The Knife River Indian Village is a National Park site in eastern North Dakota. The Mandan and Hidatsa tribes of the Upper Missouri River Valley, were farmers who lived in earth lodge villages. The earth lodge was a round, 40ft wide structure made of wood, covered in reeds, dirt and grass.
While it's much larger inside than you'd expect, one earth lodge would house 10-30 people! The door is a bison hide, hooves attached by a rope on the inside served as a door bell.
A whole in the ground was a safe place to store food for later. See below for a diagram showing how they would pack it.
This village consisted of about 120 lodges. These were the summer homes of the people, built along the river bluff for security. George Catlin visited the village in the 1830s and created the painting below. In winter, they lived in less permanent homes, often only used for one season, on lower ground near trees for wind protection and fuel for fires.
Here's a photo of what the area looked like more recently, though it's getting harder and harder to see signs of the earth lodges along the river. Flooding has eroded some of the bank, so they've constructed a wall to protect it.
The museum had lots of artifacts on display.
Stories would be recorded in pictures drawn on buffalo hides.
They used the outer casing of a bison heart to store and carry water.
We walked to the area where Sacagawea lived and where her son, Jean Baptiste, was born. Turns out we've all been pronouncing her name incorrectly. The woman we know as Sacajawea, should be pronounced sah-KAH-gah-we-uh, though there are still multiple acceptable spellings.) Sacaga = bird, wea= woman, "bird woman".
Here you can see the depression in the ground where an earth lodge used to be.
The kids have been earning Jr Ranger badges everywhere we go. This was a lovely setting for their pledge, though they were shaded. Oh well.
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