Riv. Bas. Sur. ) ree 
Pap. No. 26] SMALL SITES ABOUT FORT BERTHOLD—METCALF 29 
caches, and a test was made in one. Only decayed pieces of small 
wooden rods were found in the fill, and it is now believed that these 
shallow basins probably represent former eagle-trapping pits, the 
wooden fragments being the remains of the covers. 
32M L42 (map 1).—ast, across the river from Independence settle- 
ment, in the SW14NW), sec. 30, T. 150 N., R. 90 W., is a landmark 
known as “The Slides.” At this point the Missouri River coming 
from the west strikes the foot of the bluff which forms the west side of 
the upland and makes a sharp turn to the south. The west face of 
the bluff has slumped, and the whitish underlying formation thus ex- 
posed is visible for miles from the west and southwest. A west- 
wardly running coulee, down the bottom of which trickles a small 
stream, cuts a gash in the uplands just to the north of The Slides and 
an upland promontory has been partly detached, forming a flat- 
topped butte (pl. 3,). From the top of this a splendid view is ob- 
tained up and down the valley of the Missouri and for miles over the 
hills and rolling country beyond Independence. 
At the extreme edge of the bluff in the northwest part of the level 
butte-top, and in line with the north (left) bank of the stream, is a 
circular depression. This is between 6 and 7 feet in diameter, 2 feet 
in depth, and probably represents a former eagle-trapping pit. The 
sides of the basin-shaped depression are smoothly sloping, and the 
bottom of the feature supports a more luxuriant growth of vegetation 
than the immediately contiguous area (pl. 4, a). The entire butte-top 
was carefully examined, but no artifacts and no other definite de- 
pressions were found. In several places along the west edge the 
grass was somewhat taller, and at each such place there was a faint, 
rather indefinite suggestion of a depression. These may represent the 
sites of still older pits. 
The site is of interest because the Black and Brown Bears, who 
gave the eagle-trapping rites to the Mandan and Hidatsa, had an 
eagle-trapping camp, Buckbrush Camp, some 2 or 3 miles to the west 
and are said to have had trapping pits in the hills at “The Slides” 
(Bower, 1950, p. 223; Wilson, 1928, p. 189). 
32ML9 (map 1) —This site is just east of the reservation boundary 
on the left side of the Missouri River, on top of a high hill locally 
known as Battle Butte, in the NW1AZNWY, sec. 19, T. 147 N., R. 86 W. 
The Missouri River washes the foot of the butte at the south side, 
while the broken ravine-cut area on the other three sides is typical of 
the small, rugged badland areas scattered along this section of the 
river in North Dakota. 
The level top of this butte is roughly oval in outline and measures 
about 100 yards east-west by 75 yards north-south. A number of 
shallow depressions in the sod suggests the former presence of small] 
earthlodges and exterior caches. These depressions range in diameter 
