262 BULLETIN 183, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Aside from these contrasts between the two local groups, it has 

 been shown that each of these series is remarkably similar to series 

 from the same culture in other regions, particularly- Ohio. Thus, 

 the Turner site Hopewellians and the Madisonville Middle Mississip- 

 pians, which seem to have the same cultural and chronological rela- 

 tionships as the Missouri series, show much the same morphological 

 peculiarities as have been summarized above. In addition, the Hope- 

 wellians as a whole are shown to compare rather favorably with the 

 Ftill earlier southern Shell mound population. Furthermore, the 

 Middle Mississippi series show similarities to the Roger's Island 

 .series, which represents a population of about the same period that 

 succeeded the Shell mound population in the Southeast. 



DISCUSSION 



The Missouri River, draining as it does a large part of the central 

 and northern Great Plains, must have constituted in the past one of 

 the main migration routes between these areas and the lower Missis- 

 Fippi Valley. The occurrence of many large archeological sites of 

 different cultures along its course (Fowke, 1910; Wedel, 1940; Strong, 

 1935, 1940) bears witness to its importance in this connection. In 

 spite of intensive archeological activity here during the past half 

 century, however, few skeletons with clear cultural associations have 

 been described according to modern anthropometric standards. In- 

 deed, with the possible exception of two of Hrdlicka's reports (1909, 

 1910), the present study is the first to meet these requirements. 

 Hrdlicka's reports are unsatisfactory only because the material that 

 he had available was very fragmentary or could not be subdivided 

 on cultural grounds. 



In addition to his reports on Fowke's and Gilder's material, 

 Hrdlicka has supplied three other brief accounts of skeletal remains 

 from the lower Missouri River area (1907, 1923, 1927). In the first 

 of these he describes the "Lansing skeleton" (Kansas) and the "Loess 

 Man" skeletons from the Gilder mound in Nebraska. The age of 

 these finds has been debated partly because they were not found in 

 association with cultural objects. Hrdlicka's second report (1923) 

 concerns the type of deformity exhibited by a skull dredged up near 

 Kansas City, Mo. (cf. Stewart, 1941). His last report is the Cata- 

 logue of Crania in the United States National Museum Collections 

 (1927), which adds to the foregoing, aside from historic material, 

 only two skulls. Of these it is Iniown merely that they are from 

 Council Bluffs, Iowa. 



Poynter (1915) has supplied the only other skeletal data from this 

 area; namely, three to five average measurements (with ranges) on 

 series of skulls from four sites near Omaha, Nebr. In this case no 

 cultural information is given and it is only through the subsequent 



