12 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuLL. 185 
PREVIOUS WORK IN THE AREA 
Prior to 1950 no controlled archeological excavation had been done 
along the Missouri River in North Dakota, above the site of the Gar- 
rison Dam. Surveys of the area had been carried out at various 
times from 1908, when A. B. Stout mapped sites along the river for 
the State Historical Society of North Dakota, until the late 1930’s, 
when Thad C. Hecker made a reconnaissance of the Missouri River 
for the same organization. The Hecker survey extended northward 
from the South Dakota line to the south side of the Fort Berthold 
Indian Reservation, and on the basis of earlier work (Will, 1924), 
a few sites were listed above that point in the published report (Will 
and Hecker, 1944). 
Although it had received little attention from archeologists prior 
to 1950, ethnologists have found the area of interest from the time 
of Lewis H. Morgan until today. The work of the late Gilbert Liv- 
ingstone Wilson (1917, 1924, 1928, 1934) along with that of Wash- 
ington Matthews (1877), Robert H. Lowie (1913, 1917, 1919), and 
Frances Densmore (1923) forms a firm base for the study of the 
Hidatsa. Will and Spinden (1906), Lowie (1913, 1917), Densmore 
(1923), and, more lately, Bowers (1950) have published studies of 
the Mandan. There is less published material on the Arikara, but 
much that remains still unpublished has been gathered on that group. 
The history of the three tribal groups and the changes occurring 
within their cultures are documented for the period of White contact 
by the records of explorers, travelers, traders, soldiers, and mission- 
aries. That record has now been supplemented by archeological data 
obtained in the years 1950-54 by the Missouri Basin Project of the 
Smithsonian Institution and cooperating State agencies working 
under agreements with the National Park Service. Such informa- 
tion as remains in the ground is now lost forever beneath the waters 
of the Garrison Reservoir. 
THE LAST ARIKARA EARTHLODGE AND A COMPARISON 
WITH SOME EARLIER STRUCTURES 
During the course of the 1950 reconnaissance a large ring mound 
indicating the presence of a former earthlodge was noted in the sod 
of a small, unplowed enclosure immediately west of the Beaver Creek 
Day School. Information obtained from local residents suggested 
that this was the site of the last Arikara earthlodge, a suggestion 
which later research tended to confirm. 
It was impossible to obtain an absolutely accurate dating for the 
structure. “I think it was built about 1908, and it was still standing 
when I came home from the army in 1919, but it was torn down soon 
