Riv. Bas. Sour. 
Pav. NO. 27] STAR VILLAGE—METCALF Tale7 
tory of vegetal food remains from this village occupied by a tribal 
group identified in the Sign Language as “Corn People” or “Corn 
Eaters.” Although this may represent an actual scarcity of this type 
of food, we must remember that corn is seldom found in any quantity 
on the floors of earthlodges and that no caches or middens were ex- 
cavated at the site. Furthermore, the site was occupied for only a 
short time and that, too, during the spring months, at a time when 
normal corn reserves would naturally have been at a low point, and it 
was abandoned before a new crop was harvested. 
DISCUSSION 
Owing to the combination of a relatively small area investigated 
and the paucity of cultural debris incident to the brief occupation of 
the site, less was learned about the material culture of the Arikara of 
the 1860 period than was hoped for when the project was initiated. 
A handicap to the interpretation of such data as were recovered is 
present in the lack of comparable excavation at the Fort Clark site 
which immediately preceded Star Village and where the Arikara had 
lived for the preceding generation. At the Leavenworth site, which 
precedes the occupation of Fort Clark, a certain amount of excavation 
has been carried out, but only a small part of this has been adequately 
reported. At the Fort Berthold site (82ML2) to which the tribe 
retreated from Star Village and where they lived until scattered upon 
individual allotments, a considerable amount of archeological investi- 
gation has recently been done, the full report of which is still in 
preparation. 
However, the picture is less dark than the preceding remarks might 
indicate. A good impression of the life and history of this tribal 
group and its rapidly changing culture may be gleaned from the 
reports of the traders Truteau and Tabeau, the Journals of Lewis and 
Clark, and from the writings of such travelers as Bradbury and 
Brackenridge a decade later. Chardin’s Fort Clark Journal, while 
primarily a source for study of trader contacts with the Mandan and 
Hidatsa, contains a few notes relative to the Arikara of 1837-38. 
Denig, also a trader, left an account of this tribe, and there are other 
references of varying importance. As has been noted earlier, Lewis 
Henry Morgan paused briefly among them in 1862 and left a short 
account of some of their tools and weapons still in use or whose use 
had been only recently abandoned. A few items regarding these 
northern Caddoans are to be winnowed from studies of the Hidatsa 
made by such students as Washington Matthews and Gilbert L. Wilson. 
Finally, there are the reports of the Indian agents and much material 
of varying degrees of value in the National Archives. 
