551 - Knife River Indian Village National Historic Site 2

Do you think you could live off of the land that you see around you? What types of materials would you need for subsistence and survival? Perhaps you would use the wood from the lush trees to build a dwelling, or maybe the fertile soil for growing vegetables. Would you hunt, and if so, with what? Could you turn the stones around you into projectile points or weapons? Here in the Missouri River Basin, the Native Mandan and Hidatsa people were able to find everything they needed to survive and thrive. In fact, the river–that provided them with so much–was so sacred to them that oral tradition tells of their people being created along its waters. It is believed that at the time of first contact with European explorers, the Mandan and Hidatsa had already been living in this area for over five hundred years. How did their people affect this landscape, and just as importantly, how did the changing landscape affect them?

You may be well aware that the climate here can be extremely difficult to adapt to, yet the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara people to the south did exactly that without any modern day essentials. Establishing summer villages on the bluffs above the river helped them keep watch for enemy attacks and provided lots of open space for gardening and hunting. Moving to winter villages along the more densely forested river banks supplied wind-breaks and firewood. The thick hides and furs of animals like bison and deer provided clothing and blankets to protect them from the elements. Their houses were large and round, made of timber frames and packed earth, and would house multiple families together, ten to thirty people at a time. Do you think they valued their privacy like we do today? Working, living, and sharing together encouraged the development of a rich culture and a strong economy based on agriculture and trade for the people at the Knife River villages.

Outside influence would eventually take its toll on the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara. European explorers and fur traders were known to have visited the villages of the area by as early as the mid-1700s. By the arrival of the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1804, life for the people here was already rapidly changing. The rush of fur traders to the area began to erode the tribes’ vital role as middlemen in the economy, and the people began to adopt the use of tools they never had before, like European horses, guns, cloth, and iron. The most difficult shifts, however, were yet to come.

By the middle of the 19th century, the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara people were nearly wiped out by an influx of epidemics carried to the Missouri River Basin by steamboats, namely smallpox and cholera. Those who survived had to abandon their Knife River villages and band together to form a new village further up-river called Like-a-Fishhook. Yet by 1885, the federal government forcibly removed the people from that village and onto the Fort Berthold reservation. Now required to grow wheat instead of their traditional crops, limited on where they could hunt and fish, and banned from practicing traditions or rituals, the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation faced changes that in only one generation had eroded their connections with the land and ended the way of life like they had known along the Missouri for hundreds of years...