146 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 176 



Animal remains other than food-refuse lone. — Three animal varieties are 

 represented in fragmentary bone refuse, creatures native to tlie region but 

 perhaps included only by accident among bone refuse. These are the beaver, 

 the badger (of which a jaw and an occipital fragment remain) and the packrat 

 (of which several bones are present). 



As has been mentioned above (p. 127) the articulated skeleton of a young horse 

 was encountered among the random debris in cellar A ; the carcass of the colt 

 was presumably disposed of in this fashion merely to remove a nuisance, and 

 during the period of agricultural use of the site. Several bones of dogs were 

 obtained, but it is impossible to determine whether they pertain to the period 

 of the trade (as must have been partly the case) or to that of the farm period. 

 One bone only derived from the skeleton of domestic cat was obtained, pre- 

 sumably from the farm period, though it is known that cats were of importance 

 to traders as well, in earlier periods. 



DISCUSSION 



Attention may now be drawn to the general significance of the 

 data from excavations at site 39ST217 in the light of the salvage 

 program as a whole, and to the bearing of these data upon the general 

 history of the discovery and first exploitation of the Northern Plains 

 by Whites, preceding permanent settlement by them. This is not 

 the place for comprehensive examination of such topics, but some 

 comment on them is needed if the present data are to be seen in 

 proper perspective. 



The primary responsibility of the inter-agency archeological sal- 

 vage program is the recovery of materials and information concern- 

 ing aboriginal (particularly precontact) cultures. Only from sites 

 preserving such remains is new knowledge of prehistoric time levels 

 to be hoped for, and it is proper that agencies cooperating in the 

 program should devote less time and effort to sites of historic time 

 levels, either Indian or Wliite. Thus relatively less attention, either 

 prior to, or since the inauguration of the salvage program, has been 

 given to physical remains of former White settlements in the cen- 

 tral Dakotas, and for several reasons. This is scarcely surprising, 

 since the region is in many respects even yet little removed from the 

 frontier of permanent settlement. 



It is little more than 70 years since part of this region west of 

 the Missouri River and adjacent to it was first opened for Wliite 

 settlement, whereas Indian reservations (the Cheyenne River and 

 Standing Rock Reservations, both for the Sioux, who as recently as 

 1890 were openly hostile) still occupy all of the west bank above the 

 Cheyenne River and below the Cannonball. This region is today 

 the home of a large Indian population, whose economy differs in 

 many ways from that of rural Whites residing in the two Dakotas. 

 Furthermore, even today the scanty west-river White population is 

 engaged primarily in cattle raising, and communities of more than a 

 few hundred persons are extremely rare. The sparsity of population 



