Sometime—perhaps a hundred years—after the Mandan first built about the mouth of the Heart River, the three nomadic North Dakota tribes—the Sioux, Assiniboin, and Chippewa—were ranging the forests near the headwaters of the Mississippi. The Chippewa, however, were not strictly nomadic, as they had more or less permanent camping places, where they built their distinctive bark shelters.

The Chippewa wandered from the Lake region across Minnesota to the Turtle Mountains. They cultivated maize and were apparently more or less at peace with the Sioux until in the early eighteenth century the coming of the whites brought them firearms. With this advantage they overcame the Sioux and drove them south and west.

The Assiniboin were a large tribe, whose language, with only a very slight dialectal difference from that of the Yanktonai tribe of the Sioux, suggests they had not long been separated from the latter when first encountered by the whites near the headwaters of the Mississippi. At the beginning of the eighteenth century they were in the neighborhood of Lake Winnipeg, whence they drifted southward to the territory west of the Turtle Mountain region in present North Dakota.

The Sioux apparently once lived in the Ohio Valley, but prior to the historic period they moved out in several directions. At the coming of the whites in the middle seventeenth century they were found in the woods in northern Minnesota. Pressed by the Chippewa, they extended their range westward over the prairies to the Missouri, and west of that stream, from the Yellowstone River on the north to the Platte on the south, to cover a huge block of territory throughout which the name of this powerful tribe was feared and dreaded by all other Indians.

Of these seven North Dakota peoples—Mandan, Hidatsa, Cheyenne, Arikara, Sioux, Assiniboin, Chippewa—well-authenticated records exist. It will be noted that nearly all except the Arikara seem to have come from the east, particularly from the Lakes region, with the added suggestion of an earlier residence farther east or south. There is also in some cases a definite shift from a settled agricultural life to a nomadic one. They apparently arrived in the State in the following order:

Linguistically all the North Dakota tribes are Siouan, except the Arikara, who are Caddoan, and the Chippewa and Cheyenne, who are Algonquian.

EARLY INDIAN LIFE IN NORTH DAKOTA

It is interesting to visualize the prairie scene centuries ago when the Indian ruled the plains. The agricultural tribes usually built their villages of earth lodges so that one or more sides lay along a high cliff or next to a river. This afforded partial protection from the Sioux. In the more ancient types an earthen wall, sometimes built with bastions, protected the exposed sides. A log palisade topped the wall, and around the whole a ditch was dug. The number of lodges in a village varied from 30 or 40 to as high as perhaps 160. Catlin said the lodges had the appearance of huge inverted kettles, above which rose spears, and scalp and medicine poles.

The lodges in the older types of villages were arranged with a certain degree of uniformity. In the Mandan villages the lodges faced the center, where stood a large barrel or hogshead, called the Big Canoe. Soon after the Mandan came upon the earth, it is told, a great flood came and would have destroyed them utterly had not a wise Mandan, the First Man, with superlative effort and dexterity, built a great canoe or ark and hurried the surviving people into it. This staunch ark weathered the fury of the waters and finally came to rest on a high hill near the Cannonball River (see Side Tour 8C). The Big Canoe in the center of the village was a symbol of this ark.