ARCHEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS IN MISSOURI 191 



On the other hand is the Steed-Kisker site and, inferentially, the 

 Shepherd, Avondale, and other similar earth burial mounds. Since 

 all these remains occur under essentially identical conditions so far 

 as these concern natural environment, such as climate, topography, 

 fauna, and flora, the dissimilarities in cultural expression cannot 

 be explained by ecological factors. There is, for example, no ob- 

 vious environmental reason why one group should temper its pottery 

 with shell, the other with crushed stone ; or why one should construct 

 stone burial chambers whereas the other buried on natural hilltops 

 or in dirt mounds; or why one should use earthlodges, the other 

 not. In these, as in other details, the two groups differed sharply, 

 though both were primarily horticultural, semisedentary, and pos- 

 sessed a number of parallel or closely similar traits. The observed 

 differences are most readily explained as a result of the different 

 cultural antecedents from which each group sprang. It is to a con- 

 sideration of these antecedents, as revealed by a comparison of the 

 western Missouri materials with related remains to the east and to 

 the west, that we proceed next. 



CULTURAL RELATIONSHIPS 



It is now generally recognized that the Missouri Valley and Great 

 Plains, prior to the European conquest, were inhabited by a number of 

 native peoples each of which possessed a more or less distinctive 

 material culture inventory. In the long view, it is undoubtedly true 

 that hunting-gathering economies dominated the region, or at any 

 rate its western portions, during the greater part of its long cultural 

 history, as they did during the late historic period. But most of the 

 so-called typical tribes — the seminomadic bison-hunting Dakota, 

 Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, Kiowa, and Plains Apache — were 

 clearly late arrivals. Along the eastern margin of the Plains were 

 semisedentary agi'arian Caddoan and Siouan tribes typifying a mode 

 of life that was older in the area than any of the tribes named. As 

 Strong (1935) first pointed out, the semisedentary Pawnee type of 

 life "most clearly represents the norm of aboriginal culture in the 

 central Great Plains prior to Caucasian interference." That is to say, 

 the migratory bison hunters were preceded in the plains of Nebraska 

 and Kansas by less mobile groups who lived in fixed earthlodge villages, 

 tilled gardens of maize and beans, manufactured pottery, and possessed 

 a rather wide variety of other arts and industries not readily reconciled 

 with nomadic habits. 



The remains of these settled farming communities, designated by 

 archeologists as the Upper Republican culture (or aspect) and thought 

 to be in part ancestral to the Pawnee and other historic village tribes, 

 have been identified westward through Nebraska and northern Kansas 



