Awatixa

The Awatixa were a Hidatsa people of the Knife River country, where their earthlodge villages stood near the confluence with the Missouri. The fertile river bottoms supported fields of maize, beans and squash, and the villages formed part of a wide network of trade among the peoples of the northern Plains. Nearby Mandan and other Hidatsa communities shared the river valley.

In 1804 the Lewis and Clark expedition arrived among the villages and built Fort Mandan across the Missouri. There they met Sacagawea, a Shoshone woman living among the Hidatsa, who joined their westward journey with her husband and infant son. The Awatixa and their neighbors had already endured devastating epidemics; another smallpox outbreak swept through the upper Missouri villages in 1837.