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.
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 petie8135@att.net,
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.