82 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [ BULL, 77 
On June 12 Kurz attended a sacred dance performed for the bene- 
fit of a wounded man. He referred to it in his journal as being 
given by the Buffalo Society, where all wore buffalo masks. It was 
held in a large earth lodge, and he was accompanied by the chief, 
Joseph La Flesche. 
The site of the small village mentioned by Kurz was identified a 
few years ago by Gilder, and some of the ruins were examined. It 
stood in the forks of the Papillion, about 4 miles in a direct line west 
of the Missouri. To quote from the brief narrative: “It was here 
the Omaha lived last before going on a reservation, and where they 
were visited by the Swiss artist, Kurz... It was found that the 
ruins were quite shallow and had left but slight depressions, while 
others left small circular mounds above the surrounding level. The 
Rock Island Railroad has cut through the village, and at least one 
cache was exposed from top to bottom—about fifteen feet. In all 
instances the caches were outside the lodge sites. 
“The surface yielded fractured iron pots, delft or figured china 
of white man’s manufacture, and rusty iron objects, besides flint 
scrapers and chips, potsherds, and the usual accumulations of a vil- 
lage prior to contact with white people. The writer cannot attrib- 
ute the flint implements to the Omaha, but considers the favorable 
site on a plateau at the junction of two streams to have been used by 
another people long before the Omaha erected their lodges there.” 
(Gilder, (1), p. 75.) 
Innumerable ruins of earth lodges were to have been found in the 
vicinity of the present city of Omaha, the great majority of which 
stood in early days before the arrival of Europeans in the valley of 
the Missouri, and it is not possible to say by which tribe the villages 
were erected. Many large ruins were discovered on Childs Point, in 
the extreme northeastern corner of Sarpy County, just south of 
Omaha, and some 4 miles northeast of the small village visited by 
Kurz. Some of the ruins were carefully examined by Gilder. One, 
which appears to have been considered as possessing the typical char- 
acteristics of the group, was described by Gilder, who wrote: “In all 
house ruins similar to the one here described, the main fireplace, four 
or five feet in diameter, is situated near the exact center. From this 
fireplace the floor extends, nearly flat, to within ten feet of the ex- 
treme outer edge or periphery of the ruin. Here a platform, or step, 
twelve to fourteen inches high and almost vertical, rose from the 
floor and sloped rather sharply to the outer rim... Around the 
line of the inner circumference of the platform, at distances of ap- 
proximately five, feet, the remains of posts six or seven inches in 
diameter were discovered, These were either in the form of charcoal 
