4 BUREAU OF AMERICAN EFHNOLOGY [BULL. 80 
clad.”* Early writers are agreed as to their friendliness and hos- 
pitality. 
Hiparsa.—“ According to their own tradition the Hidatsa came 
from the neighborhood of a lake N.E. of their later home, and identi- 
fied by some of their traditionists with Mini-wakan or Devils lake, 
N. Dak. . . . Removing from there, perhaps in consequence of at- 
tacks by the Sioux, they moved S. W. and allied themselves with 
the Mandan, who then lived on the W. side of the Missouri, about the 
mouth of Heart r. The three tribes, Hidatsa, Mandan, and Arikara, 
were all living in this vicinity about 1765... . Some time before 
1796 these two tribes [Mandan and Hidatsa] moved up the river to 
the vicinity of Knife r., where they were found by Lewis and Clark 
in 1804, ... There was no change in the location of the villages 
until after the terrible smallpox epidemic of 1837, which so greatly 
reduced the Indian population of the upper Missouri. . . . In 1845 
they and the remnant of the Mandan also, about the same time, moved 
up the river and established themselves in a new village close to the 
trading post of Ft. Berthold, on the N. bank of the Missouri and 
some distance below the entrance of the Little Missouri, in North 
Dakota. . . . In home life, religious beliefs and customs, house build- 
ing, agriculture, the use of the skin boat, and general arts, they 
closely resembled the Mandan with whom they were associated.” ® 
Under the name of the Minatarees they are mentioned by early 
writers as having essentially the same agreeable characteristics as 
the Mandans. ‘“ And they are now officially known as Gros Ventres 
., a name applied also to the Atsina, a detached tribe of the Arap- 
alo.” 2 
Both Mandan and Hidatsa are agricultural people, among their 
methods ef preserving food being the drying of corn on scaffolds 
and the cutting of squash in thin slices that are strung on ropes of 
grass and dried (pl. 7). Some corn scaffolds have high poles at the 
sides, on which are hung strings of corn with the husks braided to- 
gether. A corn scaffold with only the floor on which the sheaves of 
corn are laid is shown in plate 5,6. Such a scaffold was usually over 
a sort of “ porch” that formed an entrance to the earth lodge, as in 
plate 4, 0b. 
DWELLINGS AND VILLAGES 
Manpan.—The typical dwelling of the Mandan was the round 
earth-covered lodge with a scaffold over the entrance (pl. 4,@). In 
1804 Catlin visited a Mandan village which consisted of such dwell- 
7Catlin, Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians, vol. 1, 
pp. 93, 96. 
8 Handbook Amer. Inds., pt. 1, art. Hidatsa, p. 548. 
® Handbook Amer. Inds., pt. 1, art. Hidatsa, pp. 547-548. 
