Visit the Knife River Indian Villages Near Stanton, ND

Several years ago, during our trip to the west, my wife and I stopped at the Knife River Indian Villages near Stanton, ND. The location gives the visitor a picture of Indian life during the 1800s, but it is also the site where an important event took place during the Lewis and Clark Expedition. It was in this area where Mandan and Hidatsa Indians lived that Lewis and Clark met the Shoshone woman, Sakakawea (or Sakajawea as she is better known). Sakakawea would serve the Lewis and Clark Expedition as an interpreter, and, based on her childhood memories, would prove to be valuable guide and a key to the success of the expedition.

A law passed by the U. S. Congress on October 26, 1974, established the Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site. The site is located near the confluence of the Knife and Missouri Rivers and contains the ruins of three Indian villages. Wikipedia notes that the villages were abandoned in 1837 because of a smallpox epidemic.

The Knife River Villages Historic Site will help visitors to put themselves back in history to the time when our country was young and Native American Indians lived freely on the northern plains. The site contains a reconstructed earth lodge and an area where depressions indicate where earth lodges used to stand.

As my wife and I stood in the reconstructed lodge, I began to imagine the people who lived in such dwellings, how they conducted their daily routines, and how it must have been when colder weather came and smoke filled the lodge. Living as most of us do in homes with areas for group activities and individual rooms for sleeping, we do not appreciate the communal life to the extent that it must have existed in the lives of the Mandans, Hidatsas, and other tribes.

To add to the atmosphere, there are samples of clothing-both everyday and ceremonial-bags, and implements. The guide tells stories of the tribes who built and lived in earth lodges. Then you move to the areas where the only reminders of a culture are depressions in the ground where the tribal members lived, played, and died. To stand in such areas gives the visitor a new perspective on human life and the different ways it has been lived over the centuries.

The history of the area, according to the Knife River Indian Villages website, began some 10,000 years ago with Native American big game hunters and berry/nut gathering people who roamed the area. A major trading center was established by the Mandan and Hidatsa tribes. The primary trade commodity was Knife River flint.

The Knife River Indian Villages Historic Site, says Wikipedia, is one of the few areas in the National Park system that has seen the completion of a comprehensive archaeological survey. Among other findings, the archaeological surveys have shown the remains of a culture not just hundreds of years old, but thousands of years old.

For an appreciation of Indian life in the 1800s, the Knife River site is a must stop. To better understand the Lewis and Clark Expedition and its progress through a new part of the nation, the Knife River site is a helpful stop.

Sources:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knife_River_Indian_Villages_National_Historic_Site
www.nps.gov/archive/knri/overview.htm