North Dakota: A Guide to the Northern Prairie State

by Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration for the State of North Dakota

DECLINE OF THE INDIAN TRIBES

Shortly after the Verendrye visit the Mandan seem to have declined. When Lewis and Clark came up the Missouri in 1804, the villages about the Heart River were in ruins. Farther up the river, near where it is joined by the Knife, the explorers found the Mandan, diminished by smallpox and by wars with the Assiniboin and the Dakota to two small villages. In 1837 smallpox again broke out, reducing the tribe from 1,600 to 150—some travelers give even a lower figure. At the beginning of the twentieth century it numbered about 250.

The other agricultural tribes seem to have suffered fates almost as harsh. The Hidatsa, numbering 2,100 at the time of the Lewis and Clark visit, had been reduced at the beginning of the present century to less than 500. In 1804 the Arikara, crowded by the Sioux, had moved up the river nearer to the other agricultural tribes. Lewis and Clark found them in three villages between the Grand and Cannonball Rivers in what is now North and South Dakota. At that time they numbered 2,600, but this figure had dropped to 380 by the beginning of the twentieth century. The Cheyenne village on the Missouri, some distance below the site of Bismarck, was in ruins at the time of the expedition. Successive migrations finally brought the Cheyenne to the headwaters of the Cheyenne River in the southwestern part of present South Dakota.

The agricultural tribes on the whole have been very friendly to the whites. In 1870 a large reservation, which has since been much reduced in size, was set apart at the junction of the Missouri and the Little Missouri Rivers for the Mandan, Arikara, and Hidatsa (see Side Tour 3A). Since the beginning of the century their numbers have increased by large percentages and at the present time they number approximately 1,650. The remnant of those Cheyenne who lived in North Dakota are now on reservations in south central Montana and in Oklahoma.

The nomadic tribes, especially the Sioux, did not take as kindly to the white invasion as did the agricultural groups. However, the principal disturbances involving this tribe—the Minnesota Massacre of 1862, which extended to Abercrombie within the limits of present North Dakota; Sibley's campaign to the Missouri in 1863; Sully's expeditions into Dakota in 1863-64; and the battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876, when Gen. George A. Custer and five companies of cavalry were wiped out—none of these major conflicts involved the Sioux as a whole, but rather one or more of the seven Council Fires, as they call their tribal divisions. These seven groups are the Mdewakanton, Wahpekute, Sisseton, and Wahpeton, who inhabited the region about Lake Traverse and the Big Sioux River and east to the Mississippi; the Yankton and Yanktonai, who lived along the course of the James River; and the Teton, who dwelt west of the Missouri. The four Council Fires first named were responsible for the uprising and massacre in Minnesota in 1862, in which about 400 settlers and 100 white soldiers lost their lives. Sibley and Sully were sent into Dakota Territory in 1863-64 to punish the perpetrators of this massacre, but although they punished Sioux, they probably did not punish the offending bands (see History).

While all the Sioux were bitter in their objection to the whites, it was the Teton, or prairie Sioux, whose seven bands constituted more than one-half the tribe, who were the most unremitting in their hostility. These bands were the Ogallala, Brulé, Hunkpapa, Blackfeet, Minneconjou, Sans Arcs, and Two Kettle. Of these the Hunkpapa and Ogallala were the most numerous. They were also probably the most inflexible in their determination not to yield to white sovereignty, and formed the backbone of the Indian opposition in the disasters at Fort Phil Kearney in Wyoming and at the Little Big Horn in Montana.

The other North Dakota nomadic tribes did not give the newcomers as much trouble as did the Sioux. The Assiniboin were a wandering people, less certain of fixed habitation than the Sioux and Chippewa. In spite of the uncertainty of their lives and their constant warfare with the Sioux, in the early part of the nineteenth century they numbered about 1,200 lodges. Not long afterward they were reduced by a plague of smallpox to less than 400 lodges.

The Chippewa made a treaty with the Government in 1815 after the border troubles incident to the War of 1812, and have since remained peaceful, almost all residing on reservations or allotted lands within their original territory in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota. At the close of the eighteenth century there were perhaps 25,000 Chippewa, while at the beginning of the twentieth there were in the neighborhood of 30,000, approximately 1,000 of whom were in North Dakota.

The nomadic tribes now living in North Dakota are on three reservations. Nearly 1,000 Sioux are at Fort Totten (see Side Tour 6A), while Standing Rock (see Side Tour 8C) has about 1,600 on the North Dakota side. Six thousand three hundred thirty-four Chippewas, most of whom are of mixed blood, live on the Turtle Mountain Reservation (see Tour 5). The members of the Assiniboin tribe now live on reservations in Montana and Canada.