Riv. Bas. Sur. : 
ee ar STAR VILLAGE—METCALF 75 
was Star. The relationship, if any, between this chief and Son of 
Star (1830-1881), one of the two Arikara chiefs formerly memorial- 
ized by a monument north of the cemetery at Like-a-Fishhook Village, 
is unknown. They may actually have been the same person. The 
tradition that Star was chief there is the basis of our name for the site. 
In August 1912 nine survivors of the group of Arikara who had 
served as scouts for the Army, met with O. G. Libby, of the State 
Historical Society of North Dakota, and their accounts of the Black 
Hills Expedition and of the 1876 campaign were later published by 
that Society. Following the narratives of the scouts is a section 
devoted to short biographies of the Indians interviewed. The first 
part of this paper is a valuable historical document; the worth of 
the second part is difficult to evaluate since it is often impossible to 
determine whether the identification of places is that of the Indian or 
that of the interviewer. The site considered here is mentioned a 
number of times in the biographies. In the account of Strikes Two 
it is stated that the Arikara left Fort Clark in the fall of 1861 and 
wintered in two villages above the present settlement of Nishu. “Be- 
fore the ice broke in the spring, all the Arikara moved down the 
river and built two villages across from Fort Berthold. In the fall 
of the same year they crossed the river and joined the Fort Berthold 
Village, after they had been attacked by the Dakotas, who camped 
near their villages to trade for corn” (Libby, 1920, p. 187). This 
is further dated as the year of the great Dakota attack on Fort 
Berthold, an event which took place December 24, 1862. In the 
biography of Red Star, another of the scouts, it is said that his 
mother “was killed with her five-year-old daughter by the Dakotas 
at the Arikara village opposite Fort Berthold” (ibid., p. 195). The 
statement is also made that Running Wolf, another of the scouts, “just 
remembers the Dakota attack upon the two Arikara Villages opposite 
Fort Berthold” (ibid., p. 204). 
After Libby the next published mention of the site seems to be 
that of Will, who says “. . . just above the river elevator at Ree, is 
the first of the two Arikara sites, built by that tribe and occupied for 
about a year before they crossed the river and built near their allies 
at Old Fort Berthold. These sites are separated by less than a mile, 
show very short occupancy, and are exactly opposite the old Fort 
Berthold site” (Will, 1924, p. 326). 
Only one other reference to the site has been found. In a list of 
North Dakota sites it is stated that “There are two Arikara villages 
on the south side of the river, across the river and about one mile 
upstream from the Fort Berthold site. One of these sites is known 
as the Yellow Knife site. The sites were occupied by the Arikara 
some time after 1850” (Will and Hecker, 1944, p. 116). 
