By: Brian Redmond, Curator of Archaeology
Whenever I give public talks about the archaeology of Native Americans in Ohio, someone asks me: “What tribe was it?” In most cases, I have to admit that I don’t know, and follow up with an explanation that is surprising to many. The best we can tell from archaeological research is that the native peoples of what became Ohio left this area by the year 1650, but we don’t know where they went. And, because this time preceded the arrival of any Europeans, no one was around to record their tribal names and cultures.
By default, we archaeologists assign rather arbitrary labels to these pre-European-contact (pre-contact) peoples, such as the “Whittlesey Tradition” to the village-dwelling societies living in Northeast Ohio between about 800 and 400 years ago, or “Hopewell” to the many mound- and earthwork-building groups that flourished in southern Ohio some 2000 years ago.
This apparent evacuation of Ohio probably took place over a generation or more but ended with much of the state being nearly empty of permanent settlements by 1650. It took almost a century for other Native American groups from other parts of the Great Lakes and Northeast to reoccupy our area, but we are pretty certain that these new arrivals are unlikely to be the descendants of the indigenous people of Ohio. Instead, they are well-known tribal groups, such as the Shawnee, Wyandotte, Ottawa, Seneca, Delaware, Miami, and others, that have their own long histories outside Ohio.
The next question that usually follows is: “Where did those people who left Ohio go?” Again, I have to say that I do not know—but have some ideas. The problem archaeologists have with tracking these groups as they moved out of the area is that most of the material remains we use to document their lives in Ohio rapidly vanished. The clay pottery, stone tools, bone and shell ornaments, and other goods quickly disappeared from the archaeological record after 1700. In their places, native peoples rapidly adopted European trade goods, such as brass kettles, iron knives and hatchets, glass beads, and copper ornaments.
Archaeological sites producing these materials look very similar across much of the Great Lakes and Ohio River Valley during the 1700s. They lack the regionally distinct pottery types or flint tools of former times that help archaeologists distinguish between one pre-contact group and another. In effect, the historical material similarities mask the otherwise culturally distinct societies that produced them.
We do get help from historians, who can sometimes pick up the trail of groups such as the Fox or Meskwaki, which enter “history” during the 1700s in Michigan. The Meskwaki and their Central Algonkian relatives, such as the Sac and Kickapoo, have their own histories, which document an early migration from the East Coast through Ohio, Michigan, and into the upper Great Lakes.
Even linguistic studies of ancient tribal names appearing on early maps of the northern Ohio region can shed light on this problem. For example, one mysterious group called the “Assistaeronon,” or “Fire Nation,” is listed on maps of the western Lake Erie region dating to the mid-1600s. Some linguists identify these peoples of the Fire Nation with one or more Central Algonkian groups, such as those listed earlier. While none of this work is definitive, it may bring us closer to a meaningful answer to our questions about the fate of the first peoples of Ohio.