Part 22

"The village appeared to occupy about three quarters of a mile along the river bank, on a level plain, the country behind it rising into hills of considerable height. There are little or no woods anywhere to be seen. The lodges are of a conical shape, and look like heaps of earth. A great number of horses are seen feeding in the plains around, and on the sides of the hills. I espied a number of squaws, in canoes, descending the river and landing at the village. The interpreter informed me, that they were returning home with wood. These canoes are made of a single buffalo hide, stretched over osiers, and are of a circular form. There was but one woman in each canoe, who kneeled down, and instead of paddling sideways, placed the paddle before; the load is fastened to the canoe.... About two o'clock fourteen of us crossed over, and accompanied the chief to his lodge. Mats were laid around for us to sit on, while he placed himself on a kind of stool or bench. The pipe was handed around, and smoked; after which, the herald, (every chief or great man, has one of them) ascended the top of the lodge and seated himself near an open place, and began to bawl out like one of our town criers; the chief every now and then addressing something to him through the aperture before mentioned. We soon discovered the object of this, by the arrival of the other chiefs, who seemed to drop in, one after the other, as their names were called.

"When all were seated, the pipe was handed to the chief, who began as is usual on solemn occasions, by blowing a whiff upwards as it were to the sky, then to the earth, and after to the east and west, after which the pipe was sent round. A mark of respect in handing the pipe to another, is to hold it until the person has taken several whiffs." (Brackenridge, (1), pp. 245-246.)

Bradbury, who was also present at the gathering on June 12, entered in his journal:

"I quitted the feast, in order to examine the town, which I found to be fortified all round with a ditch, and with pickets or pallisadoes, of about nine feet high. The lodges are placed without any regard to regularity, which renders it difficult to count them, but there appears to be from 150 to 160, and they are constructed in the same manner as those of the Ottoes, with the additional convenience of a railing on the eaves: behind this railing they sit at their ease and smoke. There is scarcely any declivity in the scite of the town, and as little regard is paid to cleanliness, it is very dirty in wet weather." (Bradbury, (1), pp. 114-115.) Later he wrote (pp. 165-166): "I am not acquainted with any customs peculiar to this nation, save that of having a sacred lodge in the centre of the largest village. This is called the _Medicine lodge_, and in one particular, corresponds with the sanctuary of the Jews, as no blood is on any account whatsoever to be spilled within it, not even that of an enemy; nor is any one, having taken refuge there, to be forced from it. This lodge is also the general place of deposit for such things as they devote to the _Father of Life_."

On the following day, June 13, 1811, Brackenridge "rambled through the village," which he found "excessively filthy," with innumerable dogs running about. Then he proceeded to describe the habitations: "The lodges are constructed in the following manner: Four large forks of about fifteen feet in height, are placed in the ground, usually about twenty feet from each other, with hewn logs, or beams across; from these beams, other pieces of wood are placed slanting; smaller pieces are placed above, leaving an aperture at the top, to admit the light, and to give vent to the smoke. These upright pieces are interwoven with osiers, after which, the whole is covered with earth, though not sodded. An opening is left at one side, for a door, which is secured by a kind of projection of ten or twelve feet, enclosed on all sides, and forming a narrow entrance, which might be easily defended. A buffalo robe suspended at the entrance, answers as a door. The fire is made in a hole in the ground, directly under the aperture at the top. Their beds elevated a few feet, are placed around the lodge, and enclosed with curtains of dressed elk skins. At the upper end of the lodge, there is a kind of trophy erected; two buffalo heads, fantastically painted, are placed on a little elevation; over them are placed, a variety of consecrated things, such as shields, skins of a rare or valuable kind, and quivers of arrows. The lodges seem placed at random, without any regularity or design, and are so much alike, that it was for some time before I could learn to return to the same one. The village is surrounded by a palisade of cedar poles, but in a very bad state. Around the village, there are little plats enclosed by stakes, intwined with osiers, in which they cultivate maize, tobacco, and beans; but their principal field is at the distance of a mile from the village, to which, such of the females whose duty it is to attend to their culture, go and return morning and evening. Around the village they have buffalo robes stuck up on high poles. I saw one so arranged as to bear a resemblance to the human figure, the hip bone of the buffaloe represented the head, the sockets of the thigh bones looked like eyes." (Op. cit., pp. 247-248.)

On June 14 they walked together to the upper of the two villages, which were separated by a narrow stream. They entered several lodges and were always pleasantly received by the occupants and offered food, which included fresh buffalo meat served in wooden dishes or bowls, and "homony made of corn dried in the milk, mixed with beans, which was prepared with buffalo marrow." This latter, according to Bradbury, was "warmed on the fire in an earthen vessel of their own manufacture." Later, when he returned to the same village, he wrote (p. 158): "I noticed over their fires much larger vessels of earthenware than any I had before seen, and was permitted to examine them. They were sufficiently hardened by the fire to cause them to emit a sonorous tone on being struck, and in all I observed impressions on the outside seemingly made by wicker work. This led me to enquire of them by signs how they were made? when a squaw brought a basket, and taking some clay, she began to spread it very evenly within it, shewing me at the same time that they were made in that way. From the shape of these vessels, they must be under the necessity of burning the basket to disengage them, as they are wider at the bottom than at the top. I must here remark, that at the Great Salt Lick, or Saline, about twenty miles from the mouth of the Wabash, vast quantities of Indian earthenware are found, on which I have observed impressions exactly similar to those here mentioned. From the situation of these heaps of fragments, and their proximity to the salt works, I am decidedly of opinion that the Indians practised the art of evaporating the brine, to make salt, before the discovery of America."

It was the custom of the people of the village to gather in the evenings on the tops of their lodges, there to sit and converse, and "every now and then the attention of all was attracted by some old men who rose up and declaimed aloud, so as to be heard over the whole village." Within the village women were often seen busily engaged in dressing buffalo robes, stretched on frames near the lodges. Men, playing at various games, or sitting in groups smoking and talking; children and dogs innumerable. Such was the appearance of an Arikara village a little more than a century ago.

On the 18th of June Bradbury visited the bluffs southwest of the village and on one discovered 14 buffalo skulls placed in a row, and in describing them said: "The cavities of the eyes and the nostrils were filled with a species of _artemisia_ common on the prairies, which appears to be a non-descript. On my return I caused our interpreter to enquire into the reason for this, and found that it was an honour conferred on the buffaloes which they had killed, in order to appease their spirits, and prevent them from apprising the living buffaloes of the danger they run in approaching the neighbourhood." (Op. cit., p. 125.)

An interesting observation was made at this time by Brackenridge concerning a temporary encampment of a small party of Arikara when away from their permanent, well-protected villages. He said (Op. cit., pp. 254-255): "To avoid surprise, they always encamp at the edge of a wood; and when the party is small, they construct a kind of fortress, with wonderful expedition, of billets of wood, apparently piled up in a careless manner, but so arranged as to be very strong, and are able to withstand an assault from a much superior force." Many such inclosures were discovered and mentioned by the early explorers of the Upper Missouri Valley, and several instances have been cited on the preceding pages when treating of the Siouan tribes.

In 1832 Catlin went up the Missouri, and when he arrived at the Arikara village he made a sketch of the town as it appeared from the deck of the steamboat. The original painting is now in the National Museum, Washington, and is reproduced in plate 53. This was engraved and presented as plate 80 in his narrative. Writing of this sketch he remarked: "Plate 80, gives a view of the Riccaree village, which is beautifully situated on the west bank of the river, 200 miles below the Mandans; and built very much in the same manner; being constituted of 150 earth-covered lodges, which are in part surrounded by an imperfect and open barrier of piquets set firmly in the ground, and of ten or twelve feet in height. This village is built upon an open prairie, and the gracefully undulating hills that rise in distance behind it are everywhere covered with a verdant green turf, without a tree or a bush anywhere to be seen. This view was taken from the deck of the steamer when I was on my way up the river." (Catlin, (1), I, p. 204.) At this time the Arikara were very hostile to all the traders who passed and repassed along the Missouri. They had attacked many canoes and caused the death of their occupants. Fearing the outcome of their actions they soon left the banks of the Missouri and moved westward. One year after Catlin passed the villages Maximilian arrived there while on his way to the far upper waters of the Missouri. On June 12, 1833, Maximilian wrote: "Moreau's River ... is called the southern boundary of the territory of the Arikkaras, though they often make excursions far beyond it.... On the morning of the 12th our cannon, muskets and rifles were loaded with ball, because we were approaching the village of the hostile Arikkaras. We came to Grand River, called in Lewis and Clarke's map Wetarko River. As we here touched the bottom, we crossed to the east bank, and in half an hour reached Rampart River, which issues from a narrow chain of hills, called Les Remparts; and soon afterwards an island covered with willows, which, on the large special map of Lewis and Clarke, has an Arikkara village, of which there are now no traces. From the hills we had a fine prospect over the bend of the river, on which the villages of the Arikkaras are situated, and which we reached after a short run of only two miles. The two villages of this tribe are on the west bank, very near each other, but separated by a small stream. They consist of a great number of clay huts, round at the top, with a square entrance in front, and the whole surrounded with a fence of stakes, which were much decayed, and in many places thrown down. It was not quite a year since these villages had been wholly abandoned, because their inhabitants, who were extremely hostile to the Whites, killed so many Americans, that they themselves foresaw that they would be severely chastised by the United States, and therefore preferred to emigrate. To this cause was added, a dry, unproductive season, when the crops entirely failed; as well as the absence of the herds of buffaloes, which hastened their removal.... The principal chief of the Arikkaras, when they retired from the Missouri, was called Starapat (the little hawk, with bloody claws)." (Maximilian, (1), pp. 166-167.) The Arikara at this time appear to have left the banks of the Missouri and removed to the vicinity of the Pawnee.

Fort Clark, on the upper Missouri, at the villages of the Mandan and Hidatsa, was erected by the American Fur Company during the year 1829.

In 1837 the Mandans suffered from the dreaded smallpox, losing more than 90 per cent of their number, and the few who survived abandoned their large village below Fort Clark and settled a short distance above. And, so wrote Hayden in 1855, "About the time that the Mandans left the lower village, the Arikaras came and took possession, the former readily consenting to this arrangement, because it placed a large body of strangers between them and the Dakotas, with whom, in their now feeble state, they were unable to contend." (Hayden, (1), p. 434.)

A brief description of the Arikara village as it appeared early in June, 1850, is to be found in Culbertson's journal. On the 12th of that month the steamboat, ascending the Missouri, reached Fort Clark, "a small fort, about one hundred feet in length on each side." Just above the fort was the village of the Arikara. "The village is composed of two hundred lodges, as near as I could learn from the interpreter, and is built upon the top of a bluff bank rising about seventy-five feet perpendicular from the water. The huts are placed very irregularly, sometimes with very narrow, and sometimes with quite broad spaces between them. A number of platforms of poles, as high as the lodges themselves, are interspersed among them for the convenience of drying meat and dressing robes. I noticed a number of squaws busily employed in dressing robes." (Culbertson, (1), p. 117.) The typical earth lodge is described, one similar to those mentioned on other pages of this sketch, but his account of the interior of a habitation is most interesting. He, with others, stopped at a large lodge, when, so he wrote: "We were conducted to the place of honor, opposite to and facing the door. To our right, along the wall, were arranged several bedsteads, rudely made, while to the left, a part was cut off by a couple of poles, for the accommodation of the horses; the chickens had a coop in one corner, but roam at large on most occasions, and the centre is used for a fireplace. The lodge was clean, airy, light and comfortable, and there was plenty of room for more than those, who I suppose, inhabit it. Behind us were hung bows with spears on the ends, and two rude instruments of music, made of a number of pumpkins.... Near the fireplace a small wooden mortar was sunk in the ground, for pounding corn. The large and high room appeared rather scarce of furniture." Many burials were encountered when passing between the village and Fort Clark, and there "were little patches of corn and pumpkins, generally enclosed by a slight bush fence," these probably being the gardens belonging to the people of the near-by town. The mortar, "sunk in the ground," as mentioned by Culbertson, was evidently similar to the example shown in plate 52, _b_, a form which was indicated by Bodmer in his sketch of the interior of a Mandan lodge, plate 40.

It will be recalled that the village mentioned in the preceding notes was the home of the Mandan during the memorable winter of 1804-05, when the expedition of Lewis and Clark encamped a few miles below, and there the Mandan continued to dwell until after the epidemic of 1837.

In later years the three tribes, Arikara, Hidatsa, and Mandan, were closely associated, living in the vicinity of Fort Berthold, on the left bank of the Missouri and about 60 miles above Fort Clark, the Arikara having arrived at Fort Berthold, during the month of August, 1862. Evidently their ways of life and customs were quite similar, and Matthews, in his work on the Hidatsa in particular, but in which he treats of the three tribes in general, said: "For cleaning the village-grounds, they had rakes made of a few osiers tied together, the ends curved and spreading. Their most important agricultural implement was the hoe. Before they obtained iron utensils of the white traders, their only hoes were made of the shoulder-blades of elk or buffalo, attached to wooden handles of suitable length ... as late as 1867, I saw a great number in use at Fort Berthold, and purchased two or three, one of which was sent to Washington, and, I presume, is now on exhibition in the museum of the Smithsonian Institution." (Matthews, (1), p. 19.) Several rakes of this description are in the collection of the National Museum, Washington. One, bearing the legend "Arickaree," which was obtained at Fort Berthold, is shown in plate 54, _a_ (U.S.N.M. 6353). It measures 4 feet 10 inches in length and is formed of six pieces bound together. It is also of great interest to know that the hoe which was sent by Dr. Matthews to the museum is perfectly preserved. It is here reproduced in plate 54, _b_ (U.S.N.M. 6326). Written on it is this legend: "Ree Indians. Ft Berthold Dacotah Ter. Drs Gray and Matthews." The length of the scapula, that of a buffalo, is about 14 inches. Both handle and blade are worn smooth from use. The specimen is one of much importance.

It will be recalled that Bradbury in 1811 referred to the "medicine lodge," then standing in the center of the large Arikara village. Matthews, more than 60 years later, mentioned a similar structure then standing at the village near Fort Berthold, and said concerning it: "The medicine-lodge of the Arickarees is larger than that of the Mandans, and is used for a greater variety of ceremonies. Some of these performances, consisting of ingenious tricks of jugglery and dances, representative of various hunts, we might be inclined to call theatrical rather than religious. Probably these Indians consider them both worshipful and entertaining. It is often hard to tell how much of a religious ceremony is intended to propitiate the unknown powers, and how much to please the spectators." (Matthews, (1), p. 10.)

From the various quotations given on the preceding pages it is possible to form a good idea of the appearance of an ancient Arikara village. A large number of earth-covered lodges, of varying sizes, were placed without order but rather close together, often with a "medicine lodge" in the center of the group. All were surrounded by a palisade, often reared in connection with a ditch and embankment. The village at Fort Berthold was thus protected until the winter of 1865, at which time the stockade was cut down and used as fuel, and it was never replaced.

As late as 1872 there were 43 earth-covered lodges standing at the Arikara village near Fort Berthold, together with 28 log cabins.

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 77 PLATE 54

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 77 PLATE 55

In addition to the earth-covered lodges found in the permanent villages, they had skin tents which were occupied when away from their towns on war or hunting expeditions. Like the great majority of the native tribes, the Arikara would move about during certain seasons of the year. Hayden, writing about the year 1855, referred to this custom: "At the commencement of the winter the Arikaras leave their village in quest of buffalo, which seldom approach near enough to be killed in the vicinity of their cabins. They then encamp in skin tents, in various directions from the Missouri or along its banks, wherever the buffalo may chance to range. They pass the winter in hunting, and return to their permanent village early in the spring, bringing with them their skins in an unprepared state, with a great supply of meat." (Hayden, (1), p. 354.) Such were the hunting parties often met by the traders and explorers, as that mentioned by Sergeant Gass on October 15, 1804. That they were skilled agriculturists is attested by a note referring to the time they were still living in the old Mandan village below Fort Clark, October 11, 1853. In the journal of a party at that time descending the Missouri from Fort Benton to St. Louis appears this entry:

"Arrived at Fort Clark, or Aricaree's village. It is situated on the top of a very high bluff on the bank of the river.... The Rees are not friendly to the whites, and are kept from open hostilities only by fear. They are a large tribe, and on the fertile meadows they occupy, raise a great amount of corn and pumpkins, which they exchange with the Crows and Dacotahs for dried buffalo meat and robes. They exported five thousand bushels of excellent corn this year...." (Saxton, (1), p. 265.) And it must be remembered that the principal implement was the primitive hoe, formed of a scapula of a buffalo attached to a wooden handle.

WICHITA.

Like the other members of this linguistic family, whose villages have already been described, the Wichita had two forms of dwellings, which they occupied under different conditions. One served as the structure in their permanent villages, the other being of a more temporary nature. But, instead of the earth-covered lodges used farther north, their fixed villages were composed of groups of high circular structures, entirely thatched from bottom to top. Their movable camps, when away from home on war or hunting expeditions, consisted of the skin-covered tents of the plains.

The peculiar thatched structures were first seen and described by Europeans in the year 1541, when Coronado crossed the vast rolling prairies and reached the Quivira (the Wichita) about the northeastern part of the present State of Kansas. Here extensive village sites, with innumerable traces of occupancy, undoubtedly indicate the positions of the ancient settlements.

In the narrative of the expedition led by Coronado, prepared by one of the Spanish officers, Juan Jaramillo, appears an interesting though very brief description of the thatched dwellings of the people of Quivira:

"The houses which these Indians have were of straw, and most of them round, and the straw reached down to the ground like a wall, so that they did not have the symmetry or the style of these here [referring to pueblos]; they have something like a chapel or sentry box outside and around these, with an entry, where the Indians appear seated or reclining." (Winship, (1), p. 591.) Castañeda, writing of the same villages, said: "The houses are round, without a wall, and they have one story like a loft, under the roof, where they sleep and keep their belongings. The roofs are of straw." (Winship, (1), pp. 528-529.) This evidently referred to structures similar to that shown on the right of the lodge in plate 55, _a_.

A photograph of a large Wichita dwelling, of the form mentioned, is reproduced in plate 55, _b_. The picture was probably made about the year 1880. The door in front is open, and there appears to be another on the extreme left, which would be 90° from the former; therefore there were evidently four entrances. This is explained in the following account of the construction and arrangement of such a dwelling: