Knife River Indian Villages: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site
Regions 3, 4, & 5 Park Cultural Landscapes Program. 1999. Knife River Indian Villages: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site. Cultural Landscapes Inventory Report. 450001. U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service. NPS Midwest Regional Office, Omaha, Nebraska / CRIS-CL Database
The 1,759-acre Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site (NHS) is located in Central North Dakota, sixty miles north of Bismarck and adjacent to the town of Stanton. The Knife River Indian Villages cultural landscape, which consists of all the holdings within the NHS, is further divided into several component landscapes. The location of these villages astride both the Missouri and Knife Rivers presents a unique opportunity for interpretation of aspects of Hidatsa Indian tribal life. The Knife River landscape has been used, shaped, and modified by human activity and occupancy. Several terraces formed by the two rivers provided a variety of spaces used by the Hidatsas for village sites, hunting grounds, cemeteries, ceremonial sites, and agricultural zones. The land is characterized by a concentration and continuity of areas of land use, vegetation, waterways, and natural features. A distinct quality of the landscape is the proximity of major and minor village sites along the banks of the Knife and Missouri Rivers, waterways that had a major organizational influence on Hidatsa lifestyle. The ecosystem of the rivers informed decisions to move, plant, and hold ceremonies. The east-west flowing Knife River joins the Missouri River at the northern edge of Stanton, and flood plains near this convergence were productive for growing major crops: corn, beans, squash, and sunflowers. The primary summer village sites were ideally situated on terraces where views to the expansive prairie announced migrating food sources, raiding tribes, and tribes interested in trading. Imprints of the earthlodge dwellings at these locations continue to have prominence. During winter, the Hidatsa moved to temporary camps strategically located in the forested floodplain of the Missouri, where they found shelter, wood, food, and water. A northern tract of park land known as the Krieger tract is a bluff from which expansive views of the Missouri River valley are clearly visible. The Krieger tract has been determined significant relative to the Hidastas through the identification of surface archeological features. The cultural landscape inventory for the parent landscape focuses on the beginning of Plains Village Period, CE 1000, and ends at the time the Knife River Villages were abandoned in 1845. The four component landscapes have periods of significance related to occupation of the specific villages. The Plains Village Period marks the transition from a nomadic life to a more stationary village and agricultural pattern. The inventory units were found to retain the location, setting, feeling, and association with the time of Hidatsa occupation. Evidence to reinforce the integrity of the cultural landscape can be found in the many journal descriptions and artist renderings that date back to the fur trade era of the early 19th century. Although the Hidatsa earthlodges are no longer extant, their imprints provide modern visitors an experience of place similar to that felt by traders, explorers, and artists who passed this way. Earthlodge depressions, travois trails, midden piles, viewsheds, ditches, linear mounds, and other features have been studied by archeologists for National Register documentation as an archeological district; many features documented for the CLI are previously studied surface archeological features. The village sites retain sufficient expressions to illustrate the physical spatial organization of the society and the relationships between the various villages and natural settings. Additionally, the landscape encompasses historic use areas; some that are archeological, like travois trails and cemeteries, and others where the historic use is no longer evident. Even though the historic land uses are not practiced today, the landscape continues to convey its associations with Native American settlement and lifeways.
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- Regions 3, 4, & 5 Park Cultural Landscapes Program
- Date of Issue
- 1999-08-31
- Publisher
- U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service
- Units
- KNRI , MWR
- Keywords
- Agriculture, Archeological District, archeological features, Archeology-Historic-Aboriginal, Archeology-Prehistoric, art, Big Hidatsa, Bismarck, burial grounds, ceremonial sites, Earthlodge, Enthnographic/Traditional Landscape, Ethnic Heritage-Native American, Ethnohistory of Indigenous American Populations, Expansion of the Colonies and the United States 1763-1898, Exploration-Settlement, Flood Plain, Fur Trade, Fur Trappers and Mountain Men as Pathfinders, Great Plains, Hidatsa, historic site, Hudson's Bay Company and the Northwest Coast Fur Trade, Hunting Grounds, Interpretive Landscape, John Jacob Astor and the American Fur Company 1808-1840, Knife River, Krieger Tract, Lewis and Clark Expedition, Linear Mound, Lower Hidatsa, Mandans, Mercer County, midden, Military-Indigenous Peoples Contact, Missouri River, Native American, North Dakota, Old Northwest and Mississippi Valley Fur Frontier 1763-1815, Painting and Sculpture, Post-Archaic and Prehistoric Developments, prehistoric archeology, Sakakawea, Seasonal Village, Stanton, Taylor Bluff, The Early Peopling of North America, The Northern Plains, trade, Travois Trails, Vernacular Landscape, village site