ADMINISTRATIVE REPORT 91 
up of what had once been four or five separate autonomous 
groups of kindred peoples. Here in their later home each 
group had gathered around their own public square in 
their own section of the town and thus preserved at least 
some of their old ceremonials and held together in some 
fashion their old organization. 
It is impossible to determine even approximately the num- 
ber of inhabitants, but the large number of the buildings and 
the long extent of the walls indicate a population of several 
thousand. All the buildings whose traces were untovered 
appear to have been burned. Below the fallen-in wall of an 
important building the charred remains of the woven reed 
tapestry which had formerly hung upon the wall were secured 
for the National Museum. 
It is not as yet possible to determine the age of these 
remains. Beyond all question this town had been destroyed 
long before the coming of the whites. No object of white 
man’s manufacture was found on this site. 
Mr. Gerard Fowke carried on archeological investigations 
in the Stratman Cave in Maries County, Mo. This cave, 
which is situated a little more than 2 miles south of Gas- 
condy, the point at which the Rock Island Railroad crosses 
Gasconade River, has an opening on the side of a hill about 
150 feet high. The approach to the cave on the river side is 
very steep, but from the top of the hill it is less difficult. 
Mr. Fowke opened a trench on the outside slope of the 
talus at a point 30 feet from the entrance of the cave and 16 
feet below the floor level. He found most of the evidences of 
human occupation in superficial black earth, scattered through- 
out which from bottom to top were fragments of pottery, 
parts of vessels of varying capacity and thickness: chert 
knives or spearheads, none highly finished; hundreds of 
thousands of mussel shells more or less decayed; and other 
objects so abundantly found on the numerous camp sites 
and village sites along the Gasconade River. The artifacts 
were few in number and scattered throughout the mass, 
nowhere more than a few pieces in a cubic foot of earth. 
This denotes temporary occupation, at irregular intervals, 
over a long period of time. Yet the cave was not altogether 
