The MHA Nation: Three Peoples, One Reservation
North Dakota
The Fort Berthold Reservation, east of Williston and south of Lake Sakakawea, is the homeland of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation, known as the MHA Nation or the Three Affiliated Tribes. These three peoples are distinct nations with their own languages and histories, but they share this land and a long history of living alongside one another on the upper Missouri.
The Mandan were the people Lewis and Clark wintered with in eighteen oh four and eighteen oh five at Fort Mandan, near present-day Washburn and just downriver from the Knife River villages. They were farmers as well as hunters, building large earth lodge villages on the Missouri bluffs and trading extensively with Lakota, Crow, and Assiniboine peoples from the plains, as well as with British and French traders before the Americans arrived. The smallpox epidemic of eighteen thirty-seven reduced the Mandan from several thousand people to fewer than two hundred. The Hidatsa and Arikara, also hit hard, absorbed the survivors.
The three nations were assigned to the Fort Berthold Reservation in eighteen seventy, their territory reduced repeatedly by subsequent agreements and allotment policies. Then Garrison Dam flooded the valley again.
When the Bakken oil boom began, Fort Berthold sat atop some of the most productive portions of the formation. The reservation became one of the largest oil-producing areas in the state, and oil revenues transformed the tribal government's finances. The MHA Nation invested in infrastructure, education, and economic development, while also navigating the social disruptions that came with thousands of outside workers moving onto or near the reservation without tribal oversight.
The MHA Nation today has roughly seventeen thousand enrolled members. The earth lodge villages where Meriwether Lewis spent the winter are gone, but the Three Affiliated Tribes Museum in New Town preserves their history, and the people themselves are here, adapting to yet another transformation of their homeland.
