The great dam that stilled the Missouri and created Lake Sakakawea brought power and flood control to the region, but it exacted a terrible price from the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara — the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation. The rising reservoir drowned the fertile bottomlands where the community had farmed and lived for generations, scattering families to the higher, drier ground.

The Waters That Rose Over Home

The bottoms had been the heart of the reservation — its best farmland, its timber, its gathering places, its road network all lay along the river. The reservoir cut the reservation into separated segments and forced a wholesale relocation, and the compensation offered was widely judged far too small for what was lost.

From the almanac's reckoning:

• The Garrison Dam flooded the bottomlands of the Fort Berthold Reservation.
• The reservoir drowned the community's best farmland and gathering places.
• The Three Affiliated Tribes are the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara.

The community endured, rebuilt on the uplands, and later saw the oil boom bring both wealth and new strains to Fort Berthold. But the memory of the flooded bottoms remains a defining grief. The almanac records the drowning of the bottomlands as one of the hardest chapters in the region's history.