- Bear's Belly—Arikara, photograph by Edward S. Curtis, 1908.
The Arikara tribe of Native Americans traditionally lived along the Missouri River in what is now in North Dakota. Originally related to the Pawnee tribe of present-day Nebraska, they are now associated with the Hidatsa and the Mandan.
Society and culture
Traditionally, the Arikara had 12 villages that were situated along river banks. In these villages, they built dome-shaped houses made of mud packed around a wooden frame. They also constructed larger lodges in which they performed religious ceremonies.
Near their villages, Arikara women planted and tended fields. Their corn (maize) was known for its high quality. Dried corn fed the tribe in winter and was traded to other tribes. Beans, squash, sunflowers, and tobacco were other Arikara crops.
Arikara men fished and hunted deer and elk. After they obtained horses in the 18th century, they began leaving their villages to stalk the herds of buffalo on the Great Plains. Arikara hunters lived in skin-covered tepees like other Indians of the Plains.
History
The Missouri River villages of the Arikara, Mandan, and Hidatsa were major trading centers. Plains peoples visited them to trade buffalo meat and hides for corn and other crops. French and English traders also regularly visited the Arikara to trade guns and other European goods for animal furs. Late in the 18th century, under pressure from the Sioux, they moved north from South Dakota to the villages where the American explorers of the Lewis and Clark expedition met them in the winter of 1804–05.
The Arikara were generally friendly to non-Indian visitors. But in 1823 they killed 13 members of an American trading party, and soon afterward became first plains tribe to battle the U.S. Army.
In the 1800s, the Arikara population declined due to warfare and disease. They were particularly devastated by an 1837 epidemic of smallpox, a disease introduced from the Old World. In order to protect themselves from their enemies, the survivors of the Arikara, Mandan, and Hidatsa tribes moved to a single village known as Like-A-Fishhook. In the late 19th century, the United States created the Fort Berthold Reservation in present-day North Dakota. The three tribes became officially known as the Three Affiliated Tribes in 1934.
At Fort Berthold, the Arikara became successful ranchers and farmers. They suffered a setback in the 1950s when the Garrison Dam on the Missouri River flooded much of their land. Many of the tribe had to be resettled, and government compensation was slow to arrive.
The Arikara preserve their traditional ways in an annual powwow. At the end of the 20th century, there were about 1,600 Arikara in the United States.