text: what did the mandan indians eat?   the mandan indians hunted buffalo and other game. they used wolf, buffalo and deer hide for clothes. their diet consisted of buffalo meat, and deer meat. they also farmed the land, growing corn and beans for food. they also grew tobbacco.  semi-nomadic plains tribes who spent most of the year following the buffalo herds came to the mandan and hidatsa villages for corn, beans and squash to supplement their diet. they traded furs, most notably buffalo hides, for the vegetables.  agriculture was the economic foundation of the knife river people, who harvested much of their food from rich floodplain gardens. the land was controlled by women-the size of a family's plot was determined by the number of women who could work it-and passed through the female line. they raised squash, pumpkin, beans, sunflowers, and, most importantly, tough, quick-maturing varieties of corn that thrived in the meager rainfall and short growing season. summer's first corn was celebrated in the green corn ceremony. berries, roots, and fish supplemented their diet. upland hunting provided buffalo meat, hides, bones, and sinew.