BUSHNELL] VILLAGES WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI By (ol. 
buffalo-skin canoes or boats laden with meat and skins; beside some 
horses that were going down the bank by land. They gave us a part 
of their meat. The party consisted of men, women, and children.” 
(Op. cit., p. 54.) 
Two years later, on the return of the expedition, they again passed 
‘the villages of the Arikara, arriving opposite the upper village Au- 
gust 21, 1806, at which time there was an exchange of salutes of four 
guns each. 
In 1812 Cutler wrote regarding the Arikara: “ They live in forti- 
fied villages, claim no land, eds: that on which their villages ye 
and the Soils they improve.” (Cutler, (1), p. 125.) 
It is quite evident, from the preceding references as well as from 
the observations of later travelers, that the Arikara villages were 
usually, if not always, surrounded by palisades. But to have sur- 
rounded the area occupied by the lodges by stout posts placed 
close together would have required some time and, with the primi- 
tive implements and methods of collecting the necessary number of 
timbers, would have been a laborious undertaking. However, they 
appear to have had another way of protecting their towns. This 
was told by a French trader who was at the Arikara village in 1795. 
During the early part of June of that year several Indians arrived 
among the Arikara and told that three Sioux villages “had assem- 
bled and formed an army of five hundred warriors, intending to 
attack the village of the Ricaras.” Fearing this attack, the narra- 
tive continues: “The Ricaras have fortified their village by placing 
palisades five feet high which they have reinforced with earth. The 
fort is constructed in the following manner: All around their vil- 
lage they drive into the ground heavy forked stakes, standing from 
four to five feet high and from fifteen to twenty feet apart. Upon 
these are placed cross-pieces as thick as one’s thigh; next they place 
poles of willow or cottonwood, as thick as one’s lee, resting on the 
cross-pieces and very close together. Against these poles which are 
five feet high they pile fascines of brush which they cover with an 
embankment of earth two feet thick; in this way, the height of the 
poles would prevent the scaling of the fort by the enemy, while the 
well-packed earth protects those within from their balls and ar- 
rows.” (Trudeau, (1), pp. 454-455.) Undoubtedly many embank- 
ments found east of the Mississippi owe their origin to this method 
of protecting the villages which they once surrounded. 
The most interesting and comprehensible accounts of the Arikara 
villages were prepared during the month of June, 1811. Two trav- 
elers that spring ascended the Missouri with rival parties of traders, 
but they were acquainted and again met on the upper Missouri on 
June 3. Brackenridge arrived at the village on June 12, and wrote: 
