Native American Nations / Caddoan Peoples / The Arikaras

The Arikaras

By Kristopher K. Townsend

Pachtüwa-Chtä. An Arrikkara Warrior

Karl Bodmer (1809–1893)

Painting of a warrior dressed as Clark describes below

Rare Book Division, The New York Public Library.[1]“Pachtüwa-Chtä, Arrikkara Krieger. Pachtüwa-Chtä, Geurrier Arrikkara. Pachtüwa-Chtä, Arrikkara Warrior.” New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed March 9, 2019. … Continue reading

Spelled variously in the expedition journals—Rickerie, Recreries, Richarees, Ree, Ricare, Arickaree, Rick, Rics, and Star rah he—Clark sometimes called the Arikara people Pawnee due to their similar linguistic origins—both were Caddoan-speaking people. They are also known as Sahnish and Hundi.

When they met the Lewis and Clark Expedition in early October 1804 at the village of Sawa-haini above present-day Mobridge, South Dakota, the Arikara were reduced to three villages. There, the captains met traders, Joseph Garreau, Pierre-Antoine Tabeau, and Joseph Gravelines. The latter would serve as interpreter and pilot the barge (called the ‘boat’ or ‘barge’ but never the ‘keelboat’) on its return to St. Louis in spring 1805. Arikara Chief Too Né, also known as Piahito or Eagle Feather, came on board as a diplomat in the captains’ efforts to bring peace between the Arikaras, Mandans, and Hidatsas. The chief agreed to travel to Washington City as an Arikara delegate, and his unfortunate death during that trip had a significant impact on American fur trade interests on the Missouri River and affect the lives of several expedition members.

Having lived a year with the Arikara, St. Louis-based trader Tabeau informed the captains about the people and later wrote a formal report not published for over a century. In it, he describes the people’s current decline:

Of the eighteen fairly large villages, situated upon the Missouri at some distance from each other, the Ricaras are reduced to three mediocre ones, the smallest of which is a league from the other two. They comprise in all about five hundred men bearing arms. Some hostile inroads but, in particular, the smallpox unexpectedly made this terrible ravage among them. These three villages are today composed of ten different tribes and of as many chiefs without counting an infinity of others who have remained, after the disaster, captains without companies.[2]Pierre-Antoine Tabeau, Tabeau’s Narrative of Loisel’s Expedition to the Upper Missouri River, Annie Heloise Abel, Ed., translated from French by Rose Abel Wright, (Norman: University of … Continue reading

Prior to the smallpox epidemics of the late 18th-century, Arikara and Pawnee bands lived in present-day Nebraska and Kansas practicing the Central Plains Village tradition. Warfare and disease prompted bands of Arikara to move north and form larger villages. In addition to hunting, they grew corn, squash, beans, watermelon, sunflowers and native tobacco (Nicotiana quadrivalvis).[3]Douglas R. Parks, Handbook of North American Indians: Northeast Vol. 13, Plains, ed. Raymond J. DeMallie (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 2001), 368.

Tabeau’s narrative elaborated on frequent and violent infighting among the Arikara survivors. He also stated rather bluntly, “[T]he Ricaras are the most simple and the most stupid of all the Savages of the Upper Missouri.”[4]Tabeau, 131–32. The captains’ “Estimate of the Eastern Indians” was more generous of the people and emphasized their role as victims at the hands of the Sioux:

The Tetons [Lakota Sioux] claim the country around them. Though they are the oldest inhabitants, they may properly be considered the farmers or tenants at will of that lawless, savage and rapacious race the Sioux Teton, who rob them of their horses, plunder their gardens and fields, and sometimes murder them, without opposition. If these people were freed from the oppression of the Tetons, their trade would increase rapidly, and might be extended to a considerable amount. They maintain a partial trade with their oppressors the Tetons, to whom they barter horses, mules, corn, beans, and a species of tobacco which they cultivate; and receive in return guns, ammunition, kettles, axes, and other articles which the Tetons obtain from the Yanktons of the N. and Sissatones, who trade with Mr. Cammeron, on the river St. Peters [Des Moines].[5]Moulton, Journals, 3:400–01.

Both Tabeau and the captains were of the mind that the Arikara were ready to ally with the Mandan, a move that favored American trade interests in the region. Too Né, chief of the Waho-erha band traveled with the expedition to the Knife River Villages where they smoked the pipe of peace with the Hidatsas and Mandans. In April 1805, the expedition left the Knife River with news of an Arikara band wanting the move there, and Too Né traveled in the barge to St. Louis. His delegation would continue to Washington City where he met Thomas Jefferson, Senator Samuel Latham Mitchill, and made a map of his Arikara world.[6]Too Né’s map is featured in We Proceeded On, May 2018, available at https://lewisandclark.org/wpo/pdf/vol44no2.pdf.

Too Né would die during the trip, and Tabeau’s and the Captains’ expectations would not be met for several decades. In fact, in the two decades after the expedition, the Arikara were a fierce obstacle to American expansion in the upper Missouri River. In 1807, the Arikara successfully prevented the return of Mandan Chief Sheheke from his Washington City journey. Nathaniel Pryor, a sergeant in the Lewis and Clark Expedition, would lead an armed force to get the Sheheke and his retinue past the Arikara. That attempt failed, and expedition alumni George Shannon and George Gibson would both be wounded. Some suggest the failed attempts to return Sheheke to his home was a contributing factor in the suicide of Meriwether Lewis.[7]See “Lewis’s Ultimate Failure” in Sheheke’s Delegation. See also The Last Journey of Meriwether Lewis by Clay S. Jenkinson.

Sheheke was eventually returned, only to be killed later by some Arikara, and the people continued to hamper American traders trying to get past their villages on the Missouri River. In 1823, former member John Collins was one of several men killed by the Arikara during a battle with William Henry Ashley’s fur trade party.[8]See also “Ashley and Henry” in Post-expedition Fur Trade by W. Raymond Wood. That skirmish resulted in a punitive campaign of 250 U.S. Army and 750 Sioux soldiers led by Colonel Henry Leavenworth. After several days of shelling, the Arikara escaped by night seeking sanctuary in Mandan and Hidatsa villages.[9]Parks, 367.

In 1862, decimated by disease, wars, and treaties, the Arikara fully allied with the Mandans and Hidatsas moving to the Fort Berthold Reservation, a remnant of the traditional Hidatsa territory at the time of the expedition. The alliance is known today as The Three Affiliated Tribes or the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation.

 

Selected Pages and Encounters

Notes

Notes
↑1 “Pachtüwa-Chtä, Arrikkara Krieger. Pachtüwa-Chtä, Geurrier Arrikkara. Pachtüwa-Chtä, Arrikkara Warrior.” New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed March 9, 2019. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47da-c40f-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99.
↑2 Pierre-Antoine Tabeau, Tabeau’s Narrative of Loisel’s Expedition to the Upper Missouri River, Annie Heloise Abel, Ed., translated from French by Rose Abel Wright, (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1939), 123-125.
↑3 Douglas R. Parks, Handbook of North American Indians: Northeast Vol. 13, Plains, ed. Raymond J. DeMallie (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 2001), 368.
↑4 Tabeau, 131–32.
↑5 Moulton, Journals, 3:400–01.
↑6 Too Né’s map is featured in We Proceeded On, May 2018, available at https://lewisandclark.org/wpo/pdf/vol44no2.pdf.
↑7 See “Lewis’s Ultimate Failure” in Sheheke’s Delegation. See also The Last Journey of Meriwether Lewis by Clay S. Jenkinson.
↑8 See also “Ashley and Henry” in Post-expedition Fur Trade by W. Raymond Wood.
↑9 Parks, 367.

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Unless otherwise noted, journal excerpts are from The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, edited by Gary E. Moulton, 13 vols. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983-2001).