178 BULLETIN 183, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



In the first place, it appears that mounds containing stone-vv^alled 

 or ''dry-masonry" burial chambers are most numerous along the Mis- 

 souri River from, approximately, the Nebraska-Kansas State line 

 downstream to the Gasconade River in Gasconade County, Mo. — a 

 total spread, by river, of just over 400 miles. Extended surveys in 

 eastern Nebraska (see esp. Strong, 1935, pp. 175-211; and Hill and 

 Cooper, 1938) have brought no examples to light; southwestern Iowa 

 and extreme northwestern Missouri have yet to be heard from. On 

 present information it may be suggested that the type does not occur 

 in the Missouri Valley north of the fortieth parallel. Convincing 

 evidence for the lower 100 miles of the Missouri, from the Gasconade 

 to the Mississippi, has not yet been advanced. Along the Mississippi 

 and on its tributaries, vault mounds have been reported in lesser num- 

 bers, chiefly within a radius of about 35 miles from the mouth of 

 Salt River in Pike County, Mo. Scattering occurrences elsewhere 

 include mounds on the lower Rock River and in Jo Daviess County, 

 111., in Crawford County, Wis., and perhaps in Allamakee and Henry 

 Counties, Iowa. If we except these last mounds, all vaults of which 

 I have found record, on the Mississippi as well as on the Missouri, lie 

 south of the fortieth parallel, which is, in other words, the Kansas- 

 Nebraska line extended. 



In the Missouri Valley, with which we shall hereafter be primarily 

 concerned, the great majority of reported vault mounds occur on the 

 north, or left, bank; they are rarely found more than a few miles 

 from the Missouri itself. "Wliether this has a physiographic or geo- 

 logic basis, as for example access to better building stone, or is due 

 to other factors such as inadequate sampling, I am not able to say. 

 It is of interest to note, further, that nearly all the known occurrences 

 south of the fortieth parallel, when plotted on a map (fig. 20), fall 

 into one or another of three regional subareas. Thus, three circles of 

 about 40 miles radius each, with their respective centers at Kansas 

 City, at the mouth of Osage River, and at the mouth of Salt River, 

 would include all save a few isolated mounds in Doniphan County, 

 Kans., and the Warrensburg group in Johnson County, Mo. Whether 

 future work will add other focal areas in the north, on lower Rock 

 River, 111., or at the jimcture of the Wisconsin and Mississippi Rivers 

 is problematical. For that matter it is not certain that the three sub- 

 areas set forth above will prove valid as field studies progress. How- 

 ever, since the mounds included in each exhibit certain mutual simi- 

 larities as contrasted to the structures in other subareas, it seems 

 possible that these groupings will ultimately be shown to have more 

 than mere geographic significance. 



In the Kansas City subarea, of which Platte and Clay Counties, 

 Missouri, are best known, both stone vaults and earth mounds occur. 

 The former have been reported and described only from sites north of 



