page_title: Hidatsa
section_title: 1851–1900
hierarchical_section_title: Hidatsa / History / 1851–1900
caption_attribution_description: English: Map indicating the Arikara, Hidatsa and Mandan Indian territory as described in the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1851), North Dakota
context_page_description: The Hidatsa are a Siouan people. They are enrolled in the federally recognized Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. Their language is related to that of the Crow, and they are sometimes considered a parent tribe to the modern Crow in Montana.
context_section_description: The Hidatsa tribe was one party in the Treaty of Fort Laramie, 1851. Along with the Mandan and the Arikara, they got a treaty on land north of Heart River. Eleven years later, the Three Tribes would not inhabit a single summer village in the treaty area. The Lakota had more or less annexed it, although a participant in the peace treaty.
  Encouraged by Karl Bodmer, Swiss artist Rudolph F. Kurz traveled the Northern Plains in the early 1850s. He left an account as well as sketches of the village tribes.
  Four Bears, outstanding Hidatsa war chief after the smallpox epidemic of 1837, (was one of the people who started Like-A-Fishhook Village for the Hidatsa, Mandan, and Arikara – and is not to mistaken with the famous Mandan chief Mato-tope (Four Bears)), was killed along with other villagers by attacking Yankton Sioux in 1861. In December 1862, some Sioux burned parts of Like a Fishhook Village and they may have lifted cached corn at the same time.
  Attacks made on their homes like this made the Three Tribes call for the United States Army to intervene. Already in 1857, the Hidatsa chief Long Hair had accused the Sioux of trying to be "the strongest and most powerful people on the Earth". Years later it would be chief Crows Breast's turn to raise hard-worded complaints about the Sioux.
  The Hidatsas were not idle themselves, at times even raiding Lakotas south of Heart River.
  Around 1870 a band of "dissident" Hidatsas led by Bobtail Bull and later Crow Flies High left the orthodox or conservative group in Like a Fishhook Village. For protection, they build a new village just two miles west of the military post Fort Buford. At times the men scouted for the Army. By keeping a low profile while hunting deer and other small game along the Little Missouri, they succeeded as non-reservation Indians until 1894.
  The Three Tribes sold a segment of land to the United States in 1870. The last treaty that diminished the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation was signed in 1886 (ratified in 1891). In the next century, the tribes would win a claims case and receive payment for some of the land lost by executive order fifty years before.
  The all-overshadowing troubles with the Lakotas faded after the conclusion of a peace agreement in 1875, with Colonel G. A. Custer as mediator. From then on, the Hidatsa would focus more and more on disagreements with the officials in the capital city.
  Good Bear performed the Naxpike (Sun Dance of the Hidatsa) in 1879. He was the final Hidatsa to do so.
caption: Arikara, Hidatsa and Mandan 1851 treaty territory. (Area 529, 620 and 621 south of the Missouri)
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