One of the consequences of the Missouri Basin development program will be the virtual obliteration of the Missouri River between Yankton, South Dakota, and the Montana-North Dakota line. The lakes to be created by the various dams proposed or under construction by the Army Corps of Engineers will inundate all but short stretches of the terraces on which are situated literally hundreds of fortified and unfortified earth-lodge villages and other, earlier, occupational sites. Situated near the northern limit of agriculture but heavily populated by sedentary, horticultural people for a period of several hundreds of years, this anthropologically fascinating area has been barely touched scientifically.