16 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Buuy. 185 
surface inequalities were probably scraped away, and the use to which 
it was subjected over a period of 10 or 12 years probably resulted in 
lowering the floor to some extent. 
The structure is said to have been built as a community center, a 
place to hold dances and ceremonies, and in order that the younger 
people might learn how an earthlodge was built. We were not told 
why it was pulled down but received the impression that it was falling 
into disrepair through the weakening of the timbers by decay. The 
main timbers, however, must have been sound if, as the Christman 
interview suggests, they were sold at auction. 
It is possible to compare this Beaver Creek lodge with the last two 
ceremonial lodges built by the Arikara while still living as villagers 
before being scattered upon individual allotments. The most recent 
of these is that excavated by a State Historical Society of North Da- 
kota—National Park Service party under the direction of Glenn Klein- 
sasser at the site of Like-a-Fishhook Village during the summer of 
1950.® 
The lodge stood in the northwest part of the village, its former loca- 
tion being marked by the most prominent ring-mound present. The 
Arikara occupied a separate section of the village, and the ceremonial 
lodge appears to have been located at the approximate center of their 
quarter. A large open space lay in front of it, in which no houses had 
been built. The village site has never been under cultivation and has 
become well sodded in the approximately 65 years since it was aban- 
doned. A number of depressions in the sod, inside the ring-mound, 
believed at first to mark the presence of subfloor storage features, 
proved to mark the positions of the large postholes into which the 
earth had settled as the post butts decayed. 
Upon excavation the floor showed the usual earthlodge pattern 
(fig. 2): a central fireplace, four large postholes arranged to form a 
square about it, and the holes for an outer circle of large posts 
that had carried stringers against which slabs or poles had been 
leaned to form the walls. A covered vestibulelike entrance was in- 
dicated, but no altar was found. Posthole positions at the back of the 
lodge suggest that such a feature was present but was not recognized 
during excavation. 
The central fireplace, which measured 81 inches north-south by 72 
inches east-west, was a simple, basin-shaped pit 21 inches in depth, 
filled and overflowing with white ash, the ashes extending to a height 
of 2.5 inches above floor level. The earth beneath showed the effects 
of fire to a depth of 6 inches. 
6 Field notes and floor plans of this lodge, as well as a photograph of it made by the 
pioneer photographer 8S. J. Morrow about 1870, have been made available by the State 
Historical Society of North Dakota. Description of the lodge is based upon these data. 
