It is a matter of satisfaction here that during 1947 the relations of the Missouri River Basin Study with other agencies have remained, on the whole, pleasant. By late 1947, reconnaissance parties of the River Basin Surveys had visited and surveyed part or all of the 44 Bureau.
FIELD WORK AND EXPLORATIONS KANSAS AND COLORADO
Prairie Dog Creek enters the Republican less than 35 miles to the northeast, within HarlanCounty Reservoir, which is now under construction by the Corps of Engineers. A few kilometers east of the proposed Norton Reservoir is an original quarry from which the Indians obtained limestone for use in pipe making.
NEBRASKA
Pioneer Reservoir.—Located on the Arikaree River in Cheyenne County, Kans., this will affect the southwest extension across the state line to YumaCounty, Colo, Asinglesite was found here, at the west end of the proposed dam shaft.
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Rock Creek Reservoir.—This locality is in south central Dundy County, on Rock Creek, a small tributary of the North (Arikaree) Forkof the Republican, Itisquitesmall, and but single site. The headwaters of the Loup system are in the Sandhills region, but the majority of the river valleys flow through a fertile section of loess.
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At least two of the Dismal River sites are quite extensive, and exhibit certain areas that will undoubtedly repay excavation. Rockville Reservoir.—This is on the Middle Loup in southeastern Sherman County, between Rockville and LoupCity, and a few miles above the confluence of the Middle and South Loup.
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The bilobed stone celts were interesting, as well as the usual chipped forms. They excavated an area of debris about 250 feet northeast of House I, from which a good series of Upper Republican pottery, bone, and stone specimens were taken. All can be attributed to the Upper Republican horizon; site-to-site variation may be due to temporal or group differences, or may simply represent inadequate sampling.
NO. 2 MISSOURI VALLEY DEVFXOPMENT PROGRAM WEDEL I7 making groups are manifested, and there is good evidence that much
SOUTH DAKOTA
Prior to the survey summarized herein, the University of South Dakota Museum provided the River Basin Surveys with a site list of 27 known sites between Fort Randall and Fort Thompson. However, there does not appear to be one extant report of archaeological investigations here, although the University of South Dakota Museum conducted important excavations in 1941 at Scalp Creek and at Ellis Creek, on the west bank of the river. This lack of well-verified field data is more remarkable in view of the strategic location of the district on the natural line of Indian travel between the Arikara-Mandan habitat on the upper side.
They range in time from those probably or definitely attributable to the recent Yankton Dakota to others, much more numerous, from the prehistoric period - a time span of perhaps 10 centuries or more. As with reconnaissance work in general, where little more than surface inspection and collection is done, here at Fort Randall the artifacts discovered during the operations of 1947 are quite limited. Of particular note are the results of trial excavations in two mounds (39CH4) located a short distance below Wheeler Bridge on the left bank of the Missouri.
20 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL, III occurrence of burial mounds, found in increasing numbers farther
2 MISSOURI VALLEY DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM — WEDEL 21of the fungi yielded quantities of reddish-brown decayed wood and of the fungi produced quantities of reddish-brown rotten wood and wood dust, some of which was identified by its characteristic odor as juniper. In principle, the house type indicated is not much different from the type used by the Pawnee, Arikara, and other early historic corn-growing, earth-dwelling Indians of the eastern Great Plains, although it differs in certain particulars. No traces of contact between Indians and white men were found at any of the locations tested.
NORTH DAKOTA
In all parts of the area seen, however, it is believed that further work is needed; and it is expected that more intensive investigation, including access to reserve areas, will add many other sites to the current list. Eleven of the business areas consist of grouped circles of glacial rock, 10 to 20 feet in diameter, and usually located on bluffs and uplands above the future water table. 2 MISSOURI VALLEY DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM —V^EDEL 23and glass suggests new occupation, but there is a small asso- and glass suggests new occupation, but there is little associated cultural material that no assignment of the sites is known.
It is, of course, not to be expected that a relatively rapid surface survey over several hundred miles of stream bank will enable definite conclusions as to relationships and significance of the material inventoried and recorded. The soil covering many of the sites indicates extensive wind action, perhaps correlated with reduced rainfall or prolonged drought conditions. Some are probably late and decadent; others may represent the western extensions of the vigorous village community economy that flourished further downstream during the eighteenth century and perhaps earlier.
NO. 2 MISSOURI VALLEY DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM VVEDEL 25 approximately 20 miles long, will inundate land in Barnes and Griggs
One such group is the Cheyenne, historically a hunter-gatherer tribe, but as late as 1770a settled semi-horticultural pottery-making people living in earth lodge villages on the Sheyenne River. A fortified city site attributed to this tribe was excavated in 1938 near Lisbon, N.Dak., by a ColumbiaUniversity-North Dakota Historical Society expedition. Their archaeological antecedents are unknown; none have been correlated with certainty to any of the several known archaeological complexes so far recognized in Minnesota and adjacent regions.
One would logically expect that a geographically intermediate region such as the Baldhill locale, a convenient stopping point for tribes on the move, some of the cultural adaptations made in the change from eastern woodland to a western plain -habitat can show. Little in the way of field research has been contributed during the last 40 years to the question of age, origin and significance of the mountains, and their relation, if any, to the village sites of the region.
WYOMING AND MONTANA
With a prehistory that apparently stretches back to the time when now-extinct mammals roamed the area, the problem of determining the relationships of the pre-horse bison hunters with those of post-Columbian times promises to be tumultuous and far from straightforward. to be. The presence of an occasional glass-beaded iron fragment suggests that these and stone outcrops were used as shelters by tribes of the historic period, as they were probably by others long before. Six tipi-ring sites were found; atoms, stone groups in the middle of the rings indicate the former fireplaces.
Analysis of the cave material is now underway, and the actual significance of the site awaits a full and definitive statement from laboratory findings and field data. Below these, but in the upper levels, were fragments of steatite vessels, pieces of rabbit cloth, fiber cord, baskets, points with small side and bottom notches, and a few pieces of obsidian. It is too early to state the results of these surveys and the likelihood of establishing a tree-ring chronology for this site.
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The flat central portion of the basin floor, formerly a lake, will be used to store water piped through a 20-mile pipeline from the Shoshoni Reservoir. Some are located on the shoreline of the old lake, others on nearby mountains and slopes, still others among rock outcrops and along stream channels outside the basin. There is considerable variation in artifact types, and the original occupation of the Oregon Basin region undoubtedly dates back far into the past.
The site of the dam is in Liberty County, 12 miles south of the Tiber and about 45 miles above the confluence of the Marias with the Missouri. Cottonwood and willow are in the bottom along the banks of the stream; sage covers some apartments and terraces; grass is characteristic of most of the area. Many of the hearths are partially buried, and one is tempted to wonder whether, given the right combination of topographical and climatic factors, these sites would not resemble buried ones in most details.
PALEONTOLOGY
On May 13, an exploration of the Republican Smoky Hilland Basin began in southwestern Nebraska, northern Kansas, and northeastern Colorado. On the basis of the material seen and available exposures, more extensive investigations were recommended for the Beaver City, Bonny, Cedar Bluff, Enders, Harlan County, Medicine Creek and Red WillowNos. For most others, suitable geological exposures were lacking, or the formations involved are much more exposed outside the proposed reserve areas.
Along the way, he examined paleontological collections at the ZeitnerMuseum, Mission, S.Dak., and made preHminary inspections of the proposed Philip and Rocky Ford Reservoir areas, respectively, in the basin area. 2 MISSOURI VALLEY DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM WEDEL 39work, with an emphasis of course on the more promising and urgent.
NO. 2 MISSOURI VALLEY DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM WEDEL 39 work, with emphasis naturally on the more promising and urgent
FIELD WORK BY COOPERATING AGENCIES
Ill cases were offered direct assistance in the field to members and local chapters of the Missouri Archaeological Society; the latter in turn reported the results of their field investigations to the university. As requested, this data was posted to remove the river basin surveys to assist in the preparation of reports and recommendations to the National Park Service and the construction agency. Of the several Corps of Engineers projects proposed for the Missouri River watershed in Missouri, only Pommede Terre Reservoir was investigated in 1947.
Ajointsurvey by the University of Missouri and the Ozarks Chapter, Missouri Archaeological Society, revealed the location of 25 sites of archaeological interest. In addition to Pomme deTerre, surveys were conducted in 1947 at Joanna Reservoir on the Salt River in northeastern Missouri. As elsewhere in the basin, it is also evident in the Missouri that a long series in time and a series of residues from several different periods will be directly affected by the water control program.
NO. 2 MISSOURI VALLEY DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM — WEDEL 4I and for paleontological work with the University of Nebraska State
Additional light promises paleontological problems of the Pliocene-Pleistocene transitional period, when detailed analysis of the finds will be made here. Limited manpower combined with severe overcrowding prevented more than a light sampling of the country. Here, in a layer reaching a thickness of 2 to 3 meters more, traces of former occupation were found by a group of bison-hunting, semi-dentist people whose pottery tradition was similar to that of the Mandan and Hidatsa.
Fallen slabs in front of the shelter, discarded by the cultural debris, suggest that additional data may have been buried under the collapsed front roof of a once deeper shelter. On the ground, above the level of the future reservoir, a chalcedony quarry was found; scattered scratches and a few sherd scratches testify to Indian use of the material. Pottery was not abundant at the site, but a fair sample came from several debris pits and the fill of the excavated structure.
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CONCLUSIONS
Pottery occurs here and there sparingly — as at Glendo and Boysen, in Wyoming; and perhaps somewhat more abundant along the valley of the Yellowstone in Montana. Campsites marked by piles of fire-cracked rock and rubbish, but without felling or other evidence of structures, are also common, especially in the western parts of the area. At the other end of the time scale are sites, some of them beneath halluvial or eolian deposits, such as in the Tiber Reservoir area on the Marias River, Montana, where glass beads and metal occur in association with well-defined hearth and occupation strata.
In the eastern portion of the Missouri River basin, from North Dakota through South Dakota and Nebraska to northern Kansas, the River Basin Surveys are largely, but not exclusively, concerned with the remains of semisedentary, pottery people. Dak., the work of the River Basin Surveys has thrown light on the problem of what we may call the northwestern periphery of the Upper Missouri culture area. Other sites display pottery ware, house types, and other elements strongly reminiscent of the protohistoric Lower Loup complex in east-central Nebraska, suggesting that the Arikaramay moved northward.
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- Bundle Burial on Floor of Grave Pit
- Excavated Floor of Semisubterranean Earth Lodge, possibly ARIKARA
- TESTING OCCUPATIONAL STRATUM BENEATH 5 FEET OF OVERBURDEN
- STONE-HEARTH CAMP SITE AMONG THE DUNES ON TUFF CREEK
- Petroglyphs of Unknown age
- EXCAVATION OF BiRDSHEAD CAVE
- TiPi Rings on Bluffs Overlooking the Marias River
- shell-bead-entwined skeleton of adolescent from Prehistoric Burial Pit
In retrospect, it hardly needs repeating that the surveys thus far have gathered a great deal of useful archaeological and human ecological information for many parts of the Missouri River Basin that will be directly affected by the water control program. The steps by which a highly specialized corn-bean-pumpkin economy, adapted to the rather harsh environment of the upper Missouri, developed from the original agricultural economies to the south and east remain to be worked out. There are suggestions that the prehistoric farmers of the area may have been plagued by drought, floods and other vagaries of nature from time to time, perhaps even displaced.
The campsites, towns, villages and cemeteries of the region represent the documents from which this story must be compiled. To varying degrees and with local qualifications, the above evaluation applies to all archaeological remains subject to damage or destruction by the Federal Water Management Program in the Missouri River Basin. The flat summit is strewn with flints, sherds, and other evidences of Indian occupation; Missouri River on the left.