page_title: Arikara
section_title: History up to 1850
hierarchical_section_title: Arikara / History up to 1850
context_page_description: Arikara, also known as Sahnish, Arikaree, Ree, or Hundi, are a tribe of Native Americans in North Dakota. Today, they are enrolled with the Mandan and the Hidatsa as the federally recognized tribe known as the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation.
context_section_description: In the late 18th century, the tribe suffered a high rate of fatalities from smallpox epidemics, which reduced their population from an estimated 30,000 to 6,000, disrupting their social structure.
  The smallpox epidemic of 1780-1782 reduced the Arikara villages along the Missouri from 32 to 2. The effects of the epidemic may have been so terrible that it could not be comprehended but in allegorical form.
  All-out war hit the weakened and often divided Arikara. In a burned-down village, (later studied as Larson Site), archaeologists found the mutilated skeletons of 71 men, women and children, killed in the early 1780s by unknown Indian attackers. Groups of Sioux were the ones who gained most by the weakening of the Arikara. They attacked the vulnerable Arikara and increased "the pace of Sioux expansion" west of the Missouri.
  The Arikara faced many challenges during the first quarter of the 19th century: Reduced numbers, competition from white traders, and military pressure from the Lakota and other groups of Sioux. Alliances shifted constantly. The Arikara joined old foes the Sioux in raids on Mandan and Hidatsa Indians. Later they negotiated for peace with both village tribes.
  Due to their reduced numbers, the Arikara started to live closer to the Mandan and Hidatsa in the same area for mutual protection. They migrated gradually from present-day Nebraska and South Dakota into North Dakota. The remainder of the group was encountered in 1804 by  the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
  The first Arikara delegation left for the capital, Washington, DC, in April 1805, urged by the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Chief Ankedoucharo became ill during his stay and died in Washington. The delegates blamed the whites for the chief's death. That was one reason why the Arikara for the next decades were "notoriously hostile to white Americans".
  On June 2, 1823, the Arikara attacked a group of 70 trappers led by William Henry Ashley of the Henry/Ashley Company. The trappers were camped near an Arikara village at the mouth of Grand River (north of present-day Mobridge, South Dakota). Fourteen trappers died and 10 were wounded, including Hugh Glass, memorialized in the 1954 biographical novel "Lord Grizzly" by Frederick Manfred (see also The Revenant, which is loosely based on Hugh Glass).
  Colonel Henry Leavenworth left Fort Atkinson (now in Nebraska) with 220 men. More than 700 Yankton, Yanktonai and Lakota Indians joined him in the United States' first Indian war west of the Missouri. The Arikara retreated to their fortified village. Soon the disappointed Sioux left the battlefield. The Arikara escaped at night, and angry fur traders set their empty lodges ablaze the next morning. "This was the only time in history that any of the Three Tribes fought in open warfare against the United States".
  The Bloody Hand and other Arikara chiefs signed a peace treaty with the United States (US) on July 18, 1825. They may not have realized that under US terms, they at the same time recognized the supremacy of the United States.
  In the winter/spring of 1833 members of the Arikara Tribe ambushed Hugh Glass, Hilain Menard and Colin Rose.  "A hand-written notation made on the credit side of Menard's account book page states, 'Killed by the Rees near Fort Cass Spring 1833,'" Landry wrote in his article. "The word 'Rees' was mountaineer slang for the Arikara tribe." According to a letter written by John F. A. Sanford, an Indian agent, in a July 1833 letter to William Clark, superintendent of Indian Affairs. Landry includes the excerpt in his article."They scalped them and left part of the Scalps of each tied to poles on the grounds of the murder[.]"
  Years of indecision followed. The rootless Arikara lived near their southern "kinfolk," the Skidi Pawnee, for some years. They also tried their luck in hostile country far up on the Platte (now Nebraska), where Colonel Henry Dodge met them in 1835. Harassed by the numerous Sioux, the Arikara finally buried old enmity and befriended the Mandan and the Hidatsa in the late 1830s. The manager in the trading post Fort Clark ob
caption: Alfred Jacob Miller - Interior of Fort Laramie - Google Art Project. One of the most important treaties between the Plains Indians was negotiated near Fort Laramie in 1851 and named after the fort. The treaty describes the territory of the different tribes.
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