ARIKARA

American Plains Indian people of the Caddoan linguistic family who lived along the Missouri River between the Cheyenne River in South Dakota and Fort Berthold in North Dakota. The cultural roots of Caddoan-speaking peoples lay in the prehistoric mound-building societies of the lower Mississippi River valley. The Arikara were culturally related to the Pawnee, from whom they broke away and moved gradually northward, becoming the northernmost Caddoan tribe. The Arikara were expert in raising corn (maize), which they traded with other tribes for meat and robes. In addition, they raised beans, squash, tobacco, and sunflowers. The women did the farming; the men hunted deer, elk, and some buffalo. They lived in semipermanent villages of earth-covered lodges. Village activities were controlled by reference to a sacred bundle in the hands of a priest. This office and the posts of chiefs tended to be the hereditary prerogative of a few leading families. Lower posts were associated with organized military, dancing, and curing societies. The Arikara shared with other Plains tribes the practice of self-torture in tribal sun-dance ceremonies. The Arikara became an obstacle to white trading parties moving up the Missouri River; a battle with traders in 1823 resulted in the first U.S. Army campaign against a Plains tribe. Although the Arikara had numbered between 3,000 and 4,000 near the end of the 1700s, wars and smallpox epidemics had severely reduced their numbers by the 19th century. In the 1860s they banded together with the Mandan and Hidatsa tribes at Fort Berthold, and a reservation was created for them there. By 1885 they had taken up farming on scattered family farmsteads. In the 1950s construction of Garrison Dam and the discovery of oil in the Williston Basin forced another removal to new homes.