52 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. Ill 



and upper Republican peoples, and also to contribute materially to 

 clarification of the problem of interrelationships of these two archeo- 

 logical horizons. No evidence of pre-Columbian puebloan contacts 

 with Central Plains peoples has been found. 



In retrospect, it is scarcely necessary to reiterate that the surveys 

 to date have gathered in a great quantity of useful archeological and 

 human ecological information for many sections of the Missouri 

 River Basin that will be directly affected by the water-control pro- 

 gram. By comparison with the returns that might be realized through 

 detailed excavations following up the leads now at hand, the salvage 

 task has just begun. It has barely touched some of the potentially 

 richest sections of the Missouri Valley. As Cooper has aptly ob- 

 served in his preliminary appraisal of the archeology of Fort Randall 

 Reservoir : 



Anthropologists have for years recognized the upper Missouri as one of the 

 richest and most promising archeological areas in North America. In historic 

 times, an important part of the fur trade between whites and Indians was carried 

 on at the great stockaded towns of the Mandan, Arikara, and their neighbors 

 on the mainstem in South and North Dakota. These towns represented a com- 

 paratively advanced stage of native civilization, basically of an agricultural 

 character, and were inhabited by what were apparently only the last of a series 

 of people who at various times and perhaps from several directions occupied 

 the region. Progressively simpler and less advanced peoples, who relied to a 

 great extent on hunting, seem to have preceded the Indians first seen in the 

 region by white men. The steps by which a highly specialized corn-bean-squash 

 economy, adapted to the rather trying environment of the upper Missouri, 

 evolved out of the native agricultural economies to south and east, remain to 

 be worked out. There are suggestions that the prehistoric farmers of the area 

 may have been beset, perhaps even displaced, from time to time, by drought, 

 floods, and other vagaries of nature. A long and complex story of man's struggle 

 with his environment, without the technological advantages of the white man 

 today, thus awaits closer scrutiny. The camp sites, villages, towns, and burial 

 places of the region represent the documents from which this story must be 

 assembled. It is this story, rather than the mere accuraulation of specimens and 

 compiling of lists of site characteristics, which is envisaged in the archeological 

 research program proposed. 



In varying degree and with local qualifications, the above evalua- 

 tion applies to all archeological remains subject to damage or destruc- 

 tion by the Federal water-control program in the Missouri River 

 Basin. The challenge is obvious. 



