On their return journey from Fort McKenzie, the westernmost point of their expedition in today's Montana, Prince Maximilian and Karl Bodmer stayed at Fort Clark from November 1833 to April 1834. Fort Clark was the principal American Fur Company post for the trade with Mandan, Hidatsa, and nearby Crow and Dakota groups from about 1829 to 1860. Bodmer created several detailed portraits of the Mandan and was the last artist to portray this tribe before it was decimated by a smallpox epidemic in 1837.

On December 25, 1833, he sketched a dance of seventeen older women of the White Buffalo Cow Society who came to Fort Clark to perform for Superintendent James Kipp and the European travelers. Maximilian wrote about the dancers, "On their heads, these women all wore a cap made from a high, wide piece of white buffalo skin... Most Plains Indian tribes consider the white buffalo sacred." The Mandan had various fraternal, religious, and military societies organized by gender and age groups, which individuals could join as they grew older.