176 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY (BULL. 77 
and the whole surrounded with a fence of stakes, which were much 
decayed, and in many places thrown down. It was not quite a year 
since these villages had been wholly abandoned, because their inhabi- 
tants, who were extremely hostile to the Whites, killed so many 
Americans, that they themselves foresaw that they would be severely 
chastised by the United States, and therefore preferred to emigrate. 
To this cause was added, a dry, unproductive season, when the crops 
entirely failed ; as well as the absence of the herds of buffaloes, which 
hastened their removal ... The principal chief of the Arikkaras, 
when they retired from the Missouri, was called Starapat (the little 
hawk, with bloody claws).” (Maximilian, (1), pp. 166-167.) The 
Arikara at this time appear to have left the banks of the Missouri 
and removed to the vicinity of the Pawnee. 
Fort Clark, on the upper Missouri, at the villages of the Mandan 
and Hidatsa, was erected by the American Fur Company during the 
year 1829. 
In 1837 the Mandans suffered from the dreaded smallpox, losing 
more than 90 per cent of their number, and the few who survived 
abandoned their large village below Fort Clark and settled a short 
distance above. And,so wrote Hayden in 1855, “ About the time that 
the Mandans left the lower village, the Arikaras came and took pos- 
session, the former readily consenting to this arrangement, because 
it placed a large body of strangers between them and the Dakotas, 
with whom, in their now feeble state, they were unable to contend.” 
(Hayden, (1), p. 434.) 
A. brief description of the Arikara village as it appeared early in 
June, 1850, is to be found in Culbertson’s journal. On the 12th of 
that month the steamboat, ascending the Missouri, reached Fort 
Clark, “a small fort, about one hundred feet in length on each side.” 
Jtist above the fort was the village of the Arikara. “The village is 
composed of two hundred lodges, as near as I could learn from the 
interpreter, and is built upon the top of a bluff bank rising about 
seventy-five feet perpendicular from the water. The huts are placed 
very irregularly, sometimes with very narrow, and sometimes with 
quite broad spaces betwen them. A number of platforms of poles, 
as high as the lodges themselves, are interspersed among them for 
the convenience of drying meat and dressing robes. I noticed a num- 
ber of squaws busily employed in dressing robes.” (Culbertson, 
(1), p. 117.) The typical earth lodge is described, one similar to 
those mentioned on other pages of this sketch, but his account of the 
interior of a habitation is most interesting. He, with others, stopped 
at a large lodge, when, so he wrote: “ We were conducted to the 
place of honor, opposite to and facing the door. To our right, along 
the wall, were arranged several bedsteads, rudely made, while to the 
