Crow Creek massacre facts for kids
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Crow Creek Site
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Aerial view of the site
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 Location in South Dakota
Location in the United States
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| Nearest city | Chamberlain, South Dakota |
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| Built | circa 1100 CE |
| NRHP reference No. | 66000710 |
Quick facts for kids Significant dates |
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| Added to NRHP | October 15, 1966 |
| Designated NHL | July 19, 1964 |
The Crow Creek massacre occurred around the mid 1300s CE between Native American groups at a site along the Missouri River in the South Dakota area; it is now within the Crow Creek Indian Reservation. Crow Creek Site, the site of the massacre near Chamberlain, is an archaeological site and a U.S. National Historic Landmark, located at coordinates 43°58′48″N 99°19′54″W. An excavation of part of the site was done in the 1950s, with additional excavations in 1978 and later.
Two groups occupied the site in prehistoric times. The Siouan-speaking Middle Missouri people (Initial Middle Missouri variant), ancestral to the historic Mandan people, first occupied the site sometime after about 900 AD. They built numerous earth lodges on the lower portion of the site. Caddoan-speaking Central Plains people (Initial Coalescent variant) moved into the area from southern areas (present-day Nebraska) sometime around 1150 AD. (The historic Arikara are a Caddoan people.) Whether they displaced the earlier group or moved on to an abandoned site is unknown. The Central Plains (Initial Coalescent) people built at least 55 lodges, mostly on the upper part of the site. There is no direct evidence that there was conflict between the two groups, and scholars have found evidence that both cultures changed gradually in relation to the other.
There is evidence that the Central Plains/Initial Coalescent villagers built well-planned defensive works for their village. They were replacing an earlier dry moat fortification with a new fortification ditch around the expanded village when an attack occurred that resulted in the massacre. The attacking group killed all the villagers. Archaeologists from the University of South Dakota, directed by project director Larry J. Zimmerman, field director Thomas Emerson, and osteologist P. Willey found the remains of at least 486 people killed during the attack. Most of these remains showed signs of malnutrition and many had evidence of being wounded in other attacks. This evidence has suggested to scholars that lives of people of the Initial Coalescent culture were under more stress than was thought; they have theorized that the people were attacked by another group or several groups of the Initial Coalescent culture in the area in competition for arable land and resources.
Site
The Crow Creek site, designated 39BF11 under the Smithsonian site numbering system, is located along the Missouri River in central South Dakota. The site is located on lands now under the control of the US Army Corps of Engineers due to its flood control and other projects on the river. It is surrounded by the territory of the Crow Creek Indian Reservation. The descendants of the people of the Middle Missouri and Central Plains/Initial Coalescent cultures now live in North Dakota as the Mandan and Arikara nations, respectively, of the Three Affiliated Tribes (together with the Hidatsa).
Crow Creek is now a well-preserved archaeological site. It was listed as National Historic Landmark (number 66000710) when the Register was started in 1964.
In 1978, South Dakota State Archaeologist, Robert Alex, and other members of his office attended a meeting hosted by the South Dakota Archaeological Society. They toured the Crow Creek site, which had been known and had some professional excavation in the 1950s. They discovered human bones eroding from the end of the fortification ditch. After permission to excavate the site was received from the reservation tribal council, following consultation about how to proceed and agreement for reburial of remains on site, archeology teams recovered the skeletal remains of at least 486 Crow Creek villagers. These estimates were based on the number of right temporal bones present at the scene. The characteristics of the remains at the site show they were killed in an overwhelming attack, which has been called the Crow Creek Massacre. Discovery of this event has raised many questions in the archaeological community, particularly who attacked the village and why.
Skeletal remains
The remains of the villagers of Crow Creek were discovered in a fortification ditch, where they were buried during the mid-14th century and covered with a small layer of clay from the river bottom. It is not clear who buried the victims of the massacre, whether it was the attackers, escaped villagers, or members of an affiliated village. Researchers thought that scavengers might have dug up these remains as a food source. The remains of these villagers reveal their untimely deaths and events of the last attack. They also reveal other hardships of their lives: evidence of nutritional deficiencies and previous warfare, which suggest adaptations to the changes were more difficult. These were documented by paleopathologist John B. Gregg.
Legacy
In 1989 the World Archaeological Congress met at the University of South Dakota for a forum entitled "Archeological Ethics and the Treatment of the Dead." Archeologists and Indigenous people from twenty countries and twenty-seven Native American nations debated the repatriation issue, eventually passing the Vermillion Accord. This accord influenced the passage of several provincial laws in Canada and ethics codes for both the World Archaeological Congress and the Australian Archaeological Association.
This has influenced passage of laws in Canada and the United States, as well as ethics codes for the World Archaeological Congress and Australian Archaeological Association.
Since the reburial, Congress and South Dakota have passed laws governing consultation with tribes, and return of remains and artifacts of cultural importance. The most far-reaching federal legislation was the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (Public Law 101-601).
