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The Arikara
4 – 16 October 1804
For several days after leaving the Teton Sioux, the Lewis and Clark Expedition saw Sioux warriors along the riverbanks and feared an attack. None occurred, but their discovery of several abandoned old fortified Arikara villages as they continued upriver was a constant reminder of how warfare and smallpox had dramatically reduced Indian populations in the area.
The Arikara (also called Ricara, Stararee, Rickarree or "Rees") had lost perhaps 75 percent of their people in the two decades before the Corps of Discovery arrived and were living in three villages near the mouth of the Grand River in northern South Dakota. Until the 1790s, they had had 32 villages filled with people.
The Arikara were related to the Pawnee and spoke a form of the Caddo language. Their homes were large, permanent octagon-shaped earth lodges 15 feet high and 30 feet in diameter, surrounded by flourishing fields of crops. Lewis and Clark called them the "gardeners" of the northern plains, because Arikara women were expert farmers of corn, beans, squash, pumpkins, watermelons, and tobacco in a harsh environment with a limited growing season.
Each year, in late summer and early autumn, several hundred nomadic Indian hunters from several tribes would gather at the Arikara villages for a festive trade fair. Cheyenne, Sioux, Arapaho, and other western Indians traded buffalo meat and hides, beautiful antelope skin clothing decorated with colorful porcupine quills, flour made from prairie apples, and horses for Arikara vegetables and European trade guns.
The Expedition dropped anchor in Arikara territory on Monday, 8 October 1804, and was immediately welcomed with friendly hospitality and tasty food. Lewis and Clark hosted the first of two official parleys on Wednesday, 10 October. They talked with three leading village chiefs – Kakawissassa, Pocasse, and Piahito – presenting them with Jefferson peace medals, military coats, and other gifts. They did not give them whiskey because the Arikara told Clark that alcohol was bad for Indians and was not something you gave to friends. Joseph Gravelines, a resident trader from Canada's North West Company, translated Captain Lewis's speech into Arikara:
"The great chief of the Seventeen great nations [states] of America . . . [has] parental regard for his newly adopted children . . . [and wants] peace between himself and his red children."
Above all, the Americans asked the Arikara to make peace with the Mandan nation upriver, to keep the Missouri River open for trade, and to stop supplying the Teton Lakota with firearms.
The Arikara chiefs were very polite to Lewis and Clark, but they had little choice but to continue their traditional trade with the Sioux. Because they did not have access to the beaver pelts that the St. Louis merchants desired most, the Arikara knew that they would never become a major trading partner of the United States.
In 1823 the frustrated tribe waged a short war with American merchants and U.S. troops over use of the Missouri River. However, in 1804, the Arikara had made a favorable impression as a handsome and polite people who were gracious hosts. In turn, York impressed the Arikara. He performed feats of strength for the Indian adults and delighted their children by pretending to be a bear and chasing them.
In only thirty years, most of those children would be dead from continuing epidemics of smallpox. By the mid-19th century, the few surviving Arikara would be forced to move into a single, common village at Fort Berthold with their upriver Mandan and Hidatsa neighbors. Today even their separate names are rarely used, as all are known as the "Three Affiliated Tribes." |
