The Hidatsas, or Nuxbaaga ("Original People" as they call themselves) of the main division of Hidatsas, trace their origins from the point of their emergence from what is now called Devil's Lake in eastern North Dakota.

The archaeological record indicates that the Hidatsas had established settlements on the Knife River at its confluence with the Missouri by the early 1600s. The early semisedentary culture of these farmers and bison hunters rested on the cultivation of corn, beans, squash, and tobacco. These commodities marked the Hidatsa villages as major indigenous trading centers of the Great Plains.

The first written accounts of Hidatsa life by nonnatives began with the geographer David Thompson's 1797 narratives, which were written after the Hidatsa "River Crows" split from the "Mountain Crows" of present-day Montana.