It's there past fields and trees off Rt. 23. We who have lived here all our lives give it little thought. We do marvel at how it swells to enormous size during flood times, but normally we do little more than acknowledge its watery existence at others, choosing to give an an occasional glance as it contentedly flows in its winding course to the Ohio.
Well, dear readers, the Scioto River and the valley that cradles it are geophysical giants in their contributions to human habitation. Thousands of years ago, people called this area home. Although we know too little about the first people of Scioto County, what we do know comes from precious remnants yielded by the soil, itself.
The Fort Ancient Feurt Site is situated
adjacent to the lower Scioto River north of Portsmouth. The Feurt
Mounds and Village Site lies about three miles north off the west
side of present-day U.S. 23 near the Clay Township overpass. For over
at least 150 years, it has attracted both researcher and collector in
search of relics of the Native Americans. The locale is home to a
number of multi-cultural sites that were heavily utilized during the
prehistoric era.
* Historical Note – Mr.
William C. Feurt owned the land of more than 400 acres of rich bottom
lands and sloping hillsides, and it was considered one of the most
productive and well-kept farms along the Scioto. Thus, the namesake
of the ancient site.
The Feurt community probably first
received professional attention in the summer of 1896 when the
legendary researcher/ formidable archaeologist, Warren K. Moorehead,
with the cursory support of The Ohio Archaeological and Historical
Society, led a small team of diggers to the site. Moorehead
discovered three mostly flattened mounded features all containing
burials. He examined only a small portion of the site's most
prominent features. He reported ...
"The
afternoon of July 13th we went to Mr. Feurt's farm where we opened
the smaller mound and dug the large ones the following day. They are
located on the second terrace. The small one is two by twenty five
feet, the next four by fifty feet, the largest six by sixty feet."
Moorehead's cursory field work episode
yielded 33 burials most "without notable burial goods." It
was typical in the early 1900's for members of the local collecting
fraternity to anxiously wait for spring cultivation activities on the
Feurt Site plateau so that they could collect specimens from the
artifact-rich site. They knew they were walking over the location of
a major prehistoric community, one richly endowed with the trappings
of its life history.
In the Feurt Hill Site scientists and
residents found refined pipestone specialty artifacts such as pipes;
crafted whole and broken pottery and ornaments; necklaces made of
materials such as raptor bird wing bones, shell beads, and canine
teeth of mountain lions and gray wolves; flint items such as arrow
points; and a profusion of bird and animal bones plus mussel shells.
Even the remains of relics used in a bowling-type game called
“Chunkey,” where wagering on outcomes was an important
ingredient, were found.
Overall, the Feurt village encompassed
about four acres. Situated under top-layer deposits was a uniform
layer of gravel also containing artifacts. Much of this layer was
hauled away by gravel haulers, some of whom upon their work
discovering relics. No one knows the full extent of the treasure
trove at the site.
Becoming Stewards of Ancient Humans
The Scioto Valley is a repository of
prehistoric history as evidenced by the excavation of the Feurt
Ancient Fort Hill Site. Discovering and examining artifacts of this
period of ancient, cultural explosion in the Ohio River basin region
is enriching and enlightening for us, the present stewards of the
land. In fact, how rewarding it is to discover that the entire valley
served as the home for thousands of inhabitants during that time.
Still, most importantly, we must honor
an obligation to these magnificent people. The human connection to
the remains is paramount to our history, to our respect, and to our
solemn introspection. With every specimen or artifact found, we must
properly recognize the lives of the people of this ancient past.
The Fuert site yielded many human
remains. The excavation of the dead can be seen as an act of
desecration or as an act in service to those who might otherwise be
forgotten. For centuries white explorers and settlers in the Americas
dug up the graves of indigenous people, looting sacred artifacts and
using the remains for studies that promoted white superiority. For
much of American history people could dig up artifacts and remains,
sell them, buy them, and display them with little impunity or
regulation.
How we deal with the dead is how we
gauge our own humanity. While scientists can use bones and DNA to
reveal much about the people of the past – their origin, their
family trees, their patterns of migration, their diseases, and the
types of labor they performed – respect and decency must govern any
the disturbance of any skeletal remains.
For that very reason, artifacts and
human remains are now protected by the The Native American Graves
Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), passed in 1990 to enable
tribes to protect and recover their heritage. It has succeeded in
reuniting many items from federally funded institutions with their
rightful custodians.
With the legislation, Congress
attempted to "strike a balance between the interest in
scientific examination of skeletal remains and the recognition that
Native Americans, like people from every culture around the world,
have a religious and spiritual reverence for the remains of their
ancestors."
But, when remains cannot be culturally
linked to a modern tribe – or no tribe claims them – scientists
may conduct research without getting approval from tribes to do so.
Ohio law to this day does not specifically protect graves at
abandoned cemeteries, those on private land or unmarked burials older
than 125 years, including Native American artifacts and remains
thousands of years. This lack of legislation must be questioned.
And, here is the most heated issue of
all: the debate over repatriating and reburying human remains that
are now held in museums or research labs. Some bioarchaeologists are
staunchly opposed to returning bones to the ground; however, Native
Americans largely disagree with storing the remains of their
ancestors in storerooms and collection boxes.
At the Feurt site alone, over 500
burials have been exposed during its excavated history. Moorehead and
others left a fertile field for future research about indigenous
people that should enrich our own being. Still, we must also
calculate the costs of the intrusion. When we weight the value of the
pursuit of scientific discovery against the impact on groups of real
stakeholders – descendants and other interested parties – both
groups must be equal partners in the process.
Feurt Graves
The grounds of the Feurt site revealed
our solemn human connection of settlement through the bones of an
almost forgotten people of the Scioto Valley. As they read about the
discovery and view artifacts and remains, few realize the extent of
the settlement in our own backyard. The humanity becomes clear with
further examination of the facts. The ancient Native Americans were
the first organized culture in Ohio that we know about today.
In
2018, The Department of the Interior has nominated Fort Ancient near
the Little Miami River (a related settlement) to be designated as a World Heritage Site. They are among the largest earthworks in the world that are not fortifications or defensive structures. The site may soon join the ranks of the Pyramids of Egypt, the Great Wall of China, Pompeii, Stonehenge and the Taj Mahal, all of which are World Heritage sites.
To attest to the enormity of the Feurt
settlement, on July 5,1916, William C. Mills of The Ohio
Archaeological and Historical Society began an extensive examination
of the Feurt Site. From the smallest of Moorehead's designated
cemeteries, which was actually triple the size Moorehead had
determined, Mills uncovered 102 burials. He also identified an
unusual site burial practice. The usually flexed interments were
placed directly on undisturbed subsoil and covered with mounded
earth, suggesting minimal preparation of gravesites.
An example of Mills' descriptions of
his work in the cemetery was Burial #75 …
"This was a child of perhaps
seven years of age. The body was placed in natural gravel and sand on
its left side and arms extended parallel with the body, but the legs
were flexed closely to the body. Around the neck was a necklace made
of a perforated canine of the gray wolf, three effigy bear canines,
made of wood and covered with copper, and a large shell gorget.”
Most of the inhumations were placed on
their sides in a flexed position with their appendages close to the
body. Serrated triangular points and shell ornaments were found with
several burials.
The second earth mounded cemetery
measured 90 feet by 45 feet and was 8 feet high.
Burial mound 3 was singularly
interesting because
“It contained the re-deposited
bodies of at least twelve individuals. They had been interred
elsewhere and moved to mound 3. All had missing body parts such as
their head, arms and legs. An isolated fireplace was found at the
original ground level in this cemetery. It was filled with charcoal
and large pieces of broken vessels. Was this the one-time site of a
feast /celebration honoring the dead? This cemetery, by Mills'
measurements, was six feet high at its maximum elevation and extended
90 feet by 112 feet. One hundred and one burials were found. Several
of the burials had One hundred and one burials were found. Several of
the burials had necklaces made of materials such as raptor bird wing
bones, shell beads and the canine teeth of mountain lions and gray
wolves.”
Historians tell us the prehistoric
indigenous peoples who constructed the Feurt Mounds lived in the
nearby village. The examination of the Tremper Mound, in 1915,
naturally led to the desire to know something of the inhabitants of
the Feurt Mounds and Villagesite, lying just across the Scioto River
to the eastward. The close proximity of the sites, as well as their
relative size and importance, was sufficient to raise the question as
to whether or not there might have been some connection between the
two.
Willaim C. Mills says …
“It was apparent without
detailed examination that the cultural stages represented by the two
sites were extremely different, and that if any connection were to be
discovered it would be due entirely to con-temporaneity of occupation
and the consequent relationship which, amicable or hostile, is bound
to exist where two peoples are co-resident in a vicinity.”
What do we know about people of the
Feurt site? Fort Ancient is a name for a Native American culture that
flourished from Ca. 1000-1750 CE and predominantly inhabited land
near the Ohio River valley in the areas of modern-day southern Ohio,
northern Kentucky, southeastern Indiana and western West Virginia.
Although a contemporary of the
Mississippian Culture, they are often considered a "sister
culture" and distinguished from the Mississippian Culture. The
Mississippians were a mound-building Native American civilization
centered along the Mississippi River Valley. They inhabited many
places there such as the larges city of Cahokia.
Engraved Ohio pipestone earspool, Feurt Site
Once Again, The Scioto Corn/People Connection
Although far from agreed upon, there is
evidence to suggest that the Fort Ancient Culture were not the direct
descendants of the Hopewellian Culture. It is suspected that the Fort
Ancient Culture introduced maize agriculture to Ohio – corn, the
saving grace of natives and European immigrants that followed.
About 1000 CE, terminal Late Woodland
groups in the Middle Ohio Valley adopted maize agriculture. They
began settling in small, year-round nuclear family households and
settlements of no more than 40 to 50 individuals. These small
scattered settlements, located along terraces that overlooked rivers
and sometimes on flood plains, would be occupied for short periods
before the groups moved on to new locations.
The people were primarily a farming and
hunting people. Their diet was composed mainly of the New World
staples known as the three sisters(maize, squash, and beans),
supplemented by hunting and fishing in nearby forests and rivers.
* Historical Note – Henry
Clyde Shetrone: “The stream of immigrants from across
Bering Strait came after a while into Mexico and Middle America.
Here, in a semitropical setting unfavorable to the more advanced
planes of human civilization but eminently encouraging to the
development from primitive to higher culture stages, they prospered.
“From wandering nomads they
became sedentary agricultural peoples, able for the first time to
face the future with adequate stores of food supplies against famine
and pestilence; able to exist in compact populous communities and
thus to develop community enterprise and specialization of labor. The
magic key which unlocked the door to progress was nothing more nor
less than maize or Indian corn.
“From a native seed-bearing
grass, later known to the Aztecs as teocentli, these aboriginal
agriculturists are believed to have developed, through conscious or
accidental selection and cultivation, the world's greatest cereal,
corn. With the development of agriculture – maize, beans, squash,
and tobacco – came correlated inventions – spinning, weaving, and
potterymaking. The high development of social institutions, religion,
architecture, astronomy, and so forth, destined to make their
appearance in due time within the important empires of Middle and
South America, need not enter into this sketch.
“Nor is it concerned with the
peopling from this nuclear area of the South American continent which
in time materialized. Equipped with the rudiments of agriculture and
with the confidence engendered thereby, and carrying the germ of
culture generated during their sojourn in the parental area in
Mexico, the American aborigines again succumbed to the instinctive
urge to seek new homes and to explore unknown lands …
“From the nuclear area in
southern Mexico the line of migration may be followed northward,
finding its first materialization in the arid region of our Southwest
…
“The second stage of migration
is found, not to the northward, as might be expected, but eastward in
what is termed the Southeastern Woodland area, corresponding to the
southern half of the general mound area. This second stage of removal
from the Mexican cultural center brings us definitely into the
country of the Mound-builders, and completes the hypothetical
connection between the Asiatic migrants at Bering Strait.”
Important game species for the Fort
Ancient people included the black bear, turkey, white tail deer and
elk. Archaeologists have found evidence at some sites that suggest
turkeys were kept in pens. The average lifespan during this time
period decreased from that of their ancestors. The people were
smaller in stature and less able to fend off infectious diseases than
previous peoples. Archaeological investigations of their cemeteries
has shown that almost all Fort Ancients peoples showed pathology of
some kind, with high incidence of dental disease and arthritis.
Changes and European Immigration
By 1200 the small villages of Fort
Ancient inhabitants began to coalesce into larger settlements of up
to 300 people. They were occupied for longer periods, possibly up to
25 years. During the Early and Middle Fort Ancient period, the houses
were designed as single-family dwellings. Later Fort Ancient
buildings are larger multi-family dwellings. Settlements were rarely
permanent, as the people commonly moved to a new location after one
or two generations, when the natural resources surrounding the old
village were exhausted.
The Late Fort Ancient period from 1400
to 1750 is the protohistoric era in the Middle Ohio Valley. During
this era, the formerly dispersed populations began to coalesce. The
Gist-phase villages (1400 to 1550 CE) became much larger than during
the preceding period, with populations as high as 500. Archaeologists
have speculated that the larger villages and palisades are evidence
that after 1450, warfare and inter-group strife increased, leading
the people to consolidate their villages for better protection.
This era also showed increased contact
with Mississippian peoples; some of whom may have migrated to and
been integrated into Fort Ancient villages. The Madisonville horizon
of artifacts after 1400 includes relatively high proportions of
bowls, salt pans, triangular strap handles, colanders, negative
painted pottery, notched and beaded rims, and some effigies, all
items and styles that are usually associated with the Mississippian
cultures of the Lower Ohio Valley, at sites such as Angel Mounds and
Kincaid Mounds.
Although the Fort Ancient peoples did
not encounter Europeans at this time, they, like other groups in the
interior of the continent, may have suffered high fatalities from
their diseases, transmitted among Native Americans by trade contacts.
The
next-known inhabitants of the area, who were encountered by French
and English explorers, were the historic Shawnee tribe. Scholars
believe that the Fort Ancient society, like the Mississippian
cultures to the south and west, may have been severely disrupted by
waves of infectious disease epidemics from the first Spanish
explorers in the mid-16th century.
Sources
Carmean, Kelli (Winter 2009), Points in
time: Assessing a Fort Ancient triangular projectile point typology,
Southeastern Archaeology.
Lepper, Bradley T. (February 2005).
Ohio Archaeology:An Illustrated Chronicle of Ohio's Ancient
American Indian Cultures. Orange Frazer Press. pp. 198–203.
"Middle to Late Fort Ancient
Society". Archived from the original on 2010-06-21.
Mills, William C. The Feurt Mounds And
Village Site, Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quart. 1916.
Peregrine, Peter N.; Ember, Melvin,
eds. (2001). "Volume 6 :North America". Encyclopedia of
Prehistory. Springer. p. 175.
Sharp, William E. (1996). "Chapter
6: Fort Ancient Farmers". In Lewis, R. Barry. Kentucky
Archaeology. University Press of Kentucky. pp. 162–1.
Shetrone, Henry Clyde. The
Mound-Builders. 1936.
