SECRETARY'S REPORT 75 



logical investigations with tlie legendary story which is a part of 

 the myths of the Indians in that district. 



At the Jamestown Eeservoir on the James "River in eastern North 

 Dakota one field party continued excavations started toward the close 

 of the previous year. By the end of the season in September it had 

 dug in 5 of the 28 known archeological sites which will be flooded by 

 that reservoir. Two of the sites were burial mounds attributable to 

 the Woodland culture, one was a campsite consisting of a series of 

 boulder-lined depressions strung along the crest of a low bluff, one 

 was a burial pit exposed by a power shovel in the borrow area directly 

 west of the dam, and the other comprised the remains of an Indian 

 village. The floors of four circular houses and a small sweat lodge 

 were uncovered at the latter location. The site covers more than 2 

 acres and only about 10 percent of it was investigated. A few metal 

 objects and the potsherds found there suggest that the village had 

 Mandan affiliations or at least trade relations with that group and 

 that it was occupied during the first half of the eighteenth century. 



In the Oahe Eeservoir Basin in South Dakota two parties continued 

 investigations started toward the end of the preceding fiscal year. 

 Excavations were carried on in 4 of the known 318 sites in the basin. 

 At the Black Widow site (39ST3), the location of an extensive earth- 

 lodge village of many scattered houses, about 30 miles upstream from 

 the dam on the west side of the Missouri, evidence of two occupations 

 was found. One period was prior to contact with the whites and 

 the other was during the eighteenth century. During July, August, 

 and September numerous cache pits, a refuse mound, and extensive 

 areas of village surface were dug and four house floors were cleared. 

 Three of the houses belonged to the early period, while the other was 

 of the later occupation. The fourth house was superimposed upon 

 cache pits of the early occupation. All four houses were circular in 

 outline but there were conspicuous architectural differences between 

 the three older examples and the one late form. ISIaterials from the 

 site suggest that the older level had its closest affiliations with the 

 Myers site (39ST10), where the South Dakota Archeological Com- 

 mission did some excavating in 1949, and with one of the three com- 

 ponents in the Cheyenne Kiver site (39ST1), which was partially 

 excavated by a Missouri Basin Project party in the summer of 1951. 

 The later period of occupation appears to be Arikara, although his- 

 toric documentation for the site seemingly is not known. The same 

 party exhumed a single flexed burial which was about to be destroyed 

 by erosion at a multicomponent site (39ST23) not far from the Black 

 Widow site. Part of the skeleton was missing and there were no 

 mortuary offerings accompanying it. 



The second excavating party concentrated its efforts in the imme- 

 diate vicinity of the dam. It completed excavations started at the 



