A simple piece “just made for painting”, with a captivating face. Anthony Sabatier, a young talented artist, has been able to convincingly interpret in his own way the drawings of Karl Bodmer …

The Hidatsa, commonly called Gros Ventre, Minitaree or Ree, were a group of semi-sedentary peoples who called themselves the People of the Willows.

They cultivated the lands along the upper Missouri river and produced a type of maize, still cultivated today, besides beans, pumpkin, melons, sunflowers and tobacco. The typical habitation of the Hidatsa consisted of a circular hut half-buried in the ground and covered with soil, mud, twigs, grass, turf or other materials, from which originated the colonial name of earth-lodge, which was accessed by a low corridor. On the inside, a forked prop holds up in the centre four crossed beams. Some smaller trunks placed along the circumference of the habitation hold up a series of big stakes from which the rafters start for the central beams. Willow branches are tied horizontally and covered with dry grass, followed by a layer of turf and earth.

With the advent of the horse, the sedentary agricultural system was partly replaced by an economy based on bison hunting. It was often the women who toiled in the fields while the men hunted and fought. Just like the Mandans, they were affected by smallpox, brought in by the whites in 1837 which halved their numbers. In 1845 the survivors of the two tribes united and settled at Fort Berthold, where they were later joined by the Arikara in 1862, giving rise to the Three Affiliated Tribes. Presently around 5,500 live in North Dakota.