It is quite evident, from the preceding references as well as from the observations of later travelers, that the Arikara villages were usually, if not always, surrounded by palisades. But to have surrounded the area occupied by the lodges by stout posts placed close together would have required some time and, with the primitive implements and methods of collecting the necessary number of timbers, would have been a laborious undertaking. However, they appear to have had another way of protecting their towns. This was told by a French trader who was at the Arikara village in 1795. During the early part of June of that year several Indians arrived among the Arikara and told that three Sioux villages "had assembled and formed an army of five hundred warriors, intending to attack the village of the Ricaras." Fearing this attack, the narrative continues: "The Ricaras have fortified their village by placing palisades five feet high which they have reinforced with earth. The fort is constructed in the following manner: All around their village they drive into the ground heavy forked stakes, standing from four to five feet high and from fifteen to twenty feet apart. Upon these are placed cross-pieces as thick as one's thigh; next they place poles of willow or cottonwood, as thick as one's leg, resting on the cross-pieces and very close together. Against these poles which are five feet high they pile fascines of brush which they cover with an embankment of earth two feet thick; in this way, the height of the poles would prevent the scaling of the fort by the enemy, while the well-packed earth protects those within from their balls and arrows." (Trudeau, (1), pp. 454-455.) Undoubtedly many embankments found east of the Mississippi owe their origin to this method of protecting the villages which they once surrounded. The most interesting and comprehensible accounts of the Arikara villages were prepared during the month of June, 1811. Two travelers that spring ascended the Missouri with rival parties of traders, but they were acquainted and again met on the upper Missouri on June 3. Brackenridge arrived at the village on June 12, and wrote: