Independence Valley

Documentary Photo, About 1953
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' committment 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.

--Joseph Mussulman