Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wyoming, 2008. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on August 5, 2009). Includes bibliographical references (p. 126-129).

This dissertation pays critical attention to the "community" concept in archaeological research, casting it as the flexible and impermanent loci of identity formation and social reproduction. In three articles, it investigates various iterations and transformations of the Arikara community in North Dakota after European contact. First, I examine the ethnohistoric record of the Upper Missouri River to investigate how increased flexibility in Arikara settlement strategies during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries yielded new community configurations, with particular emphasis on Arikara coresidence with their occasional enemies, the Mandans. The second article analyzes archaeological spatial data to elucidate how the organization of open space at the nineteenth- century coalescent settlement of Like-A-Fishhook Village structured interactions between the Arikara and the Mandan-Hidatsa. The third article explores how the Arikara navigated the reconfiguration of their community space as a result of allotment policies during the early twentieth century, and how the now-inundated settlement of Nishu is situated in the social memory and contemporary identity of the Arikara people. The Arikara case demonstrates that social and spatial configurations of community are not always commensurate, and that understanding the multidimensionality of belonging requires both archaeological and ethnographic approaches.

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A HISTORICAL CASE STUDY OF THE ARIKARA, HIDATSA, AND MANDAN INDIANS AT HAMPTON NORMAL AND AGRICULTURAL INSTITUTE, VIRGINIA, 1878-1911 By Nancy E. Jones-Oltjenbruns, Ph.D. A Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2012 Director: Maike I. Philipsen, PhD Professor, School of Education Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute played a role in the education of American Indians. This facet of American Indians education was examined through the lives of Arikara, Hidatsa, and Mandan students from the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. The Three Affiliated Tribes’ students attended Hampton between 1878 and 1911. The federal government generally viewed American Indians as a problem so efforts were made to assimilate them into the majority culture. Education was a component of that process. The lack of knowledge about the Plains Indians contributed to their selection for this study. Lesser known tribes do not have a prominent place in the scholarship on 19th century Indian education. This study contributes to the literature by providing historical evidence related to the Fort Berthold Reservation students. The majority of teachers who instructed Indian students were non-Indian, but it was important for them to understand the specifics of Indian culture. Early staff at Hampton thought of themselves as civilizers, missionaries, and teachers. When the doors of Hampton opened, it was the role of staff to instruct the African American students in those skills that would allow them to advance in the White world. This was the same mandate regarding American Indians. The staff was instrumental in every aspect of American Indian education. Although Indian students including the Fort Berthold students never gained equal standing with African Americans or Whites on campus, they acquired a level of acceptance by staff and students. Views of Indian students toward staff, their education, school, and fellow students varied. There were members of the Fort Berthold Reservation who appreciated their education at Hampton, while some students did not complete their educational endeavors. Generally, Fort Berthold students learned skills that would be useful upon their return home. The Indian students felt they had an obligation to their people and that education was more than groundwork for their own prosperity. While education could provide a respectable living, the Fort Berthold Reservation students had a responsibility to teach those back on the reservation.

Arikara people had been adapting their tribal structures to European influences since Europeans first arrived on the northern Plains in the early seventeenth century. Their sedentary lifestyle, focused on agriculture and hunting, increasingly included trade with French, British, and American trappers by the seventeenth century. The goods procured from European traders, such as firearms and other metallurgical works, began to upset the balance of geopolitical power on the Plains, setting the stage for the violence and political realignments at the center of this thesis. As my research reveals, by the time of the Lewis and Clark expedition, tensions between the frontiersmen and the Indigenous people across the northern Plains reached new heights. As Arikara oral histories, United States diplomatic records, ethnological sources – such as travel writings – and correspondence from frontier settlers and soldiers reveal, the Arikara tribe struggled to innovate and reshape their societies in the face of colonial expansionism and hostilities with other Indigenous polities.

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