When it is realized how little is known regarding the arrangement of the many ancient villages which once stood in the country east of the Mississippi, villages which in their time were probably as large and important as those of the Mandan of the last century, it is not possible to overestimate the value of the work of the Historical Society in causing to be made an accurate survey of the sites and in securing descriptions of the villages from some who remember them. A generation later this would not have been possible.
hidatsa group.
Two tribes are regarded as constituting this group: The Hidatsa proper, known to the earlier writers as the Minnetarees, and to others as the Gros Ventres of the Missouri; and the Crows. The Hidatsa and the Crows were, until a few generations ago, one people, but trouble developed and the latter moved farther up the Missouri to the Rocky Mountains, and there they were discovered by the early explorers of the region.
The Amahami may have been a distinct tribe, and as such were recognized by Lewis and Clark, but according to their own traditions they, together with the Hidatsa and Crows, once formed a single tribe. Their language differs only slightly from that of the Hidatsa. During the early years of the last century their one village stood at the mouth of Knife River. Already greatly reduced in numbers, they suffered during the epidemic of 1837, and later the majority of those who had survived became more closely associated with the Hidatsa.
Hidatsa.
The Hidatsa, also known as the Minnetarees and designated by some writers the Gros Ventres of the Missouri, a name which must not be confused with Gros Ventres of the Prairie often applied to the Atsina, lived when first known to Europeans near the junction of the Knife and Missouri Rivers, in the eastern part of the present Mercer County, North Dakota. Some are of the belief that it was the Hidatsa and not the Mandan whom the French, under La Verendrye, visited during the autumn and winter of 1738, but in the present sketch the Mandan are accepted as undoubtedly being the tribe at whose villages the French remained.
The Hidatsa villages as seen by Catlin and Maximilian during the years 1832, 1833, and 1834 had probably changed little since the winter of 1804-05, when Lewis and Clark occupied Fort Mandan, their winter quarters, some 8 miles below the mouth of Knife River. Describing the villages, Catlin said the principal one stood on the bank of Knife River and consisted of 40 or 50 earth-covered lodges, each from 40 to 50 feet in diameter, and this town being on an elevated bank overlooked the other two which were on lower ground "and almost lost amidst their numerous corn fields and other profuse vegetation which cover the earth with their luxuriant growth.
"The scenery along the banks of this little river, from village to village, is quite peculiar and curious; rendered extremely so by the continual wild and garrulous groups of men, women, and children, who are wending their way along its winding shores, or dashing and plunging through its blue waves, enjoying the luxury of swimming, of which both sexes seem to be passionately fond. Others are paddling about in their tub-like canoes, made of the skins of buffaloes." (Catlin, (1), I, p. 186.) Among the great collection of Catlin's paintings belonging to the United States National Museum, in Washington, is one of the large village. The original painting is reproduced in plate [43]. A drawing of the same was shown as plate in Catlin's work cited above. The work is crude but interesting historically, and conveys some idea of the appearance of the town, although in this, as in other paintings by the same artist, the earth lodges are very poorly drawn, failing to show the projection which served as the entrance and having the roofs too rounded and dome-shaped. Bodmer's sketches are far superior.
On June 19, 1833, Maximilian, aboard the steamboat Assiniboin, left Fort Clark bound for Fort Union at the mouth of the Yellowstone. Soon after passing the Mandan village of Ruhptare, so Maximilian wrote: "We saw before us the fine broad mirror of the river, and, at a distance on the southern bank, the red mass of the clay huts of the lower village of the Manitaries, which we reached in half an hour. The Missouri is joined by the Knife River, on which the three villages of the Manitaries are built. The largest, which is the furthest from the Missouri, is called Elah-Sa (the village of the great willows); the middle one, Awatichay (the little village), where Charbonneau, the interpreter, lives; and the third, Awachawi (le village des souliers), which is the smallest, consisting of only eighteen huts, situated at the mouth of Knife River.... The south bank of the river was now animated by a crowd of Indians, both on foot and on horseback; they were the Manitaries, who had flocked from their villages to see the steamer and to welcome us. The appearance of this vessel of the Company, which comes up, once in two years, to the Yellow Stone River, is an event of the greatest importance to the Indians.... The sight of the red brown crowd collected on the river side, for even their buffalo skins were mostly of this colour, was, in the highest degree, striking. We already saw above a hundred of them, with many dogs, some of which drew sledges, and others, wooden boards fastened to their backs, and the ends trailing on the ground, to which the baggage was attached with leather straps." (Maximilian, (1), pp. 178-179.)