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Garrison
Dam
According to the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851, the territorial
lands of the Three Tribes was an area of more than 12 million
acres, extending from east of the Missouri River into Montana.
In the following years, to justify taking more land, the Federal
Government, through several allotment acts and the Homestead
Act, reduced the reservation further to less than 3 million
acres. The flooding of the prime river bottomland was
yet another assault on the autonomy and cultures of the Mandan,
Hidatsa and Sahnish. Flooding the reservation bottomlands
reduced the reservation even further, leaving approximately 1 million
acres of individual and tribally owned lands.
The Corps of Army Engineers built five main-stem projects that
destroyed over 550 square miles of tribal land in North and
South Dakota and dislocated more than 900 Indian families.
The most devastating effects suffered by a single reservation
were experienced by the Three Affiliated Tribes (Mandan, Hidatsa,
and Arikara) whose way-of-life was almost totally destroyed
by the Garrison Dam, as a part of the Pick-Sloan project (Lawson,
p.27).
The construction of Garrison Dam on their land resulted in the
taking of 152,360 acres. Over one-fourth of the reservations
total land base was deluged by the dam's reservoir. The
remainder of the Indian land was segmented into five water-bound
sections. The project required the relocation of 325 families,
or approximately 80 percent of the tribal membership. For many
successful years as ranchers and farmers, these industrious
people lost 94 per cent of their agricultural lands. (Lawson,
p.59).
The Corps of Engineers entered Fort Berthold Reservation to
begin construction on the dam in Apri1 1946. The first
of the army's Pick-Sloan project on the main stem of the Missouri
River was Garrison Dam, which became America's fifth largest
dam at a cost of over $299 million. (Lawson, p.59)
The Corps of Engineers, without authorization from Congress,
altered the project's specifications in order to protect the
city of Williston, North Dakota, and to prevent interference
with the Bureau of Reclamation irrigation projects, but nothing
was done to safeguard Indian communities. When the army
threatened to confiscate the land it needed by right of eminent
domain, the Fort Berthold Indians protested in Washington.
The tribes succeeded in having Congress halt all expenditures
for the Garrison Dam project until they received a suitable
settlement. This legal action was based on the Fort Laramie
Treaty of 1851, which provided that land could not be taken
from the tribes without their consent and that of Congress.
(Lawson, p.60).
Negotiations with the army began in earnest. The Tribal
Council offered an alternative reservation dam site free of
charge. This optional site, whose selection would have
caused considerable less damage to the Indians, was rejected
by the Corps of Engineers because it would not permit adequate
storage capacity. Army negotiators did offer to purchase
an equal amount of land in the Knife River Valley to replace
that lost to the Garrison project, but the Indians found it
unsuitable for their needs. In 1947, the Three Affiliated Tribes
finally had to accept the $5,105,625 offered by Congress and
the Corps for their losses. This settlement, considered
generous by many on Capitol Hill, meant that they received about
$33 for each acre of their land with improvements and severance
damages. From this amount they were expected also to pay
relocation and reconstruction expenses. The agreement did not
permit them to claim additional compensation through Congress
or the courts. The Indians were determined to exercise this
option, and they petitioned for more money and additional benefits,
such as exclusive rights to a small portion of Garrison's hydroelectric
power production at a reduced rate. After a private appraisal
claimed damages to the tribe were $21,981,000, legislation requesting
that amount was introduced in Congress.
Following two years of debate in the House and Senate finally
agreed to a compromise figure of $7.5 million. Legislation
for this final settlement received President Truman's signature
on October 29, 1949. (Lawson,p.61). The total compensation of
$12,605,625 was over $9,000,000 less than the Indians felt was
the fair market value of the damages they sustained. The
final piece of settlement legislation denies their right to
use the reservoir shoreline for grazing, hunting, fishing, or
other purposes. It also rejected tribal requests for irrigation-development
and royalty rights on all subsurface minerals within the reservoir
area. The petition for a block of Garrison Dam power was
denied on the grounds that the granting of exclusive rights
to the Indians would violate provisions of the Rural Electrification
Act of 1936. The legislation provided for distribution
of funds on a per capita basis and its failure to bar the collection
of previous individual debts from this money proved to be a
serious handicap. Because the law required that it was
a final and complete settlement of all claims, the Three Affiliated
Tribes were unsuccessful in their twenty-year struggle to have
its deficiencies corrected by amendatory legislation. (Lawson,
p.61).
The lands that the Fort Berthold people were forced to give
up were not just some undesirable tracts assigned them by a
government more concerned with encouraging the westward movement
of the American pioneer than with the fate of the native inhabitants.
The river-valley environment of the Three Tribes had been their
home for perhaps more than a millennium, albeit not the particular
segment of the valley that lay above the Garrison Dam.
They had developed techniques of adjustment to this environment
over a time-span nearly inconceivable to white Americans.
Moreover, they had emotional and religious ties with it that
no American descended from Old World immigrants can fully comprehend.
(Meyer, p.234).
The blame for building the dam in the first place must fall
on Congress and on those segments of the public who brought
pressure on their elected representatives to have it built.
The Corps of Engineers must bear part of the blame, to the extent
that Colonel Pick imposed his plan rather than accept that of
W. Glenn Sloan when the two were presented to Congress.
For the way the Fort Berthold people were compensated
and their wishes in matters overridden by considerations of
expediency, the responsibility falls squarely on Congress, especially
the Senate for its high-handed revision of House Joint
Resolution 33. Nor are the Indian people themselves without
responsibility, as some of them recognized after the ordeal
was over. By rejecting the lieu lands offer, they denied
themselves the opportunity to build anew their cattle and farming
enterprises on a more nearly adequate land base than they were
left with when the waters of the Garrison reservoir backed up
over their former homes. And by their persistent demands
for per capita payments, they destroyed the possibility of long-
range economic benefits such as tribal development programs
might have provided. (Meyer, p.233).
The original communities before the flooding of the Garrison
Dam were Elbowoods, the central business community, which housed
the Indian Bureau, the Indian school, and the hospital; Red
Butte, Lucky Mound, Nishu, Beaver Creek, Independence, Shell
Creek, and Charging Eagle. The Mandan had settled in the
Red Butte and Charging Eagle area, the Arikara/Sahnish settled
in the Nishu and Beaver Creek area. Independence was settled
by the Mandan and Hidatsa, and Lucky Mound and Shell Creek by
the Hidatsa. Elbowoods was a combination of all three
tribes. The other communities had government, Indian day
and boarding schools, churches, communal playgrounds, parks,
cemeteries, and ferries. Although parts of these communities
remain, gone were the close traditional gatherings and community
living, as were natural resources, such as desirable land for
agriculture- timber that provided logs for homes, fence posts-shelter
for stock-coal and oil deposits-natural food sources-and wild
life habitats, for which most would or could never be compensated.
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Phone: 701-627-3503
Three Affiliated Tribes, 404 Frontage Road, New Town, North Dakota,
58763
Copyright ® 2004-2006 Mandan, Hidatsa & Arikara Nation.
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