PAP.'^No: ^IsT ^^^^ PIERRE II SMITH 153 



attention again to material aspects of the more recent past, toward 

 an understanding of which the archeologist and the historian can 

 still make contributions. 



The excavations here reported for site 39ST217 are the first system- 

 atic investigations of any site of White origin in the area of the 

 Oahe Eeservoir, and much further work remains to be accomplished. 

 Elsewhere in the drainage of the Missouri Eiver, some sites of White 

 origin have received special attention, including both limited docu- 

 mentary research and systematic excavation or testing. (Yet few 

 of the sites thus far studied in any detail have received adequate prior 

 documentary investigation, for several reasons.) 



Several of the sites to which attention has been given are military 

 rather than commercial in origin, and only a few are those of trading 

 posts, from which directly comparable materials and data are avail- 

 able. Among this small group, work at sites 32MXi2 (Forts Berthold 

 I and II) and 82MN1 (Kipp's Post), both in North Dakota, has pro- 

 vided very limited comparative data, not yet published (Smith, MS., 

 and Smith and Woolworth, MS.). Another site of the kind, located 

 in south-central South Dakota within the Fort Randall Reservoir 

 area, is site 39LM57 (Fort Lookout II), where limited excavations 

 were made and have been reported on by Miller (1960), this volume. 



It will be apparent that field investigations thus far accomplished 

 at such commercial sites in the drainage are severely limited in number, 

 are separated by considerable distances, and pertain to various parts 

 of the past century. Any broad generalizations from such limited 

 documentary and field data (even if they could be made) would be 

 premature, and further facts are needed, particularly from selected 

 sites likely to produce data useful for comparative study. In short, 

 planned field research is now called for, to expand and extend the 

 limited data now at hand, if real progress is to be made and numerous 

 sites now endangered are to be properly recorded. Such plans would 

 be laid without regard to the artificial geographic limitations of the 

 river-basin salvage program, but with regard to known historical facts 

 instead. This is particularly desirable in view of the fact that some 

 of the key sites (Forts Union, Clark, and Pierre Chouteau) are not 

 within areas in which salvage operations are required or permissible. 



Such planned fieldwork, involving sites of White origin and of 

 commercial (or other) character, would take account of various factors 

 important in the history of the trade in the West, particularly tem- 

 poral and geographic factors. Thus investigations are indicated for 

 sites of posts of the early 19th century, as well as of the late 18th, 

 together with those of later provenience, and the sites selected might 

 well be chosen from strategic different parts of the Missouri valley — 

 e.g., below the mouth of the Kansas River, between the Kansas and the 

 Big Sioux, between the Big Sioux and the Yellowstone, and between 



