The Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara

February 28, 2019 by Hunter Old Elk

from the Buffalo Bill Center of the West

The Hidatsa

The Hidatsa are made up of three closely related bands: the Hidatsa Proper, the Awatixa, and the Awaxawi. The Hidatsa Proper call themselves Hiraacá—traditionally thought to mean “willow.” Having originally lived in the Devil’s Lake region in what is now eastern North Dakota, by the early 1600s, the Hidatsa had moved to settle along the Missouri River in west-central North Dakota—near the Mandan. The two tribes were usually on good terms, both speaking Siouan dialects, although the languages were not mutually intelligible. The Hidatsa lived near the junction of the Knife and Missouri Rivers, about sixty miles up from the Mandan.

Hide shirt, ca. 1890. Hiraaca (Hidatsa). NA.202.1308

The Hidatsa lived in substantial earth-covered lodges clustered in villages of several hundred to more than a thousand individuals. These stable communities were perched on the rims of terraces overlooking the Missouri River floodplains. In the lowlands, the Hidatsa grew bountiful gardens of corn, beans, squash, and sunflowers all owned and tended to by the women, while the men hunted white-tailed deer and other woodland animals. Behind the villages were the river bluffs that separated the valley from the rolling, upland plains, where they hunted pronghorn and the massive herds of buffalo. The products produced denoted the Hidatsa villages as major part of the ancient Indigenous trading center of the Plains—and later when the Euro-Americans arrived.

Hidatsa society is matrilineal—meaning descent is traced from the mother’s side of the family. Hidatsa says that a person comes into the world through their mother’s clan, and leaves through their father’s clan. Meaning that the mother’s clan bestows membership and belonging; while the father’s clan gives them distinct rights and responsibilities. The clan structure arranged an individual’s participation in life events and ceremonies.

After a smallpox epidemic in 1781, the Mandan moved upriver to live near the Hidatsa, as their numbers had been so reduced, they were no longer able to defend their villages. Farther downriver, near the mouth of the Grand River, lived the Arikara, the third group of Earth lodge dwelling Natives. Although they spoke a different language (being related to the Pawnee of Nebraska), their villages and way of life were much the same as those of the Hidatsa and Mandan. The Hidatsa also maintained relationships with their relatives to the west, the Crow.

The American artist George Catlin visited the tribes in 1832 and remained with them for several months in 1832. In 1833 – 1834, the Swiss artist Karl Bodmer, traveling with German explorer Prince Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied, drew and painted the clothing and people and cultures of the villages.

Both Catlin and Bodmer’s artworks recorded the Hidatsa and Mandan societies, that where were rapidly changing under pressure from encroaching settlers, infectious disease, and government restraints. After an 1834 attack by the Dakota and the 1837 smallpox epidemic that reduced the Hidatsa to about 500 people, the three groups merged with the Mandan at Like-a-Fishhook Village in 1845. The Arikaras joined them in 1856. Further reading: A Living Tradition: Plains Indian Food and Medicine.