Indian Burial Mounds in the Missouri River Basin

Since its inauguration in 1946, the Missouri Basin Project of the Smithsonian Institution, along with other cooperating Federal, State and local agencies, has concentrated its efforts toward the salvage of archeological materials that will be lost by the construction of dams and the flooding of reservoirs along the Missouri River and its tributaries. The surveys and excavations have been conducted at historic military forts, trading posts, pioneer settlements and Indian villages; however, most of the investigations have dealt with prehistoric sites which include the large village occupations, hunting and camp sites, buffalo kills, petroglyphs, boulder mosaics, and burial mounds.
This short article will be concerned with burial mound sites on the northern and central Great Plains. Although there are a number of important detailed differences between mound groups, and even between the individual tumuli at a single site, certain generalities are apparent.