June 27
It is one long drive from International Falls to Knife River Indian Villages NHS, just over eight hours. The radio was announcing more air warnings for northern Minnesota due to the forest fires in Canada. People were being interviewed, saying the smell was unpleasant. By the time I came to the North Dakota border the sky was clear. This was my first time to drive the back roads in eastern North Dakota. Since the state roads are 65 mph, why not take them instead of driving all the way down to I-94 at Fargo? This area of ND is quite lush, with vibrant grasses and many ponds and lakes, large and small, all easily viewable since there were no more forests. Plenty of crop land made this look like Indiana and other Midwest states, except for all the water (and plenty of different kinds of birds).
The ranger at the entrance desk in the VC at Knife River said she had seen me on another park’s FaceBook page the other day. I mentioned a number of parks had been doing this. Any advertisement to help catch peoples’ attention and get them energized to visit said park, or any of the parks, is welcomed. This area was a major Native trading center for hundreds of years before the whiteman appeared. Makes sense since it sits alongside the Missouri River, which empties into the Mississippi River, and stretches westward to the Yellowstone area. Though the Hidatsa (along with neighboring Mandan and Arikara peoples) people of the villages which the park now encompasses were here for about 500 years, there is evidence humans have lived in the region for upwards of 11,000 years, back to the end of the last ice age. Bison and wildlife were plentiful, but the peoples who settled along the river became known more for being farmers rather than hunters.
Lewis and Clark arrived in the fall of 1804, setting camp for the winter. A young Indian girl by the name of Sacagawea was living at Knife River, having been taken captive by the Hidatsa during a western raid a few years earlier. Fortune was upon the expedition, being able to recruit Sacagawea to help the troop travel west since she knew the lands and the tribes, and other important details of what awaited the men. The downside to the adventure was that more whitemen became emboldened to venture west. Fur trading flourished, and the local tribes started to be dependent on European goods. In a few decades, the native way of life had practically vanished.
The park’s website has a wonderful aerial photo which shows the circular depressions of the collapsed Earthlodges. That will have to do if you are curious, because at ground level one cannot see the pits, so I did not put a photo in the Daily Trip Report page.