Villages of the Algonquian, Siouan, and Caddoan Tribes West of the MississippiBushnell, David I. (David Ives)
History
Villages of the Algonquian, Siouan, and Caddoan Tribes West of the Mississippi
Bushnell, David I. (David Ives)
Algonquian Indians; Caddoan Indians; Indians of North America -- Dwellings; Siouan Indians
the Porcupine river. The village site now stands on the farm of Yellow
Lodge, a Yankton Sioux, who stated that he had always been told by the
old people that this was a Cheyenne village and that in plowing he had
often turned up pottery from the ground." And in reference to the age of
this interesting site: "Sioux tradition declares that the village on
the Porcupine river was established about 1733 or a little earlier,
perhaps 1730; they fix the date as about one hundred years before the
stars fell, 1833. It was a large village and was occupied for fifty
years or more and then the people abandoned it and moved over to a point
on Grand river twenty miles above its mouth. The date of the removal is
given as about the time of a great flood at this point, which, it is
said, took place about 1784." (Grinnell, Op. cit.) This later village
existed until about 1840 and appears to have been composed of skin
lodges, not the permanent earth structures. Sioux tradition also places
the earlier home of the people who erected the village on the Porcupine
at some point in the Valley of the Minnesota.
The second of the two sites mentioned stood some 2 miles below Porcupine
Creek, and it is the belief of Dr. Grinnell that these were the villages
to which Lewis and Clark referred in their journals as having been
passed by the expedition on the 15th and 16th of October, 1804. At that
time game was abundant and several hunting parties of the Arikara were
encountered, and an entry in the journal dated October 15, 1804, reads:
"We stopped at three miles on the north a little above a camp of Ricaras
who are hunting, where we were visited by about thirty Indians. They
came over in their skin canoes, bringing us meat, for which we returned
them beads and fishhooks. About a mile higher we found another
encampment of Ricaras on the south, consisting of eight lodges: here we
again ate and exchanged a few presents. As we went we discerned numbers
of other Indians on both sides of the river; and at about nine miles we
came to a creek on the south, where we saw many high hills resembling a
house with a slanting roof; and a little below the creek an old village
of the Sharha or Cheyenne Indians.... At sunset we halted, after coming
ten miles over several sandbars and points, above a camp of ten Ricara
lodges on the north side." (Lewis and Clark, (1), pp. 108-109.) Such was
the nature of the country a little more than a century ago.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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