212 smithsonian miscfjxaneous collections vol. 93 



Surface Sites on the Dismal River, Hooker County 



According to Fletcher and La Flesche, the Omaha tribal hunting 

 grounds extended " on the west to the country of the Padoucas, 

 whose easterly village in the forks of the Dismal River, was known 

 to the Omaha." This was evidently Pa'-do'"-ka-no"-ca-gaxa-i-ke, 

 " where the Padouca built breastworks ".''* Now " Padouca " is the 

 Siouan name for the Comanche, a nomadic tribe belonging to the 

 Shoshonean linguistic stock, originally neighbors and kinsmen of 

 the Shoshone in Wyoming. They had already passed through Ne- 

 braska prior to 1804, for Lewis and Clark speak of the " Padouca 

 Nation " as having formerly occupied the region to the west of the 

 Pawnee and add, that although Bourgmont visited this tribe on the 

 Kansas River in 1724, at the time of which they write even this 

 southern portion of the old Padouca territory was held by the Kansa. 

 How long the Comanche lived in central Nebraska is unknown, but 

 the fact of their residence is testified to not only by the Omaha ref- 

 erences quoted but also by the fact that the north fork of the Platte 

 was known as late as 1805 as the Padouca fork."" In the course of 

 the last 15 years A. T. Hill has made many trips into this Dismal 

 River country, and although he has been unable to locate any village 

 site exactly in the forks, he reported three camp sites in the vicinity 

 marked by sparse but unique pottery remains. 



In the summer of 1931 the author, on an archeological reconnais- 

 sance for the Bureau of x\merican Ethnology,*" visited the Dismal 

 River forks on August 22-23 with A. T. Hill and members of the 

 University of Nebraska Archeological Survey. The river at this point 

 flows through the desolate sand hill region of west-central Nebraska 

 before it joins the Middle Fork of the Loup in Blaine County (see 

 map, fig. I, sites 23, 24, 25). The forks are in a rough, almost 

 uninhabited terrain of rolling hills which often attain a height of 

 100 feet or more. Although the underlying sand formation is largely 

 held down by the abundant and characteristic bunch grass, there are 

 occasional moving dunes and many blow-outs of varying size. Some 

 hackberry thickets in the hill pockets, an abundance of yucca, sand- 



" Twenty-seventh Ann. Rep. Bur. Amer. Ethnol., pp. 88, 91. The disputed 

 identification of the term " Padouca " has already been discussed in the first 

 section of the present paper. 



*^ Bur. Amer. Ethnol., Bull. 30, pt. i, p. 32J. The south fork was also given 

 this name up to 1819. See Grinnell, 1920, p. 249. 



** Strong, 1932 a. This summary report includes a very brief discussion of 

 the Dismal River sites and an illustration of the forks of that river, fig. 147, 

 P- 154- 



