158 SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 



were visited and the writer was tremendously impressed by the great 

 size and good preservation of these ancient villages which are so abun- 

 dant throughout the Ankara and Mandan country of North and South 

 Dakota. Especially interesting was a large, double village above 

 Mobridge, S. Dak. This Ankara town, visited by Lewis and Clark 

 and many other early explorers, was abandoned by the Indians in 

 1832, nine years after the bombardment of the town by United States 

 troops under the command of Colonel Leavenworth. 



Excavation work at this site is planned during the coming year in 

 order to positively determine the archeological criteria that distinguish 

 the historic Arikara. When these have been determined it will be 

 easier to work out the apparently complex sequence of cultures in 

 the region. 



From Mobridge, the writer drove up to the little town of Nishu 

 on the Fort Berthold Reservation, N. Dak., in order to visit the living 

 Arikara Indians. Thanks to the assistance of Dr. M. R. Gilmore, of 

 the LJniversity of Michigan, pleasant contacts were soon made with 

 numerous good informants and plans were laid for future ethnologi- 

 cal research into the culture of this extremely important but compara- 

 tively little known Plains tribe. Since the Arikara, the most northerly 

 of all the Caddoan-speaking peoples, may well have been the carriers 

 of the prehistoric horticultural civilization into the northern Plains it 

 is essential that they be studied while old informants are still available. 



Looking back over the main results of the reconnaissance, it appears 

 that the prehistoric Pawnee culture may be traced through southern 

 and central Nebraska, up the North Platte River and over to the Mis- 

 souri River in South Dakota. It is lacking along the Missouri River in 

 Nebraska where another prehistoric horizon, now termed the Ne- 

 braska culture, takes its place. The connection between the prehistoric 

 Pawnee and an advanced prehistoric people, presumably the ancestral 

 .Arikara in South Dakota extends this early Caddoan horizon far to 

 the north at an earlier time than has generally been supposed. It is 

 already apparent that a combined archeological and ethnological ap- 

 proach to this problem will open new and unexpected vistas in Plains 

 prehistory. 



