Hidatsa Territory

Becoming the Fort Berthold Reservation

Hidatsa Territory About 1800

When Meriwether Lewis and William Clark arrived, the Hidatsa were using a vast area vaguely defined by the Mouse (Souris) River on the north, the Turtle River on the east near today’s border with Minnesota, the Heart River on the south, and the Yellowstone River on the west. ‘Legal’ boundaries were unheard of.

graphic: map of reservation lands around 1800, with label explaining that, at the time of Lewis and Clark's arrival, the Hidatsas' land extended from Mouse River (north) to Heart River (south), Yellowstone River (west) to Turtle River (east).

Fort Berthold Reservation in 1950

map: Fort Berthold Reservation in 1950

The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 turned federal Indian policies away from the paternalistic objectives of de-culturalization and assimilation. Tribal self-government was facilitated, and the people of Fort Berthold Reservation became a new political entity—the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation. The revival of traditional cultural values was encouraged. The federal Civilian Conservation Corps improved roads and schools. A bridge was built from Elbowoods to the south side of the Missouri River, and named in honor of two leaders, one Mandan, the other a Hidatsa, both called Four Bears.

The 1940’s brought severe floods on the Missouri, followed by taxpayer demands that the government do something about the problem. The solution was to build a series of dams for flood control, irrigation and power generation. Over the objections of the Three Affiliated Tribes, the Corps of Engineers took 152,300 acres of their land for the reservoir to be impounded by Garrison Dam, thirty miles downstream from the southeast boundary of the Reservation.

To learn more about the sites illustrated on the map above, click any of the links below:

Changing Reservation Borders

Fort Berthold Reservation, 1851 Treaty

The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 specified the legal boundaries of the land of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara people. It contained an estimated 12.6 million acres.

map: Fort Berthold Reservation, 1851, with label that the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 reserved for the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara reservation about 12.6 million acres.

Fort Berthold Reservation, 1870

Fort Berthold Reservation was established in 1870. Though neither Congress nor the Indian people ever agreed to the change, the old reservation shrank to about 7.8 million acres, owned communally by the tribe. The land of the Knife River Villages, where Lewis and Clark had wintered among the Mandan, was no longer theirs.

map: Fort Berthold Reservation, 1870, with label about how it gradually shrank to 7.8 million acres, and the Knife River Villages, where the Expedition wintered, no longer belonged to the Mandans.

Fort Berthold Reservation, 1880

In 1880 the Northern Pacific Railroad needed land for its right-of-way through the reservation, plus some more to sell to white settlers. The U.S. Government, without consulting Congress or the Indians, exchanged much of the southern half of the reservation for a little land north of the Missouri River, leaving the tribes 1.2 million acres.

map: Fort Berthold Reservation, 1880, with label about how federal government, without asking the Indians or Congress, traded land with the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1880, leaving 1.2 million acres in the reservation.

Fort Berthold Reservation, 1891

The General Allotment Act of 1887 introduced private land ownership—basically 160 acres per family, plus a few extra acres for a wife and children. In 1891 Congress declared two-thirds of the reservation to be ‘surplus’ land, and sold it. The three tribes received $800,000, which was used for support of the Indian agency, schools, and the mission.

map: Fort Berthold Reservation, 1891, four years after the General Allotment Act assigned 160 acres of land per family. In 1891 Congress sold off the "surplus" land.

Fort Berthold Reservation, 1910

In 1910 the Government sold the northeast corner of Fort Berthold Reservation to white settlers, although the courts later confirmed it was still part of the 930,000-acre reservation. In 1954 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, pursuant to the Pick-Sloan Plan, took 192,300 acres for the reservoir, Lake Sakakawea, behind Garrison Dam, leaving the Three Tribes with 777,700 acres.

map: Fort Berthold Reservation, 1910 when it was 930,000 acres. In 1954, 192,300 were taken for Lake Sakakawea behind Garrison Dam.

Today’s Reservation

map: Fort Berthold Reservation in 1960

Ninety percent of the Indian people on the Reservation had to surrender their homes and farms in the verdant, wooded bottoms and bench lands, and move the mostly treeless and agriculturally marginal high ground, exposing themselves and their livestock to the full force of the prairie wind and weather, summer and winter. They carried the remains of their ancestors to new graves, and abandoned many revered religious sites. Even Four Bears bridge was moved to the vicinity of a ‘New Town’ in the northwest corner of the Reservation.

Where only creeks and the river had separated families and friends, vast expanses of the lake divided the Reservation into five isolated segments. A macro-community firmly rooted in traditional family and clan culture was atomized. The human devastation was almost overwhelming.

The path to recovery, and the rebuilding of tribal identity have been arduous, but the spirit of a people with a history thousands of years deep has prevailed.

Commentary

Starting from the Cannonball River, the boundary line runs southwest to the Black Hills along the divide into the Powder River westward, following Powder River it runs north, crossing the Yellowstone River. Going straight north into the Missouri River, crossing the Missouri into Muddy Creek. Following Muddy Creek it runs to the Canadian Border Line. From the Border Line it runs along the Line eastward up to the corner straight north of Devil’s Lake, North Dakota, from that corner, going south back to the Cannonball River. This is the exact mark of the boundary line which was established in the Fort Laramie Treaty in 1851.

Boundary Convention, Fort Laramie Treaty
Shell Creek (on the Fort Berthold Reservation), North Dakota
September 20, 1946
Chairman Clarkes Burr; John W. Smith, Secretary


This is not the first time that public interest has sought to acquire the lands of the Fort Berthold Indians. It has been done before in the 1866 treaty which opened the territory for railroads, and by subsequent Executive Orders of 1870 and 1880, which reduced some more of our territory without our consent, until now we have only 600,000 acres left of the original 9,000,000 acres. Is that not depreciation enough? No. The public demands some more.

From testimony of Martin Cross, Hidatsa
April 30, 1949
Washington, D.C.


We go back to our ancestors and we go back to the treaties that they’ve established. When we go to Congress, the United States Senate, and the House of Representatives, and to the White House, we talk about our treaties because that’s what our ancestors signed. That’s what our ancestors died for, was to give us our treaties, and this includes our present-day holdings. We live by them and we’ll continue to make sure the Federal Government abides by our treaties. We will have a celebration of our treaty signing in 2001.

Tex Hall, Chairman
Commenting on the Sesquicentennial of the Fort Laramie Treaty
to be held in September 2001

Photo Gallery

Independence Valley

Documentary Photo, ca. 1953

large, treed bottom on the Missouri River before dams

North Dakota Heritage Center.

The people who had established Like-A-Fishhook village in 1845 began to look elsewhere about 1885. The Arikara moved to the vicinity of Nishu, the Mandans settled around the villages of Red Butte and Charging Eagle; the Hidatsa congregated around Shell Creek and Independence. The very name, Independence, stood for the Indians’ commitment to self-help, and to independence from the government agency, the mission, and white influences in general.

Source

Carolyn Gilman and Mary Jane Schneider, The Way to Independence: Memories of a Hidatsa Indian Family, 1840-1920 (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1987), 186, 196.

Elbowoods

Documentary Photo of Elbowoods After Evacuation

photo: Elbowoods panorama

North Dakota Heritage Center.

Water Rising

Elbowoods, North Dakota

aerial photo of Elbowoods, July 7, 1954

State Historical Society of North Dakota, 194-10.

A Landmark

Saddle Butte

Saddle Butte

Calvin Grinnell photo.

Four Bears Bridge Over the Narrows near New Town

photo: Four Bears Bridge

Calvin Grinnell photo.

This structure once spanned the Missouri River near Elbowoods.

Four Bears Bridge in a January Dawn

photo of bridge over icy river

J. Agee photo.

Trail to Nightwalker’s Village

photo: Trail across buttes to Nightwalker's Village

Calvin Grinnell photo.

The Hidatsa chief, Nightwalker, established a fortified butte-top village here around the time of the smallpox epidemic of 1781.

View from Nightwalker’s Village

photo: View from Nightwalker's Village

Calvin Grinnell photo.

Mandan Indian Ferry on the Upper Missouri River

Fort Berthold Reservation, 1904

photo of ferry

From Olin D. Wheeler, The Trail of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 (2 vols. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904), Plate 28.

Mandan Earth Lodge in Winter

(reconstruction)

Earthen lodge covered with snow

Photo by J. Agee.

Holding Eagle’s Lodge

An Original

historic photo of an earthen lodge

North Dakota Heritage Center, No. 86–1016.

This lodge was photographed about 1910. Short River, now Short Creek, enters the Missouri River a few miles downstream from Williston, North Dakota.

The Old Log houses on the Fort Berthold Reservation in 1904

Two log cabins with sod-covered roofs

From Olin D. Wheeler, The Trail of Lewis and Clark, 1804–1904
(2 vols., New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904), 1:271.

A traditional earth lodge is in the background.

Mandan Indian Ferry on the Upper Missouri River

Fort Berthold Reservation, 1904

photo of ferry

From Olin D. Wheeler, The Trail of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806
(2 vols. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904), Plate 28.

 

Discover More

  • The Lewis and Clark Expedition: Day by Day by Gary E. Moulton (University of Nebraska Press, 2018). The story in prose, 14 May 1804–23 September 1806.
  • The Lewis and Clark Journals: An American Epic of Discovery (abridged) by Gary E. Moulton (University of Nebraska Press, 2003). Selected journal excerpts, 14 May 1804–23 September 1806.
  • The Lewis and Clark Journals. by Gary E. Moulton (University of Nebraska Press, 1983–2001). The complete story in 13 volumes.