14 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 



material from them should fill in some of the gaps in present knowledge 

 of the prehistory of the area, particularly for the period from about 

 A. D. 1000 to 1700. 



Several military and trading posts pertaining to the early 19th 

 century were also located in the area. Of particular interest is a site 

 that may belong to the period of the Spanish- Colonial post of Kegis 

 Loisel (ca. 1802-03). Several interesting prehistoric sites appear to 

 have had rectangular earth lodges arranged in rows, much the same 

 as at the Huff site in North Dakota. Among other significant mani- 

 festations are a boulder effigy site, "Middle Woodland" sites, and sites 

 that appear to be nonceramic. 



At the beginning of the 1957 field season in mid-June, there were 

 five field parties in the Big Bend Keservoir area. G. Hubert Smith 

 and a party of nine were at work at the end of the fiscal year excavating 

 the 19th-century historic trading post of white origin known as Fort 

 Defiance (or alternatively Fort Bonis). This same party anticipates 

 investigations at two other 19th-century historic sites in the area when 

 it has completed the season's work at Fort Defiance-Bouis. Dr. 

 Warren W. Caldwell and a party of nine at the end of the fiscal year 

 were excavating the remains of an earth-lodge village which appears 

 to have had three occupations, including a Middle Woodland compo- 

 nent. Eobert W. Neuman and a party of 10 were excavating a series 

 of three linked earth-lodge village sites on the left bank of the Missouri 

 Eiver in the vicinity of Old Fort Thompson. William N. Irving and 

 a party of nine were also working on the left bank of the Missouri 

 Eiver in the vicinity of Old Fort Thompson. They were starting test 

 excavations in a series of 14 sites and will make a map of each village 

 pattern. Harold A. Huscher and a party of two w^ere preparing to 

 start reconnaissance and mapping of sites and scouting for new sites 

 in the entire area of the Big Bend Eeservoir at the end of the fiscal 

 year. None of the five parties had been in the field long enough 

 by the end of the fiscal year to provide specific reports of results. 



A Eiver Basin Surveys party, directed by G. Hubert Smith, was in 

 the field in the Oahe Eeservoir area at the beginning of the fiscal year 

 and completed nine weeks of excavation at a late historic trading-post 

 site near the Oahe Dam on July 31. This party excavated the stockade 

 outline and the remnants of several interior structures, and recovered 

 a considerable amount of object material representing the period about 

 1860. The site is believed to be that of Fort Pierre II, which was oc- 

 cupied after the abandonment of Fort Pierre I in 1858. Structural 

 remains were found but a few inches below the plow zone, and in some 

 instances much had been destroyed by plowing over the years. A 

 road patrol was used for clearing aw^ay the overburden and very 

 satisfactorily exposed the stockade and other structural features. The 



