The Plains Indians

You can read about the Hidatsa Indians on this page as a whole, or click a link below to skip to a specific section:
Popular Misconception
The Hidatsa Indians: A Brief History
Hidatsa Society
Hidatsa Religion
Matrilineal Organization

Popular Misconceptions

    When white people think of Indian culture, they usually identify it with romanticized images of nomadic, buffalo-hunting Plains Indians. This may be due to the fact that images of popular culture tend to promote a male dominated vision of history that is consumed with warfare, diplomacy, and hunting. On the sidelines, or in the background of these images lie the Plains Indian women. Usually pictured scraping a hide or performing the “drudgery” of their daily work, Plains Indian women are rarely visible as individuals in the journals of early traders, explorers, and missionaries. Labeled “beasts of burden” by Europeans and Americans alike, the actual experiences of Plains Indian women were often unnoticed or misinterpreted (Vilbert, 120).
    Noting the substantial contribution that women made to the workload, most Euro-American travelers made the misinformed judgment that the position of Plains women was one of drudgery and subordination. The labor-intensive agricultural duties of females in Indian culture was often portrayed in early accounts as menial and monotonous. The criticism from most whites, however, was not so much that women were performing unfair amounts of manual labor but that men were not participating, or that they were forcing the women to perform these arduous tasks. An early European fur trader, John Work, remarked that the greater part of an Indian man's time was spent "loitered away in idling." As for the women: "Besides their culinary and household duties, of dressing the victuals, fetching water, wood &c the dressing of skins of animals making them into clothing for themselves and family and ornamenting the clothing, cutting up and drying meat and fish, and the laborious business of digging up roots, fall to their lot." (Vibert, 129).
    It cannot be denied that women did in fact toil as they tended their fields, processed the buffalo, and built their lodges, but there was an element of reciprocity between the sexes of the Hidatsa tribe that went unnoticed or misinterpreted by most white observers. Men hunted and women turned the buffalo into meat, hides, and tools. Women farmed and men negotiated the trade of their products. Men fought off enemies but women built and maintained the village palisades. When men went on war and hunting trips, women offered prayers for their safety and success. It was this partnership between Indian men and women that European observers could simply not understand. Elizabeth Vibert suggests in her study, Traders' Tales, that white men could not appreciate the role of Indian women because they "challenged European male, middle-class expectations for appropriate gender behavior...the intrusion of women into the realm of manual labor was a frontal assault on masculine middle-class sensibilities (Vibert, 128). Unfortunately, the misleading and jaded views of European males have had the most enduring impact our collective perception of Indian culture. It was not until recently that scholars began to re-examine the roles of Indian women. Through the gathering of new information, and the reinterpretation of old information, a more accurate picture of the Plains Indian woman has emerged; one that recognizes her crucial place in the tribal structure and economy, as well as the respect she commanded within her culture (Albers, 5).

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The Hidatsa Indians: A Brief History

    Unlike the popularized images of the equestrian, warring Plains Indians that roamed the western plains, free of conventional responsibilities and one with nature, the Hidatsa Indians of North Dakota were a relatively sedentary people who owed their economic security to agriculture. The Hidatsa built their gardens on the flood plains and bottom lands of the Missouri River, building permanent earth lodges on the terraces above where they could not be flooded. The upland prairie had an abundance of bison, which the hunting parties exploited in the summer and fall months. Essentially, the Hidatsa had a dual economy consisting of hunting and agriculture, with a strong dependence on the produce of their gardens.
    Along with the Mandan and Arikara, the Hidatsa controlled practically the whole Missouri River Valley, which was a prime location for trade associations with Euro-Americans. Unlike their peaceful neighbors, however, the Hidatsa were known to be confrontational, regularly sending war parties westward against the Shoshone and Blackfeet. It was during one of these war raids that the Hidatsa captured the famous Shoshone woman Sacagawea, who later functioned as a guide and interpreter for the Lewis and Clark expedition (for more on Sacagawea, click here ). George Catlin, a writer and painter, observed in 1832 that the Minatarees (as the Hidatsa were called by the Mandan), "were continually carrying on war" and were "a bold, daring, and warlike tribe" (Catlin, 195). The Hidatsa did focus on warfare, but mainly for ritual reasons rather than power and wealth, for it was through battle that young men established themselves as leaders in the tribe (Peters, 95).
    Before the 1830s, the Hidatsa were divided into three subgroups, all of which shared a similar language and cultural commitment to agriculture, but maintained independent villages. The Hidatsa-proper, the Awatixa, and the Awaxawi, all lived within a mile of one another, close to the mouth of the Knife River. In 1804, Lewis and Clark recognized the dialectic differences between the Awaxawi and the other two Hidatsa villages, referring to the Awaxawi as an independent "nation." There are various tales of how the Hidatsa came to be settled in separate groups along the Missouri River, but the one recorded by Meriwether Lewis on November 21, 1804 is the most logical and accepted explanation:

The Mandans say that this people came out of the water to the east and settled near them in their former establishment in nine villages;. . . The Minnetarees [Awatixa] proper assert, on the contrary, that they grew where they now live. . . They also say that. . . the Minnetarees of the Willow [Hidatsa], whose language with very little variation is their own, came many years ago from the plains and settled near them. Perhaps the two traditions may be reconciled by the natural presumption that these Minnetarees [Hidatsa] were the tribes known to the Mandans below, and that they ascended the river for the purpose of rejoining the Minnetarees proper. . .(Bowers, 303)
    The three individual tribes of Hidatsa that Lewis and Clark encountered did not last long following their visit, however, for the intrusion of the white man into Hidatsa territory catalyzed a series of incidents that weakened their separate communities.
By the early 1800s, the Hidatsa and their neighbors, the Arikara and the Mandan, became the center of the European fur trading industry on Upper Missouri. Other nomadic tribes began to barter horses and buffalo hides for the Hidatsa's agricultural produce, and traders exchanged Euro American goods such as guns, kettles, and knives for corn and squash. As a consequence of the increased trade the Hidatsa economy thrived, but their sedentary lifestyle left them vulnerable to enemies. The Hidatsa's numbers dwindled when the Dakota burned all three of their villages in 1834, and in 1837, smallpox wiped out half the tribe. Survivors of the epidemic gathered at Big Hidatsa, and in 1845 the people of Hidatsa-proper, Awatixa, Awaxawi abandoned their last village and established a new village called Like-a-fishhook.
The move to Like-a-fishhook was the beginning of a series of uncontrollable changes that would alter the Hidatsa culture and lifestyle (Wilson, xv). Situated down river from Fort Berthold, built by the American Fur Company in 1845, Like-a-fishhook was inundated by Euro American technology and cultural influence. The Hidatsa tried desperately to cling to their culture and traditions, but by the 1860’s the buffalo had begun to disappear and the US government was imposing treaties that gradually carved away the Hidatsa territory. In 1870 The Fort Berthold Indian Reservation was created as a result of the US governments assimilationist federal Indian policy, in which white policy makers tried to break up tribal patterns of the Hidatsa and other Indian tribes by forcing them to accept the concept of private property. By 1885 Like-a-fishhook village was disbanded, and the remaining Hidatsa, Mandan, and Arikara people were spread along the banks of Missouri River on government imposed land allotments. Despite the pressures of assimilation and the breakup of traditional village structure however, the Hidatsa still managed to preserve most of their traditional culture by balancing the new ways with the old, teaching their young where they came from through the rich tradition of oral history. Today, after a history characterized by adaptation to environment and forced change, the Hidatsa people continue their struggle to maintain their tribal and cultural identity.
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Hidatsa Society

    The Hidatsa owed their economic prosperity, status as traders, and ceremonial rituals to agriculture. Settled in fairly permanent villages along the Upper Missouri River, the Hidatsa’s economy was based on the production of corn and vegetables with the seasonal supplement of buffalo. Observing the unique division of labor among the Hidatsa, George Catlin remarked disapprovingly that "the women are the proprietors and cultivators of all crops. . . the men never turning their hands to such degrading occupations" (Catlin, 199). It is true that while men dominated the hunting and war expeditions, women were in charge of producing the agricultural products which fueled their economy and ensured their livelihood. Using nothing but a digging stick, a rake, and a hoe made from buffalo bones and wood, the women produced food enough to feed the Hidatsa tribe, other tribes, and white travelers. Women not only produced enough corn and other vegetables for themselves, but also a substantial surplus, which the tribe traded with other nomadic tribes for horses and buffalo hides. Later, when the white man arrived on the western plains, the Hidatsa supplied them with agricultural products in exchange for Euro American goods such as kettles, knives, and guns, which the Hidatsa in turn traded with other Indian tribes. Essentially, the surplus corn produced by the women was the source of the Hidatsa’s wealth and the foundation of their trade based economy.
    By providing the surplus corn that fed the tribe and fueled their trade network, the women also made possible the economic security that gave people the leisure to perform the important rituals and ceremonies that dominated their lifeway. To the Hidatsa the natural and supernatural worlds were inseparable, and the gods that they worshipped in the animals and plants that surrounded them possessed a power they could only obtain through daily prayer and elaborate rituals. These rituals often required the sacrifice and offering of a great deal of goods and food, things which could not be obtained without the agricultural labor of the women and the wealth which that labor generated. Essentially, the practice of the tribal religion, which recognized the earth as female, depended on women and their work.
    The Hunt, although an exclusively male event, also required a great deal of labor from the Hidatsa women. After watching the events of an Hidatsa buffalo hunt unfold, Catlin himself seemed shocked at the amount of work performed by the village women in the aftermath of the hunt: "Preparations were at once made for securing the meat. . . some hundreds of women and children, to whose lots fall all the drudgeries of Indian life, started out upon the trail, which led them to the battlefield, where they spent the day skinning the animals, and cutting up the meat, which was mostly brought into the villages on their backs, as they tugged and sweated under their enormous and cruel loads" (Catlin, 199) Catlin may have misread the extent to which the Hidatsa women themselves felt their work to be "drudgery," but he did not exaggerate in his description of their chores. Women were in charge of cutting up the meat, and hanging it on scaffolds to dry. They cooked food and did camp chores, such as scraping the hides. If the men could not manage to skin and butcher all of the buffalo, the women helped. Some of the older women of the Goose Society of the tribe also performed rituals associated with the buffalo hunt, calling on gods to assist their endeavors and ensure their success. All and all, the Hidatsa women played an equal, if not higher, role in the buffalo hunt
    After the Hunt, which took place in the summer months, the women paid exclusive attention to their fields, which needed to be hoed before harvest. The women and girls gathered together and dried the green corn, and then harvested, dried, and prepared storage for the corn squash, and beans. Each woman had one or more caches where she stored her surplus produce, setting aside the crops that would be exchanged at Trade fairs with neighboring nomadic plains tribes. When the crops were in, the women closed up the big summer lodge and moved to smaller quarters for the winter where they spent their time gathering wood to cook and heat their lodges with while they worked on the hides from the summer hunt. Before the ice broke on the Missouri River, the women went back to their permanent villages and began to clear the fields for spring planting.
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Hidatsa Religion

    In Hidatsa society, all of the necessities of life, as well as life itself, came from women. This dependence on women is reflected in the mythology and religious life of the Hidatsa, who recognized women as the origin of life. According to Hidatsa oral culture, First creator and Lone Man created the land and the male animals, but they found the source of their own being in what they called the grandmother toad. Like human females who give birth to succeeding generations, the earth was thought to be female in principle, capable of procreation as the seasons and years turned.

    The non patriarchal religion of the Hidatsa is not surprising given their dependence on the labor of women. Since the women were responsible for the agriculture that sustained their economy, it was the men who had the leisure to give to ceremonies between their hunting and war expeditions. Although the men's rituals were often more elaborate, the women's ceremonial duties were no less important. Women were in charge of blessing each new earth lodge, carrying out the annual rites before each harvest, and calling the buffalo to the village in the winter.
The women were also responsible for making the elaborate costumes worn by men, as well as providing the food and gifts distributed at male ceremonies. More importantly, it was the the surplus of corn grown and harvested by the women that created the economic surplus which allowed the tribe to host such rich ceremonies. Essentially, the women were the backbone of the of the Hidatsa religion (Peters 42).
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Matrilineal Organization
    Women owned their own fields and worked them with their sisters and daughters. Because they worked together it made sense for them to live together. Also, because men were often killed in hunting and warfare, women outnumbered them by a ratio of 3 to 1 (Catlin 195). Consequently, the man who married the oldest girl in a family usually married her younger sisters as well, and so a woman lived in her mothers lodge all her life. A Hidatsa, Buffalo Bird Woman, whose mother died when she was a small child, recalled to anthropologist Gilbert L. Wilson that she was raised by her mother's sisters, who were all wives of Small Ankle, her mother's husband as well. She told Wilson that, "it was a custom of the Hidatsa's that if the eldest sister of a household married, her younger sisters were also given to her husband, as they came of marriageable age" (Wilson, 9).
When a son married he went to live in his wife’s home. Children reckoned kinship through their mother, because women’s lodges were the basic institution of the village society. Property was passed down from mother to child and society was organized into matrilineal clans who owned the wealth. Even though village chiefs were men, their positions depended upon the support of their matrilineal clan. Furthermore, important decisions involving the tribe were not made by exclusively male councils, but were reached through a consensus including females.
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From Childhood to Marriage

    For most Hidatsa females, childhood was spent playing and learning the ancient farming techniques of their tribe through the instruction of their mothers, grandmothers, and aunts. As Buffalo Bird Woman grew up, she learned to work in the garden, "as every Hidatsa woman was expected to learn" (Wilson, 13). Both girls and boys gained knowledge and skills from their elders, which was of two kinds: "ordinary hearsay knowledge," which could be passed on by anybody to anybody, and "ancient knowledge," which had to be purchased through gifts and could be taught only by those who had inherited rights in it. Basket weaving, pottery making, and lodge construction were sacred crafts performed by women. For example, if a women had inherited the right to weave baskets, she could teach her daughter how to weave baskets in the same manner, step by step. As the girl learned the proper techniques, she would give her mother small gifts each step of the way, to show her mother her appreciation. In this way, as the girl grew older, she learned the importance of reciprocal gift giving, which governed the actions of all adults.

    A girl's position in Hidatsa society was much different than that of a boy. A girl was expected to be trained in purely domestic tasks in order to marry a good provider, while most boys were expected to prove themselves as tribal leaders and worthy husbands through battle. A girls affections remained with her brothers even after he had married and moved to his wife's lodge. She would often fast for his success while he was away at battle and put up goods when he returned from a successful war expedition. She fasted less than her brothers did before battle, and was taught to avoid religious ceremonies during her menstrual period so she did not risk disturbing the sacred rites. Although there were no organized puberty rights, there were many simple household rituals surrounding agriculture that a girl was expected to learn and observe as she grew older.
Around the time a girl reached puberty, usually when she was about twelve years old, her mother might decide that it was time for her to join an age-grade society. Buffalo Bird Women was fourteen, about two years older than average, when she joined her first age-grade society. When a girl joined her first age-grade society, she and several other girls bought their way into a society of another group of slightly older young women, who would in turn would buy their way into a higher society. Once a girl joined an age-grade society, she addressed all the women from whom she and her companions had bought it as "mother," and when her group sold out to younger girls, she would call them all her "daughters" to maintain reciprocal relationships. The first age-grade society, like the Hidatsa Skunk society that Buffalo Bird Woman joined, was not sacred like the Goose and White Buffalo societies that older women joined were, but a mere beginners group involving dances after war victories.
    It was in this age-group that Hidatsa girls prepared for marriage, a ceremony which initiated the official passage to adulthood for a woman. Marriage was not a public event in Hidatsa society, and was usually a private agreement between two households, although courtship was often displayed openly. When a girl and boy of appropriate age showed interest for one another, marriage was first suggested by his brothers and sisters, and then he was free to bring up the matter to the girls parents, knowing that his family would provide horses for him. A gift of horses was an essential part of securing his brides hand, for prospective husbands were expected to deliver an appropriate number of horses (usually determined by the girls mother) to their brides family in order to prove their worthiness. At the actual wedding ceremony itself, more gifts would be exchanged evenly between the families of the bride and groom, cementing the reciprocal relationship that would now be shared between the two households.
    If troubles ever arose in marriage, divorce was quite easy. A women living in her husbands lodge would simply return to her mothers lodge, and a man living in his wife's lodge would return to his mothers lodge. However, divorce usually only occurred if a husband mistreated his wife and/or failed to provide meat, or if a wife failed to perform her household duties. With the arrival of children in a marriage, however, divorce became highly unlikely, for children symbolized a sacred mutual bond and responsibility that drew husband and wife closer together.
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From Adulthood to Death

    When a village Indian girl married and became an adult, her responsibilities were often heavy and labor intensive. However, since she had been trained from childhood to perform her household and agriculture duties with strength and pride, the Hidatsa woman did not think her responsibilities were too harsh. By now, she knew her place in her family and her role in society well.
Women took on more responsibility in planting the gardens during the spring, and worked endlessly to ensure good crops for the fall. It was during this time in a Hidatsa woman's life that she would probably have children, an event that married couples looked forward to and took very seriously. After marriage and following parenthood, both men and women began to climb up the later of age-grade societies, gaining more prestige by meeting certain obligations and performing ceremonies.
After marriage, women joined the Enemy age-grade society, who performed dances and played an important part in the ceremonial war parades. She gradually moved on to the more important societies of the Goose and White Buffalo Cow, gaining respect and gifts along the way. She also took a large role in the social advancement of her husband, organizing feasts and decorating hides which he could give as gifts to higher age-grade societies.
    Often the advancement of a man to higher age-grade society involved the relinquishment of his wife to his "father," the older man whom he was buying his membership from. A woman's husbands "father" consequently became her "grandfather," and she would join her "grandfather" in a ritual sexual intercourse that would cement the relationship between the two men. A woman who assisted her husband through several transfers gained a great deal of respect for herself as well as her husband. Lewis and Clark may have witnessed a similar Hidatsa ritual involving the prostitution of women on January 5th of 1804 when Clark recorded:

a Buffalow Dance for 3 nights passed in the 1st village, a curious Custom. . .the old men arrange themselves in a circle & after Smoke[ing] a pipe which is handed them by a young man. . .the young men who have their wives back of the Circle go [each] to one of the old men with a whining tone and request the old man to take his wife. . .the Girl then takes the Old Man and leades him to a convenient place for the business, after which they return to the lodge; if the old man (or white man) returns to the lodge without gratifying the Man & his wife, he offers her again and again. . . all this to cause the buffalow to Come near So that they may Kill them. (DeVoto, 76)
    When a woman grew older she took over management of the lodge, inheriting the rights to lodge in the event of her mothers death. Once a woman had reached the age to join the White Buffalo Cow society, she had acquired a such a high degree of respect and status that she left the duties of the household to her daughters in favor of ceremonial activities. Old age was rewarded in Hidatsa society, and thus senior members, both men and women, were allowed to participate in activities of their choosing. Most women made preparations for death by providing themselves with beautiful robes to wear when the village performed the "sending away of the spirit," a ritual in which the entire village mourned for four days following her loss.
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