Madison
County Genealogical Society
Minutes of the Meeting – September 12, 2019
The September 2019 meeting of the Madison
County Genealogical Society was held at the Edwardsville Public Library on
Thursday, September 12, at 7:00 pm.
President, Robert Ridenour, called the
meeting to order.
The following is the Treasurer's report for
the month of August:
·
General
Fund - Beg. Balance $3,233.54 - Income $0.47 - Expenses $576.00 - End Balance
$2,658.01
GIFT
MEMBERSHIPS AVAILABLE
Do you have a family member that is
interested in (or even obsessed with) genealogy? A membership in the Madison
County Genealogical Society would be a very thoughtful gift. A gift card will
be sent to the recipient of any gift membership.
The following memberships are available:
Individual/Family Annual Membership $25.00
Patron Annual Membership $35.00
Life Membership $300.00
Contact our Secretary, Petie Hunter, at [email protected],
about a gift membership.
September
Meeting
On
September 12, 2019, Cherie Kuhn presented a program titled Ancient Indian Cultures and Artifacts —
Part II.
Ms.
Kuhn graduated in 1968 from
Livingston High School. She worked at SIUE Lovejoy Library for 28
years. Her hobbies are horses, playing piano, travel, reading, genealogy,
and hunting arrowheads. She is a member of the Silver Creek DAR Chapter,
Archaeology Society of Illinois, and Cahokia Mounds Society.
I am going to talk tonight
on the mound building cultures. I am going to start with Poverty Point
earthworks. This culture existed from about 1,500 B.C. to 700 B.C. This
400-acre site in northeastern Louisiana near Pioneer was on the Mississippi
River, but over thousands of years, the river has moved until it is 15 miles to
the east. This is the most ancient temple site on the Mississippi River – about
3,500 years old. There are earth ridges about six feet high, with mounds
surrounded by the ridges, including an effigy mound. An effigy mound is a mound
shaped like an animal. On top of the ridges were about 500 homes and the
population was about 1,500 people. There was a plaza of about 37-acres where
ceremonies, dances, and games were held. These people lived in the lower
Mississippi Valley and on the Gulf Coast. Villages extended for 100 miles on
both sides of the Mississippi. There are 100 sites of this culture in Arkansas,
Missouri, Tennessee, and Mississippi. Poverty Point was thought to be a trade
and ceremonial center. This culture had a large trade network in the
Mississippi and Ohio River Valleys and all the way to the Atlantic Coast. Domestic
tools, human figurines, and tons of stone from up to 800 miles away have been
found here. They were hunter-gatherers, and they used the spear and atlatl.
They made animal effigy figurines, pottery, spear points, tools, and miniature
stone beads. Iron ore came from Arkansas and plummets (weights) were made from
it. Copper came from the Great Lake region and slate, jasper, quartz, and
soapstone were gathered from trade. This site was abandoned about 1100 B.C. and
another Indian group lived here and added a mound in about 700 A.D. This site
is open every day 9:00 am to 5:00 pm, except for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New
Year’s Day. There are guided tours, hiking trails, and a museum.
Next, I am going to talk
about the Adena culture. The Adena Culture was during the early Woodland Period
800 B.C. to 100 A.D. There were three stages of this culture that existed in
Ohio at the time of the pyramids – 3,500 years ago. The center was in
Chillicothe, Ohio. There are 38 sites of this culture in Kentucky, New York,
Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. The name Adena comes from the estate called Adena
owned by Tom Worthington near Chillicothe. The mound there was excavated in
1901 and contained 36 skeletons. The four distinct things of this period were
pottery, agriculture, artistic works, and permanent settlements. This culture
used the spear and atlatl and they also had a large trade network. Cone mounds
were built with burial complexes. A mortuary building kept the dead until
burial. Timber lined the tomb, grave goods were burned with the deceased and
after the fire burned out, the cone mound was built over the top. So, usually,
if you see a cone mound, that is a burial mound. Their village was laid out
around a plaza. Homes formed a circle and had cone roofs covered with bark and
the walls were wickerwork. There were 15-20 people in a village, divided into
clans. People were small, heavy, and strong and the life span was about 45
years. The Adena and Hopewell (the Hopewell followed this culture) were the
first to make clay pottery in Ohio. It was shaped by hand; there was no pottery
wheel. They made stone and clay figurines of people and animals. They traded
for galena from Canada, copper from Michigan, conch shells from the Gulf, and
mica from the Appalachian Mountains. They made stone tools, effigy pipes,
gorgets, spear points, and were expert carvers of pipestone. Art motifs with copper
and mica began with the Adena. The Weeping Eye and the cross and circle design
was their trademark. They also carved geometric designs on small tablets. Some
sites are the Criel Mounds in Charleston, West Virginia, that was built around
200 B.C. between two circle earthwork enclosures. It is the second largest
burial mound in West Virginia. The Grave Creek Mound is in the Ohio River
Valley in West Virginia. It was built around the same time, 200 B.C.; it is the
largest cone burial mound in the United States. Mound State Park in Anderson,
Indiana, has ten mounds, plus the Great Mound built in 160 B.C. Wolf Plains in
Athens, Ohio, has 22 cone mounds and nine circle enclosures. The Miamisburg
Mound in Ohio is one of two largest cone mounds in Eastern North America at 65
feet tall.
Most of the mounds are east
of the Mississippi. The Adena Culture is centered around Chillicothe but there
are sculpture sites in Kentucky, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York.
The Hopewell Culture is from
the Middle Woodland Period from 100 to 500 A.D. This culture was named after
Mordecai Hopewell – the mounds and the earthworks were on his farm near
Chillicothe, Ohio, which was the center of this culture. This culture created fine
crafts and artworks from mica and copper. They traded over a wide area to get
the materials they wanted – shark teeth from the Atlantic Cost, copper from
Michigan, iron ore from Minnesota, Knife River flint from North Dakota,
obsidian from Wyoming, hematite from the Ozarks, galena from Arkansas, mica
from the Appalachian Mountains, and whelk shells. They did a lot of carvings on
shells and used some of those shells for tools. They were also expert carvers
of pipestone. Red pipestone quarries are found in Wisconsin, Missouri, Ohio,
and southwest Minnesota; a black pipestone quarry is found in Ontario, Canada.
The Hopewell made all kinds of pipes; they made human figurines, effigies of
different animals and birds, some pipes weighed as much as 12 pounds. They made
pottery, copper plates and pendants. Copper came in nuggets and it was hammered
into sheets. Then it was worked into the desired size and shape for what they
wanted to make. There were three designs on plates – birds, geometric, and
human. Plates have been found at Cahokia, and in mounds in Oklahoma, Alabama,
Ohio and Georgia. The dead were cremated and the graves were filled with
pottery, pipes, necklaces, carvings, statues, and spear points. Around 500
A.D., the Hopewell exchange ceased. There was no mound building, there were no
art forms, and larger villages were built with defense fortifications, which
indicates war. There are Hopewell sites in Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois,
Alabama, and of course Ohio. Flint Ridge Park in Glenford, Ohio, is just south
of I-70 between Columbus and Zanesville. There an eight-mile long vein of
rainbow colored flint located in the Appalachian Foothills here about three to
four feet down. The Indians found this vein thousands of years ago and they
went there to get flint to make their tools. This park is open year around and
there is a museum there. There are special events such as knap-ins in the
spring and the fall, where people get together and you can watch them make
arrowheads and tools. The largest Hopewell site in Illinois is the Albany
Mounds between Illinois and Iowa. Originally, there were 96 mounds and today
there are 47. This was a pipe-making center. There are mounds in Havana on the
Illinois River, which includes Dickson Mounds and the Ogden site. The Ogden
site has 35 mounds arranged in a crescent shape. Dickson Mounds is very nice. They
have a lot of artifacts and lot of pottery, and they explain everything.
Dickson Mound Museum sits on top of a burial mound. Excavation began there in
1926 by the Dickson brothers who owned the land. There are two cemeteries
there, ten burial mounds, and platform mounds. The Havana Hopewell culture
lived here from 800 to 1250 A.D. The museum describes the culture as Native
Americans living in the Illinois River Valley over a period of 12,000 years. Calhoun
County, Illinois, has four sites and Carrollton in Greene County has a site.
Major Ohio Hopewell sites are the Serpent Mound in Adams County, Octagon Mound
in Newark, Trapper Mound in Portsmouth, which carries over into Kentucky, on
the other side of the Ohio River. Mound City is just north of Chillicothe,
along the Scioto River and it has a group of 23 mounds. Hopewell Culture Park
is the main park in a collection of 5 parks. This site dates from 200 B.C. to
500 A.D. There are earthworks and burial mounds here. Earthworks are made in
geometric shapes. The visitors’ center is open 8:30 am to 5:00 pm every day.
The grounds are open year-round and there are ranger-guided tours. There are
Hopewell sites in West Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, Southern Indiana,
Michigan, Northern Indiana, and Kansas City.
The Adena and Hopewell
cultures made winged banner stones, stone and clay figurines, clay pottery,
copper and mica designs, gorgets, stone tablet designs, spear points, and
effigy pipes.
The Mississippian Culture –
Cahokia Mounds
Around 100 A.D., the St.
Louis riverfront had 26 mounds. The big mound stood at what is now the
intersection of Broadway and Mound Street. It was oval-shaped and it stood 30
feet high. It was leveled in 1870 for roads. There is a plaque on a rock there
today that shows where it was. There were over 15 mounds in Forest Park,
connected to Cahokia also. They were on Art Hill and below, where the art
museum is today; all these were leveled for the 1904 World’s Fair. Somebody has
come up with the idea to put some mounds out there and let the grass grow over
them just to show that there was another culture there before we came along. That
would be good. Sugarloaf Mound on I-55 South near the Broadway exit is the last
mound on the riverfront. The Osage Indians bought that property and took down
the existing house because they want to save that mound.
The Mississippian Culture
was in the late Woodland Period from 800 to 1600 A.D. East St. Louis was a suburb
of Cahokia. About 8,000 people lived here in 1100 A.D., in single-family units,
with four to eight people per hut. There were 500 acres that contained
thousands of homes, fifty circular mounds, and wooden temples on top of the platform
mounds. So if you were an Indian coming up the river in a canoe, you could see
all their wooden temples on top of the mounds and all their thatched roof huts surrounding
the open plaza. There were large square council houses, sweat lodges, and large
gardens. Life span was the late thirties, if you made it past childhood. If you
were 50, you were very old; so at my age, I would be ancient. They made female
figurines and stone owl effigies that were linked to rebirth and fertility. A
large fire occurred here and this ended the settlement. By the late 1800s, all
the mounds were leveled for homes and roads. When construction began on the new
I-70 bridge, excavation was done where the stockyards used to be northeast of
where the St. Louis Arch sits today. That was the center of the East St. Louis
Indians. They only excavated 10% because the road people do not care about
Indian history and they only gave them so much time to find things, and then
they wanted to go ahead and get the road and bridge built. In the limited time
they had, they found 6,000 pits and structures and thousands of artifacts that
were two to eight feet below the surface. Hopefully, someday they will be able to
excavate more. All these mounds were connected: Forest Park, St. Louis, East
St. Louis, and then we get to Cahokia Mounds, which was the center of the first
Indian city in North America – the largest Indian city north of Mexico.
Originally there were 120 mounds; today there are about 80. The largest mound
is 300 feet by 700 feet and 100 feet high; it took hundreds of years to build
that, a basket of dirt at a time. Platform mounds were flat on top and the
temples and the chief’s house were built on these. There were ceremony
buildings and houses built around an open plaza. Cahokia was a big trade
center; goods from here were found at other sites in all of the eastern United
States. There was no written language. The Indians farmed, growing corn, beans,
squash, and bottle gourds; they hunted, and kept turkeys. Rushes and cattail
leaves were used to weave mats and baskets. Mound 34 was just east of the big
mound, and they found arrowheads, small axes, pottery, ramie knives, copper and
shell ornaments there. Those were used for ritual activities. This culture made
hand and eye motifs, sun symbols, the cross and circle design, pipes,
headdresses, and discoidals. What’s a discoidal? A discoidal is a round disk,
somewhat concave, used in the Chunkey game. The Chunkey game was rolling the
discoidal and throwing spears at it, or where it was going to stop. There was a
copper workshop on Mound 34. Copper headdresses were made for high status people.
They made copper plates here that have been found at Etowah Mounds in Georgia
and Spiro Mounds in Oklahoma.
The peak of Cahokia was
about 1200 A.D. I was reading about the Piasa Bird and Pere Marquette Park. The
Piasa Bird, they think, was painted on the cliffs at Alton about 1200 A.D. and
that was the peak of Cahokia. They think there is a connection there – putting
this horrible figure on this bluff and there were other paintings on the cliff
walls. They think that was telling other Indians that came up the river in
canoes, “You’re coming into Cahokia Territory, so be careful!” But, that’s just
a theory. There are mounds on the west side of Marquette Park and I just found
that out. Anywhere on the Illinois River all the way up to Peoria there are all
kinds of village sites and artifacts. Mound 72 at Cahokia that is south of the
big mound is really important. On this site were mortuary houses, platform
mounds, mass burials, and eventually, the ridge top mound that you see today.
Here, was buried a tall man in his 40s, thought to be an early ruler. He was found
on a bed of 20,000 marine shell disc beads, arranged in the shape of a falcon.
He was buried with elaborate grave goods, such as mica, copper sheets, Chunkey
stones, and fine arrowheads. On display at the Cahokia Museum is a replica of
this “chief” on all those shells. Where he was buried, a pit was dug on the
southeast corner with a mass burial of 24 women. Also four young men were here,
missing their hands and heads. Next to these four men was another mass grave of
53 females, aged 15 to 30, all laid out in a row. In the southwest corner was a
mass burial of 39 men and women showing signs of a violent end. So I would say
they were sacrificed in a ritual. On top of this were the remains of 15 elite
people laid out on litters made of cedar poles and cane matting. There are
about 272 people buried in Mound 72 over a hundred-year period and, I would
say, they were all sacrifice victims. They have found human bones in trash
pits. So there is a question of whether they were cannibals.
Mississippian Culture sites
are all up the Mississippi River Valley: one in Southern Wisconsin, north to
south in Illinois, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee,
and Louisiana. They probably traded with each other along the river. The
Mississippian Culture produced such artifacts as bone harpoons, gorgets,
discoidals, stone tablets, clay pots showing tattoos, effigy pipes, tools, weapons,
effigy pots, copper plates with the weeping eye and circle and cross, carved
shells, and arrowheads.
East of Cahokia, about 15
miles, is Emerald Mound. It dates to about 1000 A.D. It had a big platform
mound like Cahokia with a plaza surrounded by huts. From Lebanon, Illinois, go
north on IL Route 4 and you will see a sign to the right that says Emerald
Mound. Some of this mound is washed away. This site is owned by the State of
Illinois. There’s not much said about it but they were connected to Cahokia
too.
We do not know what happened
at Cahokia; about 1300 A.D. that culture ended. It could have been disease,
war, flood, or any number of things. But they moved on and settled in different
areas.
Fort Ancient is in Lebanon,
Ohio. There are many, many mounds in Southern Ohio. The Fort Ancient complex
contains many sites. This culture occupied the middle Ohio Valley from about
900 A.D. to 1700 A. D. That is when the Europeans came. Most sites are on high
bluff tops in Ohio, eastern Indiana, northern Kentucky, and western West
Virginia. The Hopewell built this complex and the Newtown Culture occupied it
from 400 to 1000 A.D., then the Fort Ancient culture lived there. They are the
ancestors of the Shawnee Indians. Chillicothe is the center of the Shawnee
Indian nation. The Fort Ancient Culture was dependent on farming and contact
with other tribes for trade. This included the bow and arrow. The population in
1200 was about 300 people. Besides farming, people hunted, fished, and
collected wild plants. Half of their diet was corn. Their homes were arranged
in a circle around the plaza and platform mounds and all around was a stockade,
something like Cahokia. By 1600, most of them people were gone because of war
and European diseases and different things. Between Dayton and Cincinnati, next
to the Little Miami River is a 100-acre complex high on a bluff top, 270 feet
above the river. This site is surrounded by an earthwork wall. At the north end
there are twin mounds showing the location of the north gate. They built
trenches filled with water from the different rivers and streams. This is the
largest hilltop enclosure in the United States; there are three and a half
miles of wall. Inside this are four stone covered mounds, plus cone and
crescent shaped mounds. They made arrowheads, tools, beads, ear spools,
pottery, pipes, banner stones, and discoidals.
All of the Mound Building
Cultures were on the same order. They had cone mounds, platform mounds, and a
plaza that was for trading, games, and ceremonies. The huts surrounded the
plaza and the elite people lived on top of the mounds, unless it was a burial
mound. They had the elite people living above the common people then just like
we have now.
When I come back, I am going
to do a talk just on the Indians in Illinois and I will bring some artifacts
with me. Usually when they would find a new type of arrowhead, it would be
named for the area where it was found and they go back for thousands of years.
When I first started, I thought this is from the Indians in the 1800s. No, they
are thousands of years old.
This presentation
was very well received and provoked many questions and comments.