Lewis & Clark meet the Arikaras

By the 1500s, the descendants of the Skiri Pawnee People, the Arikara, or Ree, Indians inhabited this area, with twelve village bands living along the Missouri River in present-day South Dakota and three villages near the mouth of the Grand River. The Arikaras, who refer to themselves as the Spanish people, lived for centuries in earth lodge dwellings in farming communities. When Lewis and Clark traveled through here, they noticed a number of abandoned villages. By this time, the Arikaras had suffered grave population losses due to an influx of smallpox that began in 1780. Captain William Clark wrote on Monday, October 8, 1804, that these Indians cultivated corn, beans, squashes, and tobacco, and that after landing, Captain Lewis went to the village with Mr. Gravelin and three men while Clark formed a camp on shore. Later, the remaining Arikaras moved northward and settled north of present-day Bismarck, North Dakota, near the Mandan and Hidatsa villages. An abandoned Arikara village near present-day Mobridge, South Dakota, was drawn in 1833 by Karl Bodmer; the Arikara had left the area because of drought and the absence of buffalo and may have moved farther inland to find food. A young man there, wearing a beaded representation of bear claws on his moccasins, asked for a painting of a bear in a forest in exchange for allowing Bodmer to paint his portrait, a request that may have been connected to his personal medicine or power.

South Dakota · United States