Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation
From Free net encyclopedia
Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation, also known as the Three Affiliated Tribes, are a Native American group comprising a union of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara peoples, whose native lands ranged across the Missouri River basin in the Dakotas. Hardship and forced relocations brought them together in the late 19th century. Today, the group is based out of the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota.
The current tribal chairman is Tex G. Hall, who assumed office in 1998.
Contents |
Mandan
Main article: Mandan
The Mandan are a Native American tribe currently part of the Three Affiliated Tribes in North Dakota.
At the height of their culture, the Mandan were prosperous and peaceful farmers and traders, noted for their excellent maize and Knife River flint. Lewis and Clark stayed with the Mandan when they passed through the region, including five months in the winter of 1804-1805. Sacagawea, a Shoshone who had been kidnapped by the Hidatsa at an early age, their native guide whose picture adorns the U.S. dollar coin, joined them there. On their return trip, they brought a Mandan chief to Washington.
The smallpox epidemic of 1837-1838 decimated the Mandan, leaving approximately 125 alive, forcing them to band together with the Hidatsa to survive. Later, the Arikara were forced northward by wars with the Lakota, and also settled with the Mandan. When white settlers began arriving in the late 1800s the three tribes were placed on the Fort Berthold Reservation.
The level of technical skill the Mandan demonstrated with their agricultural and earthen lodge villages set them in stark contrast with other, more nomadic tribes on the Great Plains. This and anecdotal accounts of some explorers seeing European features in the people and their buildings led a few people to the speculative and unproven conclusion the Mandan were, in part, descended from pre-1492 lost European settlers. See Kensington Runestone and Madoc.
Hidatsa
Image:Moennitarri warrior in the costume of the dog danse 2.jpg
The Hidatsa, called Moennitarri by their allies the Mandan, are a Siouan people. The Hidatsa name for themselves is Nuxbaaga ("Original People"). The name Hidatsa, said to mean "willows," was formerly borne by one of the tribal villages. When the villages consolidated, the name was adopted for the tribe as a whole. Their language is related to that of the Crows, and they are often considered a parent tribe to the modern Crow in Montana. Occasionally they have also been confused with the Gros Ventre in Montana.
What is now known as the Hidatsa tribe is the amalgamation of three groups, the Hidatsa proper, the Awatixa, and the Awaxawi (or Amahami) (Bowers 1965). These groups had different histories and only came together after they settled on the Missouri.
The Amahami have a tradition similar to that of the Mandan, where they emerged from the earth, long ago, far to the southeast. Like the Mandan, they traveled northward, where they settled at Devil's Lake. Later they moved westward to the Painted Woods (near Square Buttes) and settled near a village of Mandan and another of Awatixa.
The Awatixa originated not from the earth, but from the sky, led by Charred Body (Wood and Hanson 1986:34). According to their tradition, their first people lived near Painted Woods, "where they were created" (Bowers 1948:17-18). After that they always lived between the Heart and Knife Rivers along the Missouri.
The Hidatsa proper, still with those who would become the River Crow, separated from the Amahami in what is now western Minnesota. First they settled to the north, then later moved south to Devil's Lake. In their travels they met the Mandans and then moved westward and settled with these distant relatives north of the Knife River. Later they moved to the mouth of Knife River.
The Hidatsa originally lived in Miniwakan, the Devil's Lake region of North Dakota, before being pushed southwestward by the Lakota. As they migrated west, the Hidatsa came across the Mandan at the mouth of the Heart River. The two groups formed an alliance, and settled into an amiable division of territory along the area's rivers.
In 1804, Lewis and Clark found the Hidatsa in three villages at the mouth of the Knife River, and the Mandans in two villages a few miles lower down on the Missouri. Tribal appearance amd customs were documented by the visits of two artists of the American west. The allied tribes were first visited by George Catlin, who remained with them several months in 1832. Karl Bodmer, a Swiss painter, accompanied German explorer Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied on a Missouri River expedition from 1832 to 1834. Catlin and Bodmer's surviving work are a unique record of a lifestyle which was quickly damaged by disease and government regulation.
The smallpox epidemic of 1837-1838 reduced the Hidatsa to about 500 people. The remaining Mandan and Hidatsa united, and moved farther up the Missouri in 1845. They eventually settled at Like-a-fishhook bend near Fort Berthold. They were joined there by the Arikara in 1862.
The Hidatsa are a matrilineal people, with descent determined through the maternal line. As the early Mandan and Hidatsa heavily intermarried, children were taught to speak the language of their mother, but understand the dialect of either tribe. A short description of Hidatsa-Mandan culture, including a grammar and vocabulary of the Hidatsa language, was published in 1877 by Washington Matthews, a government physician assigned to the Fort Berthold Reservation.
Arikara
The Arikara were forced into Mandan territory by the Lakota (Sioux), between the Arikara War and the white settlement in the 1870s. The Arikara, who lived for many years near the Ft. Clark trading post/Knife River, joined the Hidatsa and Mandan at Like-a-Fishhook Village, near the Ft. Berthold trading post, in 1862. For protection and also for jobs, the Arikara men scouted for the U. S. Army, stationed at nearby Ft. Stevenson. In 1874, the Arikara scouts guided Custer on his Black Hills Expedition. In 1876, a large group of Arikara men led by Soldier accompanied Custer and the 7th Cavalry, this time on the Little Big Horn Expedition. It was the Arikara scouts who were in the lead when the village was attacked. Several scouts drove off Lakota horses, as they had been ordered, and others fought valiantly alongside the troopers. Three Arikara men were killed: Little Brave, Bobtail Bull, and Bloody Knife. During the subsequent confusion, the scouts were cut off from the troopers, and returned to the base camp as they had been directed. After the battle, in which Custer and some 260 others on the U.S. side were killed, the search for scapegoats resulted in undeserved smears directed at the scouts.
References
- Gilman, Carolyn, Mary Lane Schneider et al; "The Way to Independence: Memories of a Hidatsa Indian Family, 1840-1920." St Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1987. 0-87351-209-X
- Libby, Orin G., ed. "Arikara Narrative Of Custer's Campaign And The Battle Of The Little Bighorn." Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998, ISBN 0806130725
- Hammer, Ken. "With Custer in '76." Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1976.
- Matthews, Washington. "Ethnography and Philology of the Hidatsa Indians." U. S. Geological and Geographical Survey, 1877.
- Nichols, Ron. "Men with Custer," revised ed. Hardin, MT: Custer Battlefield Historical and Museum Association, 2000.
- Wilson, Gilbert Livingstone, Ph.D. "Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians: an Indian Interpretation." University of Minnesota, 1917.