First Encounters and Abandoned Villages
The Corps’ first recorded brush with Arikara presence came not through people but through ruins. As they ascended above the Cheyenne River in late September and early October 1804, Clark catalogued a string of empty Arikara towns marking the nation’s recent retreat upriver under Sioux pressure. On 29 September 1804 he noted passing “an old Ricara Village at the mouth of a Creek without timber.” Two days later, on 1 October 1804, he observed that “opposit this Island the Ricaras lived in 2 Villages on the S W. Side.” On 4 October 1804 the party camped near another deserted town:
Camped on a Sand bar at the upper point of an Island on which is the remains of an old ricara Village fortified Called La hoo It was circular, this Village appears to have been deserted about 5 or 6 years, 17 houses yet remain.
On 6 October 1804 Clark described an unusually well-preserved village of “about 80 neet Lodges covered with earth and picketed around” with lodges “Spicious of an Octagon form,” still containing “Canoes of Skins Mats buckets,” and on 7 October he passed “a old Ricara village partly burnt, fortified about 60 Lodges built in the Same form of those passed yesterday.” These ghost-towns gave the captains a tangible record of a nation in motion.
The Living Villages and the Council of October 1804
On 8 October 1804 Clark sighted the inhabited Arikara towns: “our hunters discovered a Ricara village on an Island a fiew miles above we passed the 1s Ricara Village about the center of the Island.” The island village, about three miles long, supported intensive horticulture — “those Indians Cultivate on the Island Corn Beens Simmins, Tobacco &c.” The French trader Joseph Gravelines joined the party here as interpreter, and would remain entangled with the Corps’ Arikara dealings for years.
The formal council took place on 10 October 1804. Clark recorded the naming of three chiefs:
we Delivered a Similar Speech to those delivered the Ottoes & Sioux, made three Chiefs, one for each Village and gave them Clothes & flags1 s Chief is name Ka-ha-wiss assa lighting ravin 2d Chief Po-casse (Hay) & the 3rd Piaheto or Eagles Featherafter the Council was over we Shot the Air gun, which astonished them.
Clark noted with some concern that York unsettled the Arikara — “the Inds. much astonished at my black Servent, who made him Self more turrible in thier view than I wished him to Doe” — and observed pointedly that “Those Indians are not fond of Licquer of any Kind.” Two Sioux were spotted at the council attempting to dissuade the Arikara from cooperation.
On 12 October 1804 the Arikara chiefs gave the expedition substantial gifts of corn — seven bushels at one village, ten bushels at another, plus beans and squashes — and pressed a request that would shape the rest of the journey: they wanted help making peace with the Mandan, acknowledging that “they were the Cause of the war by Killing the 2 Mandan Chiefs.” One chief, Arketarnashar, agreed to travel upriver with the expedition to broker that peace.
Hospitality on the River
As the Corps continued north, they passed Arikara hunting camps along the Missouri. On 15 October 1804 Clark wrote of warm receptions on both banks: “Several from the 1t Camp visited us and gave meat as also those of the Camp we halted at, we gave them fish hooks Some beeds &c.” He added the brief but telling note that “their women fond of our men&c.” That evening, after dancing and feasting at a ten-lodge camp, sexual hospitality was again offered.
On 16 October 1804 they set out with the Arikara chief aboard, and on 17 October Clark walked ashore with him: “I walked on Shore with the Ricara Chief and an Inteprieter, they told me maney extroadenary Stories.” The chief explained the seasonal migration of antelope to and from the Black Mountains. By 18 October the party met two French trappers who reported being robbed near the Mandan villages — a complaint that would re-enter the diplomatic record.
Brokering Peace at the Mandan Villages
On 24 October 1804 the Arikara chief was formally introduced to the Mandan grand chief on an island near the Mandan towns: “those Chief met our Ricarra Chief with great Corduallity, & Smoked together.” On 29 October at the Mandan council, Clark recorded the diplomatic centerpiece:
we mentioned the Ricaras & requested them to make a peace & Smoke out of the Sacred Stem with their Chief which I intreduced and gave him the pipe of peace to hand around, they all Smoked with eagerness out of the pipe held by the Ricara Chief Ar-ke-tar-na-Shar.
On 31 October 1804 the Mandan principal chief responded with a remarkable speech accepting the peace, returning two stolen traps, and pledging “that man Pointing to the 2d Chief and those 2 young warriers will go with you & Smoke in the pipes of peace with the Ricaras.” The Arikara chief departed downriver carrying a Mandan delegation.
Winter Tensions: Sioux, Cheyenne, and Broken Peace
The peace proved fragile. On 6 November 1804, Gravelines was sent back to the Arikara with instructions to bring an Arikara delegation to Washington in the spring. Through the winter at Fort Mandan, Arikara news kept arriving. On 18 November 1804 Black Cat told Clark that the Mandans suspected they had been deceived as “the Soux does the Ricarees.” On 30 November 1804, after a Sioux attack on Mandan hunters, Clark led twenty-three men out to organize a punitive expedition; on 1 December a delegation of Cheyenne arrived, and word came that “the Sieaux & ricares are Camped together” — the painstaking peace already unraveling.
On 2 December 1804 Clark sent letters by Cheyenne messengers to the traders Tabeau and Gravelines at the Arikara villages, asking them to “interseid in proventing Hostilities.” On 28 February 1805 Gravelines returned with confirmation: the Arikara would follow the captains’ counsel, but a Sioux coalition was forming to attack both Arikara and Mandan. On 5 March 1805 a courier carried another letter to Tabeau among the Arikara.
Arikara Crafts and Knowledge
The journals also preserve glimpses of Arikara material culture. On 16 March 1805 Clark noted that “Mr. Garrow Shew’d us the way the ricaras made their large Beeds,” and Lewis devoted a long entry the same day to a detailed description of the bead-making process, observing that “these nations are said to have derived” the art “from the Snake Indians who have been taken prisoners by the Ricaras” and that “the art is kept a secret by the Indians among themselves and is yet known to but few of them.” When the keelboat was loaded for return to St. Louis on 3 April 1805, it carried, among the specimens, “some Ricara’s tobacco seed” and “a Carrote of Ricaras Tobacco.” On 21 February 1805 Clark recorded that the Mandans believed the Arikara, like themselves, traveled to consult oracular stones. Lewis later noted on 11 July 1805 that “the Panis and Ricaras give the same account of the Black mountains” regarding mysterious thundering noises.
The Return: A Shattered Peace
On the homeward journey in August 1806 the captains found their diplomatic edifice in ruins. At the Mandan villages on 15 August 1806 Clark urged the Mandan and Hidatsa to send chiefs down to Washington; “the great Chief of the Menetaras” answered that “the Scioux were in the road and would most certainly kill him,” because the Arikara, far from honoring the peace, had now joined the Sioux. On 16 August 1806 Clark spoke bitterly to assembled chiefs, “reproached them very Severely” — though his anger was largely directed at Mandan and Hidatsa failures to act. On 20 August 1806 the party passed “the place where we left the last encampment of Ricaras in the fall 1804.”
On 21 August 1806 three Frenchmen coming upriver — two of whom had wintered with the Corps at Fort Mandan in 1804 — brought sobering news:
700 Seeoux had passed the Ricaras on their way to war with the Mandans & Menitarras and that their encampment where the Squaws and Children wer, was Some place near the Big Bend of this river below. no ricaras had accompanied them but were all at home… no trader had arived at the Ricaras this Season, and that they were informed that the Pania or Ricara Chief who went to the United States was dead.
The death of the Arikara chief who had traveled to Washington was a diplomatic catastrophe. On 22 August 1806 the Hidatsa chiefs told Clark that “they must trade with the Sieoux one more time to get guns and powder.” By 26 August 1806 Clark suspected the Tetons “are not on the Missouri at the big bend as we were informed by the Ricaras, but up the Teton river.” Finally, on 12 September 1806, near the St. Michael’s Prairie, the Corps met Joseph Gravelines and old Dorion coming upriver:
Gravelin was ordered to the Ricaras with a Speach from the president of the U. States to that nation and some presents which had been given the Ricara Cheif who had visited the U. States.
Gravelines was being sent back to explain to the Arikara, in Jefferson’s name, the death of their chief in the United States — the diplomatic loose end the captains left behind them.
A Nation in the Middle
The Arikara appear in the journals as horticulturalists in fortified earth-lodge villages, makers of glass beads and skin canoes, raisers of corn, beans, squash, and tobacco, and above all as a people squeezed between the Teton Sioux who taxed their trade and the Mandan-Hidatsa who blamed them for past killings. Clark’s hopeful peace of October–November 1804 collapsed within two years; by August 1806 the Arikara had aligned with the Sioux against the Mandan, and the chief sent to meet Jefferson was dead. The journal record offers no Arikara voice unmediated by Gravelines, Tabeau, or Garreau — every speech, every name, every piece of intelligence reaches us through these French intermediaries — but it preserves a detailed picture of a people the captains repeatedly described as friendly, hospitable, abstinent of liquor, and skilled in arts they kept closely held among themselves.
