26 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuLL. 185 
EAGLE-TRAP SITES 
The Arikara, Mandan, and Hidatsa, in common with many other 
Plains groups, trapped eagles. Stripped of its ceremony and ritual, 
the procedure consisted of the trapper concealing himself in a pit cov- 
ered with a light frame over which were strewn brush and grass. A 
piece of meat or a stuffed rabbit was placed on or beside the screen as a 
lure. An eagle coming to this bait was seized by the concealed man and 
drawn into the pit. 
Remains of old eagle-trapping pits have been frequently reported 
from the Upper Missouri River region. Will states that they are 
widespread along the Missouri River bluffs, in the badlands, and on the 
scattered hills and buttes, in North Dakota and in northern South 
Dakota (Will, 1924, p. 298). 
Another student who is familiar with the area says that “in the rough 
country, west of the Missouri River there are thousands of depressions 
marking the sites of former pits. These pits vary from sharply rec- 
tangular forms with rotted sections of the cover still protruding to 
gently rounded depressions now nearly filled by erosional activity” 
(Bowers, 1950, pp. 207-208). Bowers has also published a map show- 
ing the location of 31 Mandan and Hidatsa eagle-trapping camps 
(ibid., fig. 28). 
Wilson was told by an old Hidatsa that pits were always dug on the 
west side of the promontories, since the eagle always migrated on a west 
wind (Wilson, 1928, p. 213). “We never placed a pit on the top of a 
hill; but we did locate them on the top of a flat bluff,” Wolf Chief stated 
(ibid., p. 118). The same informant, in describing an eagle-trapping 
expedition, stated that he dug his pit at the foot of a westwardly 
sloping bluff (ibid., p. 117). 
Densmore, while recording Mandan and Hidatsa music on the Fort 
Berthold Reservation, was shown an old pit on the westward slope of 
a butte (Densmore, 1923, p. 62). 
Bowers says that eagle trapping was confined to the rough land ad- 
jacent to wooded streams and that the pits were dug on the top, or near 
the top, of hills or on benchlands adjacent to the streams (Bowers, 
1950, pp. 206-207). In another place he says that “most trappers had 
their pits on the tops of hills near the northwest edge, but it was be- 
lieved that the best pits were those on the northwest slope about three 
rods from the top of the hill” (ibid., p. 239). 
Among the Yanktonai the pits are said to have usually been on bluffs 
overlooking the Missouri, although some were not near any water- 
course (Howard, 1954, p.71). Blackfoot trapping pits are described as 
being on the top of a butte, at the east end of a butte top, and on the 
top of a long, narrow ridge (Schultz, 1922, pp. 58, 204, 220). 
