4 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. IO7 



working techniques, and other practices paralleled closely those ob- 

 served by the first Spanish explorers who visited the Plains hunting 

 tribes in the sixteenth century. Their remains have been found prin- 

 cipally in and immediately east of the High Plains in Colorado, west- 

 ern Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Montana, in a region character- 

 ized by low precipitation and sparse vegetation. Some of these peoples 

 evidently hunted the mammoth, now extinct forms of bison, and other 

 large game ; and there is evidence that they lived in a somewhat cooler 

 and moister climate. From the locality in northeastern New Mexico 

 where their distinctive form of projectile point was first recognized 

 in association with extinct fauna, the term Folsom culture has been 

 affixed to these remains. It has been estimated on geological evidence 

 that the people of the Folsom culture lived as long ago as 10,000 

 to 25,000 years. 



Following the Folsom peoples in the western plains, there seems 

 to have been a succession of poorly defined and little-known pottery- 

 less groups. Their remains consist chiefly of chipped and other stone 

 implements, bone refuse, hearth sites, and other camp litter. The 

 widely distributed Yuma blades, whose associated artifact complex 

 is still unclear, seemingly belongs to this post-Folsom period (pi. i, 

 fig. 2). Their relation to the Folsom culture is still in dispute ; neither 

 is it possible to relate them satisfactorily — if indeed a direct connec- 

 tion exists — to any of the presumably later remains found in caves, 

 bison falls, and other sites in the Colorado-Wyoming-Montana region 

 and immediately to the east. Further intensive research, particularly 

 at stratified sites such as Signal Butte and Ash Hollow Cave in west- 

 ern Nebraska, and Pictograph Cave near Billings, Mont., will prob- 

 ably help solve this vexing problem. 



Still undetermined is the time when cultivation of corn and beans 

 began in the Missouri River Basin. Without question, however, it 

 was some centuries prior to the European conquest beginning in the 

 sixteenth century — quite possibly as much as five or six centuries 

 before. The introduction of horticulture encouraged a more settled 

 mode of life, the establishment of semipermanent villages, and ulti- 

 mately a marked diversification of cultures. Archeologists, working 

 partly through stratigraphy and partly by other more devious means, 

 now recognize a succession of these semisedentary cultures. Their re- 

 mains, as is to be expected for climatic and other environmental 

 reasons, occur in greatest abundance and variety along the eastern 

 portion of the Missouri Basin, though they have been found many 

 hundreds of miles to the west on suitable tributary streams. 



Widespread throughout the Missouri Basin area, and apparently 



