Riv. BAS. SUR. 
Riv. Bas. So" SMALL SITES ABOUT FORT BERTHOLD—METCALF 27 
Published accounts regarding the size of the pits are even less uni- 
form than those regarding their location. Wilson (1928, p. 212) was 
shown an old pit which was about 5 feet square and 31% or 4 feet deep, 
but one of his informants, describing the digging of a pit, stated that a 
rectangular area was measured off, equal in length to the trapper’s 
height so that he could lie down without touching his head and feet 
to the walls. This informant described his pit as being about 30 inches 
wide and apparently oriented north-south. It was deep enough to 
allow the occupant to sit upright without touching the cover with his 
head (ibid., p. 114). 
The Mandan are said by one student to have made the pit deep 
enough to allow the trapper to sit upright but too short for him to 
lie in, stretched out at full length (Bowers, 1950, p. 239). On the 
other hand Maximilian (1906, in Thwaites, vol. 23, p. 848) recorded 
for the same group, in 1833, that the trapper “lies down at full length 
in a narrow pit made on purpose, and exactly large enough to hold 
him.” The old pit visited by Miss Densmore was less than 3 feet 
deep and less than 4 feet in width (Densmore, 1923, p. 62). A Black- 
foot informant describing his method of taking eagles did not give 
the dimensions of his pit but said that he dug a deep hole, so deep 
that he could stand erect beneath the cover. In this hole he stood 
all day (McClintock, 1910, p. 428). This seems to imply a small 
but deep pit. For the same tribe Schultz (1922, pp. 59, 205) de- 
cribes a pit as being the length of a man, narrow, and shoulder deep. 
One of the Yanktonai interviewed by Howard thought that the pits 
were about 5 feet long, 3 feet in width, and 3 feet deep, but another 
described pits 5 feet in depth (Howard, 1954, p. 71). 
Tt seems probable that pits varied greatly in size according to the 
whim of the individual using them. Occasionally, too, they were 
cleaned out and used a second season. If the walls had slumped 
they were rebuilt with stones and small logs (Wilson, 1928, p. 212) 
but the slumping must have resulted in some enlarging and change 
of the original shape. It seems probable that tribal differences may 
have been reflected more strongly in the accompanying ritual than 
in the size and location of the pits. McClintock (1910, p. 62) and 
Schultz (1922, p. 58) mention the Blackfoot trapper as occasionally 
taking a human skull into the pit with him, a practice nowhere noted 
for the other groups. Howard’s informants stated that the bodies 
of the eagles trapped by the Yanktonai were buried in the pit, which 
after being filled was marked by encircling it with a row of stones 
(Howard, 1954, p. 73). No trace of this custom was found during 
the Garrison Reservoir survey, but stone circles about eagle-trapping 
pits are reported from Montana (Hoffman, 1953). 
Eagle trapping has not been generally practiced in the Fort Ber- 
thold area for 50 years according to Bowers (1950, p. 233). In that 
