[5]All dates, even those determined by radiocarbon methods, should be
taken as only roughly approximate.
[6]These dates and those given hereafter refer to the earliest and
latest sites known in Illinois for the cultures under consideration.
Although supported by radiocarbon dating methods, they are only
approximate. Undoubtedly also cultures in one area disappeared while
they continued to flourish in another part of the state or in other
states.
[7]Generally speaking, each succeeding higher culture in the area made
most of the tool and weapon types of their predecessors, adding
certain improvements and sometimes new types. The Archaic people
used flint scrapers, chipped flint choppers, and native cobblestone
hammers as had the Paleo-Indians. The narrow-bladed spearheads were
occasionally made but the fluting or channel is practically always
lacking. Polished stone forms, possibly the spearthrower, were new
inventions in Archaic times.
[8]In the page that follows a tentative reconstruction of the less
tangible customs of these people will be presented, based on a study
of several tribes now or recently in the Archaic status. The Archaic
culture as used in this paper refers to those tribes who lived
mainly by hunting, supplemented to a degree by collecting native
edible plant foods. They are distinguished here from other peoples
of the Stone Age or non-farming stage—from Big Game Hunters on the
one hand (none of whom exist today) and on the other, from Food
Stores, who were able by one means or another to store food over one
or more seasons and so establish more or less fixed homes. The
peoples recently living in the Archaic status include the native
tribes of Central and Coastal Australia, the Tasmanians, the Andaman
Island tribes, the Terra del Fuegians, the African Bushmen and a
number of others.
[9]The Initial Woodland in Illinois is usually considered to consist of
three cultural divisions or units, the Black Sand, the Red Ochre and
the Morton. The only known Red Ochre sites are mounds which
undoubtedly are the burial places of important personages of a
cultural group whose campsites and artifact assemblages have not as
yet been identified as such. The graves yield a number of artifact
types that are identical with those found in Black Sand villages. It
is possible the Red Ochre mounds belong to the Black Sand people and
that the mounds and special burial customs may have been continued
into or adopted by the Morton cultural group and served still later
as a framework for the highly elaborated Hopewellian funeral
practices.
[10]The narrow-bladed leaf-shaped spearhead, well-chipped and without
fluting, reminiscent of the general Yuma, Folsom and Clovis shape,
are found in the Red Ochre subculture and are worthy of note. This
type appears rarely in campsites but occurs in relatively large
numbers in mounds. Profuse amounts of red ochre are found in graves
as in Terminal Archaic (Titterington focus) in western Illinois.
Copper ornaments may indicate Wisconsin (Old Copper Culture)
influence.
[11]The Poole village (Pike County) is dated 550 B.C. and the Wilson
Mound (White County) about 89 B.C. The Poole village appears to have
been occupied from 550 B.C. to 200 A.D.
[12]Civilization, as used in this paper, signifies exhaustive
exploitation of the natural resources and accompanying significant
elaborations of the social and spiritual aspects (as exemplified by
ceremonies, regalia, insignia, art and extensive architectural
structures), accomplished by means of specialization of the existing
tools and technologies, with or without fundamental inventive
developments. Artisans of the Initial and Final Woodland cultures
seem to have practiced all the crafts employed by Hopewellians but
failed to produce the beautiful chipped spearheads, “pipes of pan”,
excellent sculpture in stone and pottery, etching in bone, the
extensive earthworks and the mounds with timbered burial chambers.
Perhaps some additional stimuli—the introduction of maize or the
intensification of its cultivation, a satisfying new religion with
stirring ceremonies together with intergroup competition—gave the
spiritual impetus that produced the Hopewellian fluorescence.
[13]Specialization was foreshadowed in the Red Ochre culture but the
small total of grave offerings discovered to date fail to
demonstrate any greater leisure than occurs at favorable times among
any simple hunting people.
[14]An early subculture termed Old Village preceding the generally known
Middle Mississippi (Trappist or Bean Pot) period has been proposed
on the strength of stratification at the Cahokia village near East
St. Louis. Although this appears logically sound, the evidence has
not been published and no pure Old Village site has yet been found
and reported upon.
[15]Except where noted as based directly on archaeological evidence, the
broad cultural features suggested in the rest of this section, are
inferred from similar customs found generally among tribes in the
plant-raising status without food-draft animals. The results were
derived by the writer from a study of anthropological reports of the
following tribes or groups of tribes: Polynesians, Delawares,
Natchez (and their neighbors) and the western Pueblo Indians. The
Pueblos, in their social, political and religious customs and
institutions have been for seven hundred years in a transitional
status between the Archaic hunters (or possibly “food storers”) and
a “fully-developed” plant-raising stage.
[16]The archaeological evidence for this section is chiefly from _The
Fisher Mound Group_, etc. by George Langford in the AMERICAN
ANTHROPOLOGY, Vol. XXIX, No. 3, pp. 153-205 (July-September, 1927).
[17]These Indians called themselves Ilini (pronounced Il´-i-nee) or
Illini signifying “man,” in the plural Illiniwek, “the men.” The
French dropped the -iwek and substituted their own ending whence the
name Illinois by which they were generally known thereafter. In this
booklet Illini will be generally used to designate these tribes,
their culture and language to avoid confusion with other tribes who,
like the Sauk, Fox, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, and Miami, have occupied
parts of the state and are sometimes called Illinois Indians.
[18]Information given on historic tribes is from notes and manuscript
assembled by Dr. Wayne C. Temple.
[19]The term _calumet_, originally applied to the stem of the tobacco
pipe, is now generally used to designate the pipe and stem. “It is
fashioned from a red stone, polished like marble, and bored in such
a manner that one end serves as a receptacle for the tobacco, while
the other fits into the stem; this is a stick two feet long, as
thick as an ordinary cane, and bored through the middle. It is
ornamented with the heads and necks of various birds, whose plumage
is very beautiful. To these they also add large feathers—red, green,
and other colors—wherewith the whole is adorned. They have a great
regard for it....” (R. G. Thwaites, ed., _The Jesuit Relations_,
Vol. LIX, p. 131.) The war calumet differed from that of peace and
was decorated with red feathers. See Fig. 34, A.
[20]Artifact types having once appeared are likely to appear again in
subsequent culture even though rare or even lacking in some
intervening assemblages (e.g. necklaces of anculosa beads of
similarly ground [snail] shells found from Medial Archaic through
Middle Phase; grooved axes from Medial Archaic to Mississippi but
rare or lacking in most subcultures and cultures except Archaic and
Initial Woodland). On account of unwieldiness of complete
accumulative lists only new artifact types when they first appear
will be recorded here. Exceptions: 1) the name of an artifact
entered as probably present (indicated by a following ?) will be
repeated in the first subsequent culture in which definite evidence
for it has been reported and 2) when an artifact once reported
assumes a new form or presumably takes on a new significance (e.g.
Archaic hoe becomes a tool of the plant-raisers in Classic and
Middle Phases), it will appear again in the text.