Carol Klay, age 11, of Williamsport, Pennsylvania, for her question:
What is an Arikara?
"Arikara" means "the corn eaters," and once it was a mighty important name to those who ventured westward through the Dakotas. Here early traders had to pay suitable tolls to the Arikara Indians before this powerful tribe allowed them to continue on their journey.
The early pioneers of North America referred to these Indians as the Uhreef or simply as the Rees. They found their villages as they traveled by boat far up the Missouri River into the Dakotas. The Arikaras were very sophisticated people who changed their living quarters and their way of life with the seasons. They were both farmers and hunters and early Spanish explorers rated their pottery as equal to the best earthenware produced in Europe. These capable people were surrounded and beset by warlike tribes. For this reason they had well trained warriors and lived in readiness to protect themselves at all times.
Early traders along the upper Missouri had to pass through Arikara villages and the villagers expected to be paid by the travelers. Their favorite tributes were horses. These useful animals were unknown to their ancestors and the Arikaras treasureo them enough to stable them in their family homes. These were the permanent homes where the Arikaras spent the cold winter months. The walls of these buildings were wooden posts sunk deep into the ground. The roofs were slatted with poles and topped with grass roots in chunks of soil. In spring the Arikaras went outside to sow their special corn which reached its full size during the short Dakota growing season. Ceremonies and sacred rites were held in the hopes of encouraging the corn to grow its best. After the corn was harvested, the Arikaras packed their belongings and moved out onto the open Plains. There they hoisted their movable tepees, hunted and feasted themselves on buffalo meat. As winter approached they returned to the shelter of their villages. Each of their earthen lodges was the home of three or four families, plus stable room for their precious horses.
These American Indians wore well made, gaily decorated clothing of fine, soft buckskin. The men greased their long hair and twined it in two stiff braids. A traveler who chanced to meet an Indian with two stiff braids looking like a pair of horns on his head knew at once that he was a Ree. The fine pottery of the Arikaras was made by the women. They used a local clay of slate gray and strengthened the mixture with fragments of flint and powdered granite. One hand was used to turn the clay around a stone to form the hollow inside of a pot. The other hand held a piece of poplar bark to smooth the pot's outside.
Early traders had many fierce spats with the mighty Arikara people. But the days of their power were doomed when the villages were struck with smallpox. This disease was unknown to their ancestors. The Arikaras had no vaccination and no natural defenses against it. They were so weakened that their warlike neighbors easily drove them from their villages. The surviving Rees now live together on a reservation at old Fort Berthold in North Dakota.