Fort Ancient Feurt Site: Remnants of the First People

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.