RIVER BASIN SALVAGE PROGRAM — ROBERTS 525 



paleontological sites located within such areas and would recommend 

 such surveys and other work in the field as might be indicated. In 

 addition, the National Park Service Avas to notify the respective 

 agencies planning or constructing dams as to the nature and extent 

 of the materials that would be lost if extensive investigations and 

 excavations were not undertaken in advance of the flooding of the 

 reservoirs. The agreement between the two agencies was signed in 

 October 1945, and the Inter- Agency Archeological and Paleontological 

 Salvage Program became an established fact. 



OPERATIONS OF THE PROGRAM 



The Smithsonian Institution, in order to fulfill its part of the 

 Memorandmn of Understanding, shortly thereafter organized the 

 River Basin Surveys as a unit of the Bureau of American Ethnology. 

 The Eiver Basin Surveys was then furnished with lists of Corps of 

 Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation, and other projects by the National 

 Park Service. From those lists it was apparent that such rapid prog- 

 ress was being made in the construction of dams that vital information 

 which in normal times would be recovered through the work of several 

 generations of archeologists would need to be salvaged within a few 

 short years. Information available in published reports and obtained 

 through correspondence with local societies, interested laymen, col- 

 leges, universities, and museums indicated which were the most crit- 

 ical places and where initial surveys should be started. It was clear 

 that in many regions the operations would be a race against time. 



The Missouri Basin was chosen as the first scene of operations 

 because of its size, the fact that 105 projects had already been author- 

 ized and in many cases were under construction, since very little was 

 known about its broader manifestations, and because of its impor- 

 tance to American archeology in general. Justifications for the work 

 in the Missouri Basin were presented to the Bureau of Reclamation 

 by officials of the National Park Service, and a preliminary allotment 

 of funds to start the investigations was transferred from the Bureau, 

 through the National Park Service, to the Smithsonian Institution 

 in May 1946. The funds were to cover surveys in both Corps of 

 Engineers and Bureau of Reclamation projects. In September of 

 that same year an allotment for the work in other areas was trans- 

 ferred by the Corps of Engineers through the National Park Service. 

 The latter, however, was for use only in Corps of Engineers projects 

 outside the Missouri Basin. In the following March the Bureau of 

 Reclamation transferred money to be used for surveys at Bureau 

 projects in the Columbia-Snake Basin. Since that time all the funds 

 for salvage work have been carried in the budget of the Department 

 of the Interior in the items for the Bureau of Reclamation and the 



