From around 1770 to 1837, Numak'aki (Mandan) and Minitari (Hidatsa) peoples lived in what they called in the Minitari language the Awatíkihu (Five Villages).[1] These villages were located within a ten-mile stretch of the Missouri and Knife Rivers and were numbered from the south (First Village) to the north (Fifth Village). When trader James Kipp built Fort Clark in 1831, he located the fort on a shared bluff with the First Village of Mít uta hako'sh above the Missouri, putting the two entities within walking distance of each other and a shared boat launch.
The Awatíkihu had a long history along the Missouri characterized by their shifting structures and locations. Partnerships among at least twelve Numak'aki and Minitari villages first formed at the conjunctions of the Heart and Missouri Rivers, about sixty miles south of their 1823 locations.[2] Archaeologists have named these earlier cooperating settlements the Heart River Confederacy, which was in existence from around 1400 until the smallpox epidemic of 1781.[3] Due to their permanence, their craft specialization, and their agricultural production, these villages became a trade center. After smallpox hit in 1781, the villages and their reduced populations moved northward and reorganized into five villages—the Awatíkihu.[4]
Each village of the Awatíkihu housed a distinct village band.[5] In 1833, Numak'aki peoples lived in the first two villages, Mít uta hako'sh and Nuptadi, while Minitari peoples lived further north in the fourth and fifth villages of Amatihá and Elá-sá, the latter only recently renamed.[6] The middle village was Amahámi, and its population was “made up of movers, remnants and accretions from the other villages who gradually gathered into one village.”[7]
Like Amahámi, the Awatíkihu itself was made up of remnant peoples. Various events across its long history caused villages to appear or disappear from the confederacy: chance meetings, disagreements, warfare and attacks, disease, and even extreme weather. Sometimes villages took in remnant survivors from catastrophic events, as Amahámi had done. Thus, a diversity in language and custom existed across the Awatíkihu. During Prince Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied’s visit, villagers gave their affiliations through hyphenated identities that matched their village band, and they spoke their tribal language in the distinct dialect of their village.[8] And some rituals had discrete variations not only across tribes, but also across villages.
Positioned within both an intertribal cooperative structure and a thriving trading center, leaders of the Awatíkihu, such as Mató-Tópe, had mastered diplomacy and Middle Ground practices across many languages and groups of people well before the arrival of Europeans. These conduct codes were later extended to the dynamics within Indian country, the portion of US territory west of the Mississippi River. In 1833, Indian country—which included the Awatíkihu—was administered as an entity independent of the United States, and non-Native visitors traveled through under approved passports or licenses.[9]
