482 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 194 



this study was undertaken in 1932, I was able to distinguish three 

 distinct Hidatsa migration accounts. Those informants whose 

 parents came from Awatixa village on the south bank of the Knife 

 River claimed that they had always lived upstream from the mouth 

 of the Heart River and they had no traditions of living elsewhere 

 than on the Missouri River. The Awaxawi descendants gave an 

 account of their ancestors' migrations which was essentially the same 

 as recorded by Thompson in 1797; to the effect that they had pre- 

 viously lived along the streams to the east until a few generations 

 prior to 1797 when they moved to the banks of the Missouri River. 

 These informants claimed that their ancestors came to the Missouri 

 River as agriculturalists and continued a way of life which was char- 

 acteristic of their eastern residence. The Hidatsa-proper claimed to 

 be the last to reach the Missouri River, coming there from the north- 

 east as nomads, having "lost their corn" while residing north of 

 Devils Lake. The various Hidatsa and Mandan traditions con- 

 cerning the Crow Indians seem to have validity in that they believed 

 that the Crow Indians residing west of the Missouri River came by 

 two or more major migrations from their eastern homeland near the 

 headwaters of the Red River of the North as agriculturalists, lin- 

 guistically related to the Awatixa, while others came from the north- 

 east as nomadic hunters as part of the Hidatsa-proper-River Crow 

 linguistic group, known prior to their separation as the Mirokac. 



This would then have been the picture of distribution of the Hidatsa 

 and Crow groups five or six generations prior to 1797: The western 

 branch of the Hidatsa-Crow would have been composed of an agri- 

 cultural group — the ancestors of the Awatixa — living upstream from 

 Square Buttes and a closely related nomadic group comprised of 

 small bands living on the Plains to the west; a cluster of agricultural 

 villages on the lower Sheyenne River and headwaters of the Red 

 River, the survivors of this area becoming the Awaxawi when they 

 moved to the banks of the Missouri River north of the Square Buttes; 

 the Mirokac living as nomads in the Devils Lake area and to the 

 north until they migrated southwestward to the Missouri. There 

 some continued to live as nomads, to become the River Crow, and 

 the others adopted the earth lodge and agriculture, settling upstream 

 from the mouth of the Knife River as the Hidatsa-proper. 



These native traditions of the various Hidatsa-Crow groups are 

 borne out, in part, by recent archeological studies conducted in many 

 areas of the Northern Plains traditionally occupied by these peoples. 

 A significant group of sites on the Missouri River, between Square 

 Buttes and the Knife River, traditionally occupied by the various 

 Hidatsa groups, are found, from an analysis of lodge forms, village 

 organization of lodges, and pottery types and frequencies, to be es- 



