pip Noisf' HISTORIC SITES ARCHEOLOGY — MATTES 9 



Fort Pierre from the traders, making it the first military post on the 

 Upper Missouri. This was shortly succeeded by Fort Lookout and 

 Fort Randall downstream (Meyers, 1914, pp. 71-108). Indian up- 

 rising during the 1860's prompted the addition of fortified points and 

 garrisons at Fort Rice and Fort Stevenson while Whetstone, Lower 

 Brule, Grand River, and Fort Berthold Indian agencies, among 

 others, came into being as steps toward pacifying and civilizing the 

 bewildered aborigines (Comm. Ind. Aff., 1865-70). 



Meanwhile, pirogues, canoes, flatboats, buUboats, and steamboats 

 plied upriver to these primitive or warlike establishments or beyond 

 into Montana country, where the fur trade was replaced during the 

 1860's by the lure of gold. Steamboat landings, woodyards, saloon 

 towns, and little communities of assorted description appeared along 

 the river to fulfill the needs of the rough and dangerous times. 



Until 1849 the Missouri River rivaled the Platte route as a major 

 line of approach to the Far West. After that date it became the line 

 of demarcation between the eastern settlements and the western 

 wilderness, with Indians, Indian agents, and United States Cavalry 

 playing out the last act of interracial violence. 



THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE AND THE 

 MISSOURI BASIN 



Planned construction of the several giant dams along the Missouri 

 River in the Dakotas unavoidably doomed many of these sites, highly 

 significant to American frontier history. For the first time in the 

 known history of river impoundment, the nature of the calamity 

 about to befall the cause of historical conservation was fully under- 

 stood. Further, machinery was on hand to do something about it. 



The National Park Service, by authority of the Historic Sites Act 

 of 1935, is the Federal agency primarily responsible for the conserva- 

 tion of historic sites. This responsibility extends first of all to sites 

 that happen to be, accidentally or by design, in Federal ownership, 

 such sites comprising the bulk of the present 180 national parks, na- 

 tional monuments, national memorials, national historical parks, etc., 

 in the National Park System (Lee, 1951). Secondly, however, the 

 Service is charged by this Act to make necessary surveys of historic 

 as well as prehistoric sites throughout the United States, to assess 

 their national significance, and to cooperate with other agencies. State 

 or Federal, in the preservation and interpretation of such sites. When 

 the National Park Service as an Interior Department agency became 

 involved in the Missouri River Basin program, it became readily ap- 

 parent that it shouldered a dual responsibility — to undertake recrea- 

 tional planning for reservoir areas, and to initiate a program for the 

 conservation of historic and archeologic sites threatened by these 

 reservoirs (Mattes, 1947, 1952 a). 



