Archeology In Northeastern Illinois
The Past Lives Of The I&M Canal National Heritage Area
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Canal Stories, a series brought to you by the Canal Corridor Association to celebrate the 175th anniversary of the Illinois & Michigan Canal and the communities that were shaped by its legacy. Last week, we discovered the Ice Age Geology that shaped the face of northern Illinois as we know it today, but another popular area of study in our region is the field of archeology, or the study of human history through the excavation of sites and analysis of artifacts or physical remains.
While archeology may not be as action-packed as Hollywood would have you believe, it plays a vital role in our understanding of both the land we inhabit and the people who came before us. Today, we’re exploring the archeology of the I&M Canal National Heritage Area and taking a look at the different periods of human occupation in northeastern Illinois. This story is brought to us by J.A. Brown from the Department of Anthropology at Northwestern University, and was originally printed in an informational brochure by Illinois and Michigan Canal National Heritage Area and the National Park Service.
Archeologists recognize that the Native Americans who met the first Europeans had long been in the area we call Illinois. Just as Europeans once lived in caves, became farmers, erected cities, waged war, and became industrialized, so too did the lifestyles of Native Americans evolve over time. As a matter of convenience, archeologists divide the prehistory of the Native Americans into four periods, in addition to the Historic Period. Each of these major time periods within the 12,000 year occupation of the region is marked by an important economic development. Distinctive artifacts stand out as important traces of these eras of land use.
PaleoIndian Period (to 8000 BC)
Native Americans entered what is now Illinois during the late Ice Age, or Pleistocene. These early peoples were organized in small, highly mobile bands which hunted large game animals using their principle weapon, the spear. Distinctively chipped stone spear tips, called Clovis points, are the principle remnants of this time period. Small camping sites are found mainly in well-drained upland areas on high ground, far back from the river. Another favored location is along the crest of the bluffs overlooking the Illinois and Des Plaines Rivers. Hunting most likely focused on herding animals, such as elk, bison, and caribou, but now-extinct animals, such as the mammoth and mastodon, were probably hunted, as well.
The climate of northeastern Illinois at this time was influenced by a mountain of glacial ice occupying the Lake Michigan Basin. The climate in the National Heritage Area was cooler then, similar to the current climate in Hudson Bay. The present-day Illinois River was filled with water and sediment that flowed from Lake Michigan. A mixed tundra and open spruce forest occupied the area until about 8900 BC, when a pine and ash forest replaced the spruce. About 600 years later, with the transition to a milder, temperate climate, came a more moist, deciduous forest dominated by oaks.
The Archaic Period (8000 to 500 BC)
Native Americans, with the end of the glaciers, found northern Illinois increasingly congenial to hunting and gathering. Climate and vegetation patterns approached those of the present day, and in this newly established environment, the Native American communities thrived. With the extinction of many large Pleistocene animals, the foragers living along the upper Illinois River turned to hunting modern species of game, especially deer and waterfowl, and to gathering wild plant foods. Grasslands expanded into the rolling uplands from the plains regions. Today, this prairie land is planted in corn and soybeans. Large chipped notched points are common indicators of this period. Less common, but just as distinctive, are the large grooved axes, various polished stone ornaments, and the occasional stemmed and socketed knife blades, hammered out of nearly pure copper nuggets. Compared to those of other time periods, Archaic peoples made broader use of the numerous ecosystems throughout the area. For the first time, Native Americans established a campsite on the summit of Starved Rock.
The Woodland Period (500 BC to AD 1000)
The introduction of crude, grit-tempered pottery marks the beginning of a period in which native plant foods gradually gave way to the increased use of domesticated plants. These plants, which include sumpweed, goosefoot, sunflower, and squash, were domesticated from native stock over a long period of time, providing food for increasingly sedentary populations. In this period, decorative arts became more elaborate, trading networks expanded across the continent, villages grew in size and became more permanent, and the dead were buried under mounds placed at locations that marked the heartland of settled territories. This development peaked during the Middle Woodland or Hopewellian Sub-Period (200 BC - AD 400). Representative sites of the period were the Utica and Adler Mounds. These mounds housed the dead who were interred in sunken crypts with pottery and other objects, including copper and marine shell artifacts acquired through long-distance trade.
The Mississippi Period (AD 1000 to 1673)
Large villages and cemeteries came into being in the upper Illinois River Valley, founded upon an economy that combined maize agriculture with older practices of hunting and gathering of natural foods. Maize (or Indian corn) and the common bean were introduced from Mexico via the American Southwest. These two tropical plants, in combination with native squash, laid the foundations of an important agricultural system that swept Midwest. The success of this system produced important changes to native lifeways. Settlements were now large, permanent villages composed of substantial, partly sunken earth lodges. Cooking pots became more spherical in shape, to adapt to new methods of cooking food, particularly maize, and agricultural tools became more common. The substitution of the bow and arrow for the spear introduced small arrowheads (mainly triangles of chipped stone) into the tool inventory. Burials occurred in large cemeteries located in broad and low earthen mounds. Copper objects, ear ornaments, and copper and shell gorgets suspended around the neck set prominent individuals apart from others in death. Briscoe Mounds are examples of mounds from this period.
The beginnings of this system took place around AD 1000, when cultures centered at Cahokia, in the greater St. Louis area, began to exercise powerful influence in the upper Illinois watershed. Emblems of distinction at Cahokia were exported widely, some finding their resting place in the upper Illinois River Valley. Material culture in the area took on an appearance that was to persist with minor changes until the advent of European explorers. Major villages that became established in this period were Old Kaskaskia and the Fisher site.
The Historic Period (since AD 1673)
Sometime before Father Marquette discovered the Illinois Indians living at Old Kaskaskia, native ways of life had undergone a change in one respect: greater village mobility. This shift resulted from the adoption of wide-ranging bison hunting twice a year, and although villages were large and permanent, occupants were used to moving their housing frequently. They lived in long wigwams which were covered in lightweight mats that could be erected and dismantled with ease. The Illinois Indians found great value in bison meat and the starch-filled tubers of water lily plants. These food sources made use of natural habitats found in the area, as bison were common on the grasslands, and edible tubers grew in abundance in the swampy wetlands along parts of the Illinois and Des Plaines, particularly in the swamps of the Sag.
Later, inter-tribal warfare in the 17th century increased the trend toward more mobile life, especially after 1660, when Iroquois raiding parties penetrated northern Illinois. The Iroquois carried guns, which had a devastating effect on Midwestern tribes, as these weapons were not available in sufficient quantities to Illinois Indians until LaSalle and fur-trading Frenchmen arrived in the Illinois Valley. With the establishment of a steady influx of weapons, along with useful household items, beads, and other ornaments, populations in Illinois stabilized.
The chief trading place in the 1680s was Starved Rock. As a consequence, the upper Illinois River Valley became a magnet for native people far and wide, reaching a peak population of 10,000, for a brief time. Widespread evidence of occupational use of the canyons, plateaus, and bottomland plains around Starved Rock during these early decades of European contact, testify to the impact of concentrated settlement on the area. During this period, Old Kaskaskia was a major village from which Jesuit priests wrote long, informative accounts of the Illinois Indians. Other places of Indian habitation were the summit of Starved Rock and the promontory, called Hotel Plaza, below the bluff on which the Starved Rock State Park Lodge now sits.
After the Illinois tribes left the National Heritage Area, it was occupied by other Indians as part of a general westward migration in advance of the spread of peoples of European descent. Disease and warfare took a heavy toll on Native Americans in this period. Of these Native Americans, the Potawatomis, and associated Ottawa and Ojibwa, settled and utilized the area extensively. Chicago was the base of a large population, but small villages were established throughout the area. In 1816, these native peoples ceded lands within the corridor, and by 1833, they had left northern Illinois for Kansas.
That codes today’s Canal Story. Thank you so much for joining us as we continue our journey through the history of the Illinois & Michigan Canal. Tune in next time for Part 2 of our archeology discussion, where we’ll take an in-depth look at the major archeological sites in the National Heritage Area. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, pass it along to your family and friends, leave us a like or a comment, and we’ll see you again very soon.