Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site, in Stanton, North Dakota, preserves the remains of several Native American villages that once prospered where the Knife and Missouri rivers meet. The area in which these villages lie was important in the development of Plains Indian culture.
The site includes the remnants of three villages of the Hidatsa tribe: Awatixa Xi’e village, founded about 1525; Hidatsa village, established about 1600; and Awatixa village, founded in 1796. The abandoned settlements contain many circular depressions left by earth lodges, large round shelters built by the Plains tribes. Native American people built these shelters by first removing the sod, then adding walls and a roof covered with willows, sod, or earth. The depressions measure as wide as 40 feet (12 meters) across because each earth lodge sheltered an extended family of 10 to 15 people. A full-scale, furnished reproduction of an earth lodge is open to tourists. The site’s visitor center houses exhibits of Native American artifacts and crafts, as well as research facilities. Visitors can hike or ski on about 10 miles (16 kilometers) of trails.
Nomadic people probably occupied the region as early as 9500 B.C. Archaeological investigations show that Native American villages existed there by about 6000 B.C. Ancestors of the Mandan people, and possibly of the Hidatsa, inhabited the area bordered by the Knife and Missouri rivers as early as the A.D. 1200’s. The Mandan and Hidatsa were skilled farmers, raising beans, corn, squash, and sunflowers. They also traded for goods with some Plains tribes and sold the goods to other tribes. Goods from all over the continent found their way to these villages on the upper Missouri River. Flint from the area was an important local export.
Beginning in the 1700’s, the villages attracted European traders who brought European diseases to the region. A smallpox epidemic in 1837 nearly destroyed the Mandan, who took refuge with the nearby Hidatsa. In 1845, the Mandan and Hidatsa established Like-a-Fishhook village about 60 miles (97 kilometers) from the Knife River villages. The Arikara people joined them in 1862.
In 1804, the famous Lewis and Clark expedition spent the winter at Fort Mandan, near several Knife River villages. The United States government had sent the expedition, led by U.S. Army officers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, to explore the Pacific Northwest. In Awatixa Village, Lewis and Clark recruited a French-Canadian trapper named Toussaint Charbonneau and his Shoshone wife, Sacagawea, as interpreters for their trip.
The Knife River villages became a national historic site in 1974. The National Park Service operates the site.
