2 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 194 



ington Matthews (1877), assistant surgeon of the United States Army, 

 while stationed at Fort Stevenson near Fishhook Village. Since 

 that time, all students of the culture have identified them as Hidatsa, 

 and other proper names have tended to drop out of the literature 

 except in Government reports. 



All the informants for this study were born within 10 years after 

 the abandonment of their old villages near the mouth of Knife Kiver. 

 Their parents all were adults before Fishhook Village was built in 

 1845, and they had referred to three contemporary settlements which 

 they identified as Hidatsa, Awatixa, and Awaxawi, these three and 

 no more. The three ancient villages were remembered by my in- 

 formants, for it was the custom of many families to return to these 

 sites and to point out to the younger people the depressions of lodges 

 where certain relatives had lived, their graves, or earth rings on the 

 prairies where various ceremonies such as the NaxpikE or Wolf cere- 

 monies were held. Wolf Chief, Crows Heart, and Bears Arm pointed 

 out many of these features to me, identified even earlier sites in the 

 Sanger vicinity, and explained many things that might have other- 

 wise gone unrecognized. 



As this study progressed, it was evident that some cultural dif- 

 ferences existed between villages and that there should be some 

 consistent way of identifying these former separate and independent 

 communities. The tribal name "Hidatsa" was generally in use by 

 this time, although it had been employed by the people themselves 

 only to identify the inhabitants of the largest village community 

 situated on the north bank of Knife River. I decided to continue 

 the use of the term "Hidatsa" when speaking of the entire population 

 or when referring to customs and practices that appeared to be common 

 to all three communities. I have identified the people of the middle 

 village as "Awatixa," the name by which they were designated by 

 the others. The small group, somewhat more diverse in dialect and 

 culture, I have designated as "Awaxawi." Unlike their near neigh- 

 bors, the Mandan, they had no tribal name until given one by early 

 traders. Since many situations arose during the preparation of this 

 manuscript when it was necessary to distinguish the community 

 group known as "Hidatsa" from the other communities, I have 

 employed the term "Hidatsa-proper" when referring to them. 



This study of the Hidatsa actually began several years prior to 

 the field studies of 1932 and 1933 when, as a graduate student in 

 anthropology at the University of Chicago and graduate assistant 

 for the Logan Museum of Beloit College, I collected much archeo- 

 logical data from ancient earth-lodge sites along the Missouri. Al- 

 though the ancient sites of the Hidatsa at, and downstream from, 

 the mouth of the Knife River have never been extensively studied 



