Men of Worth

Men of Worth. . Privates John Shields, William Bratton and Alexander Willard manned the blacksmith shop at Fort Mandan. These men provided repair work to native tools, such as sharpening iron hoes and knives and fixing trade kettles. , The Mandan and Hidatsa who watched them must have admired the men who worked metal into tools, utensils and weapons. A considerable amount of corn was exchanged for two types of weapons, the "Missouri War Hatchet" and another called the "Battle Ax." , A burned out sheet of iron stove provided four-inch square pieces of iron the natives formed into arrowhead points, or manufactured into instruments for scraping and dressing hides. For each square of iron the blacksmiths obtained seven to eight gallons of corn. , In addition to corn, buffalo meat, robes, beans, squash, sunflowers, and wild berries were exchanged for the blacksmiths labors. , "the blacksmith's have proved a happy resource to us in our present situation as I believe it would have been difficult to have devised any other method to have procured corn from the native." -- Meriwether Lewis, February 6, 1805