Plains Indian Studies - Smithsonian Institution Libraries

NUMBER 30 179
FIGURE 30.—Forest cover in the Glenwood locality (black
areas represent forest identified during 1850s land surveys;
dotted line represents the approximate bluff line; dashed
line defines Mills County, Iowa; source: WPA, c. 1930).
was probably largely prairie, as observed by Orr
(1963) and Tabeau (Abel, 1939), with pockets of
timber marking the hollows eastward into the
bluffs. Based on the WPA forest cover map, the
wide, gentle terraces of the Keg Creek watershed
upstream from Glenwood were probably prairie
covered. Because of the lack of timber and the
open, unprotected character, the gentle slopes
were apparently avoided as lodge sites.
In his discussion of the Upper Republican villages,
based on extensive excavations at Medicine
Creek, Wedel (1959:558) notes a similar situation.
There appears to be a marked preference for residence on
small streams, perhaps because suitable building timber may
have been more abundant here than on the main rivers, as
seems to have been the case in the 19th century.
Central Plains Settlement Patterns
Studies of the Nebraska phase settlement patterns
and lodge variability have been seriously
compromised by two continuing problems: incomplete
excavations of sites and a serious backlog
of unreported fieldwork. In regard to the first
problem, the majority of the published comparative
studies primarily represent minimal excavations
from widely scattered sites. Sampling of
one or two lodges from a site is a common survey
method and may not be representative of the
range of variability that may be present in a
particular locality. The necessarily incomplete
nature of partial site excavations may result in
distortions of the settlement pattern.
For example, in a review of settlement patterns
in the Central Plains, Gradwohl (1969:135) suggested
that sampling localities has resulted in a
built-in bias toward a dispersed community pattern.
He argued that conceptualizing site units by
individual house depressions, and excavating only
these features without testing the areas lacking
surface indications, has resulted in an apparent
settlement pattern of either isolated lodges, linear
strings, or small clusters of two to four lodges.
Gradwohl stated that more nucleated villages are
found in the Central Plains tradition, based upon
excavations conducted at the Theodore Davis site
in the Weeping Water locality of Nebraska. At
this site, six lodge depressions were observed on
the surface. Four were excavated, yielding typical
square earth lodges. Rather than excavate the
remaining two lodge depressions, a series of tests
were conducted in the areas between the lodge
depressions, resulting in the location of two additional
lodges with no surface indication. Gradwohl
assumed that these "buried" lodges were
contemporaneous with the six lodges noted from
the surface depressions and that the site actually
was a small nucleated village. However, the floor
area of the lodges found in the depressions (420
to 1156 square feet or 39 to 107 m^) was two to
five times the floor area of the buried lodges (196
to 213 square feet or 18 to 20 m^). The six lodge
depressions could alternately be interpreted as
representing the terminal occupation of the site,
and the buried lodges might date from an earlier
occupation. Regardless of the correctness of either
interpretation, the presence of additional lodges
with no surface indication clearly illustrates the
magnitude of the problem for settlement pattern
studies.
Closely related to this problem is the continued
obliteration of surface indications of lodges. None
of the lodges located by Brown (1967) in the Pony
Creek watershed were visible on the surface.
Many lodges located at the footslope bottomland
contact were found only because erosion associ-