30 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuLu. 185 
from 4 to 20 feet, and small tests revealed burned earth, charcoal, 
animal bones, and flint flakes in the larger ones to a depth of 12 inches. 
A few small cord-impressed sherds that were picked up about the edge 
of the butte top appear to belong to some phase of the widely spread 
Woodland pattern and closely resemble a number of aberrant sherds 
recovered by Hartle in excavations at Nightwalkers Butte in the 
Bull Pasture, a butte-top village site (82ML39) a few miles up the 
valley. 
Near the south edge, at the east end of the flat butte-top, was a differ- 
ent type of depression. This measured nearly 8 feet in length by 4 
feet in width, with the long axis east-west. It appears to be of fairly 
recent origin, since the walls have not entirely collapsed, and meas- 
ured 3 feet in depth. No traces of a cover were found, nor was there 
any trace of a dirt pile resulting from the excavation of the pit. Earth 
removed in digging an eagle-trapping pit is said to have been carried 
away and scattered at a distance. This pit is believed to represent a 
rather recent eagle trap. 
32ML48 (map 1).—In the same quarter section and a short distance 
west of the butte on which 32ML49 is located is a somewhat larger topo- 
graphical feature of the same type. On top and near the rim at the 
northwest end is a well-sodded depression 6 feet in diameter and 12 to 
15 inches in depth. From its location and appearance I believe it to be 
all that remains to mark the former presence of an eagle-trapping pit. 
These last two sites, 32ML9 and 32MI48, are both in the first hilly, 
badland area east of the site of Like-a-Fishhook Village. In the leg- 
end of the origin of the Eagle Trapping Rites, as obtained by Bowers 
(1950, p. 223), it is stated that the Bears had a trapping place below 
that village, on the high banks. This was known as High Butte Trap- 
ping Camp and must have been in the area where 32ML9 and 32ML48 
are located, since there are no other buttes or high banks below the 
village on that side of the stream until Riverdale is reached, over 20 
miles below. It may be significant in this connection that three buttes 
are present here in a row and that the narrator of the legend said, re- 
garding the location of High Butte Trapping Camp, “We do not 
know if it was Sandy Lodge, Thunder Butte or One Cottonwood that 
he had his camp close to.” 
It is probable that these two sites, 32ML9 and 32ML48, will be de- 
stroyed when the reservoir fills. Both are on relatively small buttes 
that will become islands. Wave action alone would destroy them in a 
few years, but a greater threat to their permanence is the character of 
the formation of which they are composed: a hard clay which is 
markedly unstable when water soaked. After the base has become 
saturated during a full-pool period, a rapid draw-down of the pool 
level, such as will occur during the dry season, will inevitably result in 
the destruction of the buttes through slumping. It seems certain that 
