Huff Indian Village State Historic Site

Huff Indian Village State Historic Site is a classic prehistoric Mandan settlement dating to about AD 1450, perhaps two hundred years before Euroamerican influence reached the Missouri Valley area. The village is a very large, well-planned community where perhaps a thousand or more people once lived. Huff Village was probably occupied for only a short time (perhaps 20 years), as indicated by the clarity of the village plan and lack of evidence for rebuilding and trash accumulation.

The site is in pristine condition, and the community layout is easily seen on the surface. Depressions marking the locations of more than one hundred lodges are arranged roughly in rows, paralleling the river bank. The rectangular shape of the houses is still evident in the depressions on the ground. A large ceremonial lodge faces an open plaza near the center of the settlement. The entire settlement is surrounded by a massive fortification system consisting of a ditch more than two-thousand feet long with ten well-defined bastions. The village, including its fortifications, covers about twelve acres. In a modern city residential area of the same size , about five city blocks , about five hundred people might reside, compared the about one thousand individuals at Huff Village.

Residents of Huff Village were clearly concerned about conflicts with other Indian peoples in the region. The village was densely settled in order to minimize the length of site perimeter to be defended. Huff villagers were most likely concerned about attacks from other village farmers, probably ancestors of historic Arikara Indians, who moved from the Central Plains into South Dakota during the AD 1400s. Today, the Fort Berthold Reservation in northwest North Dakota is home to the Mandans, along with the Hidatsa and Arikaras.

Photo captions: , Upper right: Huff Village aerial showing planed arrangement of houses inside the fortification ditch , Bottom right: 3-D image of Huff Village in its setting on a Missouri River terrace. Breaks and upland terrain back the village while forested plain was along the river front. , Lower left: 3-D image of Huff Village showing fortification system and arrangement of houses.