The Arikara Indians were an offshoot tribe of the Pawnee tribe that migrated from the South and settled in the Dakotas.  Their general grouping is with the Plains Indians that roamed the area between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains. Linguistically, they speak a dialect of Pawnee, which is of Caddoan stock.  The Wichita of the southern Plains also speak this basic language, and many believe the Iroquois of New York to be originally of the Plains due to similar language structure as well as artifacts which are similar. 

    Going back thousands of years, they were all thought to have migrated from the valley of the Columbia River south to the headlands of the Arkansas River in Colorado, after which they drifted to the Plains and settled.  In historic times, they were farming Indians living in our Southeastern Plains area who also did some hunting.  After the introduction of the horse by the Spanish in about 1540, the Pawnee began to push northward, following the buffalo herds, and they based their economy more on hunting than agriculture.  Their pottery-making also declined.  They would set up semi-permanent camps and grow crops of corn and tobacco while hunting local buffalo.  The Pawnee settled in the northern Nebraskan area, but the Arikara pushed farther north, finally settling in the Dakotas along the western bank of the Upper Missouri River, reverting back to their agricultural economy. 

    The Arikara’s were known to traders in 1770 when their villages were below Cheyenne.  The entire population was estimated at 3800.  Some of these Arikaras migrated further north to the neighborhood of the Mandan Indians.  Those still located at Cheyenne were having battles with the Sioux, who were in the process of migrating westward, and in 1797, the Arikaras moved north to join their brothers.  However, there were soon a war with the Mandans, and the whole Arikara tribe moved about 200 miles south to camp near the mouth of the Grand River.  The first group that had gone into Mandan territory camped in two lower villages, with the late-comers living in a third village.  The first group had about 350 men, and in 1804 were considered the Arikara proper.  The second group consisted of 300 men.  However, "men" usually indicated braves only, and the total population was believed to be 2600.  In 1804, the Lewis and Clark expedition met the Arikara Indians while searching for the Northwest Passage. Their journal of October 15, 1804 reads:

        "We stopped at the three miles on the north a little above a camp of the Rikaras who are hunting, where we were visited by about 30 Indians.  They came over in their skin canoes, bringing us meat, for which we returned them beads and fishhooks.        About a mile higher we found another encampment of the Rikaras on the south, consisting of 18 lodges.  Here we again ate and exchanged a few presents.  As we went we discerned numbers of other Indians on both sides of the river; and at about nine miles we came to a creek on the south, where we saw many high hills resembling a house with a slanted roof; and a little below the creek an old village of the Sharka or Cheyenne Indians...At sunset we halted, after coming 10 miles over several sandbars and points, above the camp of 10 Ricara lodges on the north side." 

    The early writers spelled the tribal name as ARICKAREES, ARIKKARAS, RICARAS, RICCAREES, REES, as well as about three dozen other ways.  The name is derived from the Skidi Pawnee word "ariki", meaning 'horn', because they wore there hair with two pieces of horn standing up like little horns on each side of the crest; and "ra", a plural ending. The tribe had given up the hunt for buffalo meat to a large extent, and traded tobacco, corn, and beans for the buffalo meat with the Cheyenne.  In 1806, on their return, the Lewis and Clark expedition again met the Arikaras, and their journal of August 21, 1806 reads:

        "...arrived opposite to the upper Ticara villages.  We saluted them with the discharge of four guns, which they answered in the same manner; and on our landing we met by the greater part of the inhabitants of each village, and also by a band of Chayennes, who were encamped on a hill in the neighborhood..."

    In 1832 the entire tribe moved westward to rejoin the Skidi Pawnee on the Loup River in Nebraska after having killed many travelers.  Their chief at the time was named Starapel.  It is believed that they moved to the west to escape Government reprisals.  In 1837, the Mandan tribe living near Fort Clark, North Dakota; about 1200 miles directly north of the Grand River, sufferred such terrible losses from smallpox to be extent that 90% of the tribe died.  They moved from their large village, and the Arikara’s moved in.  By 1850, they had 250 lodges.  Using only primitive hoe made of buffalo capula tied to a wooden handle, they managed to export 5000 bushels of corn in one year.  August 1862 found the Arikaras moving again, this time to Fort Berthold, about 60 miles further up the Missouri, and they joined theMandan and Hidatsa Indians, and where they are located today.  In 1872, they were recorded as having 43 earth-covered lodges and 28 log cabins.  In the summer of 1874, a reconnaisance was made into the Black Hills of Dakota headed by General G.A. Custer.  ON July 26, they camped by a village of Sioux, and the following entry was made in the journal of one of the party:

  "General G.A. Custer was desirous they should remain and introduce us to the hills, but the presence among our party of a party of Rees with whom the Sioux wage constant war, rendered them very uneasy, and toward nightfall, abandoning their camp, and made their escape."  The Arikaras served with a number of Army detachments as Scouts. 

    In 1884, their present reservation, along with the Mandan and Hidatsa tribes, was  settled upon, surrounding the Fort Berthold trading post.  The latest population report places their number about 650.     Early travelers and trades described Arikara lodges and villages as follows.  From the Lewis and Clark expedition, one member wrote:

        " In a circle of a size suited tothe dimensions of the entended lodge they set up 16 formed posts five or six feet high, and lay poles from one fork to another.  Against these poles they lean other poles slanting to the ground, and extending about four inches above the cross poles; these are to receive the ends of the upper poles that support the roof.    They next set up four large forks, fifteen feet high, and about ten feet apart, in the middle of the area; and poled or beams between these.  The roof poles are then laid on extending from the lower poles across the beams which rest on the middle forks, of such a length as to leave a hole at the top for a chimney.  The whole is then covered with willow branches, except the chimney and a hole below to pass through. On the willow branches they lay grass and lastly clay.  At the hole below they build a pen about four feet wide and projecting ten feet from the hut; and hang a buffalo skin at the entrance of the hut for a door. This labour like every other kind is chiefly performed by squaws."

    An early traveller credited each family with 30 or 40 dogs.  The lodges also had room for a family's chickens and horses.     Craft work was limited to buffalo and antelope skin dressing, and pottery, glasswork, and basketweaving.  The Arikara appear to have brought basket making to the Mandan and Hidatsa, and were credited with making highly distinctive twilled plaited carrying baskets.  This weave is of the same as one practised by former Louisiana tribes, a relic of the days when they were living in the South.  In addition, the women would make a crude reed basket and line the inside with clay.  The assembly was then put in a fire to harden, and the reed would be burnt off and removed, leaving a fired-clay jug or bowl having an interesting pattern.  They grind glass beads to a powder and glaze articles with fused glass to this day. 

    An interesting legend concerns the large Sioux reservation situated on the North-South Dakota border on the west bank of the Missouri.  This is Standing Rock Reservation, and derives its name from a pillar located about 60 miles south of Bismark, N. Dak. A traveller in 1875 related:

        " It was a little boulder about 28" in height, by fifteen inches at the base, and 8" at the top, and was painted over in various colors, and surrounded by pieces of gay colored ribbons, bead work and the ears and tails of small animals, and other tokens, indicating that the Indian women looked upon it as sacred, and came 'to make medicene', in their domestic troubles, or in 'white man's talk,' or offer sacrifices.

        " The story or myth of Standing Rock is quite respectable as many others found in the traditions of savage or semi-barbarian people. It is to the effect that 'once upon a  rime', a young Arickara woman, wife of a great brave, and who loved him dearly, was so mortified and spirit broken because her husband took a second wife, that she went out on the prairie and sat down and neither ate nor drank till she died, and the Great Spirit turned her into that standing stone.  To this day, the women of a hostile tribe, the Sioux, who now occupy the country, hold it as a sacred thing, and offer to it their sacrifices to aropiate it, and secure its good offices for them in their no doubt sufficiently frequent little domestic difficulties.  A man of ordinary strength could carry the stone away, but none has ever molested it, and it remians a pillar of rock to mark the credulity of a simple and superstitious people."

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