UTTC Native Studies instructor Dakota Goodhouse during First Nations Day, Oct. 7, at the North Dakota Heritage Center. United Tribes News photo, Dennis J. Neumann

BISMARCK (UTN) – The historical review done on the route of the Dakota Access Pipeline apparently leaves much to be desired. When it comes to understanding tribal history and events that took place near the confluence of the Cannonball and Missouri Rivers, much of the historical record that distinguishes the location is absent from the pipeline company’s filings.

That was the takeaway October 7 from North Dakota First Nation’s Day in Bismarck.
“If the Cannonball River were excluded from primary resources…our North Dakota history would be poorer for it,” said event keynote speaker Dakota Goodhouse.

Goodhouse presented the results of seven-months of research in a talk titled: “Remembering a River; Significant Mentions in Historic Resources.”

“There is a continuous cultural occupation along this Missouri River tributary reaching back to circa 1300 through the tribal histories of the Mandan, Arikara, Cheyenne, Yanktonai Dakota, and Hunkpapa Lakota,” he said. “The north and south banks of the Cannonball River are rife with physical evidence of historic and cultural occupations of people who are still here.”



Goodhouse is a college educator, author, blogger and historian who researches history using a combination of resources like journals, maps, and Native American winter counts.

Earlier this year he began researching existing sources for historical reference about the area where the Cannonball River divides Morton and Sioux Counties and flows into the Missouri River. The area is the focus of conflict over construction of the controversial oil pipeline aimed to pass within one mile of the Cannonball and snake its way under the Missouri River and Lake Oahe. His work also included the east bank where Beaver Creek enters the Missouri in Emmons County.

SIGNIFICANT HISTORICAL AREA
The area was a gathering place along main travel routes of Native People who lived there in established villages. On the north and south banks of the Cannonball, the Big River Mandan Villages were prominent earth lodge settlements there 600 years ago.

Goodhouse found more than a dozen mentions of significant historical events and occurrences that are missing from the Dakota Access Pipeline Class II survey report filed with the Historic Preservation Office of the State Historical Society of North Dakota. He viewed the survey report at the state agency but is prevented by law from revealing its contents. Instead, he summarized the volume of evidence that was readily available to researchers but not included in the historical review process for siting the pipeline.

According to Goodhouse, the survey fails to mention the Cannonball River observations of Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery in 1804.

Not mentioned were the 1833 descriptions of Prince Maximilian von Wied-Neuwied, who observed the nearby terrain and the sandstone balls, known as concretions, found in the stream that give the river its modern name.

Also missing were the observations of botanist John Bradbury who observed the river in 1811 and made a return trip in 1819, for the express purpose of collecting additional botany specimens.



The report does not mention the many deaths from the great prairie fire of 1762-63 recorded on winter counts in the National Museum of the American Indian, nor the dramatic flood of 1825 that killed over 150 people opposite the mouth of the Cannonball.

Absent is any reference to the work of Dr. Raymond Wood, a well-known expert in Plains Indian cultural and archaeological sites on the Upper Missouri, who believed the north Cannonball Village sites to be “extraordinary and significant.”

About 75 audience members at the North Dakota Heritage Center applauded When Goodhouse said, “It is absolutely preposterous to say that there are no burial grounds nearby. To say so would be to suggest that no one ever died in any of the cultural occupations.”

Goodhouse concluded that the area, and the north Cannonball Village site in particular, is highly meaningful in terms of the development of Mandan culture, inter-tribal and military conflicts, natural disasters, the 1837 smallpox epidemic, and for the location of the historic Cannonball Ranch.

Goodhouse reiterated he was prevented by law from revealing whether the route of the pipeline would cross the north Cannonball Village site. But those with access to online earth maps would be able to determine that for themselves.

In closing his talk, Goodhouse quoted from the late Vine Deloria Jr. about sacred places.

“The first and most familiar kind of sacred lands are places to which we attribute sanctity because the location is a site where, within our own history, something of great importance has taken place. Unfortunately, many of these places are related to instances of human violence. Every society needs these kinds of sacred places because they help to instill a sense of social cohesion in the people and remind them of the passage of generations that have brought them to the present. A society that cannot remember and honor its past is in peril of losing its soul. Indians, because of our considerably longer tenure on this continent, have many more sacred places than do non-Indians.”

Goodhouse is a Native Studies instructor at United Tribes Technical College. Read his historical research and see his photos and maps on the Cannonball-Missouri River area here: http://thefirstscout.blogspot.com/.