Ancient Artifacts

UNIT 3

Messages from the past

About halfway between today’s towns of Jeffers and Comfrey is a place where history is written in stone. A 23-mile-long ridge of red rock rises above the surrounding prairie and farmland. Changes in the shape of the land over hundreds of millions of years created this ridge. Long ago, deposits of sand and mud collected in the area. Slowly, the deposits compressed first into soft rock (sandstone) and then into hard stone (quartzite). Much of that stone remains hidden from view under layers of soil and water. In some places, called outcroppings, the stone is visible. Here, on the outcroppings at the Red Rock Ridge, we begin to explore Minnesota’s history.

At several places on the ridge, it looks as if a giant has scratched the rock with its fingernails. The rock has, in fact, been scratched, but not by a giant. The scratches were caused by heavy ice sheets called glaciers as they inched across the ground. Glaciers have covered what is now Minnesota many times. The last one melted away from southwestern Minnesota about 12,500 years ago.

Bering Strait: land bridge that connected North America to Asia

THE FIRST NORTH AMERICANS

The ridge also shows other marks that were carved not by glaciers, but instead by people. Humans may have begun living in this region about 12,000 years ago. (this was approximately 10,000 bce.) They lived in small groups, adapting to the changing environment and developing new ways to live together with the people and the world around them. Experts believe that people came here following the animal herds across the land bridge called the Bering Strait, which connected North America to Asia. (The ocean levels were lower than they are today because much of the earth's water was stored in glaciers on land.)

^ Take a close look at the carvings in the red rock on the image to the right. These images were carved by people living in Minnesota about 7,000 years ago.

Jeffers Petroglyphs

Around 7,000 years ago, people began leaving their mark on a long, stone ridge in south western Minnesota. (This happened around 5,000 bce.) The Jeffers Petroglyphs Historic Site is one of the most important collections of ancient rock carvings in North America. These carvings called petroglyphs can tell us much about the people who made them, how they lived, and what they may have believed. The Jeffers site has about 5,000 carvings.

Many of these carvings represent things that we can easily recognize today. These images include animals—bison, bears, wolves, turtles, elk—and human stick figures. Some of the humans seem to be holding weapons called atlatls. Others appear to be wearing headdresses with horns. Many carvings, however, are difficult for us to recognize. We may never know exactly what each symbol means, but we can still learn much from them if we are willing to listen to the people who know the most about them.

petroglyphs: ancient rock carvings

atlatls: tool used to thrust a spear at a higher rate of speed with better accuracy

^ An atlatl is a throwing stick used to launch a dart or spear. This ancient launching tool allows a skilled hunter to throw a spear at speeds of about 90 miles per hour

*Click here to view a video of an atlatls in action!

One way to understand the carvings at Jeffers is to ask the native people whose ancestors may have made the carvings. These symbols are records of histories and traditional stories. Many American Indian elders believe that Jeffers is a sacred place to which people have come for thousands of years. For some, the site still provides guidance and healing. To elders, the symbols on the rocks speak not only of the past, but also of the present and future.

Another way to understand the carvings is to ask a type of scientist called an archaeologist (ahr-kee-AHL-uh-jihst). Archaeologists study human history by looking at the evidence people left behind. (Archaeologists do not study dinosaurs. Paleontologists do.) The petroglyphs at Jeffers are examples of that evidence. Archaeologists argue carvings like those at Jeffers reveal important information about the people who made them, and about the time and the place in which they were made.

archaeologist: person that studies human history by examining ancient artifacts

Superior-Quetico Pictographs

Scattered across the Boundary Waters and Quetico, left by its native people on canvases of stone, are hundreds of paintings. These ancient Native American paintings, or pictographs, can be seen on cliffs bordering a number of lakes and rivers. These sites may be several hundred years old, although the age, the artists, and the purpose of the pictographs are yet unknown.

pictographs: ancient paintings (usually on rocks/cliffs)

There are at least 30 pictograph sites in the Superior-Quetico region. Large displays span the granite cliffs at Lac La Croix, Crooked Lake, and along the Kawishiwi River while smaller clusters of figures gather on Rocky and McAree Lakes. The majority of pictographs sites have at least two thing in common. Almost all drawings are red (a sacred color characteristic of aboriginal rock painting worldwide), and they are always near water, usually 2 - 5 feet above water level, suggesting they were painted by someone standing in a canoe. The red ochre paint was created by mixing iron hematite with boiled sturgeon spine or bear grease to depict their stories on the stone canvas.

Ancient Burial Mounds

Man made mounds have been found throughout Minnesota. Although many of these sites are now protected, previous excavation of some mounds have uncovered a variety of interesting artifacts, including human bones, fish bones, weapons, tools, and clay pottery. Many of the burial mounds are located near rivers.

The Indian Burial Mounds are some of Minnesota's great treasures of the past, and serve as a monument to one of the earliest organized civilizations dating back to a time when there were pharaohs in Egypt and great dynasties in China.

artifact: any object made, used, or altered by humans

^ This map illustrates the state-wide distribution of recorded burial and earthwork (mound) sites in Minnesota

GRAND MOUND

Grand Mound, a the northern border of the state, is the largest burial mound in Minnesota. It is 25 feet tall and more than 100 feet wide at its base. It contains almost 5,000 tons of earth. No one is allowed to dig here now, but we know from previous excavation that the mound has many separate soil layers containing stone tools, clay pots, and bundles of human bones. One of the the first things archaeologists noticed when they started excavating the areas where people lived near the mound was the large number of sturgeon bones and scales. The lake sturgeon is a fish that can grow 8 feet long and weight up to 250 pounds During the spring, sturgeon swim upstream into rivers such as the Rainy and the Big Fork to lay their eggs. Archaeologists believe that the people who gathered at Grand Mound went there during the spring so they could feast on the big fish at a time when they were especially easy to catch. Excavations have turned up two types of bone harpoon points that were probably used for fishing. Most of the other tools found near Grand Mound also were used for catching or preparing sturgeon.

The Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) decided in October 2018 to keep the Grand Mound Historic Site closed to the general public, following the wishes of descendants of Native Americans who are buried at the sacred site. The site will be accessible to Native Americans for ceremonial and educational purposes.

RAINY RIVER - 2,000 YEARS AGO

The people are gathered at the base of a huge mound of dirt that is taller than three men standing on each other's shoulders. At the top of the hill, an old man is chanting. At his feet are many bundles of bones. The bones belong to relatives who died during the past year. When the elder has finished, the people a the bottom of the hill scrape up baskets of dirt from the ground and carry them to the top of the mound. There they cover the bones and make the monument even taller than it was. For as long as anyone can remember, people have been coming to this place and doing this.

When the ceremony is complete, the people return to their camps. Clay pots brimming with bubbling fish stews nestle in the coals of small campfires. Families who haven't seen each other for many months gather together to share food, goods, and stories. Soon, many of the families will leave the woods and head south and west towards their prairie hunting grounds. They'll return next spring to bury their dead and renew friendships. .

INDIAN MOUNDS PARK

Indian Mounds Regional Park was established in 1893 and is one of the oldest parks in the region. Situated atop Dayton's Bluff east of downtown St. Paul, it is a burial site for at least two American Indian cultures and is just upriver from where the first historic Kaposia village site was once located.

Archaeologists believe that an ancient people known as "Hopewell" created the earliest mounds, which were built between 1,500-2,000 years ago. In more recent times, the Dakota also used this site for their burials. The Dakota wrapped the bones of their deceased in a bison skin before burying them. Valuable objects like knives, foods, pipes, or even horses or canoes were also placed within the mound. The Dakota may have used mounds constructed by the Hopewell or constructed their own on the same site.

^ At least thirty-seven mounds once stood along the bluffs of the Mounds Park area; only six remain today.

In the 1980’s attitudes were changing and this made for changes in the area around the Indian Mounds. In 1981 the city removal of roads between the burial sites and the bluff were completed, improving the setting and relationship of landscape to the topography. Around the same time, they place decorative fences that still remain around the mounds to protect them from thoughtless visitors.

^ While city residents were fascinated by the Indian Mounds, they were far from reverential in their actions. For years there were spiral paths cut into the burial sites so people could easily walk up to see the scenery. For many years there were poles for electric wires going through the area and even embedded in the side of a mound.

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