WINONA BAY - For decades, Jack McCrory's land just south of a territorial settlement called Winona was deep under the waters of Lake Oahe.

Now that drought has lowered the lake level, the land is accessible but restricted, to prevent the removal of cultural artifacts and guard against disturbing old gravesites that could be exposed.

Since the reservoir was created in the 1960s by Oahe Dam, one of six earthen dams built on the upper Missouri, the high ground of the old town of Winona stuck out above the water and became known as Winona Island.

The former island and surrounding land - called Winona Bay when Lake Oahe is full - was a thriving hub in the late 1800s, a saloon town.

Winona, established in 1874, sprang up on the eastern bank of the Missouri River and once proclaimed itself the biggest town on the stagecoach line between Bismarck and Pierre, S.D., then Dakota Territory.

On the other side of the water stood Fort Yates, an army garrison where 3,000 troops were stationed after Custer's 7th Cavalry was wiped out in the Battle of Little Big Horn in 1876.

From a lookout post in Fort Yates, Jeff Kelly, a game warden for the Standing Rock tribe, peered through binoculars recently, looking for poachers, and for looters who scavenge old burial sites for artifacts and even bones to sell to collectors for profit.

Army Corps of Engineers officials in North Dakota said they know of flint knives, other tools made of bone or stone, arrowheads, pottery fragments and other artifacts offered for sale on eBay.