Our Native American past: Part 1
The Williamson County Historical Society is in the process of remodeling our Native American room at the museum in Marion. With spear points in our collection from this county that date back 10,000 years it has given me the opportunity to reflect on the indigenous cultures that have occupied the land that we now call home.
Beginning at the end of the last Ice Age, app. 14,000-10,000 years ago, Paleo-Indians (ancient Indians) would have been hunting the last of the Ice Age animals like mastodons and ground sloths the size of a Volkswagen in small mobile groups, taking them down with spears. These groups of hunters were known to range over hundreds of miles making annual rounds, probably following herd animals, into what are now our neighboring states, camping in places such as wetlands, salt licks and stream crossings. The weather at the time would still have been cold and moist with tundra like conditions similar to Northern Canada and as the ice retreated it would have been replaced with forests of spruce and pine.
Though the exact date is not known it is suspected that around 10,000-9,000 years ago ice aged mammals disappeared, likely due to the changing climate or overhunting. As the weather changed, forests would begin to support deciduous trees and the fauna would eventually switch to deer, raccoons, opossum and squirrels. With the environmental changes the natives changed with it into a period called the Dalton Culture referred to as a "settling in" period. Groups tended not to range as far and settled into local environments. Basic tools began to form like dugout canoes, wooden bowls and utensils. They routinely used caves and rock overhangs as shelters, established formal cemeteries and formed alliances with neighboring groups.
The next overlapping cultural period to form was called the Archaic Period that ranged from 10,000 to around 3,000 years ago and is broken by archaeologists into the Early, Middle and Late Archaic Periods. Around 8,000-5,000 years ago, the average annual temperature and precipitation began to become similar to today. The warmer and drier climate began spawning great forests of oak, hickory, ash and elm and with it varieties of the mammals, amphibians, reptiles, fish and migratory waterfowl we recognize today.
It is estimated that natives in the Early Archaic period (10,000-8,000 years ago) were about five feet tall and lived to be around 25-30 years old, had domesticated dogs and established cemeteries for the dead of the community. It is thought that they lived in family units of around 10 members or so in sites for a short time, likely seasonal, before moving to another location.
During the Middle Archaic Period (8,000-5000 years ago) as warmer, drier climate change began forming the forests, Great Plains and prairies of the Midwest, natives began forming more permanent base camps at the edge of floodplains where a variety of seasonal resources were made available. They would have lived off waterfowl, fish, mussels, turtles, marsh tubers, wild plants, and hunted local mammals like deer. Tools made of bone and chert became more prevalent, such as scrapers, drills and tools for sewing and weaving.
By the Late Archaic Period (5,000-3,000 years ago) natives began supplementing their diet with cultivated plant foods like sumpweed (marsh elder), squash and sunflower. Communities continued growing larger and more permanent and long distance trade items indicate exchanges from other natives as far away as the Gulf Coast and Lake Superior.
The period from 3,000 to 1,250 years ago has been defined as the Woodland Period broken up into Early (3,000-2,200 years ago), Middle (2,200-1,800 years ago), and Late Woodland (1,800-1,250 years ago) and has left its mark in our area today.
Early Woodland sites tended to be small and impermanent, often located in large floodplains and lacked burial or mortuary activity but contained fragments of the first handmade pottery in Illinois. Middle Woodland, however, was marked with increased social and ritual complexity, and gave rise to the first known burial mounds in Illinois around 100 B.C. to 1 A.D. The period also reflected an increase in village life and the further cultivation of select seed plants including small amounts of tobacco. Elaborately decorated pottery began to appear.
The Late Woodland period was marked with the appearance of the bow and arrow, the planting of corn, clay pipes and most significant for us here is the formation of defensive stone forts around 550 to 650 A.D., which can still be seen at Giant City State Park and were the namesake for the village of Stonefort that straddles our county's southeastern border with Saline County.
The Mississippian period began 1,100 years ago and continued in Illinois until about 550 years ago (A.D. 1450). The period was marked with increasingly complex societal structures, large population centers, monumentally scaled architecture, hierarchical organization, a rich array of political and religious symbols and massive agricultural development of starchy seeds like corn.
Around 1050 A.D. local native life shifted from small scattered villages to life centered around large temple and burial mounds and plaza centers. One of the earliest and most influential was the site called Cahokia near Collinsville though another large site existed at Kincaid Mounds near Brookport.
Cahokia covered 4,000 acres with more than 80 man-made mounds, one of them over 100 feet tall, the population is estimated to have reached 20,000 or more, larger than London in 1250 A.D. As a spiritual and trade center, natives from all over North America and Canada came to trade here that were ethnically different creating cultural diversity. Many of their implements like stone hoes for crops and projectile points were made from Mill Creek chert found in Union County to our southeast.
Cahokia's demise around 1450 A.D. and Kincaid around the same time, for reasons yet not quite understood, marked the end of the Mississippian Period's great mound building culture. But, it is known that the Mississippian people persisted in Southern Illinois into the 1500s when the first European explorers would show up.
Continued next week.