[8] In subsequent years, contact between the Arikara and White Americans increased as a result of the growing activity of corporations engaged in the international fur trade.

The Arikara lived in permanent settlements for most of the year where they farmed, fished and hunted buffalo on the surrounding plains.

Not wishing to limit his operations by having to maintain a permanent base, Ashley instead promised the Arikara that he would have the goods they asked for shipped to them directly from St. Louis.

[13] On 2 June 1823,[14] Arikara warriors assaulted trappers working for Ashley's Rocky Mountain Fur Company on the Missouri River, killing about 15 people.

The United States responded with a combined force of 230 soldiers of the 6th Infantry, 750 Sioux allies, and 50 trappers and other company employees[15] under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Henry Leavenworth,[5] Fort Atkinson, present-day Nebraska: "The forces thus organized, including regular troops, mountaineers, voyageurs and Indians, were styled the Missouri Legion.

[17] The Indian force received promises of Arikara horses and spoils,[18] and with the enemy's villages fallen new ranges would open for the Sioux.

[23] The hostility between the United States and the Arikara ended officially on 18 July 1825, when the two opponents signed a peace treaty.

In 1851, the western Sioux claimed the 1823 battleground as Lakota territory and later received formal treaty recognition on the former Arikara land.

Archaeological work at the location of the Arikara villages (Leavenworth site (39CO9)) in 1932 gave a clue to the futile shelling of the earth lodges more than 100 years earlier.

[27] A fictionalized representation of the 1823 attack by the Arikara on the Rocky Mountain Fur Company appears in the 2015 film The Revenant from the perspective of trapper Hugh Glass.

9 in, Roger L. Nihols (ed), The American Indian: Past and Present, University of Oklahoma Press, 2014 ISBN 0806186143.