Trending
This past week was Thanksgiving, and we had a house full of people. My wife's family was in town and despite being short on space at the dinner table, we enjoyed the visit.
Thanksgiving at our house is always a busy affair. The few days prior to the holiday, I usually spend time with my dad, father-in-law and son out hunting. I am not the most successful in the woods, but spending time out of doors is good for one's spirit. Sitting in the woods with no distractions is refreshing, and the longer you sit there in silence, you realize the woods aren't quiet at all. Chipmunks, squirrels and birds all chatter and play on the forest floor. Wind rustles the leaves left on the trees, and somewhere in the distance water is moving noisily in a creek bed, and suddenly the woods are alive and busy.
In those situations, I always think about our pioneers and frontier folk who traversed this wilderness and the hardships they must have endured to carve a life in this strange country. Living off the land was a natural part of the way our early settlers had to live their lives. And if a harvest was a bust, then there could be big trouble ahead for the winter months.
The ancient peoples who lived here in our valley going back thousands of years, depended on wildlife to sustain life, too. Looking at some of the excavated sites just right here in our region, especially the East Steubenville site located on the hilltop above the Market Street Bridge, we can get a full picture of what was on the menu. There is a great website the explains the history of the site and the interesting objects found while excavating there.
According to the site, the Paleo Archaic peoples who lived in our area between 4,000 and 5,000 years ago were nomadic, traveling from campsite to campsite following the herds. The East Steubenville site had people at the location in the spring, summer and fall. Subsidence from the river was the main staple for these people in addition to deer and other woodland animals. The types of fish bones discovered at the site from the river were catfish, redhorse, sucker, herring and sauger.
The most important staple of the group was freshwater mussels. Most were those that grow in shallow water but there were some found that were from deeper water.
About 26 varieties were found at the site. These shellfish were collected and carried up the hillside to be roasted or steamed. There were remains of nuts, such as hickory, acorn and black walnuts. Grapes, raspberry and chokeberry pits were discovered. Bones and antlers from the animals were reused, being worked into articles such as fishhooks, awls, drills and spearheads.
The East Steubenville site was not the only site in our region to host a native site from this time period in Native American history. Another site is the New Cumberland Heights site, located north of the city on the hill overlooking the river. According to the 1955 copy of the "Prehistory of the Ohio Valley" by William Mayer-Oakes, the New Cumberland site was another Paleo-Archaic site with a shell midden, or heap of shells from river shellfish.
At this site, artifacts were collected during many years from the surface. Another site in Hancock County is called the Globe Hill site, just north of New Cumberland, where shell middens and artifacts were found that are similar to the East Steubenville site.
Most interesting to me was the discovery of the Half Moon Site. According to Mayer-Oakes, this site was located in the Half-Moon area of Weirton and consisted of four small Adena mounds and several villages and campsites.
By 1955, there was only one mound left as the others had been destroyed by development at the site. Many artifacts were collected on the surface of the site in addition to an excavation into one of the burial mounds, which was recorded by Mayer-Oakes in 1951. He reported that no shell middens were found there, but many artifacts from the Paleo-Archaic period were found, so it can be deduced that the group used the area for hunting and possibility for a settlement as well.
These three sites were first excavated in the 1930s primarily, but evidence of ancient Native American groups were prevalent decades before that. Caves were discovered on the hills below the East Steubenville site in the 1830s with Native American remains still evidenced there. At Half-Moon in 1838, a rock was described by a fellow called James McBride as bearing many petroglyphs. His account of the carvings made it into the 1847 book "Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley" in 1847.
He writes about finding the site during a survey of the turnpike road in July of that year.
He said the main rock was about three feet above the low water mark of the river and its size was about 9 feet by 7 feet. The rock was covered in carvings representing the human form, human footprints, horse hooves, turkeys, rabbits, snakes and a turtle among other fanciful creatures. According to McBride, there were many other rocks at that site that had carvings too, but they had been weathered by the river or had broken off from other bigger stones.
By the time the Europeans came to the valley, the Native Americans here were unsure of the origin of the mounds and petroglyphs left by earlier and much more ancient cultures. These images show animals from the environment these peoples were accustomed to seeing here in our area.
What binds us all together over the many thousands of years of continual human presence in our little part of the world is the respect and connection to our natural world.
Today, we are fortunate not to solely rely on whether I can bring home game from my occasional hunting trips, but in this activity, we are connected to a very real and ancient part of our collected past.
(Zuros is Hancock County administrator.)