52 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 195 6 



earth lodges were uncovered and the encircling moat and remnants 

 of the palisade were studied, but it was not until the big trench was 

 cut that the site was determined to represent a single occupation. The 

 trench bisected the depressions of four circular lodges and exposed 

 some 20 refuse-filled cache pits which were cleaned out by hand. An 

 excellent series of specimens, including a large pottery vessel, was 

 recovered while the operations were under way. 



The second field party in the Oahe Reservoir area in the 1955 field 

 season was a Smithsonian Institution group directed by Richard P. 

 Wheeler. This party conducted excavations from July 20 to Novem- 

 ber 5 at the Leavitt site (39ST215) and at the Breeden site (39ST16), 

 formerly known as the Mathison site. The Leavitt site proved in 

 part to represent an early historic Indian occupation related directly 

 to the occupation at the Philip Ranch site, excavated in 1951 and 

 reported in Bulletin 158 of the Bureau of American Ethnology, and 

 in part to an older late prehistoric period. The site produced materials 

 that assist greatly in the interpretation of both phases in the Oahe area. 

 Especially important was the recovery of 15 human burials. One of 

 them was particularly interesting because the skeleton was that of a 

 large male with a lead musket ball embedded in the dorsal surface of 

 the right pelvic bone. The individual had been shot in the back, 

 possibly while running away from an assailant. There was nothing 

 to indicate immediate death, but the man had not lived long because 

 the bone surrounding the ball had not started to heal. Iron and brass 

 bracelets, as well as glass beads, were found in several of the graves. 

 At the Breeden site there was evidence for at least three occupations. 

 The earliest was older than the first one at the Leavitt site and pro- 

 duced four deeply buried rectangular house remains indicative of 

 the Monroe Focus which is thought to date at approximately 

 A. D. 1200-1300. The later occupations have not been sufficiently 

 identified to correlate definitely with other known cultures but they 

 did have circular house structures. One has been attributed tentatively 

 to the La Roche Focus, which is estimated by some to be A. D. 1600- 

 1700, and the other to the historic Teton Dakota of about 1825 to 1875. 



The third Smithsonian Institution party in the Oahe area in the 

 1955 season was directed by Dr. Waldo R. Wedel, assisted by George 

 Metcalf. Working from July 18 to August 31, that party continued 

 investigations at the Cheyenne River site (39ST1) which were begun 

 by Dr. Wedel in 1951 for the River Basin Surveys. The site, a multi- 

 component one, is located near the juncture of the Cheyenne River 

 with the Missouri. Excavation of a large rectangular pit house, be- 

 gun in 1951 and identified with the earliest of three occupations, was 

 completed in 1955, and a 70-foot section of the stockade line forming 

 part of the defensive works for the last (third) occupation was un- 



