By BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuLy. 185 
blocks of granite, or other large stones, on the top of which is placed a 
buffalo skull, which, we were told, the Indians place there to attract 
the herds of buffalo, and thereby to insure a successful hunt.” (Maxi- 
milian, 1906, in Thwaites, vol. 23, p. 383.) 
In 1941 N. C. Nelson tested a cairn in the Pryor Valley, on the 
Crow Reservation in southeastern Montana, for the American Museum 
of Natural History. This feature measured 12 meters in diameter 
and 150.0 centimeters in height. Like those in the upper part of the 
Garrison Reservoir area, it was composed of earth and boulders. The 
upper half proved to contain a fair number of stone artifacts, glass 
beads, bone and shell ornaments, and some 200 potsherds. Nelson 
(1943, p. 166) believes these may represent offerings. 
Cairns which have been attributed to the Dakota are reported as 
frequently occurring on the tops of the highest hills and buttes in the 
area west of the Missouri River (Will, 1924, p. 295). Others are said 
to have been built near the sites of old Mandan and Hidatsa villages 
by visiting tribesmen “. . . . in memory of their ancestors who for- 
merly lived there” (ibid.). 
The Blackfeet are said to have erected cairns within the last 75 
years to mark the sites of memorable events (Kehoe, 1954, p. 184), 
while Ewers states (1955, p. 2380) that the same tribe sometimes 
marked the finish line of a horse race with “two piles of rocks, each 
about 3 feet high, erected some 60 feet apart.” 
During the summer of 1951 members of the survey party were shown 
two unusual cairns by a local resident of mixed Mandan-Hidatsa 
ancestry. These received site numbers and are described below. 
32M E62 (map 1).—This site is on a low knoll at the end of an up- 
land spur, and from it one can see far up and down the valley of a 
small unnamed arm of Beaver Creek which flows from west to east 
about a mile south of the site. It may be further located as in the 
SE1,SE¥, sec. 6, T. 146 N., R. 89 W. and is about 3.5 miles south of 
a local landmark known as Red Butte. 
The cairn is a conical pile of large, rough boulders and measured 8 
feet in diameter by 8 feet in height. Immediately north of this is an 
east-west row of smaller boulders 5 feet in length. From the center 
of this row another alinement of small boulders runs north for a dis- 
tance of 80 feet to the center of a second 5-foot row running east-west. 
Our guide referred to the complex as “. . . a rockpile with an arrow 
pointing at it.” Immediately northeast of the cairn, marked out with 
cobbles, is the figure “XV,” which we were told was the brand of a 
ranchman who ran cattle in the vicinity and which was made by two 
boys who were herding cattle there a few years ago. The tall grass 
which covered the site at the time of our visit not only effectually con- 
cealed most of the details of the alinement to the north of the cairn 
