bay. No 26), SMALL SITES ABOUT FORT BERTHOLD—METCALF 21 
the leaners were placed from the secondary posts, one man stating 
that the butts were placed at a distance of but 1 pace beyond them, 
while the other informant places them at twice that distance—at the 
arm span of a man. 
The covered entranceway was oriented to the rising sun, the door- 
way, fireplace, and altar being in line. The inner end of the entrance 
was at a distance of 314 arm spans from the center of the fireplace 
according to one informant. One gave its width as 1 arm span (68 
to 72 inches), while the other made it 3 paces (90 inches) ; both stated 
that length and width were equal. 
The altar, made of puddled clay mixed with grass, stood at the 
center of the back wall, opposite the entrance. It was an arm span 
wide, north-south, and its length was “the space required for a man 
to sit on his knees and heels and have room in front of him to lay out 
the Sacred Bundle” (ibid., p. 56). The second informant made it 
the spread of a man’s arms in each direction. Both agreed that the 
height was the length of a man’s hand from the wrist line to the tip 
of the middle finger. A post 4 to 6 inches in diameter was set at each 
of the front corners. 
No mention was made of an excavation for the floor, but it was said 
that the women leveled it on their knees and that it was sprinkled 
with water. 
Little or no excavation has been done at the Fort Clark site at 
which the Arikara lived for over a generation before moving to the 
Star and Like-a-Fishhook Villages. At the still earlier Leaven- 
worth site a number of houses, among them the ceremonial lodge, 
were opened by William Duncan Strong for the Bureau of Amer- 
ican Ethnology in 1932. <A published ground plan of one of the 
dwelling lodges shows the usual centrally located fireplace, 4 center 
posts, and a ring of 16 secondary posts. The covered vestibulelike 
entrance was to the south. The ceremonial lodge is said to have been 
larger (55 feet in diameter) than the ordinary domiciliary struc- 
tures, with large posts, a suggestion of an altar against the west wall, 
and with the entrance to the east (Strong, 1940, p. 367). In all essen- 
tial details it seems to fall into the same group with those which 
have already been described. 
At the postcontact but undocumented Dodd and Phillips Ranch 
sites, presumably of Arikara origin, remains of two structures were 
found which, because of their larger size, central location within the 
village, and the presence of altars opposite the entrance, are believed 
to represent ceremonial lodges (Lehmer, 1954, pp. 16-17, 94-95). Like 
the later lodges, these have a four-post central foundation, but there 
are some interesting differences, chief of which is an outer row of 
closely set vertical posts in place of the secondary row and leaners 
597967—_63——3 
