Meet the Three Affiliated Tribes

Good morning. My name is Tex Hall. I’m the tribal chairman of the Three Affiliated Tribes . . . the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation . . . here at Fort Berthold at present day New Town, North Dakota. I would like to welcome everybody. I would like to speak a little Hidatsa because I am Mandan and Hidatsa.

Dosha, Nuxbaga-oh. Nidisha iputa ishaehedz.

My Indian name is Red Butte, which is a sacred site near near present day Twin Buttes, North Dakota. As chairman of the Three Affiliated Tribes, I would like to extend a welcome to all the visitors that will be coming to North Dakota and to the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. When Lewis and Clark came upon our homelands in October 1804, they wintered with our ancestors at Knife River. They stayed with our people for nearly six months, until April 1805.

Our relatives and our ancestors say that without our people the expedition would have never happened. They would never have survived the winter. They ate Mandan corn, buffalo meat, and learned the ways of communication and survival.

So we welcome all the visitors who will be coming to North Dakota. We know you will have a very enjoyable and educational stay.

My name is Edwin Benson. My Indian name used to be Ma-doke-wa-des-she, Iron Bison. Ben Benson was my grandfather. His Indian name was Buffalo Head. I’m about one of the last ones that’s able to speak the Mandan language quite fluently. The Lewis and Clark Expedition . . . there is only one name that I recall, and that was White Coyote. In the Mandan language, White Coyote was Sheheke-shoat. I would say, maybe in the older days, they probably called it E-mah-shoat, because the Mandan languages were different from the way I speak today. Black Cat in the Mandan language would me E-goo-hawmp-see, or something like that would be more of an appropriate name for the Mandan Chief.

A school board member asked me if I would teach the language, and asked me if I was a fluent speaker. I’m about one of the last ones that’s able to speak the Mandan language quite fluently. I teach phrases . . . short phrases, and names and numbers, and short sentences. Children have problems getting up in the morning to do . . . looking for their clothes and stuff. So I use the short sentence, saying, “Looking for my shoes.

Sheheke-Shoat. Now, can you tell me what that means? A name of what? What did we say Sheheke was? Coyote, yeah. Sheheke-shoat. Shoat means white. You remember that. We had the colors. Sheheke-shoat . . . White Coyote. And then another one called Black Cat. The way I would say it in this day and age, I would say Buoss-see. See is black, you remember. We had the colors. Buouss-see . . . Black Cat. How many of you own a black cat at home? Buoss-see, Black Cat.

This Missouri River was pure water, from the beginning. Awati, that’s the name of the river. They don’t have a translation for Missouri. That’s a white man’s word, but the river is Awati. Awaga-nuxbaaga is Native American, it’s an overall name for all Indians. According to what my grandparents say, the Hidatsa people came out of Devil’s Lake. There were people down below and there was no more hunting. They had used all the deer or buffalo, and they started looking for food. And this one warrior was hunting, and he couldn’t find any deer or buffalo, or anything. He was so tired and he laid down to rest, and he went to sleep.

When he woke up, he saw a hole in the sky, and there was a vine that went right up through the hole. So he climbed up, and when he climbed up, it was out of Devil’s Lake. He looked around, and he seen all this buffalo and deer and everything, and this land was so rich. So he went back down and told them. So they started coming up through that vine, and they all come out of Devil’s Lake, the Hidatsa people.

And there was this pregnant woman. Then she was trying to climb, but they said, “No, you wait. You wait until the last.” And so they held her back. But everybody was coming and there was a whole bunch of people that came up to this area. And so, finally, that pregnant lady got mad, and she said “I’m going!”

And so she climbed that rope, and here she broke it, and that was the end of it. Nobody else could come up after that.

That’s where the Hidatsa come from.

I clean my corn and wash it, and put in the oven and roast it. Then, when it’s ready, about one or two hours, I turn the oven off and let it stand another hour until it gets real brown. Then I grind it with a blender and clean out the lumps with a screen.

This is the corn that we use to make cornballs, or corn soup, or dried corn. We have plenty, and we dry it and put it away. We save seed. This is the corn we used to plant. It’s a yellow corn. This corn here, without berries, you could cook it and make a corn stew.

In the Hidatsa way, ma-pi-nug-a-ba” [Corn Balls].

I’m Mary Conklin Elk. I live near New Town, and my parents were William Conklin, Sr., and my mother was Ella Many Ribs. I grew up on the reservation. I went to school in Elbowoods and Shell Creek. I moved to New Town in 1951, and I’m a resident here since 1951.

I’m kind of creative. I like to do things, and I like to learn things. I learned how to do quilting back in the Forties. There was an old lady . . . I used to babysit her grandchildren. She was the one that showed me how to do sewing. She gave me needles and thread, and some material that she had. I learned how to do my quillwork back in the 1960s from Dora Smith, and later on from Carrie Brady. And I do beadwork

I learned how to do pottery, also, back in the 60s, and worked for the Three Tribes Stoneware. Now I’m retired and staying home, and doing sewing, making star quilts and moccasins. I work with brain-tanned leather . . . that’s just like working with a cloth. I use sinew. When you want to make moccasins, you have to get the footprint first. Then you outline the top, and that’s how you cut the hide to make the moccasins. You can’t do it without the footprint.

My name is Dennis Fox, Jr., and I’m Mandan/Hidatsa, from the Three Affiliated Tribes. I am the director of the Independence Program, which is a program to assist individuals in starting their own businesses or micro-enterprises. I worked for First Nations Development Institute, was the director of First Nations Art, and worked for the Smithsonian as program coordinator of the Festival of American Folklife. I am a continuing artist; I do artwork throughout my career, and have items on exhibit at various museums across the country . . . the Smithsonian, the Canadian Museum of Civilization, and private collections.

We look forward to the year 2004 because of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial. The economic impact which is going to be, I think significant here on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, is going to be a venue for our individual business owners to capitalize on outside money coming in from various tourists and people who are interested in Lewis and Clark’s 200th anniversary of their expedition.

We can provide items for sale for tourists that may come through the Three Affiliated Tribes, in the same way Lewis and Clark did, and they can take home a token of what that visit meant to Lewis and Clark as they were gathering items to send back to Jefferson when they came through.

There are particular designs that are really unique to the Three Affiliated Tribes. One example is the Dog Soldier headdress, the large hat you see Two Ravens wearing in one of the Bodmer paintings. What we try to identify are those particular designs, those particular attributes of those designs that are Three Affiliated Tribes oriented, or Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara, so that when a person may take something from Fort Berthold, it’s really from Fort Berthold . . . that they are buying something that’s authentically from the Fort Berthold Reservation.

The Independence program that I work for is funded by HUD, through the Denver Office. This is sort of a new program, a new sort of step toward developing that economic self-sufficiency which we once had when Lewis and Clark did visit our areas. The Mandan and Hidatsa people were known as great traders, and they knew how to trade. They knew how to finance themselves in order to survive, because they had this ideal place on the Missouri. What we’re trying to bring back today is that initiative that we, as Three Affiliated Tribes members, still have—that ability to be excellent traders or excellent business people.

My name is Jim Wolf. I’m an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes . . . Hidatsa, Arikara, Mandan. We’ve been in business here at New Town for 15 years. Our type of business in this area is the only one of its kind.

We feel the unique part of our business is . . . people are interested in the local star quilts and beadwork. We’ve tried to add to our storefront to make it kind of unique, the old western part of it, and we also want to get into the Native American part of it. People like that type of thing.

We’re trying to come up with something this summer for Lewis and Clark. We’re trying to add something more to our business here to attract people.

My name is Monica Mayer, and I’m a family practitioner. Right now we’re in Hazen, North Dakota, at the Sakakawea Medical Center, which is just 10 miles east of the Knife River Villages. This medical center here is named after Sakakawea. She was raised and lived among the Hidatsa, and was very instrumental in the successful journey with Lewis and Clark to the Pacific.

I’m a Three Affiliated Tribes enrolled member. My Indian name is Good Medicine, which is Xobadi-zigish in Hidatsa. I’m doing mentorship here at the Sakakawea Medical Center. The program I came out of is the “Indians into Medicine” program.

I’ve got a very personal interest, not only from the Lewis and Clark medical aspects, from the non-Indian’s view of medicine in the past and present, because I am western trained, but I do have a personal interest in the herbs and plants that were used in the Upper Missouri River area for medicinal purposes. And there are several plants that are still used today that were used back in Lewis and Clark’s time.

I graduated from the University of North Dakota School of Medicine with a medical doctorate degree in 1995. I always knew I wanted to be a family practitioner, as opposed to being a specialist where I’d have to go to practice in a big urban, metropolitan area.

I’ve been very interested in herbs and plants that have been used for medicinal purposes, particularly the Upper Missouri River area, our native lands to the Mandans, Hidatsa and Arikara. I hope that by the end of 1999 we will have a full exhibit of the plants, and what their names are, and what their medicinal uses were. The purple coneflower is an herb that is still used today, that was used back in Lewis and Clark’s time . . . that we shipped in a box to President Thomas Jefferson for his collection of plants, herbs and specimens.

As a physician, I have found the Lewis and Clark Expedition to be extremely fascinating, from a medical standpoint. When they approached the ancestral villages of the Mandan and Hidatsa, we had an equal ground of practicing medicine with herbs. But I think the advantage that we had was that we approached medicine from a psychological aspect by doing rituals, besides using plants and herbs. We did rituals that were very strong customs, such as sweats, and things that were purifying. And prayer was also used for the psychological well-being of our patients.

One of the first things the people did, upon their arrival, October 26, 1804, was to give them corn, beans and squash. And that was one of the most important things they could do, because diet is a very integral part in our immunity, or your ability to fight off infection. And so, in doing this they contributed quite a bit to the health status which was very important for the expedition to be successful.

Hello. My name is Tom Bird Bear, and I’m a member of the Tribal Business Council with the Three Affiliated Tribes. I’d like to welcome everyone to Fort Berthold and the Three Tribes. What I’ll be talking about today is the tribal government and some of the areas related to the historic journey of Lewis and Clark two centuries ago.

I grew up here on the reservation, from a farming and ranching background. I joined the service and went into the U.S. Army after high school. I attended college, and graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in philosophy from the University of North Dakota. I have a law degree from the law school there at the University. And today, I’m a licensed attorney and an attorney-at-law. But for now the tribal government takes up the majority of my time in terms of practice.

What we do today in tribal government is so related to the bicentennial in terms of President Jefferson in 1803, and his instructions to Lewis and Clark as they journeyed westward to this new country. I think it’s significant at this time, 200 years later, that the president of the United States, William Jefferson Clinton, continues the relationship, and continues the recognition of tribal nations as sovereign entities. As part of his Executive Order of 1998, he points out that in treaties the United States has guaranteed the right of Indian tribes to self-govern, and I think that is so significant today, when you look at the history of our tribe from the point of contact with Lewis and Clark and, really, a couple of centuries of challenges, of devastation, and of coming back from that to where we’re at today.

I think it is significant that Lewis and Clark, in their journey, came through this area. They came through the Missouri River. Through unfortunate circumstances about fifty years ago, through the flood, Lake Sakakawea was created. But we still have a number of historic sites, and points of interest, along the area that we have without our jurisdiction. Its those areas like Pouch Point, Reunion Bay, and various others, that we are certainly interested in promoting with the bicentennial issues, promoting as far as tourism, and that’s really where we’re seeing the two things come together with history in terms of our casino expansion, and how we want to see economic development succeed on Fort Berthold, and the ideas and all of the positive things coming out of the bicentennial and the Lewis and Clark journey.

You know, gaming as a separate issue, as an economic issue. . . . Gaming arose out of the 1988 statute passed by Congress, the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. It set forth the authority, and so forth, of the tribes to conduct various forms of gaming. It’s important for our tribe here and, I think, tribes nationwide, because of the historic problems and chronic issues associated with poverty, and so forth, in really trying to get an economic development engine prepared and started everywhere.

I think that, too often, that’s something that is not highlighted, or that is not given enough attention by the major , by non-tribal elected officials, and there’s really a tide against what is perceived as the tribes’ unfair advantage, and so forth.

However, what we’re dealing with is a limited marked. We are a rural area. Some tribes enjoy a better status than we do. But nonetheless I think, uniformly almost, in fact, the tribes that deal with and are involved with gaming, they tend to provide the services, the better level of services that they can to their members, that the rest of the country is used to, but that we haven’t seen. So it’s a matter where we’re attempting to get on a level playing field, and the successes that we enjoy, and the expansion that we would like to see, are only a beginning, really.

Hello, my name is Calvin Grinnell, and I am a member of the Fort Berthold Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Committee. I’m also a member of the Three Affiliated Tribes . . . the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara. On behalf of my people, I want to welcome you, one and all, to our reservation in western North Dakota. We are very proud of our state and our reservation. We have some attractions, and we have some natural scenic wonders that you might enjoy. We are known since the days of Lewis and Clark as very hospitable people, and when the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark Expedition comes by, we hope to be able to accommodate your needs and to answer your questions, and give you some idea of what we thought of our people’s roles in history.

Hello, my name is Calvin Grinnell, and I am a member of the Fort Berthold Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Committee. I’m also a member of the Three Affiliated Tribes . . . the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara. On behalf of my people, I want to welcome you, one and all, to our reservation in western North Dakota. We are very proud of our state and our reservation. We have some attractions, and we have some natural scenic wonders that you might enjoy. We are known since the days of Lewis and Clark as very hospitable people, and when the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark Expedition comes by, we hope to be able to accommodate your needs and to answer your questions, and give you some idea of what we thought of our people’s roles in history.

I’m a direct descendant of Four Bears. There were two Four Bears. One was the Mandan Four Bears who died in 1837 during the smallpox epidemic. He was a member of the Five Villages. Later on, there was a Hidatsa Four Bears, who signed the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851. I am proud of the fact that I’m descended from him. These were chiefs of our people, and I always think of them as role models. They were our leaders.” “The chiefs of old, and the present-day tribal council representatives, they were counterparts. They are expected to do as the chiefs of old did, and indeed some of them do. They participate in community activities such as celebrations, and what is known today in the general vernacular as a ‘pow-wow’.

My name is Running Elk. that’s my Indian name. It was given to me by a World War I veteran, Martin Levings. He led me around the celebration circle to announce to everyone that that was my name, and I was entitled to it. I’d just graduated from boot camp in the U.S. Marine Corps. From then on, I’ve basically done the proper ethics to warrant carrying that name on forward.

I’m a historian at the Three Affiliated Tribes Museum. I’ve always had an interest in our history and culture. I know we have a very proud history of self-sufficiency and being, I guess, survivors.

Cultural preservation is important for all people but more so for our Indian people because it’s an aspect of a person’s identity, and when is a person is secure in their identity and in their selfhood, then they can interact positively with other people.They’re proud of their heritage, proud of themselves. Then they have the self-confidence and the character to take care of themselves in this world, and to be contributing members of society.

The youth of the reservation have opportunities, and we look to the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial as a prime opportunity for them to seek employment, or even start their own businesses.

The major contribution probably was maps . . . that we had an understanding of the country beyond our villages, up into the Rocky Mountains. We gave them an idea of how to go, where to go. Even the Three Forks of the Missouri was indicated on those maps. Secondarily, we gave them a “base camp,” the last known village before the “Great Beyond,” so to speak. We provided them with foodstuffs that we used in our winter camps or hunting parties. For example, the cornballs, or what’s known today as pemmican.

History hasn’t been kind to us. There’s a belief that the Mandans are extinct. Probably the Hidatsas even more so. I want to say that we are alive and well, living here on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, and we are contributing members of society. A lot of our people have become doctors and lawyers and business people, and educators. And we are looking very positively towards the future of our people, to make a better life for ourselves and our children.