172 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Boll. 176 



rapidly exhausted the timber resources available for building 

 purposes. 



Of local materials employed at Fort Stevenson for construction 

 purposes, none is more clearly illustrated in the excavations than the 

 extensive use of field stone for masonry foundations, still largely 

 preserved in place. No quarry rock was available in the vicinity, 

 and most of the stones used were probably found on the surface of 

 the prairies, derived from glacial drift and river deposits. De Tro- 

 briand speaks of rock having been brought from, the bluffs li/^ or 2 

 miles away — presumably the highest bench away from the river 

 (ibid., pp. 42, 346) . The boulders used, so far as could be seen during 

 the investigations, were of suitable size for carrying and handling, 

 and many wearisome wagonloads must have been brought in by 

 soldier details. Civilian masons were apparently responsible for the 

 stone masonry, as well as for other construction here. Soldiers also 

 assisted from time to time in actual construction activities (ibid., pp. 

 43,158). 



A particularly interesting use of local materials for construction 

 purposes was that of clays employed with prairie grasses in the man- 

 ufacture of adobe bricks. According to local tradition these bricks 

 were made by soldiers working under the direction of an Indian 

 woman known as "Indian Mary" (information from, Dr. Robinson; 

 his authority was persons who had lived at the fort). The precise 

 source of clays used in making these bricks is not known, but it was 

 probably in the immediate vicinity of the brickyard which, in turn, 

 lay between the landing and the temporary camp (de Trobriand, 1951, 

 p. 43). The yard was, therefore, near the point at which Garrison 

 Creek entered the recent river bottom land, about one-quarter mile 

 east of the parade ground of the peimanent post. 



The use of adobe clays for adobe brickmaking elsewhere on the 

 upper Missouri is not unknown, but it would be of interest to know 

 how adobe bricks came to be made and used in military buildings 

 here, in preference to other possible types of construction, at a point 

 far distant from the adobe-brick region proper in the Southwest. It 

 would also be of interest to know how "Indian Mary" became ac- 

 quainted with the process of adobe-brick manufacture and just what 

 her background had been. The adobe-brick tradition does not seem 

 to have persisted in the architecture of this region of the upper Mis- 

 souri, but was succeeded by that of the sod house and other styles, in 

 the period of permanent settlement of the region. 



Adobe bricks were, it is true, used at numerous other military posts 

 in the West during the 19th century. An example is Fort Laramie, 

 established in 1849, but that post was some four hundred miles south 

 and west of Fort Stevenson. The adobe-brick tradition at Fort 

 Laramie had, furthermore, been introduced during a previous period, 



