SECRETARY'S REPORT 37 



in previous years by the North Dakota Society. During the progress 

 of the operations the remains of Fort Berthold I, an earlier fur-trading 

 post dating from 1845 to 1862, were located and uncovered. The orig- 

 inal post had been burned by the Sioux Indians and earth lodges 

 erected over the site. For that reason its location was long in doubt 

 and it was a fortunate circumstance that it was found because much 

 previously unknown information on the fur trade during the middle 

 nineteenth century was obtained. At the end of the fiscal year the joint 

 field party was occupied with the remains of Indian houses located 

 between the two trading posts. No further work will be possible there 

 after the 1954 field season because the Garrison Reservoir was to cover 

 it before the end of the summer. Heavy equipment was used with 

 marked success during the digging at the Garrison Reservoir. By 

 using a road grader and a bulldozer it was possible to define for the 

 first time the entire course of the palisade which originally enclosed the 

 oldest portion of the Indian village. As a result of the investigations, 

 a complete detailed map of the entire Indian village and the tAvo Fort 

 Bertholds could be made. 



The fourth party went to the Jamestown Reservoir area in east- 

 central North Dakota early in June. It devoted three weeks to a sur- 

 vey of the upper end of the basin, locating five new sites of which three 

 were tested. The remaining time was spent digging at the location of 

 a former earth-lodge village where excavations were started during 

 the 1952 field season. The work of the 1954 season determined the 

 limits of the village and added enough new infonnation to make pos- 

 sible a fairly accurate description of early eighteenth centuiy Mandan 

 culture in that part of the Plains. There were other sites in the area 

 w^hich merited further study but since flooding was already well under 

 way, no additional work could be done. The party had returned to the 

 headquarters at Lincoln by the end of the fiscal year. 



During July two of the temporary staff members assisted a joint 

 party from Kansas State College and the Laboratory of Anthropology 

 of the University of Nebraska in excavations at a site in the Tuttle 

 Creek Reservoir in northeastern Kansas. The site was partially dug 

 by a River Basin Surveys group in June 1953 but it was not possible 

 to complete the work that had been started before the party had to 

 return to the Lincoln headquarters. Since portions of an earth lodge 

 and other village features had been uncovered, it was essential to 

 finish those investigations and to accomplish that end the cooperative 

 effort was organized under the sponsorship of Kansas State College. 

 The information obtained helps to explain a little-known phase of the 

 history of that particular district. 



During the year the Laboratory at Lincoln processed 27,965 speci- 

 mens from 181 sites in 3 reservoir areas and 5 unassignable sites. A 

 total of 5,346 catalog numbers were assigned to the series of specimens. 



