🇺🇸 WEEKLY AMERICAN HERITAGE: Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site

(Explore the history and landscape of the United States with us as we approach the 250th anniversary of American Independence. Get out your homeschool atlas and almanac and follow along!)

North Dakota is our homeschool state-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today with your students learning about one of North Dakota’s most important historical places: Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site, which preserves several of the historic Indian villages of the Northern Plains region.

“The Earthlodge people of the Northern Plains hunted bison and other game, but were in essence farmers living in villages along the Missouri and its tributaries. The site was a major Native American trade center for hundreds of years prior to becoming an important market place for fur traders after 1750.”

Imagine a busy earthlodge village full of life and excitement: women sit on platforms and sing to their gardens, girls play with homemade leather dolls, boys practice with their first bows and arrows, old men smoke tobacco and laugh at each other’s stories.

You see faces from across North America and even the world. You hear Hidatsa and Mandan and maybe even Lakota, English, French, or German. You smell corn boiling in a clay pot, sage smoke filling the air, and sweet wildflowers blowing in from the prairie.

Or perhaps you hear the howling winds of a winter blizzard. Thick wood smoke stings your eyes and cold air nips at your nose but the thick buffalo robe around your shoulders keeps you warm. Strange visitors enter the earthlodge bringing gifts of tobacco and in return ask for information on the land to the west.

In 1974, the United States Congress established a national historic site at a place that was once just like this. Knife River Indian Villages NHS preserves and interprets an area rich with history and culture. (nps.gov)

You can find a wealth of additional information about the Site’s history, landscape, location(s), and visitor facilities on the webpage for Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site from the National Park Service, and also on the Site’s page on Wikipedia.

Explore America’s National Parks, National Historical Parks, National Historic Sites, National Monuments, and more via Wikipedia and via the U.S. National Park Service’s website today.

What historical American treasures have you and your students explored in your homeschool this Leo Term? 🇺🇸

❡ The great globe itself: This is one of our regular Homeschool Geography posts featuring important natural and historical sites in the United States. Print your own copy of our River Houses American Heritage Calendar and follow along with us, and add your name to our weekly mailing list to get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🌎

❡ We set to-day a votive stone: If you want a wonderful long-term history and geography project for your homeschool, explore the Historical Marker Database online (hmdb.org) and make a plan to find all the markers that are listed in your local area. Add any new ones you know of that are missing, and add new photos or descriptions for the ones already included. Your students will gain a better appreciation for your local community and will learn a wealth of new information about history and geography. 🏛

❡ Print this little lesson: Down at the bottom of this post you’ll find a special “Print” button that will let you create a neat and easy-to-read copy of this little lesson, and it will even let you edit and delete sections you don’t want or need (such as individual images or footnotes). Give it a try today! 🖨

❡ Books in the running brooks: You can always turn to your River Houses atlas and almanac for more information about any of our homeschool states-of-the-week. The almanac has detailed profiles of all the U.S. states and territories, and the endpapers of the atlas are indexes that will show you where all of the individual national and regional maps may be found. 📚

❡ Homeschool calendars: We have a whole collection of free, printable, educational homeschool calendars and planners available on our main River Houses calendar page. They will help you create a light and easy structure for your homeschool year. Give them a try today! 🗓

❡ Support our work: If you enjoy our educational materials, please support us by starting your regular Amazon shopping from our very own homeschool teaching supplies page. When you click through from our page, any purchase you make earns us a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for helping us to keep going and growing! 🛒

❡ Join us! The aim of the River Houses project is to create a network of friendly local homeschool support groups — local chapters that we call “Houses.” Our first at-large chapter, Headwaters House, is now forming and is open to homeschoolers everywhere. Find out how to become one of our founding members on the Headwaters House membership page. 🏡