Adixoodagoorahareesh

Adixoodagoorahareesh is the Hidatsa name associated with the Mandaree country of the upper Missouri and its western tributaries. The Great Plains here combines short grass, river terraces and broken badlands, where water and shelter are concentrated along valleys. Bison moved across the uplands, while wooded bottoms supplied fuel, building material and protection from winter winds.

Hidatsa communities built earthlodge villages on river terraces, growing corn, beans, squash and sunflowers and hunting bison across the plains. Awatixa oral tradition places its people along the Missouri from an early date, and archaeological remains show earthlodge settlements near the Knife River from around the fifteenth century. Women owned the lodges and organized much of the household and garden economy. The river valleys also kept the villages linked to wider Plains exchange.

By the eighteenth century, Hidatsa, Mandan and Arikara villages formed major trading centres on the upper Missouri. Goods passed between Plains hunters, village farmers and European fur traders, drawing metal, cloth, horses and guns into exchange for corn, hides and provisions. River routes and intertribal alliances gave the region its political importance. Epidemic disease struck the river villages in 1837, ending a long period in which earthlodge communities controlled the crossing of the northern Plains.