NO. 2 SALVAGE PROGRAM, I95Q-I95I — COOPER 33 



before excavation by the survey party, the evidence indicates it con- 

 sisted of two adults, at least one of which was tightly flexed. Only a 

 few fragments of the other remained. A grit-tempered, cord-marked 

 pottery sherd was found in the earth which had been recently dis- 

 turbed. The other burial, 25NC201, was on a ridge bordering the 

 valley of Cedar River, in Nance County. The incomplete remains of 

 four individuals, representing secondary burials, were found generally 

 scattered in an oval pit covered with stones. Among the bones present 

 was one small fragment, probably from a tibia, which had been arti- 

 ficially perforated. In the pit fill were a number of grit-tempered, 

 cord-marked sherds which appear to be attributable to one of the 

 early Woodland variants in the area. Long bones with perforations 

 similar to the one mentioned here were found in secondary burials 

 in a submound pit in a site, 39CH4, excavated in 1947 by the River 

 Basin Surveys in the Fort Randall Reservoir, South Dakota (Cooper, 



1949, p. 309). 



The area that would be occupied by the Sherman Reservoir and 

 the routes to be followed by the Sherman Feeder Canal and the 

 Sargent and Woods Park Canals, if these various features are con- 

 structed, were surveyed. Only one site pertaining to archeology was 

 found, and that was a small area yielding a sherd, two scrapers, and 

 a little White material, which does not warrant further investigation. 

 This site and a site where fossil bones of elephant and possibly bison 

 were found weathering out of a loess deposit are near the course of 

 the potential Sherman Feeder Canal. The paleontological site prob- 

 ably deserves investigation. 



Niobrara River Basin 



The survey of the Niobrara River Basin, together with the more 

 intensive investigations that should follow it, exemplifies in miniature 

 one of the notable ways in which the salvage program is contributing 

 to our knowledge of the prehistory of the Missouri Basin, namely by 

 the sampling of archeological manifestations over extensive areas of 

 locally diverse environments. The Niobrara River, heading in eastern 

 Wyoming, flows east across northern Nebraska through parts of the 

 Nebraska- Wyoming Upland, the Nebraska Sand Hills, and the Loess 

 Plains, all subdivisions of the High Plains, and through the southern 

 part of the Missouri Plateau to its confluence with the Missouri 

 River (Fenneman, 1931, pp. 17-22, 61-72). In its upper reaches, it 

 has a narrow, sparsely tree-fringed channel meandering in a valley 

 bordered by high, slightly undulating plains covered with short grass, 

 but to the east, augmented by a number of spring- fed tributaries, it 



