Ocmulgee National Monument 3

Ocmulgee National Monument 3

Their simple living was obtained with the aid of a few tools and weapons

of stone and wood. Being constantly on the move, they could erect no

very permanent dwellings; and a rough lean-to shelter was doubtless

their only protection from the elements. Hunting was the major activity

of the men; for, with fish from the streams, the game which they killed

made up the chief element of their diet. The women were not idle,

however; for in addition to preparing the food and caring for the

children, they spent many hours in gathering the nuts, roots, and

berries which made such a necessary and welcome supplement to their

daily fare. It is doubtful that the bow and arrow, which to us are

almost inseparable from our picture of the Indian, had yet been

invented; but the thrusting spear and the thrown javelin were very

effective at close range. At greater distances the hunter could bring

down his game with the dart propelled by a throwing stick. This

increased the effective length of his arm and imparted the resulting

greater thrust to the butt of the shaft.

 

Also missing in their equipment were the pottery cooking vessels of the

later Indians, which so simplified the preparation of foods by boiling

and thus added variety to the menu. Stone boiling, of course, could be

accomplished by means of heated rocks dropped into some suitable

container, such as a pit in the ground lined with a skin; but the method

was tedious and probably less used for that reason.

 

Organization for such a life was simple. Since they must move with the

game on which they depended, group size had to be limited; for large

bodies of people could not move easily from place to place. Moreover,

the population was not large, and there was plenty of room to spread

out. For all these reasons the hunting band was probably made up of a

few related families, numbering on the average perhaps 50 people who

habitually camped together. Leadership in such a small group would not

be a matter of too great importance; and the chief might be chosen for

skill in hunting or for an outstanding personality. Possibly he

inherited the office, but in any case his authority is not likely to

have been very great. The band doubtless accepted his choice of

campsite, his direction in the hunt, or arbitration in disputes; but in

doing so it was more likely to be out of respect for his ability than in

recognition of his official position.

 

Even at this simple stage of culture, though, there were doubtless well

defined rules of conduct. All primitive peoples today share certain

universals of social life. From these we may confidently infer that

every man was part of a clearly defined kin group, that the structure

and relationships of this group determined into what similar group he

might marry, and which were forbidden to him as sources for choosing a

mate. We can also be reasonably certain that while antisocial acts like

murder, adultery, and theft might not be punished by the community at

large, strong measures to hold them in check were generally approved

even though they might have to be initiated privately. In short, the

rudiments of social living were already thousands of years old. The

lives of these early Georgians were different from our own in countless

material ways; but even at this early date their primary problems were

the same as ours. They must have food, shelter, and protection for

individual survival; and the continued existence of the group required

the education of its younger members in the skills and habits and

community organization of their elders. The means to these ends were

crude, and by our standards extremely simple; but they were not

developed without considerable ingenuity; and hard work made up for many

technical shortcomings.

 

 

 

 

Food From the Waters

 

 

Our knowledge starts to increase as we come to the period beginning

about 5,000 years ago. Here a few of the details of Indian life in the

Southeast emerge rather clearly. Curiously enough it was the food habits

of these _Shellfish Eaters_ which first led to their identification; and

even today our scanty information on them still tends to center around

this feature of their lives. From the nature of the evidence we will

soon present, it is easy to infer that the principal food of many of the

groups of this period was shellfish. This may not seem especially

remarkable; but we know that, in shifting to a principal reliance on the

lowly mussel, clam, or oyster, they accomplished, in effect, a local

revolution in man's pattern of living. They had discovered that an

almost inexhaustible supply of these prolific creatures was to be had

for the taking in places along the rivers and the ocean shore where

conditions favored their growth. Perhaps the taste for this form of diet

was difficult to acquire, but once achieved it freed them for

generations from the hard necessity of moving their camp every time the

game grew scarce. At last they could settle in one place; and the

numerous sites they occupied tell us not only that life was easier but

that the abundant food supply contributed also to a marked increase in

the population.

 

[Illustration: Shellfish Eater campsites were gradually raised on mounds

of their own shell refuse, sometimes even larger than this. Courtesy

Florida Board of Parks and Historic Memorials.]

 

[Illustration: Dart points of the shellheap dwellers were heavy, but

workmanship varied from crude to very careful. Length, 2-1/4 to 2-7/8

inches.]

 

Our chief reminder of the presence of these early shell gatherers lies

in the piles of shells which mark the scene of their activities. Of

course the bones of deer, bear, rabbit, turkey, and other wildlife mixed

with the shells show us that to vary their diet they did a good bit of

hunting and fishing as well. The river and coastal shorelines are dotted

with such refuse heaps, often of monumental size, from Florida to

Louisiana and northward inland to the Ohio River and along the coast as

far as Maine. It may be doubted that these were all produced by related

peoples, or that they even represent the same time period; for it is

certain that many of them were still growing in fairly recent years.

Still, the fact remains that in the southern area as far north as

Kentucky and Tennessee the sites represent the oldest camps yet to be

uncovered following the earlier paleo-Indian period; and that besides

the evidence of a remarkably uniform economy, they disclose a great

similarity in the tools, weapons, and ornaments of their inhabitants.

 

Projectile points (a term we use because "arrowhead" implies use of the

bow and arrow) make up by far the most numerous type of artifact

recovered; and these tend to be long and heavy, although proportions may

be either narrow or broad. The size of these points indicates that

instead of the bow and arrow the dart was used with the "atlatl," the

Aztec name we have adopted for the throwing stick or spear thrower. This

is confirmed by the presence of many antler hooks for the end of the

throwing stick. Shaped much like the hook of a giant crochet needle,

these engaged the notched butt of the dart shaft. Additional evidence is

found in the special stone, antler, or shell weights which were attached

to the shaft to add momentum to the throw.

 

[Illustration: Mullers and pot boilers were important kitchen tools.]

 

Tools included grooved stone axes, chipped drills, and large chipped

knife or scraper blades. Mullers, or flared-end "bell" pestles, were

used to reduce wild plant foods to edible form; but the mortars or trays

with which they were used are thought to have been made mostly of wood.

Vessels of soapstone or sandstone were added to the skinlined pit or

basket, and the flat pieces of steatite with a large hole bored in them

may have been used with these containers for stone boiling. Fish were

caught with bone fishhooks and with nets weighted with grooved or

notched stones. Bone was also used for awls, which were probably

employed in making baskets and for simple stitching operations as in the

making of leather moccasins or leggings, as well as for projectile

points and flaking tools. Bone heads served as ornaments, as did bone

pins which were often decorated, though the plainer ones may have been

used merely to secure clothing. Shell was worked into beads of many

varieties, and into gorgets or pendants in addition to the atlatl

weights mentioned.

 

[Illustration: Shell mound people of the Archaic period are the first

whose axes we can surely identify. The hafting groove encircled the ax

completely or, in the three-quarter-groove form, was omitted from the

bottom edge. Length, 22 inches.]

 

Life on the shell mounds, or in the camps along streams and rivers where

this source of food was of minor importance, was hardly different in

most of its material aspects from that of the wandering hunters who had

gone before. Permanent dwellings were still apparently unknown; and the

rough shelters which were built were doubtless much the same crude

lean-to of poles and brush or tree bark as formerly. Areas which appear

to have been floored with clay and the remains of many hearths indicate

that the shell mounds themselves were the actual habitation sites. This

is confirmed by the presence of the numerous articles of daily living

mixed in with the shells. The dead, too, were buried directly in the

mound, most commonly in small round pits which required that the corpse

be tightly flexed. Dogs were also buried in this manner occasionally,

and we can guess either that they were loved by their masters or that

they held some special religious significance. The fact that a very few

shell mounds were intentionally formed into a large ring, as much as 300

feet in diameter, provides a definite hint of religious ceremonialism.

From the few objects of daily use or adornment placed with the dead, we

can assume they believed in an after life.

 

The life of these Indians continued unchanged in any of its major

features until perhaps 2000 or 1500 B. C. About that time, according to

radiocarbon dating, the knowledge of pottery making seems to have

reached them in some manner which has not yet been determined. Perhaps

they even discovered it for themselves; but it seems more probable that

the idea reached them from some fairly distant tribe, and that by local

experiment they developed their own techniques from a hazy understanding

of the principles involved. At any rate, the upper levels of the older

shell mounds begin to yield "sherds" (fragments) of a coarse undecorated

pottery which contains innumerable tiny holes running through the paste

in all directions. These are the channels which remain after some

vegetable material like grass or moss fibers was burned out when the

vessel was fired. Any substance mixed with the clay to make it easier to

handle and keep it from cracking during the drying out and final firing

of the pot is known as "temper," and the process itself is called

"tempering." Later potters learned that a temper of sand, crushed shell,

or, better still, crushed rock or crumbled bits of old pottery made

stronger and better pottery; and therefore "fiber-tempered" wares

usually represent the oldest type of pottery we find in any region where

they occur. While this pottery was undecorated at first, its makers in