Riv. Bas. Sour. 
Pap, No. 27] STAR VILLAGE—METCALF 67 
location was still known to many of the descendants of the builders, 
some of whom still identified it by its old name of Heart Village. 
The following spring the Arikara crossed the Missouri River and 
moved a few miles downstream to the wide flat terraces above and 
across the stream from Like-a-Fishhook Village, where they began the 
construction of two villages, one of which, 32ME16, is the site con- 
sidered in this paper. In August 1862, as a result of a Dakota attack, 
the two villages were abandoned and the Arikara accepted the invita- 
tion of the Mandan-Hidatsa group to join them at Like-a-Fishhook 
Village. There they remained until moved onto separate allotments 
about 1886. 
The area was well known to a number of other tribal groups who 
raided, visited, and some of whom also hunted and wintered in this 
region. The Dakota, particularly the Yanktonai, were raiding the 
Mandan and Hidatsa villages at the mouth of the Knife River before 
1804 and later became an ever-present menace to the villages at Fort 
Clark and Fort Berthold. In 1806 Henry mentions the arrival of a 
party of Crow who had come to the Hidatsa villages to trade (Henry 
and Thompson, 1897, pp. 8398-399), and at a much later period, in 
1851, we find mention of the arrival of a group of visiting Chippewa 
at Like-a-Fishhook Village (Kurz, 1937, pp. 84-85). At an earlier 
period the Assiniboin seem to have been the most frequent visitors to 
the area. Verendrye was guided to the Mandan villages in 1738 by 
members of that tribe who were accustomed to visit the Mandan for 
purposes of trade. In 1804 a party of Assiniboin accompanied by a 
number of Cree visited the Mandan and Hidatsa villages (Reid, 
1947-48, pp. 71-72), and in April 1805 Lewis and Clark passed 
recently abandoned camps of both the Hidatsa and Assiniboin in what 
is now McLean and Dunn Counties (ibid., pp. 2138-219, 227-228). In 
1809 Henry, in speaking of the extent of the Assiniboin territory, 
places their southward boundaries on the Missouri and “down that 
river nearly to the Mandan villages” (Henry and Thompson, 1897, 
a oli.) 
At present little is known regarding the earlier occupants of the 
area. A few potsherds with cord-roughened exteriors which have 
been found along this section of the Missouri River appear to belong 
to some aspect of the widely spread Woodland pattern. Tests at a 
site north of Williston, in Williams County, N. Dak., yielded sherds 
which have not been assigned to any previously known culture com- 
plex (Metcalf, 1962). Mounds are present on the west side of the 
Missouri in Mercer County, but nothing is known regarding their age 
or the cultural affiliations of the builders. Circles of small boulders, 
commonly known as tipi rings, and some of which may be of moder- 
ate antiquity, are common throughout this part of the State. Ter- 
race spurs commonly show traces of campsites buried to an average 
