Worked Bone Artifacts Discovered During Archaeological Excavations at Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site(32WI17), ND

Fort Union served as the major trading establishment for the American Fur Company and its St. Louis descendants (Bernard Pratte and Co. and Pierre Chouteau, Jr. and Co.) on the Upper Missouri River between 1828 and 1865. In 1865, Charles Chouteau sold Fort Union to Hubble, Hawley and Smith, otherwise known as the North Western Fur Company. During its last years of existence, between 1864 and 1866, the treaders shared the post's facilities with the U.S. Army, the latter utilizing Fort Union as a base of operations against the Northern Plains Indians. In 1866 Fort Union was sold to the Army, which tore down its structures in 1867 to build Fort Buford two miles away. In 1965, the site of the old fort was acquired by the U.S. National Park Service (NPS) and renamed Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site. The NPS interpretive plans called for reconstructing the fort in its entirety. In order to obtain structural information concerning the fort, the NPS sponsered four seasons of archaeological investigations at the site between 1968 and 1972. Further excavations took place between 1985 and 1988. During the course of these efforts, thousands of artifacts were recovered. In this report, bone, antler, and ivory artifacts from the excavations are described and illustrated. These items represent one of the largest collections of such items recovered through scientific excavations and provide clues about the lifeways of fort residents.