[Bowers] HIDATSA SOCIAL AND CEREMONIAL ORGANIZATION 477 



southern origin downstream: the Mandan reached White River from 

 the east, where they set up villages, and then migrated upstream until 

 they reached the Heart River where some had lived so long that that 

 area was thought of as "the heart of the universe." The Arikara had 

 recently separated from the Skidi Pawnee to settle on the Missouri 

 River in what is now the State of South Dakota where they planted 

 their corn and built their earth lodge villages until losses from epidem- 

 ics and pressures from the Sioux forced them, too, to migrate upstream, 

 abandoning their ancient villages which were observed in ruins by 

 Lewis and Clark in 1804. 



Granting the validity of these migration myths as indicative of the 

 general direction of population shifts in the Great Plains, the wide- 

 spread movements of local groups to many localities during historic 

 times is consistent with the long-time archeological picture of the 

 region. Prior to 1930, those writing on the history of the three village 

 tribes, the Hidatsa, Mandan, and Arikara, tended to treat each as a 

 close-knit political group of related villages moving as a tribal unit 

 when the wood and other resources were consumed. At that time 

 it was believed that a single cultural tradition was shared by all of 

 them. Other than the Mandan, whose late prehistoric archeology 

 had been studied by Will and Spinden, Uttle was known of the archeol- 

 ogy of the Hidatsa and Arikara. 



In 1930, a Logan Museum field party excavated the first rectangular 

 lodge discovered on the Missouri. It was found to deviate sharply 

 from the well-known circular lodge tradition. It was suggested that 

 a second and earlier lodge tradition might exist locally on the Missouri 

 River in areas formerly occupied by these three tribes. In this site, 

 39ST1, known today as the Cheyenne River site, surface features in 

 part of the habitation area suggested other large rectangular lodges. 

 Part of the area of the site had been occupied by the Arikara in his- 

 toric times. Outlines of a rectangular lodge were discovered under- 

 lying the historic level in a stratigraphic position which preceded the 

 earliest White contacts. A considerable interval between the two oc- 

 cupations was further evident by the fact that the outlines of historic 

 Arikara graves cut the outlines of the ruins of these earlier lodges. 

 So far as is known today, this was the first actual discovery of the 

 reoccupation of an ancient village site by an agricultural group of a 

 second tradition. 



Those who had previously surveyed and excavated in earth lodge 

 sites along the Missouri River in North Dakota and South Dakota 

 took little note of this new evidence. Rectangular loghouses had 

 commonly been built at the Mandan and Hidatsa villages near Knife 

 River by White traders living with the Indians and married to Indian 

 women. Although our researches at that time did not establish the 



