Who Are the Arikara?
The Arikara (Sahnish, meaning "horn" in reference to their traditional hairstyle) are a Caddoan-speaking people of the Missouri River valley, linguistically related to the Pawnee but culturally aligned with the neighboring Mandan and Hidatsa village farmers. Today numbering approximately 1,500-2,000 enrolled members as part of the **Three Affiliated Tribes** of North Dakota, the Arikara were once a numerous and powerful people—perhaps 30,000 before European contact—who controlled extensive stretches of the Missouri River through their fortified villages. Successive epidemics, conflicts with the Lakota, and the violent opening of the American fur trade reduced them to a remnant who eventually merged with the Mandan and Hidatsa for survival.
The Corn Villages
The Arikara were master agriculturalists, cultivating corn, beans, squash, sunflowers, and tobacco in the fertile Missouri River bottomlands. Like the Mandan and Hidatsa upstream, they lived in permanent fortified villages of earth lodges, supplementing agriculture with buffalo hunting. Arikara corn was famous—Lewis and Clark praised its quality—and surplus was traded to nomadic peoples for meat, hides, and horses. Their villages functioned as marketplaces where goods from across the continent changed hands. The Arikara occupied a more southern position than the Mandan-Hidatsa, making them the first village farmers encountered by parties traveling up the Missouri. Before epidemics, they may have lived in over 30 villages stretching along hundreds of miles of river. Disease and Lakota raids progressively reduced them; by the early 19th century, they were concentrated in a few large fortified villages, struggling to survive between epidemic waves.
The Arikara War of 1823
The **Arikara War** (1823) was the first military conflict between the US Army and a Plains people—and it grew from the explosive violence of the fur trade. In June 1823, Arikara warriors attacked a fur trading party led by William Ashley's Rocky Mountain Fur Company, killing 15 trappers. The attack responded to previous injuries: disease, trader exploitation, and white men's abuses. Colonel Henry Leavenworth led 230 soldiers and 700 Lakota allies against Arikara villages in August—an ironic alliance, since the Lakota were the Arikara's primary enemies. The campaign was inconclusive; the Arikara abandoned their villages and scattered. The war established a pattern of US military intervention on behalf of trading interests, while the US-Lakota alliance against the Arikara demonstrated how colonizers exploited inter-tribal conflicts. For the Arikara, the war meant displacement, increasing pressure from all sides.
Consolidation and Survival
By mid-century, the Arikara had joined the Mandan and Hidatsa at **Like-a-Fishhook Village**, the last earth lodge community on the Missouri. Three distinct peoples—speaking different languages, maintaining separate ceremonies—shared one village for mutual defense and survival. The Fort Berthold Reservation (established 1870) formalized this arrangement. The three tribes maintained distinct identities while governing together; elderly people could still identify which families descended from which of the original tribal groups. The **Garrison Dam** disaster (1953) flooded reservation lands, displacing communities again. Oil development on the reservation has brought revenue but also disruption. The Arikara language is severely endangered; language programs work against time as few fluent speakers remain. Cultural revitalization includes documentation of traditional knowledge, revival of ceremonies, and education about Arikara distinctiveness within the Three Affiliated framework.
Contemporary Arikara Community
Today's Arikara maintain identity within the **Three Affiliated Tribes** (MHA Nation) while preserving distinctive cultural elements. The annual **White Shield Celebration** honors Arikara heritage specifically, alongside joint tribal events. Traditional Arikara ceremonies—some shared with Pawnee relatives, others unique—continue or are being revived. The relationship with the Pawnee has been renewed; the two peoples separated perhaps 500-700 years ago but share linguistic and cultural roots. Archaeological research on Arikara village sites has recovered information about pre-epidemic lifeways, while oral histories preserve knowledge through the generations of catastrophe. The Arikara experience demonstrates how peoples reduced to near-extinction can maintain identity through alliance, adaptation, and determined cultural preservation. From 30,000 to 2,000 across three centuries, the Sahnish persist.
References
- Parks, D. R. (1996). Myths and Traditions of the Arikara Indians. University of Nebraska Press.
- Rogers, J. D. (1990). Objects of Change: The Archaeology and History of Arikara Contact with Europeans. Smithsonian Institution Press.
- Meyer, R. W. (1977). The Village Indians of the Upper Missouri. University of Nebraska Press.
- Holder, P. (1970). The Hoe and the Horse on the Plains: A Study of Cultural Development among North American Indians. University of Nebraska Press.