88 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Boll. 176 



lacking within the Oahe area itself, sites that still remain unexca- 

 vated, though of probably richer individual historic values than the 

 present one. The general significance of any site — historic or pre- 

 historic, Indian or White — scarcely affords more than clues, how- 

 ever, to actual historical or scientific values until careful excavations 

 have been carried out. (This is not to deny historic values to "asso- 

 ciation sites," at which physical data are not recoverable by ordinary 

 archeological procedures. An example of such a site would be an In- 

 dian treaty ground, used for but a few hours or days but pivotal in 

 the general history of an area.) In the present instance, excavation 

 has added substantially to knowledge of a period of mid-19th-century 

 trade, then declining, about which relatively little has hitherto been 

 known, and provides a part of the "documentation" ordinarily missing 

 from customary records available to historians. 



As one result of systematic documentary research by the National 

 Park Service covering historic sites in the Oahe Reservoir area, it 

 became apparent that such sites, to be adversely affected by construc- 

 tion of the dam and establishment of the reservoir, were not inconsid- 

 erable in significance or numbers (Mattison, 1954). Sites of forgot- 

 ten ghost towns, of better-remembered military posts, and even of an 

 important battle were among those to be flooded beyond hope of 

 further study at some future time. 



No single category of sites was, however, as large or generally im- 

 portant in the earlier history of the region as that of the fur- and 

 Indian-trade posts of the last century. Extending from at least the 

 period of the War of 1812 down to that of permanent settlement of 

 much of the valley in the 1880's, surviving sites of these posts — visible 

 physical remains of which have long since disappeared — preserve 

 irreplaceable data of earlier times, written record of which is ordi- 

 narily scanty, or even lacking— data in part recoverable only through 

 archeology. Actual physical details of individual posts, or properly 

 recorded specimens illustrating life at such frontier communities and 

 the conduct of the trade, on the other hand, are seldom to be found 

 in customary document sources or museum collections. (Inventories 

 of physical properties and goods at such establisliments, a few of which 

 have been preserved and published, seem to be rare; such sources, 

 conversely, sometimes preserve detailed information not to be expected 

 from even the most thorough excavations. Cf. McDonnell, 1940.) 



An example of the meagerness of contemporary document sources 

 concerning such commercial posts of the past century will illustrate the 

 desirability of excavations at sites of the kind. Despite more than two 

 decades of heavy use as a departmental headquarters of the dominant 

 trading firm of the region, little would now be known of the plan or 

 construction of the original Fort Pierre Chouteau were it not for the 

 records made for the War Department at the time of its purchase as 



