16 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 194 



due to their long western migrations out onto the Plains. Eventually 

 the western ones moved permanently into the upper Little Missouri 

 River region to take up hunting. The smaller group remained on 

 friendly terms with the Mandan living in the Painted Woods region 

 intermediate to the Knife and Heart Rivers where they practiced 

 agriculture. This seems to be a reasonable interpretation, for the 

 Mandans who supplied much of the data recorded by Lewis and Clark 

 in 1804 were aware of the different cultural histories of the three 

 Hidatsa village groups and the Crow. 



Concerning the Awaxawi, if we are to rely on traditions and 

 interpretations of Mandan and Awaxawi informants, we must conclude 

 that they represent an independent village group who arrived on the 

 Missouri after the Awatixa and Mountain Crow and prior to the 

 Hidatsa-River Crow; that they were agriculturalists prior to their 

 arrival on the Missouri as indicated by the Thompson account; and 

 that they were, owing to their small numbers, closely associated for 

 defense with either the Mandan or the more sedentary Awatixa during 

 the 18th and first half of the 19th centuries. The archeological record 

 of their traditional villages on the Missouri River further strengthens 

 native beliefs of the relative periods of the occupation along the Mis- 

 souri by these three village groups and the Mandan. 



In 1806, Alexander Henry recognized the Saul tier (Awaxawi) to be 

 an independent tribe, writing: 



These people are an entirely different tribe from the Big Bellies and Mandanes;' 

 their language resembles that of the latter more than that of the former, but is 

 not the same.^ Their long intercourse with those people has tended to this 

 similarity of language, and from proximity they have acquired the manners and 

 customs of the other nations, though they continue to live by themselves. They 

 have the reputation of a brave and warlike people. They formerly sustained a 

 three-years' war with the Big Bellies notwithstanding the latter were then ten 

 times their number.^ They held out with the greatest resolution and disdained 

 to submit till the others, finding it impossible to reduce them, unless by extermina- 

 tion, proposed to make peace. Since then they have lived in amity. They are 

 stationary, like their neighbors, the Mandanes, with whom they have always 

 been at peace, and have acquired more of their customs and manners than those 

 of the Big Bellies, who continue to view them with an envious eye. [Henry, 

 1897, pp. 343-344.] 



Henry estimated the size of the villages to be: Awaxawi, 40 lodges; 

 Awatixa, 60 lodges; Hidatsa, 130 lodges. These are unquestionably 

 overestimations, since lodge outlines at these villages show Hidatsa 

 site 35 to have 83 earth lodges, Awatixa site 33 to have 49 earth 



' Hidatsa and Awatixa village groups at this time lived In the same two villages as reported by Lewis and 

 Clark previously. 



' Henry errs. It was a Hidatsa-Crow dialect. 



' Traditionally this was with the Hidatsa, not the Awatixa, and was brought about by the unwillingness 

 of the Hidatsa to permit settlement on the Missouri upstream from the mouth of the Knife River in tradi- 

 tional Hidatsa hunting territory. 



