110 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bdll. GO 



Explorations have been conducted within the area by Catlin, 

 Latham, Winchell, Brower, Brown, Hamilton, Phillips, Smith, 

 Holmes, and many others. 



5. The Great Plains and Rocky Mountain Area 



Traces of the typical culture of the agricultural mound-building 

 peoples of the Mississippi Valley fade out gradually as we traverse 

 the great plains which extend w^estward to the Rocky Mountains. 

 The region generally is not well suited to primitive agriculture, and, 

 abounding in game, it encouraged a nomadic rather than a sedentary 

 life, although several stocks — Siouan, Algonquian, Caddoan, Atha- 

 pascan, Shoshonean, Kiowan, and others — claimed and permanently 

 occupied somewhat definite areas. Agriculture was practiced in a 

 limited way in some of the more easterly valleys. There were no 

 buildings that could be called permanent, although many hut rings, 

 house depressions, and small mounds, the last being the remains of 

 earth lodges, occur on the old village sites, and burial mounds are not 

 uncommon in some of the principal valleys. The dwellings of the 

 less sedentary triljes were made of the dressed skins of animals, 

 especially the buffalo, which overran the region in vast herds. 



Quarries of flint with associated sites of manufacture are found 

 in Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas, and of quartzite and soapstone 

 in Wyoming. Obsidian is plentiful in the Yellowstone Park and in 

 the upper valleys of the Snake River, and was much used locally. 

 The obsidian implements found occasionally in the 

 stone Implements Eastern States may have come from this region. The 

 population was sparse, the activities were restricted, 

 and as a consequence the varieties of well specialized artifacts w^ere 

 limited in number. The more essential stone implements of the 

 hunter tribes — the projectile points, knives, scrapers, hammers, and 

 club heads — are very generally distributed, while other forms are 

 comparatively rare. An implement of much importance to the 

 hunter tribes was the heavy grooved hammer so useful in killing 

 and breaking the bones of large game, in driving stakes, and 

 in pounding seeds and pemmican. It is probably the most typical 

 and characteristic of the stone implements of the plains and 

 mountains of the middle region. A powerful weapon was a 

 hafted hammer, probably of somewhat recent introduction, called 

 fogamocjgan by some of the tribes. These two hammers were the 

 principal articles of the pecked-ground variety of the region, 

 although implements of other classes and even objects devoted to 

 sacred and ceremonial use occur here and there in the valleys. Simi- 

 lar lithic conditions prevail in the mountains and valleys north of 



