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BOARD OF ILLINOIS STATE MUSEUM ADVISORS
BOARD OF ILLINOIS STATE MUSEUM ADVISORS
M. M. Leighton , Ph. D., Chairman Illinois Geological Survey, Urbana Everett P. Coleman , M. D. Coleman Clinic Canton Percival Robertson , Ph. D. The Principia College Elsah N. W. McGee , Ph. D. North Central College Naperville Sol Tax , Ph. D. University of Chicago Chicago Elsah N. W. McGee , Ph. D. North Central College Naperville Sol Tax , Ph. D. University of Chicago Chicago Copyright by ILLINOIS STATE MUSEUM 1958 STATE OF ILLINOIS William G. Stratton , Governor DEPT. OF REGISTRATION &am
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AMERICAN INDIAN WAYS OF LIFE
AMERICAN INDIAN WAYS OF LIFE
Springfield, Illinois 1958 [Printed by authority of the State of Illinois] Site of the ancient Middle Mississippi religious city on the Kincaid farm near Metropolis, Illinois, as it is today. Four mounds can be seen; the village area is in the foreground and the plaza at the right (south) of the largest mound with house on it. TABLE I. STAGES AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL UNITS This paper is primarily planned for the layman, the beginning student of prehistory and others interested in acquiring a general u
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PALEO-INDIANS, BIG GAME HUNTERS, DISCOVER A NEW WORLD (50,000? to 8,000? B.C.)[5]
PALEO-INDIANS, BIG GAME HUNTERS, DISCOVER A NEW WORLD (50,000? to 8,000? B.C.)[5]
Man probably discovered America as early as 50,000 years ago and gradually occupied the two continents in the succeeding millenia. The first discoverers of the New World were of Mongolian racial stock as are the American Indians. They crossed from Siberia to Alaska over an existing land bridge, over ice, or possibly by wading or by boat over the shallow sea in the wake of mammoth, mastodon or musk ox herds on whose flesh they lived. Following in the path of the huge animals, they made their way
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If Archaic Man Was Like Present-Day Archaic Tribes[8]
If Archaic Man Was Like Present-Day Archaic Tribes[8]
Fig. 5. Rock shelter near Cobden. Such shelters were used by Archaic and succeeding peoples. (Photograph by Irvin Peithmann) If Archaic man in Illinois lived as do present-day Archaic peoples, the family or local group, though they restricted themselves during most of the year to their hunting grounds which they guarded jealously from trespassers, did not camp continuously in one spot. At appropriate seasons of the year they rotated from one hamlet site to another to take advantage of the food r
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CULTURES AND CULTURAL CHANGE
CULTURES AND CULTURAL CHANGE
Man can live virtually anywhere on the earth’s surface where he can obtain food, water and fuel, and do so without any fundamental change in his physical structure. This is largely because he is easily able to modify his customary ways of filling his basic needs under new or changing conditions of his surroundings. For primitive man to “live better” required an increasing knowledge of the resources in his locality and ingenuity in devising effective means and contrivances for exploiting them. Be
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THE INITIAL WOODLAND CULTURES[9] (2500-500 B.C.)
THE INITIAL WOODLAND CULTURES[9] (2500-500 B.C.)
After 5000 B.C. the temperatures continued to rise producing a climatic interval known as the Thermal Maximum when it was warmer and drier than at the present time. After reaching its high point, the temperature gradually declined and probably ended in southern Illinois about 2100 B.C. or later in a climate much like that of today. By projecting the rate of deposit from the eight- to the eleven-foot level of the Modoc Rock Shelter up to the five-foot level where the Archaic remains appear to end
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THE FOOD STORERS (BAUMER AND CRAB ORCHARD CULTURES) (1000?-100 B.C.?)
THE FOOD STORERS (BAUMER AND CRAB ORCHARD CULTURES) (1000?-100 B.C.?)
It has been seen that in southern Illinois the Archaic way of life may have persisted until 2100 B.C. or perhaps even later. Across the state on the Ohio River a Woodland people succeeded the earlier Archaic residents. Their culture is known as Baumer and their nearest cultural relatives lived south of the Ohio in Kentucky (Round Grave or Upper Valley People). The Baumer artifacts do not resemble those of the Archaic period very closely, giving one the impression that the Baumer people developed
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THE HOPEWELLIAN CIVILIZATION[12] (500 B.C.-500 A.D.)
THE HOPEWELLIAN CIVILIZATION[12] (500 B.C.-500 A.D.)
Toward the end of the Initial Woodland period maize or corn, as we call it today, was introduced into northern Illinois, presumably from Mexico and Middle America through the agency of intervening tribes. In an apparently short time, its production seems to have been greatly intensified and exploited. Other food crops and tobacco may have accompanied maize. About the same time, a formalized religion arose, probably concerned with the worship of deities who personified natural forces like the sun
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Final Woodland Archaeology
Final Woodland Archaeology
Archaeologically these peoples are in the Final Woodland phase of culture . The Final Phase yields tobacco pipes and crude flint arrowheads , its chief artifactual differences with the Initial phase. The clay of their pottery was generally mixed with grit or sand to prevent firing cracks in the vessel walls. The customary vertically-elongated pot with a conical or pointed bottom was accompanied by new forms—the globular or flattened globular with “round” (spherical) bases, the “coconut shell” cu
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A SECOND PLANT-RAISING CIVILIZATION—THE MIDDLE MISSISSIPPIANS (1000-1500 A.D.)
A SECOND PLANT-RAISING CIVILIZATION—THE MIDDLE MISSISSIPPIANS (1000-1500 A.D.)
The Middle Mississippi culture seems to have arisen, as previously suggested, in the area where several important highways of aboriginal travel converged—the region surrounding the Ohio and Mississippi rivers from the mouth of the Wabash to the mouth of the Illinois. Whether or not its development was stimulated by the contracts of Muskhogeans and Algonkians or whether it was due to interplay between the cultures of the Final Woodland petty tribes is unknown. Two slightly differing subcultures o
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UNDER-DEVELOPED NEIGHBORS—THE UPPER MISSISSIPPIANS (1100?-1600 A.D.)
UNDER-DEVELOPED NEIGHBORS—THE UPPER MISSISSIPPIANS (1100?-1600 A.D.)
Less advanced Mississippi tribes with customs showing some admixture of Woodland cultural elements living contemporaneously in Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio, encircled the Middle phase peoples on the east, north and west. Known generally now as the Upper phase peoples their sole representative in Illinois was the people of the Langford subculture , who dwelt around the southern end of Lake Michigan as well as in adjacent parts of Indiana and Michigan. The type station is the Fisher
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Dress
Dress
Men went naked in summer except for mocassins. At times a breech cloth was worn; in winter buffalo skin robes were added and belts, leg bands and leggings on occasion. Women when working apparently wore only a girdle ( breech cloth ), at other times a wrap-around skirt of skin with a belt passing over one shoulder and under the opposite arm. The skirt dates back to Hopewellian times and was used during the Mississippi period in Indiana and probably in Illinois. The bosom was covered with a deers
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Economy
Economy
Labor was divided between the men and the women (and children). Men did the hunting, fighting and made the weapons. The women (and children) did the other work—the housework, planting and harvesting the crops, dressing deer and buffalo skins, making twine from bast , weaving cloth and, on the hunt, carrying the house parts and setting up the camp. Buffalo meat was preserved by drying and smoking it over a fire in the hunting camp. Vegetable foods, corn, beans and squash were dried or parched and
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Marriage Customs and the Family
Marriage Customs and the Family
An Illini man, desiring to get married, sent presents to the girl’s parents. If the suitor was acceptable, the parents kept the gift and took the bride to the man’s hut the following evening. Apparently there was no wedding ceremony. Women had somewhat lower social status than their husbands. Wives did not eat with their husbands. A man was permitted two or more wives and often married two sisters. Children were well-treated. Infants were bound to a cradle board that the mother carried around. T
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Political Organization
Political Organization
The explorers and writers to whom we are indebted for our knowledge of Illini social and religious organization were, unfortunately, casual and untrained observers who, on the whole, held the Indian and his customs in contempt. Important activities were often dismissed with meaningless generalizations, or omitted entirely, as if generally known. Consequently great gaps are left in the information that has come down to us. From the various accounts, the impression is given that the Illini tribes
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Raids
Raids
The tribe in historic times seems to have been the war-making group. Raiding parties tried to sneak undetected into enemy country and conceal themselves. From their hiding place, they fell suddenly on small unsuspecting enemy bodies, scalping men, killing women and children, and slipping away again with a few prisoners if practicable. Back in the village, captive warriors were bound to a frame of green wood, suspended over a slow fire, and tortured until death released them. Warriors hung the sc
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Trade
Trade
Earlier in the European period , the Illini furnished Canadians with skins of beaver, raccoon, deer, bear and buffalo, but in 1776 the French (in Illinois) compelled them “to devote themselves to producing oil, tallow and meat which they traded with them.” (Deliette Memoir. See Pease in Bibliography under ILLINI.) The Indians traded for porcupine quills with more northern neighbors. After the European came, Illini trade was probably overwhelmingly with the whites, exchanging native products of t
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Religion
Religion
The religion of the early historic Illini was apparently a complex one. The sun was evidently a powerful deity from whom the calumet pipe had perhaps been supposedly received. A special calumet, apparently sacred to the sun, was revered as a palladium (like the Hebraic Ark of the Covenant) on which rested the safety of the nation. A special official had responsibility for its safe keeping. The smoke of the pipe was offered to the sun whenever the Illini prayed for rain, fine weather, or some oth
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Art
Art
Men tattooed their “whole bodies.” They painted themselves in solid colors and with designs in red, black, yellow, blue, and other colors. The body was adorned with native jewelry , the nose and ears were pierced for ornaments, and feathers of many colors were worn attached to the scalp lock. Moccasins were decorated with porcupine quill embroidery. Men clipped or shaved most of the head, leaving the scalp lock and four other tufts of long hair, two on each side, one in front of and behind each
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Archaeology of the Illini
Archaeology of the Illini
Two village sites of the Illini have been investigated by the Illinois State Museum, one near Utica, LaSalle County (jointly with the University of Chicago) and one in Randolph County near the mouth of the Kaskaskia River. This last site was occupied for over a century by descendants of the Kaskaskias and other Illini tribes. Except for a small area where Archaic artifacts are found, it is a “pure” site. The Illini tools, weapons and ornaments of native make were the usual chipped flint triangul
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THE INDIANS LEAVE ILLINOIS
THE INDIANS LEAVE ILLINOIS
For historic tribes of the state other than the Illini little is known of their archaeology . Culturally it is almost a certainty that all were, soon after contact, largely disorganized due to partial economic dependence, European diseases and the alcohol trade, to diminishing game, loss of other resources, and to military pressures from white governments and contiguous Indian groups. Only the broad outlines of the movements of the historic tribes that lived, hunted, or made forays in Illinois n
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SUMMARY OF ILLINOIS PREHISTORY
SUMMARY OF ILLINOIS PREHISTORY
The archaeology of Illinois in its present position seems to indicate that the state did not at any time form a distinct single culture or subculture but that it was rather the meeting place of many, due possibly to the rivers that enclose, lead to and intersect its territory. It was at one and the same time a part of one or more widespread patterns or phases and a patchwork of subcultures that extended into neighboring states. There was a tendency for the cultures of the northern four-fifths of
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GLOSSARY
GLOSSARY
ADVANCED PHASE : The earliest pottery-making cultures of Woodland in southern Illinois. The peoples seem to have been storers of acorns and hickory nuts. It is sometimes called early Woodland. AMERINDIAN : The American Indian of Mongolian racial stock so named to distinguish him from the Asiatic Indian who is of the white or Caucasian race. ANTHROPOLOGY : The study of man and his cultural activities. ARCHAEOLOGY : The division of anthropology that studies peoples of the past through the remains
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STORY OF ILLINOIS SERIES.
STORY OF ILLINOIS SERIES.
Cost: 25c each; 20c each in lots of 25 or more Address all enquiries to the Museum Director , Illinois State Museum , Springfield, Illinois (80513—6-58)...
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