Slant Village was a Mandan agricultural village named for the sloping ground on which it stood. It covered about seven or eight acres, and a 1937 survey revealed the ruins of seventy-five earth lodges, whose remains are marked by visible circular depressions. Study of tree rings and timbers indicates that the village was occupied during the period of 1650-1750. By the fall of 1804, when the Lewis and Clark Expedition moved up the Missouri River, the village was already in ruins, and the Mandan were then living near the Knife River about 60 miles farther up the Missouri. The Mandan had moved into North Dakota from the south, and ruins of their abandoned villages were found in the state from the South Dakota line north to the Berthold Reservation. A ditch or dry moat at the site was restored in 1935 at the location of the original, and five earth lodges restored that same year are typical of the dwellings the Mandan inhabited before they were confined to a reservation.