American Travel Journal: Village Trail - Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site

During my August 2017 visit to Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site in North Dakota, I walked the mostly ADA accessible Village Trail to the remains of two Hidatsa villages: Awatixa Xi'e and Awatixa. The park service lists the trail as being 1.3 miles, but my GPS measured it as 1.6 miles from the rear of the visitor center. The only portion of the trail not ADA accessible is the berm along the Knife River. To reach the berm requires the use of a wooden stairway. However, the river is easily visible from the accessible portion of the trail.

Awatixa Xi'e Village, also known as the Lower Hidatsa Site, is the first village on the trail. According to the wayside display:

Fifty-one earthlodge depressions are clearly visible from the air. According to archeological evidence, people occupied the site for centuries before the Awatixa built this village. They abandoned it after the smallpox epidemic in 1780, but later returned and built a new village at river's edge.

When Lewis and Clark arrived in 1804, this village had already been abandoned for nearly a quarter century. Lodges were expected to last about 10 years before building another and moving, so it is likely that many of the lodges had already collapsed when the Corps of Discovery arrived.

Aerial photomap with GPS route

Trail leading from visitor center to the villages

Overview of Awatixa Xi'e Village

Each depression was once an earth lodge

A closer view of one lodge depression

From the village, the high bluff on the far side of the Missouri River is readily visible

These mounds are middens or garbage dumps on the edge of the village

One of several benches along the trail

Looking northwest at the bluffs beyond the Knife River

North Dakota prairie

The trail loops around what remains of Awatixa, the Sakakawea Site. This is the new village at river's edge that was a thriving community when Lewis and Clark arrived. The wayside display states:

As many as four hundred people occupied this village from the late 1790s until 1834. They built this village after abandoning the earlier site, Awatixa Xi'e. In 1834 a Sioux raiding party burned the village.

In addition, the display notes:

Most historians agree that Toussaint Charbonneau and probably his wife Sakakawea lived in this villages. When lewis and Clark camped in the area, they hired Charbonneau as an interpreter for the expedition.

Sakakawea was a Shoshone who had been captured in a raid by the Hidatsa or another tribe and sold or otherwise traded to Charboneneau while he lived with the Hidatsa. He took the teenager as his second wife. She gave birth to her son Jean Baptiste on February 11, 1805 in the Corps' Fort Mandan nearly 20 miles downstream. For the Corps of Discovery, Sakakawea proved more valuable than her husband as her mere presence meant the Corps was not a war party. In addition, her knowledge of multiple tribal languages allowed her to interpret for Lewis and Clark. In a moment of serendipity when the Corps was lost and starving, they stumbled upon a Shoshone party and she recognized her brother as the chief. Without her assistance, the Corps of Discovery likely would have turned out much differently.

Another wayside marker quotes from Captain William Clark's journal entry on August 17, 1806:

we also took leave of T. Chabono, his Snake Indian wife [Sakakawea] and their child who had accompanied us on our rout to the pacific ocean in the capacity of interpreter and interpretes. [Spelling has not been corrected]

I chose to head left at the trail split

Pink flag marks a former earth lodge in Awatixa Village

Two more earth lodge depressions

An overview of the village

Another earth lodge depression

A bench in the shade

Overview of the remains of the village

The remains of the village have been subjected to two centuries of erosion by the Knife River and modern farming practices. As noted on another wayside display:

The river that nurtured Awatixa Village is erasing evidence of its existence. In 1798, explorer-trader David Thompson estimated fifty-two earthlodges here. As of 1990, only thirty-one earthlodge depressions remained. Cutbank erosion and channel shifting had washed away at least six, partially destroyed another six, and modern farming had obliterated ten others. To protect the site from future flodding and ice jams, the park has constructed a berm along river's edge.