RIVER BASIN SURVEYS — F. H. H. ROBERTS 373 



taining the bones had been covered with logs. An interesting feature 

 in connection with the leg and arm bones of one of the bundle burials 

 was the presence of perforations near one end. Such treatment of 

 bones had not previously been reported from the upper Missouri and 

 Great Plains region. Not all the individuals represented by the 

 bones from the mounds had been buried in the pits ; some presumably 

 had been placed there later. The village where the people who built 

 the burial mounds lived was not located (Cooper, 1949, pp. 309-310). 



The University of North Dakota working in cooperation with the 

 North Dakota State Historical Society excavated two burial mounds 

 on the east bluff overlooking the left bank of the Sheyenne River 

 in the Baldhill Reservoir area in North Dakota. Both mounds were 

 roughly circular in outline and approximately 100 feet in diameter. 

 They sloped gradually to a truncated conical shape. They were 

 built almost entirely of top soil and rose to a height of 6 to 7 feet. 

 Both had had a central rectangular-shaped pit roofed with oak logs 

 and containing masses of disarticulated human bones. This feature 

 was similar to the Wheeler Bridge mounds. In addition, in one of 

 them there was a second and shallower grave pit adjacent to the main 

 chamber. The second had not been covered with timbers. It con- 

 tained four more or less articulated and well-preserved adult skele- 

 tons and fragments from at least two infant skeletons. The four in- 

 dividuals apparently were buried simultaneously and the infants may 

 also have been a part of the same interment. In the other mound were 

 the remains of a burial that probably was placed there long after 

 the mound had been built. The latter represented a different culture 

 group (Hewes, 1949). 



Artifacts were not numerous in either of the two mounds, and they 

 are of little help in determining the culture represented. One or two 

 interesting items were found, hovrever. One of them was a fragment 

 from the alveolar portion of a himian mandible which was ground 

 flat at the level of the midpoint of the tooth roots. Several teeth 

 from which the roots had been ground were found nearby. At a lower 

 depth a complete upper dental arch and palate, made from a human 

 maxilla, carefully cut and ground down, was recovered. The object 

 closely resembles an artificial upper plate. What the purpose of 

 such altered human jawbones may have been has not been determined, 

 but they evidently served some specific function or the time and 

 trouble necessary to make them would not have been spent. It is 

 difficult to believe that the "upper" could have been intended as a 

 denture, but such may have been the case. Some toothless Indian 

 in desperation might have tried to do what European dentists of the 

 period found a difficult task. Many of the bones from the burial 

 pits were covered with red ocher, which probably was applied at the 

 time they were placed there and is a good indication that secondary 



