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The attribution of Sioux primacy in the Plains Indian wars of the nineteenth century rests upon numerical superiority rather than actual battles fought and casualties taken. Through ethnogenesis, the formation of a new political entity, the Cheyennes attained the only “tribal” status in the Great Plains, marked by an overarching authority structure buttressed by powerful religious sanctions. This gave them a generally unrecognized importance. The writing of Thomas B. Marquis, an agency physician, delineates Cheyenne-Sioux interactions in the 1870s, highlighted by an unprecedented two-year alliance with the Hunkpapa leader Sitting Bull. This alliance in 1876 probably determined the outcome of the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

Canadian fur trader Donald Mackay visited and left a description of the Mandans and Hidatsas on the Missouri River in 1781, six years before James MacKay, generally credited with being the first Canadian trader to do so since visits by the La Verendryes in the mid-1700s. Information from Mackay’s visit was incorporated into the Edward Jarvis and Donald Mackay map of 1791. The details Mackay provided on that manuscript chart reveal new insights into intertribal relations between the Mandans, Hidatsas, and Arikaras and the nomadic groups that surrounded them at the time of his visit. Contemporary documents support the hypothesis that the “Shevitoon” Indians depicted on the map may be identified as the Sutaios.

A relictual population of Threshersaurus dakotaensis is still to be found in the northern Plains, ignored by zoologists and, even more remarkably, by evolutionary biologists. The ancestor of this quadrupedal vegetarian saurid once was common in the Jurassic, but that became rare in the Late Cretaceous, have adapted their behavior and adjusted to an environment highly modified from that of their pre-Tertiary ancestors. These solitary animals today are found in a patchy distribution across landscapes dominated by the great expanse of mixed-grass prairie or steppe soils lying between Minnesota and Montana, and Nebraska and the Canadian provinces. Here we provide a preliminary study of their little-known ethology, including speculations on reproductive activities and nocturnal behavior. These beasts deserve serious study by scholars as a visible representation of folk (or public) art, as do other equally visible manifestations of public art in this dominantly rural area.

For an aspiring anthropologist, the year 1949 was an exciting time to arrive at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. The headquarters for the Smithsonian Institution's Missouri River Basin Surveys (MRBS), of the Inter-Agency Archeologi cal Salvage Program, earlier had been established in the Department of Anthropology in the base ment of Burnett Hall at the invitation of John L. Champe. It was small space indeed for a group re sponsible for salvaging prehistory from the post war flood control that was to affect streams across

The inveterate fieldman and surveyor, T. H. Lewis, visited northeastern Nebraska in his quest for archaeological sites in the fall of 1890. He recorded four earthworks there, only one of which (Pon...

Description d'une carte indienne realisee par un Mandan de la reserve de Fort Berthold entre 1906 et 1907.

Three lines of evidence bearing on the Crow Hidatsa separation provide different dates for that separation, but dates which are consistent with the following generalizations: (1) The Crow began to diverge linguistically from the various Hidatsa groups no less than five centuries ago, and perhaps even earlier. (2) The Crow movement onto the North western Plains was accomplished gradually, perhaps by band-by-band movement, rather than as one precipitous migration away from the Hidatsa. (3) Archaeological evidence from sites of the Mandan/ Hidatsa continuum in the Missouri Valley suggest that the Hagen site, at least, probably dates at about A.D. 1675 ? although alternative explanations for related sites suggest that the Crow moved into the Northwestern Plains several centuries earlier. (4) Ethnohistorical data suggest that the Crow separation dates from the mid-1700s. Rather than dating the initial separation of the two groups, the ethnohistor ical data probably reflect the final severing of ties with the Hidatsa ? a separation made final by the adoption of the horse.

Two accounts of Mandan and Hidatsa pottery making, collected by Wilson in 1910, appear here for the first time. New information is provided on clay sources, and on manufacturing and firing times and techniques.

Basic data are offered on 2 pottery bearing localities in the Souris Basin, North Dakota. Additional data from adjacent areas are introduced to support the assertion that there was a relatively hea...

(1969). Site Description by W. Raymond Wood. Plains Anthropologist: Vol. 14, Parts 1 and Part 2, pp. 3-11.

The purpose of this note is to present full descriptive data on a ceramic site in northwestern North Dakota which has been briefly described by Will and Hecker (l9kh, pp. 116-117). According to these writers, Site 32MZ2 is situated on a flat-topped promontory about 2.5 miles southwest of the town of Williston, on the south side of the Missouri River, in McKenzie County. The legal descrip tion is the NE-l/U SE-l/U Sec. 10, T153N, R10W. The promontory is covered with bone to a depth of l6 or 18 inches from the surface, and deep layers of ash, bone, and flint chips are covered with a layer of clay. The artifacts from the site, in the collections of the State Historical Society of North Dakota, include pot tery, chipped and ground stone and fragmentary bison bones.

(1955). Pottery Types from the Biesterfeldt Site, North Dakota. Plains Anthropologist: Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 3-12.