Riv. BAs. Sour. ees 
Pap. No. 26] SMALL SITES ABOUT FORT BERTHOLD—METCALF 9 
lower course of Shell Creek. Purposes of the dam are flood control, 
irrigation, and power development. 
Fort Berthold Indian Reservation lies in the west-central part of 
North Dakota and comprises parts of Mercer, Dunn, Williams, 
McLean, and Mountrail Counties. It lies near the lower end of the 
reservoir area and is divided into two parts by the Missouri River, 
which here flows from northwest to southeast. With the filling of the 
reservoir, the reservation will be divided into five segments. 
This reservation was established by Executive Order, April 12, 
1870, for the use of the Hidatsa, Mandan, and Arikara tribes, now 
officially known as the Three Affiliated Tribes. As originally estab- 
lished it ran “from a point on the Missouri River 4 miles below the 
Indian Village (Berthold), in a northeast direction 3 miles (so as to 
include the wood and grazing around the village) ; from this point a 
line running so as to strike the Missouri River at the junction of the 
Little Knife River with it; thence along the left bank of the Missouri 
River to the mouth of the Yellowstone River, along the south bank 
of the Yellowstone River to the Powder River, up the Powder River 
to where the Little Powder River unites with it; thence in a direct line 
across to the starting point 4 miles below Berthold.” (Kappler, 1904, 
vol. 1, pp. 881-883). This area was later reduced until, just prior 
to construction of the Garrison Dam, it contained some 648,000 acres. 
It has now been reduced to an area of less than 500,000 acres by the 
loss of the acreage which will be inundated. 
The three tribes residing on this reservation were semisedentary, 
earth-lodge-building agriculturists when contacted by the first White 
explorers to reach the area. At the time of Lewis and Clark, the Ari- 
kara villages were just below the State line in South Dakota, while 
the Hidatsa occupied three villages at the mouth of the Knife River, 
with the Mandan immediately below them. After the great smallpox 
epidemic of 1837—an epidemic which virtually exterminated the 
Mandan—the Hidatsa appear to have experienced a period of inde- 
cision and unsettled wandering. This terminated in 1845 when they 
began the construction of a new village on the left bank of the Mis- 
sourl. Here they were soon joined by the remnant of the Mandan. 
At this village, which was named “Like-a-Fishhook” after the bend 
of the river in which it was situated, a trading post was built by the 
American Fur Co. and named Fort Berthold. 
The Arikara, moving upriver, occupied the abandoned site of the 
Mandan village near Fort Clark and lived there from about 1839 until 
1861, when a growing shortage of timber coupled with continual 
harassing raids by the Dakota forced them to move upstream again. 
In 1862 they began the construction of two villages on the right side 
of the river across from Fort Berthold, but after a Dakota attack in 
August of that year, they abandoned the sites and settled beside the 
