Bowers] HIDATSA SOCIAL AND CEREMONIAL ORGAI^ZATION 213 



into the eastern woods or into the valleys of the Rockies even before 

 the horse reached them. Although the Thompson accounts speak 

 of their former residence on the Red River and its tributaries, until 

 driven out by the Chippewa who first obtained guns, most Hidatsa 

 traditions refer to an even earlier residence on the Missouri by some 

 groups. Thus, it is to be presumed that formerly, as given by the 

 traditions, the Hidatsa and Crow groups as we know them today 

 were scattered along the lower portion of the Yellowstone, the Little 

 Missouri, the Missouri from the mouth of the Yellowstone to Square 

 Buttes and then eastward into the Devils Lake, Red River, and 

 Sheyenne River regions. Archeological evidence indicates that those 

 groups living on the Missouri practiced agriculture and held firmly, 

 in cooperation with the Mandan, a considerable section of the Missouri 

 from the Knife River to the Cannonball. So far as we know today, 

 the larger area claimed by the Hidatsa as the exclusive territory of 

 the Crow, Hidatsa, and Mandan groups was formerly uncontested 

 by other groups with a peripheral area into which many groups 

 occasionally penetrated. 



Numerous efforts have been made to interpret Hidatsa migra- 

 tions in terms of an old Mandan tradition that tells of the first arrival 

 of the Hidatsa-proper on the Missouri at a point a short distance 

 above the mouth of Heart River where they were named by the Man- 

 dan who gave them their first corn. This tradition, however, is not 

 consistent with the general traditions of the various Hidatsa groups 

 which operated independently, nor with the archeological evidence of 

 the area. The Mandan have made a great deal of their traditions 

 of teaching corn growing to the Hidatsa-proper, but this is in direct 

 contradiction to the Thompson-supported Awaxawi traditions of an 

 agricultural economy on the tributaries of the Red River and in the 

 Devils Lake region (Thompson, 1916, pp. 225-237) and the archeo- 

 logical record for the Schultz sites on the lower Sheyenne which tie up 

 very closely with the oldest traditional Awaxawi sites on the Missouri. 

 Although my researches do not reveal any evidence that the Awaxawi 

 abandoned the eastern region because of the pressure of enemy groups 

 equipped with firearms, their former residence there is indicated by 

 traditions and the custom of the older people even within the memory 

 of living informants to return to their later village sites around Devils 

 Lake. Instead, the Awaxawi traditions speak of a former prehistoric 

 agricultural life on the streams to the east and at DevUs Lake prior 

 to a "continental flood" which drove them westward onto the Missouri 

 where they found related groups already established in earth lodge 

 villages. 



The Awatixa village group had lived so long on the Missouri that 

 even in Lewis and Clark's time they had no traditions of residence 



710-195—65 15 



