Another 1,000-year-old nut-cracking tool.
Posted on 01/10/2007 11:02:36 PM PST by FLOutdoorsman
ping
So that is where Dick Cheney hides the bodies!;-)
Neat stuff. I wonder if he got lucky and shot a limit too!
I wonder what possessed them to think they were remains that would belong to the Caddos or Wichitas? They tended to range further south and west, even 1000 years ago. This is forested area and they were open plains Indians, even into Kansas, to the north, but in the western part. The tools sound like Plains tools, too.
Eastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas had been Cherokee for maybe 300 years. Maybe it was some Caddoan (not necessarily the Caddos or Wichitas themselves) or a Delaware-Lenape tribal family that came from the east.
I suppose if they dig more and find some mounds, that might answer the question - or they already know there are some. Hunh - interesting, anyway.
I caught my very first fish as a tiny kiddo at Spavinaw! Then promptly fell down *splat* in the watercress at the shoreline, just me and my little perch and short-stuff rod/reel.
The size of the grinding table was massive. Eastern natives had finer-tuned and smaller-scaled tools. That's all I meant - just from things I've seen and known about.
They probably mean this small site is caddo as in "Spiro mounds caddoan" but I don't think people have settled to whom exactly the Spiro mounds era "caddo" are really related; the old theory was they were ancestors of the modern Caddo and Witchita but it's in dispute- they may be more akin to other peoples northeast of them all the way up to Illinois. Certainly the people from the Arkansas basin are linked in some fashion- and Spiro seems to have been a trade hub or gateway in the midst of this basin where finished goods passed from places like Cahokia with its numerous copper and shell workshop sites and huge caches of chert drills in return for something- some say Spiro may have been the conduit through which flowed soft bison hair for textiles, meat, bow d'arc staves for bows, etc, since we're not sure. Spiro is lacking in workshop sites but abounds in exotic finished goods. Trade in perishable products from their region and from the west is most likely the reason but it could be that goods went to Spiro for other cultural needs- a form of tribute, a kind of religious sacrifice at what may have been considered a special site, or reasons we can't understand yet.
The site will be declared historical and he just hunted his very last season there.
I don't think it is Caddo or Wichita either. These tribes were assigned to reservations there but that was in the late 1800's. If these findings are 1000 years old they have to be some other tribe.
I have always wondered how one disposes of 'holy crap'.
***I wonder what possessed them to think they were remains that would belong to the Caddos or Wichitas?***
Possibly Osage?
The time I've spent at Spiro itself was somewhat of a waste, as I didn't really know a lot of "big picture" background as to what I was learning until much later, when I got into my own genealogy.
I am Chickasaw and do not consider myself related to Caddo or Wichita, as we were Muskogean in language family. Our historic homeland is around the Tennessee River in NW Alabama and NE Mississippi.
I consider us part of the "Southern Cult" or Mississippian culture - however, some say we came from west of the Mississippi in the ancient, and probably originated around the Red River valley, like the "Caddoan" cultures, before migrating eastward.
One thing, though, we were not mound builders and there is nothing in our anasazi origin stories indicating that we ever were. That's why I am so often in dispute about that.
After Removal, we were originally part of the Choctaw Nation, then "got our own place" - but we own half of the Arkansas River. I believe Spavinaw is in the Arkansas watershed, although it might be the Grand River - I'd have to look.
Anyway, I dislike that these ancient artifacts would just be handed over to the Caddo-Wichita tribes, no questions asked. I looked at the Caddo Nation website just now, at least the one sponsored by their Texas portion, and could not believe the hyperbole they've written.
You would think they are the only Indian tribe in the US and that they invented everything and saved the white man from every other evil Indian - and made the most fabulous pottery in the world! They are laying claim to everything that has ever been labeled "Caddoan" as their own modern-day tribe's birthright! Harrumph.
No - we're talking about the "ancient lands" of each of the tribes. I can't explain it all very quickly, I'm kinda too close to the trees and not good at simplifying it.
Who is the entity that will declare it 'historical'?
The reason I'm asking in 1889 while building my barn, 40 skulls were found on my property (according to an old newspaper report). No further information was available and I wish I could bury, so to speak, that information due to the possible ramifications.
Well, that would made *some* sense. Especially considering the bois d'arc bow wood - however, that's all over eastern Oklahoma and east Texas.
And their ancient lands are not where their reservation is now - although they were just a little farther east. I've lived in the Osage, but don't know much about the tribe in prehistory.
In the back of my mind, I think they are possibly Iroquoian in language family - more like Cherokees. Could be wrong about that. I don't believe they are Muskogean or Caddoan, however. Perhaps our Freeper O.O. will correct me.
Another 1,000-year-old nut-cracking tool.
Where are you talking about? Like, what state?
Ohio
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