Rlv. Bas. Sur 



Pap. No^; 34/' DEMERY SITE — ^WOOLWORTH AND WOOD 127 



west, rather than the Missouri Eiver or John Grass Creek. The 

 houses were built in pits dug about a foot and a half into the ground, 

 with shallow, dish-shaped floors. A central, unlined basin-shaped fire- 

 place is in the house center, around which are four roof supports set 

 in the form of a square with the posts oriented to the four cardinal 

 directions. There are no postholes on the edge of the house floor ; the 

 walls and roof were probably composed of poles set along the edge of 

 the house pit and leaned in against stringers resting on the center 

 posts. Supporting evidence for this inference was observed in the 

 charred timbers in House 4, which extend up to the shoulder of the 

 house pit, where they were removed by the road patrol (pi. 8, h). 

 House 2 presents the simplest floor plan ; the other three houses fully 

 excavated were rebuilt one or more times, and the pesthole patterns 

 are therefore more complex. All of the houses were destroyed by fire, 

 since there were charred beams on the floors, with a film of ash cover- 

 ing the last floor level. 



The entrances were usually elongated basin-shaped depressions 4 

 to 7 feet long, 2.5 to 4 feet wide, and 0.2 to 0.5 foot deep. Both sides 

 of these depressions were lined with small postholes that formed the 

 passage walls; in several of the houses these posts continue into, or 

 originate in, the house floor. Bell-shaped pits were most common 

 along the house walls; in six instances, they undercut the house 

 shoulder, and their mouths were bisected by the house wall. A variety 

 of irregular and basin-shaped pits were also in the house floor, as well 

 as a few auxiliary fireplaces. 



From the foregoing description, we may infer that the houses were 

 nearly conical in form, with a covered entry way projecting from the 

 southwest side of the structure. Evidence from House 4 suggests that 

 the roof poles were covered with grass over twigs, and the mottled and 

 disturbed nature of the soil overlying the floor seems indicative of an 

 earth cover over the grass. The house fill, that is, resembles that of 

 structures known to have been earth covered at Like-a-Fishliook 

 Village. 



The type of house just described is clearly analogous to the "eagle- 

 trapping lodge" of the historic Mandan, as reported by Bowers (1950, 

 p. 232, fig. 25). The same sort of structure has also been described 

 for the Hidatsa by Wilson ( 1934, pp. 405-409, 411^15, fig. 40) . Such 

 dwellings conform in all major details with the type of house inferred 

 from the floor plans of the Demery houses, although the structures at 

 Demery are larger than those described by Bowers and Wilson, since 

 they served as the principal dwelling type, rather than as an ad- 

 junct to it. The lack of wall postholes was also noted in houses at 

 the Spotted Bear site in central South Dakota (Hurt, 1954, pp. 4^8, 

 figs. 6-10). 



