The Garrison Dam and the Drowned Heart of Fort Berthold

There is a photograph taken in Washington in nineteen forty-eight. George Gillette, the chairman of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation, sits at a table signing a document. His free hand covers his face. He is weeping.

The document he signed that day transferred roughly one hundred fifty-two thousand acres of Fort Berthold Reservation land to the federal government, clearing the way for the Garrison Dam and the reservoir that would become Lake Sakakawea. Gillette told the reporters gathered around the table: right now the future of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara people is dark.

The Army Corps of Engineers had been authorized to build the Garrison Dam in nineteen forty-four as part of the Pick-Sloan Missouri Basin Program, a federal effort to harness the Missouri River for flood control, irrigation, and hydroelectric power. The dam was completed in nineteen fifty-three. The reservoir filled over the following years, drowning the cottonwood groves, the garden plots, the river bottomlands, and the ceremonial sites that had sustained the Three Affiliated Tribes for centuries. The settlement Like-a-Fishhook Village and the community of Elbowoods disappeared beneath the water. Approximately three hundred twenty-five families, roughly one-third of the reservation's population, were relocated to higher ground, where the land was less fertile and the housing was inadequate.

The tribe had been offered about five million dollars, later raised to seven and a half million. Independent appraisers later estimated the fair value of what was taken at three hundred million or more.

Senator William Langer of North Dakota called it a horrible crime. His colleague called it a good deal.

The Missouri River is still there. The lake is still there. The MHA Nation is still there, on the higher ground that remained.