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Arikara

The Arikara (/əˈrɪkərə/ ə-RICK-ə-rə), also known as Sahnish, Arikaree, Ree, or Hundi, are a tribe of Native Americans in North Dakota and South Dakota. Today, they are enrolled with the Mandan and the Hidatsa as the federally recognized tribe known as the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation.

The Arikara's name is believed to mean "horns", in reference to the ancient custom of wearing two upright bones in their hair. The name also could mean "elk people" or "corn eaters".

The Arikara language is a member of the Caddoan language family. Arikara is close to the Pawnee language, but they are not mutually intelligible. As of 2007, the total number of remaining native speakers was reported as ten, one of whom, Maude Starr, died on 20 January 2010. She was a certified language teacher who participated in Arikara language education programs.

Linguistic divergence between Arikara and Pawnee suggests a separation from the Skidi Pawnee in about the 15th century.[citation needed] The Arzberger site near present-day Pierre, South Dakota, designated as a National Historic Landmark, is an archeological site from this period, containing the remains of a fortified village with more than 44 lodges.

An Arikara village, near where present-day Pierre, South Dakota developed, was visited in 1743 by two sons of the French trader and explorer La Vérendrye.

In the last quarter of the 17th century, the Arikara came under attack from the Omaha/Ponca and the Iowa near the end of the Omaha/Ponca migration to Nebraska. With peace established later, the Arikara influenced the newcomers. The Omaha still credit the Arikara women for instructing them in the art of building earth lodges.

The Arikara lived as a semi-nomadic people on the Great Plains. During the sedentary seasons, the Arikara lived primarily in villages of earth lodges. While traveling or during the seasonal bison hunts, they erected portable tipis as temporary shelter. They were primarily an agricultural society, whose women cultivated varieties of corn (or maize). The crop was such an important staple of their society that it was referred to as "Mother Corn."

An early European, a botanist, praised the Arikara women as excellent cultivators. He had not seen finer crops anywhere in America. The surplus corn and other crops, along with tobacco, were traded to the Lakota, the Cheyenne and more southern plains tribes during short-lived truces. The amount of trading items passing through the Arikara villages made them a "trading center on the Upper Missouri". Before smallpox epidemics hit the three village tribes, they were the "most influential and affluent peoples in the Northern Plains".

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