Hidatsa people

The Hidatsa are a Siouan people.

Hidatsa are enrolled in the federally recognized Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. Their language is related to that of the Crow, and they are sometimes considered a parent tribe to the modern Crow in Montana.

The Hidatsa's autonym is Hiraacá. According to the tribal tradition, the word hiraacá derives from the word "willow"; however, the etymology is not transparent and the similarity to mirahací ‘willows’ inconclusive. The present name Hidatsa was formerly borne by one of the three tribal villages. When the villages consolidated, the name was adopted for the tribe as a whole.

They are called the Minnetaree by their allies, the Mandan; in Assiniboine the Assiniboine (Hidusidi) know them as: wakmúhaza yúde, ȟewáktųkta

Occasionally they have also been confused with the Gros Ventres in today Montana and Prairie Provinces of Canada, which were part of the Arapahoan languages speaking peoples. The nomadic Gros Ventre were called Minnetarees of Fort de Prairie, Minnetarees of the Prairie, Minnetarees of the Plains or Gros Ventres of the Prairie while the semisedentary Hidatsa were known as Minnetarees of the Missouri or Gros Ventres of the Missouri.

For hundreds of years the Knife River area in present North Dakota was the home of the Hidatsa and their ancestors. The first villages dates back to the 13th century.

Accounts of recorded history in the early 18th century identify three closely related village groups to which the term Hidatsa is applied. What is now known as the Hidatsa tribe is the amalgamation of these three groups, which had discrete histories and spoke different dialects; they came together only after settling on the Missouri River.

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