12 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 195 



Owing to repeated cultivation, no remains which could, definitely 

 be termed earth lodges were discovered inside the ditch, although 

 numerous post molds were recovered in the 30 excavation units of 

 the 1936 and 1937 fieldwork. Nevertheless, all traditional and his- 

 toric accounts of the fort indicate the presence of earth lodges, and 

 the Dorsey map (1884 a, fig. 30) indicates four lodges within the en- 

 closure, the depressions of which may have been visible in the 1880's. 

 Outside the fortification ditch, in natural hummocks or mounds, the 

 inhabitants of the fort buried their dead. The crania from these 

 mound burials show a roundheaded, broad-faced, narrow -nosed physi- 

 cal type in no way different from the present-day Ponca. 



The Ponca Fort, or N as it is termed in ^egiha, seems to have 

 been the last of its type built by the Ponca, though at least one other 

 is mentioned in the traditional history of the tribe. In my opinion 

 the construction of earthen forts of this sort is almost certainly a 

 culture complex which the Ponca derived from their Middle Missis- 

 six^pi forebears in the Southeast or wdiich diffused to them from this 

 area. 



Wood has identified three components at the site, one of which is 

 prehistoric and two of which date from the early historic period. 

 The prehistoric component is identified as belonging to the rather 

 widespread Aksarben Aspect, which is thought by many Plains 

 archeologists to represent the ancestors of the Pawnee, Arikara, and 

 perhaps other groups and is dated A.D. 1000-1500. The second or 

 "B" component yielded pottery of the type known as Stanley ware. 

 Stanley ware has been found at several sites in South Dakota and is 

 attributed to the Arikara Indians of the latter part of the 18th cen- 

 tury. Component B has been identified, nevertheless, as representing 

 the Ponca occupation of the site. 



Aside from the pottery. Component B contained such native arti- 

 facts as grooved stone mauls, mealing slabs and mullers, shaft 

 smoothers, grooved abraders, bowshaves, discoidal hammerstones, 

 whetstones, cobble hammerstones, stone anvils, flint projectile points 

 and scrapers, bone knife handles, a bone tube, fleshers, shaft wrenches, 

 scapula hoes, an ulna pick, catlinite pipes and disks, fragments of 

 twined matting, and a strip of bark in a roll. These artifacts, though 

 valuable in indicating the general cultural orientation of the inhabi- 

 tants of the site, are unfortunately not distinctive enough to specifi- 

 cally identify them, or to connect 25KX1 with other possible Ponca 

 sites. 



Numerous European trade objects were also recovered, including 

 iron hoes, a hatchet, metal arrowpoints, coils of lead wire, button 

 weights, pin brooches, and scraps of cloth. With one of the burials 

 a conch shell gorget and a hair pipe were recovered. Finds of corn 



