pIp. ^o^; 1 9? ■ INVESTIGATIONS AT FORT STEVENSON — SMITH 167 



helpful advice, personal recollections, and unpublished documents. 

 Dr. Carlyle S. Smith of the Museum of Natural History, University 

 of Kansas, furnished welcome expert advice on firearms, and gave 

 permission for republication of his study of materials of this nature 

 from the site, as an appendix to this paper. The excavation party 

 under my direction included Byron Houseknecht, assistant, and 

 George Metcalf, Lee G. Madison, Loniel B. Bagby, Jr., Hugh Sam- 

 path, and students of the Riverdale High School, all of whom 

 worked faithfully through the field season. 



To all of these persons and the institutions they represent I am 

 most deeply grateful. My sincere thanks go to them and to others 

 who have helped in less obvious but equally important ways to make 

 this report possible. 



GENERAL OBSERVATIONS 



The general history of Fort Stevenson, occupied as a militarj'^ post 

 from June 1867 until August 1883 and as an Indian school from that 

 date until 1894 (id1. 33), has been recounted elsewhere (Mattison, 

 1951). That account, based on official records of the post now pre- 

 served in the National Archives, devotes special attention to the 

 history of construction of the post and to its physical structures. In 

 the following record of excavations conducted from June to October 

 1951 at the site of the former post, frequent reference is made to these 

 specific data from the documentary record, particularly at points 

 at which excavation supplemented or permitted correction of the 

 contemporary record. In general it may be said that the excavations, 

 though confined to selected building-site units, and in no sense ex- 

 haustive, confirmed the data preserved in the post records. Few 

 errors w^ere noted in these records, so far as they could be verified on 

 the ground. 



The general setting in which Fort Stevenson was established has 

 been treated in the general history referred to, and elsewhere (Kivett, 

 1948, pp. 4-5, comments on the physiography of tlie region). Atten- 

 tion may be called to the fact that the geographical location of the post 

 given on the ground plan, traced December 10, 1879, is in error. 

 (Photostats of original in Missouri Basin Project and National Park 

 Service Region Two files. The plan is retraced, for the sake of 

 legibility, but with minor errors, to accompany Mattison, 1951, opp. 

 p. 28.) The true location of the post was approximately 47°34'' N., 

 101°29' W. (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, sheet No. 143, 1943 a). 

 It may also be noted that although the parade ground and sites of 

 adjacent buildings of the post were in the NEi^ sec. 10, T. 147 N., 

 R. 85 W., as stated (Mattison, 1951, p. 2) , other closely related parts 

 of the whole lay in the adjacent NWi/4 of section 11 of this town- 



