by Paul Herrick, Mackinaw, Illinois
Volume 66, Number 3, July 2019 Central States Archaeological Journal
After looking for artifacts most all my life I had never found anything that resembled pottery, that changed in the 1990s. I was fortunate to be able to look for artifacts over a long stretch of the Mackinaw River Valley for quite a number of years. One such spot I called the Boy Scout, named for a scout camp that is located on the property. At this point in our lives I worked evenings and my wife Roxanne worked days which worked out because it enabled one of us to be home with the boys. We had some really scouring floods on the river during those years and I did not realize the opportunity I missed, which is surprising, especially with my interest in history.
We had one of those big scouring spring floods that year but I was on mandatory overtime and with two active boys I was not able to make it out till weeks later. When I finally got some free time I headed straight to the Boy Scout. There were two farms that were divided by a hedge row and I had permission to look on both. The hedge row started at the river and went up over a rise then down a dip to what I think is an old river channel and then on up towards the bluff.
I found an area close to the present day river that had a circle of I’m guessing, post holes, that I believe were a shelter. In the center of the ring was a large pottery sherd along with a couple of smaller pieces.
I followed the path of the water picking up sherds along the way. I had never seen anything like this from a flood before, as there were spots that were scoured out and there were spots that the soil looked like wind blown snow drifts. I found a small discoidal along with a nice polished Celt just outside of the ring along with some bird points and crude triangular knives.
On the other side of the hedge row on top of the rise along what I think is the old river channel I found an area of circular depressions of discolored soil. There I found some lighter colored pottery sherds and a lot of points from the Late Archaic to Mississippian time periods along with some scrapers and preforms. I couldn’t believe my luck! I had found artifacts after floods sure but never anything like this.
The bad part of it was I had to go. I was on mandatory overtime and had to work that evening. All night long that’s all I thought about getting back to the field the next day and see what else I could find. The next day I woke up early with excitement, as soon as the boys were off to school I grabbed a camera and headed out.
Well luck has a way of changing fast as soon as I turned down the lane to the scout camp I saw something I didn’t like. From the time I had left to go to work and then return the farmer had disced both fields. I was sick because I had missed my chance!
A couple of years later I took the largest pottery sherd to identification day at Dickson Mounds Museum. I had Alan Harn look at it and he told me it was called Starved Rock Collared and he was surprised at where I had found it.
He has since retired but still goes into the museum from time to time and is still active in archeology. Thru some good friends who belong to IVAS (Illinois Valley Archaeological Society), I was able to get his e-mail address. He is still active in the society. I recently sent him the story of discovery and pictures of all the Pottery sherds. I also sent a frame of bird points that mostly came from that spot, but not all of them.
Figure 1. Pottery sherds found at the site.
Figure 2. Some of the projectile points uncovered at the Boy Scout site.
Figure 3. Scrapers, tools and game balls found at the Boy Scout site.
Figure 4. A large group of Woodland and Mississippian projectile points along with a celt and dimpled discoidal. All found at the Boy Scout site.
He said he remembered an unusually large piece of Starved Rock Collared being brought in on Identification Day years back. He added that it was unfortunate that the farmer disced the field before the house ring could have been studied more thoroughly, considering it an unusual and important find. He also stated in all of the 270 miles of Illinois River bank surveyed in the late 1980s, the survey found only one small piece of Starved Rock Collared and that was near the Starved Rock site. The Starved Rock site is one of the few places that type of pottery is known. Of course similar Late Woodland period pottery is common around the Great Lakes region where it is generally referred to as Lake Michigan ware. Obviously some Great Lakes Woodland people made their way down the river in small numbers.
His evaluation continued, remarking that in addition to some earlier Archaic material, there appears to be some Early Late Woodland (Weaver?) and some very Late Woodland ceramics (Starved Rock or Mossville?). He related that the number of triangular points indicates one component of the site must have occurred during the Mississippian time period, although no shell tempered sherds were obvious in the pottery sherds.
He stated that however, an otherwise Mississippian temple mound center featuring only grit tempered Late Woodland Mossville ceramics along with a small amount of emergent Mississippian Lohmann type ceramics had recently been discovered at the north end of the upper Peoria Lake (on the Illinois River). It apparently dates to the very early emergent Mississippian intrusion into the Illinois river valley thought to have occurred about AD 1050.
To the best of my knowledge this area has never been investigated by an archaeologist. The famous Mackinaw Cache site is located down river a couple of miles and from what I understand has never been fully studied either. As I stated in a previous article I am a novice, but being a hunter and trapper all my life I look for signs of prehistoric habitation, I found a lot of it here!
The area that I call the Boy Scout encompasses a large area. Not just by the river but on the surrounding bluff and fingers as well. At the time these had four different landowners. As I have found a broken Clovis point base of an Agate Basin point as well as numerous Archaic, Woodland, and Mississippian points. In addition, I have uncovered bannerstone preforms, grooved axes, polished and chipped celts and even a couple of game balls. Along with these were large worked blanks, preforms, scrapers and a few small curved blades that I am guessing were for cutting the thatch for their shelters. This spot was obviously used for a long period of time.
Over the years the farms have been broken up and sold in sections and I no longer have access to this stretch of the river. After realizing I missed a unique opportunity to record history, the purpose of this article is to finally get the information of this find documented. There are more unusual and important discoveries out there just waiting to be uncovered. Hopefully these will be realized sooner rather than later before they are gone forever.