[Shoshone Indians] | [Hidatsa Indians] | [Mandan Indians]
Before Europeans came to America, the Shoshone
Indians numbered about 60,000 and lived throughout a large
area extending from what is now Southern California through
Nevada into parts of Idaho and Utah. During the summer months,
they would travel widely to hunt and gather, but would spend
the dry winter in clan groups around various springs. In
the spring and fall, representatives from all the clans
gathered together - these were spiritual gatherings as well
as meetings for decision making.
Equipped with only bows and arrows, Shoshone
tribes had been continually raided and robbed by the Minitaree
Sioux and Blackfeet, who were armed with rifles supplied
by white traders. Due to this major disadvantage, in nearly
every conflict with other tribes, the Shoshones would forfeit
many of their possessions and lose many Tribal members to
enslavement or death.
This is how Lewis and Clark first met Sacagawea.
She had been kidnapped and enslaved by the Mandan Sioux who were living in Fort Mandan, ND.
The Mandan gambled her away to Charbonneau, a white fur
trader who had lived among them for many years.
The Lewis and Clark expedition encountered
a Shoshone tribe for the first time in August 1805. In his
log entry dated for August 17, 1805, Clark recorded that:
"I had not proceeded on one mile before I saw at a distance
Several Indians on horseback comeing towards me, The Interpreter
[Charbonneau] & Squar [Sacagawea] who were before me
at Some distance danced for the joyful sight, and She [Sacagawea]
made signs to me that they were her nation [Indian sign
language of sucking her fingers]..." In his entry for that
same day, Lewis recorded that "...the Indian woman [Sacagawea]
proved to be a sister of the Chief Cameahwait. The meeting
of those people was really affecting [emotional], particularly
between Sah-cah-gar-we-ah and an Indian woman, who had been
taken prisoner at the same time with her and who, had afterwards
escaped from the Minnetares and rejoined her nation."
Today the Shoshone live on reservations in
California, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming.
This group of Native North Americans was also
known as the Minitari and the Gros Ventre. After their separation
from the Crow, with who they were once united, they occupied
several agricultural villages on the upper Missouri River
in North Dakota. They were in close alliance with the occupants
of other villages, the Arikara and the Mandan. The Hidatsa
villages, complete with circular earth lodges, were enclosed
by an earthen wall. Hidatsa traits included the cultivation
of corn and an annual organized buffalo hunt. They had a
complex social organization and elaborate ceremonies, including
the sun dance. After a smallpox epidemic in 1837, they moved
up the Missouri, establishing themselves near the trading
post of Fort Berthold. Today, with the Arikara and Mandan,
many Hidatsa reside on the Fort Berthold Reservation in
North Dakota.
The Mandan were a passive tribe of the Plains
area and were culturally connected with their neighbors
on the Missouri River, the Arikara and the Hidatsa. The
Mandan had interesting cultural traits, including a myth
of origin describing that their ancestors climbed from beneath
the earth on the roots of a grapevine. It is believed that
at one time the Mandan lived further east, but they historically
migrated westward up the Missouri River. By the mid-18th
century, they occupied nine villages near the mouth of the
Heart River in south central North Dakota. After withstanding
a severe smallpox outbreak and attacks of the Assiniboin
and the Sioux, the Mandan moved farther up the Missouri
River, opposite the Arikara villages. It was here that the
Mandan survivors merged into two villages on opposite sides
of the Knife River. In 1804, they were visited by the Lewis
and Clark Expedition, who reported in their journals that
the tribe numbered some 1,250. It was during this visit
that Sacagawea became part of their team. In 1837, after
an epidemic of smallpox and cholera, the Mandan were reduced
to some 150, all dwelling in a single village. In 1845,
when the Hidatsa moved from the Knife River region to the
Fort Berthold trading post, the few Mandan joined them.
In 1870, a large reservation was designated for the Mandan,
the Hidatsa, and the Arikara in North Dakota at the Fort
Berthold Reservation.
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