site of a new creature was a momentous occasion. perhaps even a visitation of the spirits. one eyewitness reported that hundreds came to watch and look at the strange animal. no one, he said, dared to kill it. when the indian side of where devouring a deer mouse they were delighted. perhaps if these new creatures multiply they would rid there lodges of the bothersome deer mice. perhaps theperhaps the spirits had intervened. well, the arrested multiply and quickly. i'm going to spare you the details of rat reproduction that i learned in the course of this research, suffice to say that they are impressive. there may be children in the audience. reproduction aside, norway rats are assiduous borrowers. it's been much of their life beneath the surface of the earth. this aspect of rat ecology combined with their prodigious reproductive rate to create a dreadful consequence. the underground grain caches were no match for the rats. and with a seemingly bottomless storehouse of maize to consume, the rats borough then multiplied. within six years of the rats arrival eyewitnesses reported that the animals had infested every wigwam. the mandan caches where they bury their corn and other provisions were robin sacked. no longer supported by stores of grain. there was a little for trading post, an american fur company post that sat beside the village. and for clark was staffed by aa very cranky fur trader, a gentleman in france a showdown, and you can get a sense of his personality by reading his journal. he detested the mandan and the rats had started keeping a record of aa number of rats he killed every month and his journal. i've just exited some of those records. over the course of the year from 1836 to 1837 he killed a total of 1,600 and 86 rats in the course of a year. that is just and for clark. where isclark. where is all the corn stored? it is in the mandan village. so just imagine the rats? now, in 1832 as the rats ran , a steamboat named yellowstone churned up the missouri river docking in order to service for clark. yellowstone was the 1st game or two reach the kayseven. and like like the rats, it had a voracious appetite. not from maize but from would. the mandan consumed plenty of work on there own. steamboats were in a different league. small steamer like the yellowstone is the equivalent of 60 tenants trees for each day of travel. the boats inevitably reloaded with would where would was in short supply as early as 1833 and 34. and the dwindling forests had far-reaching effects. in the winter, the bison herds migrated to the missouri river's forests river's forests and bottomlands to escape the full force of the weather. for the mandan, this made for easy hunting, abundant meat, especially in that difficult season. but now with a few trees in the river bottom in the villages there is little shelter, and the winter bison herds went elsewhere. mandan starving, of fort full of men, women command children picking meat wrote francis showdown on november 31. ported plenty of bison 30 miles away on february 4. why didn't they mandan go hunt them? because the lakota were nearby, their enemies were nearby. so the mandan, a three-dimensional problem in the winter of 1836 and 37. the corn was to merely. the rats reading it. the sioux were too close and the bison were too far away. in april of 18372 additional pressures came to bear. the 1st is a mystery. for some reason, the thawing missouri river ice failed to yield its annual supply of prized flood bison. second, the entire a ricker a tribe, neighboring people neighboring people to the south, another tribe of earth lodge dwellers, the entire tribe, perhaps as many as 2,000 people sought shelter with the mandan after abandoning their own villages. the net effect was still more strain on the mandan poultry food stores. now, the decisive blow came two months later. on june 18, 1837, the fur company steamers landed at me to the hawkish. onboard were passengers, supplies, and the smallpox virus. a young man, a young mandan died today of the smallpox. several others have caught it. thereafter the parks ripped through the mandan village. august 1837, that mandan abandon the site. the women scoured the town for orphans belonging to their clans and then fled leaving behind the sick to heal or die on there own. their departure was a desperate act of self-preservation, some two or three mandan survived, two or 300 survived. now, think about this, the year was 1837. the mandan had lived through no more than a century and a half of contact with european newcomers, the famous indian wars of the west had barely begun. that phrase manifest destiny had yet to be coined. the railroads and why homesteaders have yet to arrive. there had been no violence between mandan and european americans,americans, but events had already brought one of the great nations of the planes to the brink of destruction. and they had survived. but the resilience of the mandan who lived on by virtue of their toughness, kindness, openness, wisdom, and their cultural and spiritual will is an inspiration to us all. thank you. [applause] so i have time for questions, if anybody has been for me. >> in your talk and also in your book you talk about the different levels of the disease. can you outline the scientific data that was left out by writers by genetic viewers so that you can.out that on this date this thing happened. >> it is very hard to pin down an exact dates for the earliest epidemics. much of epidemics. much of what i do in my research is to triangulate by way of sources from the north and hudson bay from the east and from the south. as the mandan said in between these outbreaks, and i know it starts in the south, i cani can speculate there head in the summer of 1781. earlier epidemics are harder to track, later epidemics are the easiest because we have st. peter's to watch, god for bid, dropping smallpox up and down the missouri river. >> did they allow the researchers to go into the grave site? >> no. >> not at all. >> no. and that -- i mean, these are protected sites today, as well he should be. there was a lot of salvage archaeology really up until -- because of damning along the missouri river. the 1950s, 60s, and 70s were devoted to salvage archaeology, his archaeological sites were being flooded out and there were excavations done. a lot of collections that have not even been processed or examined from that time. >> thank you. >> sure. thank you. >> in your pictures of the double-digit village, there was some housing type of thing.thing. is that privately owned or -- >> no, it is a state site, and it has recently been reinterpreted. it is still one of my favorite historic sites on the planet. i think it should be a world heritage site. the reason i like it is because it has not been reconstructed. it fires up your imagination. that is probably a stone structure that you see on the site,site, that little building, and there is new signage now is archaeology has discovered these additional ditches, and the new signage explains it. it is just a breathtaking sight. if. if you are ever in north dakota, everyone's favorite vacation spot, be sure to go they're just want the bismarck. >> thank you. >> hi. after the mandan move north, how do they interact? >> great question. yes, mandan and hidatsa were allies, but they did not always get along. we can think of comparable cases in the us today. so whenever lakota threatened you could count on them collaborate, but why did they stop where they did? they would not let them go any further. there were some conflicts between the two. that is an excellent, excellent question. hidatsa protected their bison hunting territories. >> thank you. >> you welcome. >> thank you for a very good talk. could you add just a couple of additional comments about the mandan relationships with other tribes to their stay in that part of america? >> absolutely. mandan villages where the hub of commerce on the planes. i sometimes described them to be bless walmart but not tacky. with this like vibrant, cultural and social life. if you can imagine kyowa, arapahoe, cheyenne, trees, even a jew boys, the planes just teeming with people, and this was the destination , and when you arrived at a mandan village, even if you were in enemy, once you were within the village ball, you were on safe terrain. you would not be harmed. so mandan peoples could often war with people, especially lakota one day, have, have a battle plan the next day the trading with them. and lakota were under constant perennial enemies of other peoples who were constant friends and relations. blue hot and cold over 15 year cycles. yes, sir. >> thank you very much for this presentation. i have a question that emerges from this picture that you painted of the central planes being a place of mobility and the place of movement with equestrian evolution in the coming of the steamboat of these two trade networks that are emerging. so there is this notion that the mandan people could have left and gone elsewhere and perhaps re-created new communities in the face of the epidemic disease that was devastating society. is there any suggestion or evidence the people migrated elsewhere? >> that is a great question. during any of this big epidemic outbreak the question would have been way to go because the spread of pestilence was so ubiquitous, so widespread that there was not really in a safe place. the point you make is significant because, man, it is pertinent to us today. if there is a smallpox outbreak, would you rather be in washington dc or north dakota? andin washington dc, you are a sitting duck because of population density, the transmission is just so much easier. and the mandanand the mandan villages are the analogy to washington dc because the population is so compressed. when infection struck, everybody would get sick. so after the 1837 to 38 epidemic, mandan actually tested out of nomadic lifestyle for a while. they spent several years, these are called the lost years of the mandan. they spent several years in different bands on the move, just small handfuls of people, and then eventually they return to the missouri river and formed the village called like a fish hook. it was wondering 1845. but they did experiment with a different life. nomadic peoples, we know, were not so severely affected as the mandan were. thatthat is one of the reasons that the lakota were able to overrun them as they migrated westward from the planes. yes, ma'am. >> in the mandan have there own language? do we know their story from there own either written or verbal stories or from other telling their story? >> they do have there own language. there is a gentleman named edwin vincent, must be about 90 years old today. he is the last really fluent mandan speaker. he has been working with some younger folks through the trouble college in newtown, north dakota, to make tape recordings and to teach younger people the language. the mandan language is a select language, so it is a big language group kind of related to the sioux language, and we do have good effort on murphy's from the early 20th century in which anthropologists have recorded mandan creation stories, the stories of the landscape, i like to think if i show you those images, the went to town was the way that many kept track of there own history, through the recording of a single, memorable event for each winter. and i like to think of the north dakota landscape as a winter town in its own right because all these features on the landscape and body mandan creation stories, the tales, the history that makes them a people command their foundational ceremony which is incidentally, the origins of the planes sundance. the ceremony happened every year and it was essentially a reenactment of their history. >> i was wondering about the picture in front of us. could you say anything about the archaeologists? >> what you see they're, see the scooped up place in the soil there? the scooped out places where once the sites of earth lodges. and so the mandan village, you could see better from the aerial views from each one of these big fish like scooped out areas was the site of enough lunch. now, you see smaller, circular marks in the soil, and those of the location of green caches. this is the last mandan village, the village it was wiped out by the smallpox epidemic of 1837 and 38. incidentally, when the mandan left it, someone else to go over command a couple years after it was burnt to the ground by the sioux and it was then rebuilt from scratch. other questions? >> you mentioned earlier that there is a known history going back to 1100. presume that the period when mazes evolved has been bred to survive this? i am also wondering what particular agricultural techniques they developed that enable them to have that thriving agricultural society? >> yes, mandan have the story of the founding figure who taught them how to grow maize and just briefly if i could get into mandan agriculture, mandan women were phenomenal farmers. i mean,, we owe such a debt to indigenous foodways. the mandan women group probably the 13 or so varieties of corn. each variety for a different purpose. they knew how to plantu! in different areas on the path because of prevailing wind causing a certain talent to the pattern of cross-pollination to develop , the particular cost is the -- crosses that they wanted, some corn they popped, some corn the ground in the flour. they were -- someday treated with alkaline salts making grits and making the niacin available to avoid pellagra in a maze -based culture. women were just phenomenal agriculturally. inmy out of time? two more minutes. okay. >> what was the negative you learned that prompted you to write a book? >> i was -- i am an early american historian. and the early american history that i grew up with -- we didn't talk about spanish colonies. we talked about the mayflower, right? and 13 colonies and the march of progress westward. so doing my smallpox book i come across this huge population down the middle of north dakota. at the time of the american revolution the population is bigger than charleston, charleston, south carolina, the 4th biggest city on the atlantic seaboard. and i just said, holy count. what if we told the story of early america from the center of the continent? what if we counted all the people as americans? right? i mean,, this is american history. this is the quintessential american story. thank you. [applause] >> your watching book tv, television for serious readers. you can watch any program you see here online at booktv.org. >> your watching booktv.org on c-span2. >> executive director of the national law enforcement museum in washington dc, an award-winning journalist with 25 years experience in his business. it was part of the editing team and held a variety of positions at the paper including senior correspondent, managing editor and covered a variety of political and social issues serving as the producer of "usa today". he led a team of historians, , journalists that designed and created a museum located in pennsylvania avenue in washington dc. they served as its executive director from 1996 until 2,001, former chairman of the peabody award, and currently serves as a member of the national advisory board of the college of media at the university of illinois alma mater. his journalism honors include a words from the national association of his difficulties in the national association of sunday and feature editors. he won an emmy award friday's documentary on campus crime. pleaseplease join me in welcoming joel urschel to the national archives. [applause] >> thank you, doug. i must say, i am disappointed that there is no whiskey for this event. had i known, ii would have brought my own. thank you all for coming out today. i appreciate you stopping by. i will try to refrain myself from droning on for too long. so i think that we have about 45 minutes time, about 30 minutes into this if you're feeling like you have a question you would like to ask to a fight me and i will start that part of the program. i 1st would like to explain a little bit of how i got into the story and this book. as doug said, i came here in 1982 for the launch of "usa today". and i was very excited to be in washington. i was taking in all the tourist sites including the library of congress and it's beautiful constantly waiting room. and this is 1882, and the library of congress a just converted card catalog to digital database, which patrons could use when they were visiting. so kind of on a lark i went over to the computer keyboard and touch my last name. which is fairly uncommon, or at least it was until the baltimore ravens drafted john herschel. notnot only no more famous than me, but also a lot smarter. if you don't no anything about, is probably the only person in the nfl working on his phd valleys plane. when i put in my name, there was one entry that popped up. the world's greatest collection of novels. and the entry was charles urschel kidnapping victim. there was one book written about it called crimeskinds of paradise, the authentic inside story of the urschel kidnapping. so intrigued, i of course called it up and sat down and read it cover to cover. and it was the most remarkable story. it read like a novel. it had more twists and turns and it then you could possibly imagine, and i was just flabbergasted because i had never heard of this guy. basically, i had not heard of any urschel in the country really other than the one i was related to. so after i read the book, i called up my data and said, i just read this incredible book about charles urschel, oil millionaire in texas the get kidnapped in the 1930s are we related? and without a 2nd thought he said, no, we are not. how do you know? or not. so like any good son, i immediately set out to prove my father wrong. you know, embarked on some genealogical research. probably should not admit this of the archives, but i never did find a connection. there was no connection that i could find within the united states. if there is any connection. so with that, i decided, well, it is still a good story, and, and i just began collecting string on it over the last 30 years or so. and the more that i learned about it the better the story got. it is an incredible story about the most, one of the most remarkable kidnappings in american history. hehe produced the largest manhunt in the nation up until that time. the manhunt covered 16 states and 20,000 miles. it resulted in a sensational trial that was covered daily by the press were on the world and recorded on motion picture cameras and shown in movie theaters week after week. part of the sensational nature of that resulted in federal trials banning cameras for the next probably 50 years. and even now they are only used on bases. it blocks the fbi and if the agents their nickname. resulted in the establishment of alcatraz as a federal penitentiary, as a home for criminals who were deemed vicious and irredeemable mother worst of the worst. it sped the passage of the federal crime bill of 1934 which may kidnapping a federal crime punishable by death and greatly expanded the power of the fbi. all of this was made possible by the remarkable cooperation of charles urschel, kidnap victim. the story takes place in 1933, which is what i deem the year of the fear. primarily because fear contains this incredible cup of events that are taking place. in 1933, we are three years into the great depression. it is probably the worst year, the worst economic consequences of being played out across the nation as the economy sinks further and further. in the years sinceyear since the 1929 crash the market had lost some was 90 percent of its value. the unemployment rate was up to 40 percent. in some cities is stretched his eyes 80 percent. thousands of banks were closed, the, loss of tax revenues the sessa tatar draconian cuts on the social services, the few social services that did exist. municipal workers, police and teachers were laid off over an unpaid, thousands of schools closed for millions of students just dropped out. at the same time catastrophic dust storms were beginning to kick up across the southwest and midwest later to become what we refer to now as the dust bowl. this was an incredible storm that would start in new mexico or oklahoma or texas and blows so hard, so strong with so much find so that the people who live in that area would have to do things like drape their child's beds and carriages with wet sheets just to prevent the silt from coming in and choking them to death it would kill livestock in the field. it would blow so far that it would turn the snow read. ships at sea coming into new york harbor would encounter unable to see the skyline. you can see some of the effects of what these we will do to local farms. and while the dust arms are kicking up in the economy is tanking, a sense of lawlessness was beginning to abound throughout the country. just assassinated for law enforcement officers in broad daylight in the parking lot of kansas city's union station, and violent gangs a bank robbers and these were operating with virtual impunity along with a call the criminal court or college stretched from dallas, texas to st. cloud, minnesota. anton cermak was assassinated standing next to fdr a political event in miami. we now think that the assassination attempt was directed at fdr, but at the time fdr thought the assassination attempt was simple and that cermak was, indeed, the victim. cermak had just unseated fred thompson, the mayor of chicago. thompson had formed an unholy alliance without capone and his criminal empire in chicago. cermak came in on about to rid the city of capone, and the way he was going to do that was to ally himself with another gang known as the terrible chilies, who were operating on the north side of the city. and he literally had hired some of the men to be his police officers and bodyguards. they had made as estimation attempt weeks earlier on frank nati, who was capone's chief lieutenant. so while this is all going on, prohibition is about to begin. and the elimination of prohibition eliminates one of the criminal empire's most lucrative sources of money. so with banks drying up, the bankrupting businesses not as good as it used to be, and the prohibition coming to an end, they are looking for other ways to make money what happens and the three years since the market failure, an incredible state of kidnappings began occurring across the country , an estimated 2,000 kidnappings have occurred between 1930 in 1933. charles lindberg being probably the most famous. so with no money left in the bank command their sideline business of running liquor drying up, the folks operating out west were looking for knew ways to make money, people in hollywood were driving around in armor plated limousines with armed guards in the passenger seat. companies were issuing kidnapping insurance. while all this is going on fdr takes off and announces that we have nothing to fear but fear itself when at the very same time adolf hitler was appointed chancellor in germany. so these are tough times in the us with tougher times coming. so in the midst of this incredible scenario, george kelly and his glamorous wife decide they are going to kidnap the richest man in the southwest. and with an almost remarkable lack of planning, kelly and his partner burst into the urschel home at 1131 hot july evening when urschel and his wife are playing bridge with their friends. so kelly on the machine gun and bates armed with a 45 kick in the door, run-up to the bridge game, and suddenly discover that they don't know which of the two guys is urschel. so making all kinds of threats, they demand that urschel revealed himself, which he doesn't do. so as they are getting increasingly belligerent, walter decides that he is going to stand up and be a hero. he begins to stand up,up, at which point urschel begins to stand up, too. kelly says forget it, we will take both of you. they put them in the car and speed off into the night. they realized

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