26 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. Ill 



occur on a single site under conditions suggesting their use by a 

 single group, may mean that there was in this area a relatively late 

 fusion of cultural practices in vogue among several peoples at an 

 earlier date. 



Baldhill Reservoir area, and in fact the Sheyenne Valley in general, 

 is one of considerable archeological promise. During the historic 

 period, Indian groups seem to have traveled from east to west across 

 the region. A number of historically important northern plains tribes 

 are thought to have entered the Great Plains from central Minnesota 

 and eastern North Dakota. One such group is the Cheyenne, his- 

 torically a hunter tribe, but as recently as 1770 a settled semihorti- 

 cultural pottery-making people living in earth-lodge villages on the 

 Sheyenne River. A fortified town site attributed to this tribe was 

 excavated in 1938 near Lisbon, N. Dak., by a Columbia University- 

 North Dakota Historical Society expedition. Historical documents 

 or tribal traditions link with the Minnesota woodlands such other 

 tribes as the Siouan-speaking Hidatsa, Teton Dakota, and Assiniboin. 

 Their archeological antecedents are unknown ; none have been cer- 

 tainly correlated with any of the several known archeological com- 

 plexes so far recognized in Minnesota and adjacent regions. The 

 valleys of the Sheyenne, Big Sioux, and James Rivers, lying athwart 

 any route westward from Minnesota, should show traces of the 

 passage of migrating groups. One would logically expect that a 

 geographically intermediate region such as the Baldhill locale, a con- 

 venient stopping point for tribes on the move, might show some of 

 the cultural readjustments made in the change from an eastern wood- 

 land to a western plains habitat. 



The historic tribal movements of the area, and their archeological 

 implications, are but one of several problems to be expected at Bald- 

 hill. Another is the matter of the earth mounds with which the region 

 abounds. Such remains occur in great numbers in northern Iowa 

 and Minnesota. Westward, they are found into the Dakotas in 

 diminishing numbers, reaching the Missouri sparingly in southern 

 South Dakota and elsewhere, but not in general occurring beyond 

 the Coteau du Missouri. So far as known, most of these appear to 

 be burial mounds, often with grave goods. Little in the way of field 

 research has been contributed during the last 40 years toward the 

 matter of age, origin, and meaning of the mounds, and their connec- 

 tion, if any, with the village sites of the region. It seems improbable 

 that the mounds are all assignable to a single people or period; they 

 may well have been constructed over a considerable interval of time, 

 although it is true that none of those so far explored have given evi- 



