Product Code Database
The Arikara ( ), also known as Sahnish, "History: The Sahnish (Arikara)." Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation. (Retrieved Sep 29, 2011) Arikaree, Ree, or Hundi, are a tribe of Native Americans in North Dakota and South Dakota. Today, they are enrolled with the Mandan and the Hidatsa as the federally recognized tribe known as the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation.
An Arikara village, near where present-day Pierre, South Dakota developed, was visited in 1743 by two sons of the French trader and explorer La Vérendrye.
In the last quarter of the 17th century, the Arikara came under attack from the Omaha people/Ponca and the Iowa people near the end of the Omaha/Ponca migration to Nebraska. With peace established later, the Arikara influenced the newcomers. The Omaha still credit the Arikara women for instructing them in the art of building earth lodges.
An early European, a botanist, praised the Arikara women as excellent cultivators. He had not seen finer crops anywhere in America. The surplus corn and other crops, along with tobacco, were traded to the Lakota, the Cheyenne and more southern plains tribes during short-lived truces. The amount of trading items passing through the Arikara villages made them a "trading center on the Upper Missouri". Before smallpox epidemics hit the three village tribes, they were the "most influential and affluent peoples in the Northern Plains". (1987). 9780806118994 ISBN 9780806118994
Traditionally an Arikara family owned 30–40 dogs. The people used them for hunting and as sentries, but most importantly for transportation in the centuries before the Plains tribes adopted the use of horses in the 1600s. Many of the Plains tribes had used the travois, a lightweight transportation device pulled by dogs. It consisted of two long poles attached by a harness at the dog's shoulders, with the butt ends dragging behind the animal; midway, a ladder-like frame, or a hoop made of plaited thongs, was stretched between the poles; it held loads that might exceed 60 pounds. Women also used dogs to pull travois to haul firewood or infants. The travois were used to carry meat harvested during the seasonal hunts; a single dog could pull a quarter of a bison.
The Arikara played a central role in the Indigenous Great Plains trading networks based on an advantageous geographical position combined with a surplus from agriculture and craft. Historical sources show that the Arikara villages were visited by Cree, Assiniboine, Crow people, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Sioux, Kiowa, Plains Apache and Comanche.
The smallpox epidemic of 1780-1782 reduced the Arikara villages along the Missouri from 32 to 2.
All-out war hit the weakened and often divided Arikara. In a burned-down village, (later studied as Larson Site), archaeologists found the mutilated skeletons of 71 men, women and children, killed in the early 1780s by unknown Native American attackers. Groups of Sioux were the ones who gained most by the weakening of the Arikara. They attacked the vulnerable Arikara and increased "the pace of Sioux expansion" west of the Missouri River.
The Arikara faced many challenges during the first quarter of the 19th century: Reduced numbers, competition from white traders, and military pressure from the Lakota and other groups of Sioux. Alliances shifted constantly. The Arikara joined old foes the Sioux in raids on Mandan and Hidatsa Indians. Later they negotiated for peace with both village tribes.Lutting, John C.: Journal of a Fur Trading Expedition on the Upper Missouri, 1812-1813. New York, 1964, pp. 80, 87, 110 and 113. McGinnis, Anthony: Counting Coup and Cutting Horses. Intertribal Warfare on the Northern Plains, 1738-1889. Evergreen, 1990, pp. 19-20.
Due to their reduced numbers, the Arikara started to live closer to the Mandan and Hidatsa in the same area for mutual protection. They migrated gradually from present-day Nebraska and South Dakota into North Dakota. The remainder of the group was encountered in 1804 by the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
The first Arikara delegation left for the capital, Washington, DC, in April 1805, urged by the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Chief Ankedoucharo became ill during his stay and died in Washington. The delegates blamed the whites for the chief's death. That was one reason why the Arikara for the next decades were "notoriously hostile to white Americans".Viola, Herman J.: Diplomats in Buckskins. A History of Indian Delegations in Washington City. Washington, D.C., 1981, p. 159.
On June 2, 1823, the Arikara attacked a group of 70 trappers led by William Henry Ashley of the Henry/Ashley Company. The trappers were camped near an Arikara village at the mouth of Grand River (north of present-day Mobridge, South Dakota). Fourteen trappers died and 10 were wounded, including Hugh Glass, memorialized in the 1954 biographical novel Lord Grizzly by Frederick Manfred, the 2002 historical fiction novel by Michael Punke, and the 2015 film The Revenant, an adaptation of Punke's book.
Colonel Henry Leavenworth left Fort Atkinson (now in Nebraska) with 220 men. More than 700 Yankton, Yanktonai and Lakota Indians joined him in the United States' first Indian war west of the Missouri. The Arikara retreated to their fortified village. Soon the disappointed Sioux left the battlefield. The Arikara escaped at night, and angry fur traders set their empty lodges ablaze the next morning.Robinson, Doane: "Official Correspondence Pertaining to the Leavenworth Expedition into South Dakota in 1823 for the Conquest of the Ree Indians," South Dakota Historical Collections, Vol. 1 (1902), pp. 179-256. "This was the only time in history that any of the Three Tribes fought in open warfare against the United States".
The Bloody Hand and other Arikara chiefs signed a peace treaty with the United States (US) on July 18, 1825.Kappler, Charles J.: Indian Affairs. Laws and Treaties. Washington, 1904. Vol. 2, pp. 237-239.
In the winter/spring of 1833 members of the Arikara Tribe ambushed Hugh Glass, Hilain Menard and Colin Rose. "A hand-written notation made on the credit side of Menard's account book page states, 'Killed by the Rees near Fort Cass Spring 1833,'" Landry wrote in his article. "The word 'Rees' was mountaineer slang for the Arikara tribe." According to a letter written by John F. A. Sanford, an Indian agent, in a July 1833 letter to William Clark, superintendent of Indian Affairs. Landry includes the excerpt in his article."They scalped them and left part of the Scalps of each tied to poles on the grounds of the murder."
Years of indecision followed. The rootless Arikara lived near their southern "kinfolk," the Skidi Pawnee, for some years. They also tried their luck in hostile country far up on the Platte (now Nebraska), where Colonel Henry Dodge met them in 1835."Serial 289," 24th Congress, 1st Session, Vol. 4, House Document No. 181 p. 14. Harassed by the numerous Sioux, the Arikara finally buried old enmity and befriended the Mandan and the Hidatsa in the late 1830s. The manager in the trading post Fort Clark observed in June 1838, how "the Rees, Mandans and Gros Ventres Hidatsas started out early" in a common bison hunt.Chardon, F. A.: Chardon's Journal at Fort Clark, 1834-1839. (Edited by Annie Heloise Abel). Lincoln and London, 1997, p. 163.
Smallpox had struck the Upper Missouri tribes the year before (and would again in 1856). It decimated the Mandan. The surviving Arikara took over the almost empty Mandan village Mitutanka next to Fort Clark.Dollar, Clyde D.: "The High Plains Smallpox Epidemic of 1837-38," Western Historical Quarterly, Vol. 8. No. 1, (January 1977), pp. 15-38. Collison, Patrick J.: "Bastions, Beads, Baptism, and Burials: Evidence for Epidemic Disease among the Arikara and their Ancestors," Plains Anthropologist, Vol. 58, No. 225, (2013), pp. 9-43, see p. 25. The earth lodges stood until Yankton Sioux set them on fire in January 1839.Chardon, F. A.: Chardon's Journal at Fort Clark, 1834-1839. (Edited by Annie Heloise Abel). Lincoln and London, 1997, p. 181. The village was rebuilt by the Arikara, who lived there until 1861. Another Sioux attack—and the need for a trading post—made them leave the settlement for good.
Peace was short-lived. As drawings collected by W. J. Hoffman of Hunkpapa Chief Running Antelope showed, in 1853 he already had killed four Arikara Indians.Mallery, Garrick: Picture-writing of the American Indians, 10th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1888-89. Washington, D.C., 1893, pp. 572-573. For narratives of individual Lakota attacks on the Arikara, see e.g. Densmore, Francis: "Teton Sioux Music." Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 61. Washington, 1918. For the later chief Red Cloud's experience with a war party against the Arikara, see: Paul, Eli R. (Ed.): Autobiography of Red Cloud. War Leader of the Oglalas. Helena, 1997, pp. 125-135. The next year the Three Tribes called for the U. S. Army to intervene; that request was repeated the next two decades.
Arikara hunters were waylaid and had difficulties securing enough game and hides. A lengthy battle between an Arikara camp on hunt and several hundred Lakota took place in June 1858. The Arikara camp lost ten men, with 34 wounded.Mattison, R. H.: "Henry A. Boller: Upper Missouri River Fur Trader," North Dakota History, Vol. 33, (1966), pp. 106-219, about the fight pp. 203-206.
The Arikara built Star Village in the spring of 1862. They had to abandon it after a fierce fight with the Sioux a few months later. The Arikara crossed the Missouri and built new earth lodges and log houses near the common Mandan and Hidatsa village Like-a-Fishhook Village. The village was built outside the Three Tribes treaty area. "We, the Arikara, have been driven from our country on the other side of the Missouri River by the Sioux", declared chief White Shield in 1864.Serial 1220, 38th Congress, 2nd Session, Vol. 5, House Executive Document No. 1, p. 408.
Like a Fishhook Village was not safe from devastation, strikes or raids for horses (and neither was the nearby trading post Fort Berthold II). Just before the end of 1862, some Sioux burned a part of the village. The affiliation of the Sioux is not always clear: Lakota, Yanktonai and "refugee" Santee Sioux from the Minnesota uprising sometimes attacked the Three Tribes.McGinnis, Anthony: Counting Coup and Cutting Horses. Intertribal Warfare on the Northern Plains, 1738-1889. Evergreen, 1990, p. 121. As always in intertribal warfare, there were interludes with peace - and conflicts with other Indian foes, as for example the Assiniboine.E.g. Boller, Henry A.: Among the Indians. Four Years on the Upper Missouri, 1858-1862. Lincoln, 1972, p. 154. McGinnis, Anthony: Counting Coup and Cutting Horses. Intertribal Warfare on the Northern Plains, 1738-1889. Evergreen, 1990, p. 102.
In 1869, the Three Tribes asked the United States for guns as protection against hostile Sioux, and they finally received 300 pieces.McGinnis, Anthony: Counting Coup and Cutting Horses. Intertribal Warfare on the Northern Plains, 1738-1889. Evergreen, 1990, pp. 120-121.
The Three Tribes sold a part of their southern treaty land, more or less already annexed by the Lakota, to the United States on April 12, 1870. At the same time, they got treaty on the area where Like a Fishhook Village was located.Also American Memory. (http://memory.loc.gov). Indian Land Cessions in the United States, 1784 to 1894. Serial 4015, 56th Congress, 1st Session, pp. 852-853. Map: Dakota 1.
In June 1874, Colonel George Armstrong Custer in Fort Abraham Lincoln (now North Dakota) received an order to delay his Black Hills Expedition and stop a large war party of Lakota on its way to attack Like a Fishhook Village. "The Rees and Mandans should be protected same as white settlers", read the order from General Phil Sheridan. Custer failed and the Lakota killed five Arikara and one Mandan.McGinnis, Anthony: Counting Coups and Cutting Horses. Intertribal Warfare on the Northern Plains, 1738-1889. Evergreen, 1990, p. 133.
During the Great Sioux War of 1876, some Arikara served as scouts for Custer in the Little Bighorn Campaign. The Arikara "supplied some of the most faithful and effective Arikara scouts" for the Army during the war against the bands of Lakota roaming other peoples' territories in 1876-1877.Gray, john S.: "Arikara Scouts with Custer," North Dakota History, Vol. 35, (1968), pp. 442-478, quote p. 445. "For tribes subject to Sioux pressure for decades, the combination of revenge and self-defense would constitute a powerful motivation" for joining the whites in actions like that.Dunlay, Thomas W.: Wolves for the Blue Soldiers. Indian Scouts and Auxiliaries with the United States Army, 1860-90. Lincoln and London, 1982, p. 112. Custer's favorite scout, an Arikara known as Bloody Knife, fell during the Battle of the Little Bighorn in the Crow Indian Reservation (now Montana) in 1876.Dunlay, Thomas W.: Wolves for the Blue Soldiers. Indian Scouts and Auxiliaries with the United States Army, 1860-1890. Lincoln and London, 1982, p. 54 and 113.
"Mandans, Arickarees and Gros Ventres" were among the first Indian children to arrive at Hampton Institute, a historically black college, in Virginia for schooling, in 1878.Hultgren, Mary Lou and Paulette Fairbanks Molin: "Long Rides Across the Plains": Fort Berthold Students at Hampton Institute. North Dakota History, Vol. 61 (1994), No. 2, pp. 10-36.
The Fort Berthold Indian Reservation got a new shape and size by agreement in 1886 (ratified in 1891). In 1910, the Three Tribes gave their consent to sale of land, so the reservation was reduced once more. The Arikara drifted away from Like a Fishhook Village. They raised and branded cattle instead of hunting buffalo.Gilman, Carolyn and Mary Jane Schneider: The Way to Independence. Memories of a Hidatsa Indian Family, 1840-1920. St. Paul, 1987, p. 242, column I. With the Dawes Act and "allotment in severalty" passed as another attempt at assimilation to European-American culture, each Arikara family was allotted a homestead of 160 acres in the early 1890s. The Arikara Indians were considered citizens of the United States—and no more tribal village dwellers.
The three tribes are settled on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota.
|
|
