What did the Mandans think of York?
Well, York, you know, was always astonishing the Indians that the expedition met because he was big and because of his color. One Hidatsa chief came strolling into the, into the fort one time and said, you know, “My men, I’ve heard these rumors that there’s somebody here who has a different color skin, and obviously, you know, these are, these are tales, you know, told around a campfire that aren’t true.” And they brought York out and he looked at him and he said, “Well, you’ve just sort of greased him up or something like that,” and took his hand and tried to rub the grease off, and when he couldn’t, then he said, “Well this really is a big medicine here. This, this person is something special.” How cold was that winter? There’s no place in America where the temperature extremes are as much as they are in North Dakota. They have hot, hot summers and nobody has a colder winter than north of Bismarck, North Dakota. It was 30 degrees below zero, 40 degrees below zero, hard winds blowing.
