Big Hidsata Village: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site
Regions 3, 4, & 5 Park Cultural Landscapes Program. 2012. Big Hidsata Village: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site. Cultural Landscapes Inventory Report. 450009. U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service. NPS Midwest Regional Office, Omaha, Nebraska / CRIS-CL Database
Big Hidatsa Village is a component landscape of the Knife River Indian Villages landscape, located sixty miles north of Bismarck, North Dakota and adjacent to the town of Stanton. The cultural landscape is part of the Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site. Its position along the Missouri and Knife Rivers presents a unique environment through which to interpret the many aspects of Hidatsa Indian tribal life. Big Hidatsa was listed as a National Historic Landmark in 1964 for its high integrity, size, and completeness, representing an example of the effects of nearly a century of fur trade contact and acculturation that occurred between about 1740 and 1845. The Hidatsa are known to have used both winter and summer villages. The summer villages were located on terraces above the Missouri River and near the Knife River, where the convergence produced fertile grounds for farming corn, beans, squash, and sunflowers. The views offered by the summer domiciles also provided advance notice of migrating food sources, raiding tribes, and tribes interested in trading. Winter camps were located in the forested floodplain of the Missouri, which provided shelter, food, wood, water, and fuel. Big Hidatsa was a summer village occupied by the largest sub-group of the tribe. The 15.5-acre site has 113 depressions denoting the location of former earthlodges. Travois trails, cache pits, fortification ditches, linear mounds, midden piles, village periphery zones, off-village activity areas, and burial areas define the village near the Knife River. The period of significance for Big Hidatsa Village is 1400 to 1845, varying from the parent landscape significance (1000-1845) to represent its period of occupation. The existing National Register Nomination for the archeological district focuses on a longer period of significance, between 5,000 BC and 1845. The earthlodge depressions and ethnohistoric documentation of the site are unique to the Great Plains. In addition, the Hidsata villages played a pivotal role in the trade networks of the plains and, later, in the fur trade and exploration of the American west. The villages continue to show indications of changing trade patterns, epidemics, and material culture transformations. Big Hidatsa Village is also significant for expressing tribal relations to the environment, subsistence patterns, cultural history of the plains, and subgroup movements. Overall, the condition and integrity is good. Based on inventory levels and site visits conducted by the CLI team, 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. Although the Hidatsa and their earthlodges are no longer extant, the imprints left on the landscape provide modern visitors a sense of place similar to that experienced by traders, explorers, and artist who frequented the villages. Many features documented for the CLI are previously studied surface archeological features. Earthlodge depressions, travois trails, midden piles, views, fortification ditches, linear mounds and other features have been studied by archeologists for National Register documentation. The village landscape is important because of the contextual setting it provides, retaining sufficient above-ground features to illustrate the physical spatial organization of the society and the relationships between the various villages and natural settings. Additionally, the landscape encompasses and protects historic use areas; some that are archeological, like travois trails and cemeteries, and others where the historic use is no longer evident. The landscape preserves its open character and associations even though the historic land uses are not intact.
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- Regions 3, 4, & 5 Park Cultural Landscapes Program
- Date of Issue
- 2012-09-11
- 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, Epidemics, 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 Tribe, 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, Lewis and Clark Expedition, Linear Mound, Lower Hidatsa, Mandans, Mercer County, midden, Military-Indigenous Peoples Contact, Missouri River, National Historic Landmark, Native American, North Dakota, Old Northwest and Mississippi Valley Fur Frontier 1763-1815, Painting and Sculpture, Plains Farmers, Post-Archaic and Prehistoric Developments, prehistoric archeology, Sakakawea, Seasonal Village, Stanton, Taylor Bluff, Terrace, The Early Peopling of North America, The Northern Plains, trade, Travois Trails, Vernacular Landscape, village site