American Indian Ways of Life: An Interpretation of the Archaeology of Illinois and Adjoining Areas

[5]All dates, even those determined by radiocarbon methods, should be taken as only roughly approximate.

[6]These dates and those given hereafter refer to the earliest and latest sites known in Illinois for the cultures under consideration. Although supported by radiocarbon dating methods, they are only approximate. Undoubtedly also cultures in one area disappeared while they continued to flourish in another part of the state or in other states.

[7]Generally speaking, each succeeding higher culture in the area made most of the tool and weapon types of their predecessors, adding certain improvements and sometimes new types. The Archaic people used flint scrapers, chipped flint choppers, and native cobblestone hammers as had the Paleo-Indians. The narrow-bladed spearheads were occasionally made but the fluting or channel is practically always lacking. Polished stone forms, possibly the spearthrower, were new inventions in Archaic times.

[8]In the page that follows a tentative reconstruction of the less tangible customs of these people will be presented, based on a study of several tribes now or recently in the Archaic status. The Archaic culture as used in this paper refers to those tribes who lived mainly by hunting, supplemented to a degree by collecting native edible plant foods. They are distinguished here from other peoples of the Stone Age or non-farming stage—from Big Game Hunters on the one hand (none of whom exist today) and on the other, from Food Stores, who were able by one means or another to store food over one or more seasons and so establish more or less fixed homes. The peoples recently living in the Archaic status include the native tribes of Central and Coastal Australia, the Tasmanians, the Andaman Island tribes, the Terra del Fuegians, the African Bushmen and a number of others.

[9]The Initial Woodland in Illinois is usually considered to consist of three cultural divisions or units, the Black Sand, the Red Ochre and the Morton. The only known Red Ochre sites are mounds which undoubtedly are the burial places of important personages of a cultural group whose campsites and artifact assemblages have not as yet been identified as such. The graves yield a number of artifact types that are identical with those found in Black Sand villages. It is possible the Red Ochre mounds belong to the Black Sand people and that the mounds and special burial customs may have been continued into or adopted by the Morton cultural group and served still later as a framework for the highly elaborated Hopewellian funeral practices.

[10]The narrow-bladed leaf-shaped spearhead, well-chipped and without fluting, reminiscent of the general Yuma, Folsom and Clovis shape, are found in the Red Ochre subculture and are worthy of note. This type appears rarely in campsites but occurs in relatively large numbers in mounds. Profuse amounts of red ochre are found in graves as in Terminal Archaic (Titterington focus) in western Illinois. Copper ornaments may indicate Wisconsin (Old Copper Culture) influence.

[11]The Poole village (Pike County) is dated 550 B.C. and the Wilson Mound (White County) about 89 B.C. The Poole village appears to have been occupied from 550 B.C. to 200 A.D.

[12]Civilization, as used in this paper, signifies exhaustive exploitation of the natural resources and accompanying significant elaborations of the social and spiritual aspects (as exemplified by ceremonies, regalia, insignia, art and extensive architectural structures), accomplished by means of specialization of the existing tools and technologies, with or without fundamental inventive developments. Artisans of the Initial and Final Woodland cultures seem to have practiced all the crafts employed by Hopewellians but failed to produce the beautiful chipped spearheads, “pipes of pan”, excellent sculpture in stone and pottery, etching in bone, the extensive earthworks and the mounds with timbered burial chambers. Perhaps some additional stimuli—the introduction of maize or the intensification of its cultivation, a satisfying new religion with stirring ceremonies together with intergroup competition—gave the spiritual impetus that produced the Hopewellian fluorescence.

[13]Specialization was foreshadowed in the Red Ochre culture but the small total of grave offerings discovered to date fail to demonstrate any greater leisure than occurs at favorable times among any simple hunting people.

[14]An early subculture termed Old Village preceding the generally known Middle Mississippi (Trappist or Bean Pot) period has been proposed on the strength of stratification at the Cahokia village near East St. Louis. Although this appears logically sound, the evidence has not been published and no pure Old Village site has yet been found and reported upon.

[15]Except where noted as based directly on archaeological evidence, the broad cultural features suggested in the rest of this section, are inferred from similar customs found generally among tribes in the plant-raising status without food-draft animals. The results were derived by the writer from a study of anthropological reports of the following tribes or groups of tribes: Polynesians, Delawares, Natchez (and their neighbors) and the western Pueblo Indians. The Pueblos, in their social, political and religious customs and institutions have been for seven hundred years in a transitional status between the Archaic hunters (or possibly “food storers”) and a “fully-developed” plant-raising stage.

[16]The archaeological evidence for this section is chiefly from The Fisher Mound Group, etc. by George Langford in the AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGY, Vol. XXIX, No. 3, pp. 153-205 (July-September, 1927).

[17]These Indians called themselves Ilini (pronounced Il´-i-nee) or Illini signifying “man,” in the plural Illiniwek, “the men.” The French dropped the -iwek and substituted their own ending whence the name Illinois by which they were generally known thereafter. In this booklet Illini will be generally used to designate these tribes, their culture and language to avoid confusion with other tribes who, like the Sauk, Fox, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, and Miami, have occupied parts of the state and are sometimes called Illinois Indians.

[18]Information given on historic tribes is from notes and manuscript assembled by Dr. Wayne C. Temple.

[19]The term calumet, originally applied to the stem of the tobacco pipe, is now generally used to designate the pipe and stem. “It is fashioned from a red stone, polished like marble, and bored in such a manner that one end serves as a receptacle for the tobacco, while the other fits into the stem; this is a stick two feet long, as thick as an ordinary cane, and bored through the middle. It is ornamented with the heads and necks of various birds, whose plumage is very beautiful. To these they also add large feathers—red, green, and other colors—wherewith the whole is adorned. They have a great regard for it....” (R. G. Thwaites, ed., The Jesuit Relations, Vol. LIX, p. 131.) The war calumet differed from that of peace and was decorated with red feathers. See Fig. 34, A.

[20]Artifact types having once appeared are likely to appear again in subsequent culture even though rare or even lacking in some intervening assemblages (e.g. necklaces of anculosa beads of similarly ground [snail] shells found from Medial Archaic through Middle Phase; grooved axes from Medial Archaic to Mississippi but rare or lacking in most subcultures and cultures except Archaic and Initial Woodland). On account of unwieldiness of complete accumulative lists only new artifact types when they first appear will be recorded here. Exceptions: 1) the name of an artifact entered as probably present (indicated by a following ?) will be repeated in the first subsequent culture in which definite evidence for it has been reported and 2) when an artifact once reported assumes a new form or presumably takes on a new significance (e.g. Archaic hoe becomes a tool of the plant-raisers in Classic and Middle Phases), it will appear again in the text.