In 1821, Congress agreed to incorporate Missouri as a State. With an American population of 7,500, Missouri also consisted of a Native American population of over 20,000, comprising tribes such as Kickapoo, Ioway, Shawnee, Otoe, and Delaware, which left behind deposits of historic artifacts.
The Osage settled in territory spanning Missouri and parts of Arkansas, Kansas, and Oklahoma. In 1808, the tribe gave up its southern Missouri lands with a treaty in return for perpetual hunting and fishing rights. Nonetheless, Missouri remains rich in Indian artifacts, with the primary legacy left by the Osage Nation. It started migrating from the Ohio River valley region around 200 AD to the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.
Settling in the Mississippi Valley near St. Louis, they also migrated up various river drainages as far as Illinois. The waterway-driven settlement and migration pattern continued after the Osage splintered into multiple tribes.
Remnants of these tribal civilizations include major platform mounds in the St. Louis area. They feature abundant pottery used to store and process water and food. Remnants also include changes in soil composition or coloration where the tribes possibly camped when hunting wild game.
People have found pottery shards and arrowheads near land that once featured rivers and lakes - in many cases, the land became agricultural fields. Arrowhead seekers must obtain permission from landowners to explore the areas. They often search from late autumn to early spring. Seasonal rains wash up artifacts, and the harvests turn over the ground, making it accessible and free of crops. Such conditions enable the easier spotting of arrow points, rock flakes, and chips from the arrowhead-making process. The presence of such items often indicates more substantial finds nearby.
Those who find more substantial items associated with archeological sites must contact the University of Missouri Archaeology Department and leave the land undisturbed. Moreover, individuals rarely receive permission to dig on public lands.
One of the most noteworthy Native American artifact sites in Missouri is Big Eddy, which features items along Cedar County’s Sac River. More than 13 feet of river sediment built up over the millennia, preserving them. However, significant volumes of water released by the Stockton Dam’s hydroelectric operations caused site erosion in the 1970s. Before it disappeared completely, the US Army Corps of Engineers funded five seasons of excavations from 1997 to 2005.
Professionals believe that prehistoric Indian groups used the area extensively as it combined forest and prairies with a river environment abundant in fish, ducks, mussels, and aquatic and semi-aquatic plants. The area also consisted of large deposits of chert, a flint-like rock, in river gravel bars and surrounding bluffs, allowing for the creation of tools and arrowheads for hunting turkey and deer.
Before the digs, researchers had placed the upper limit of habitation in the area at 8,000 years. However, the excavations uncovered remains of human habitation that extended as far back as 13,000 years. The loss of this ancient site due to a human-accelerated erosion process indicates the rapid cultural and environmental change that has occurred in a relatively brief period, following many thousands of years of coexistence with the natural world.
