SoutheasternOhioPreps.com

The recorded history of Scioto county goes all the back to the 1700's when the settlers first started arriving and settling in the area, but this area has had occupation going back as far as 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. I have collected Indian artifacts for 43 of my 49 years I've been on this planet and our area is rich in Indian culture, villages, mounds, and artifacts. There isn't a plowed field anywhere in Scioto county where you can't find evidence of Indians once being there, whether it be traces of flint chips or actual arrowheads and other artifacts. I have pieces that date from 10,000 to 8,500 BC (Paleo culture) all they way up to the mid 1600's (Ft Ancient culture).

First Americans, Paleo Culture 12,000 to 8,500 BC
The Paleo people are considered to be the first people to inhabit our continent and it has always been said they came across the Bering Strait and down through Alaska and then spread out through the country. There is now specualtion and some evidence of some people possibly arriving from Europe on the east coast at around the same time and possibly earlier. The Paleo people were hunter gatherers that were for the most part nomadic. They had camps, but nothing actually permanent, since they followed the game which consisted of the Mammoth, the Giant Sloth, and the Saber Tooth Tiger among others. They may have used some camps over and over as they went through an area, but they didn't have actual villages per se. Paleo culture is most famous for their point styles known as Fluted Points since they would chip channels or flutes out of one or both faces of the point. Some people speculate this was for better hafting while others say it was so the blood would flow more freely from the animal and it would die quicker.

These are typical Paleo Points.





The Archaic Culture, 8,500 BC to 2,500 BC
Do to changes in the enviroment and the ever decreasing amount of game the Paleo culture slowly died out and was replaced by the Arcahic people who were more settled and a lot less nomadic. Like the Paleoindians before them, Archaic people hunted large and small game animals, fished in the lakes and streams, and gathered nuts and berries. During the early part of the Archaic Period people were always on the move. Their shelters were tents made from wooden poles covered with bark or hides. Later in this period some groups began to settle down and focus on certain rich resources such as nuts or shellfish. They built sturdier houses and dug pits alongside for storing nuts and other foods.

One of the Archaic people's more important natural resources was flint. They mined flint from several sources, but in Ohio, their favorite flints continued to be Upper Mercer flint from Coshocton County and Flint Ridge flint from Licking County. Tools made from flint supplied many of their needs, but new kinds of tools were added to the Archaic toolbox.

Archaic people made sturdy axes from hard stone such as granite. They used these axes to chop down trees and shape the wood into dugout canoes and other useful forms. They also carved and polished pieces of a rock called slate making them into a variety of shapes. Many of these artistic carvings were used as weights or decorations for their spear-throwers. A spear-thrower, or atlatl, is a wooden shaft with a handle at one end and a hook at the other. The spear-thrower was used to catapult spears much farther and with more force than if they were thrown with the unaided arm.

Here are some typical Archaic pieces.







The Woodland Culture, 2,500 BC to 600 AD
The Woodland Culture included both the Adena and the Hopewell peoples, or as they are more commonly refered to by some, the Mound Builders. The Portsmouth area was hotbed of activity during this time period with numerous large and extravagant mounds being built in the area. The most famous ones being Tremper Mound, The Medicine Wheel, and of course the Horseshoe Mounds of which one is still left in Mound Park. There were probably hundreds of Mounds in Scioto county at one time, but almost all of them have been destroyed by either farming or constuction. Even the Horseshoe Mound in Mound Park isn't an original and is instead a replica of one of the originals. Tremper Mound was most famous for the wealth of artifacts that were found buried within it's confines, including hundreds of Effigy Pipes that had been ceremoniously killed and buried in a Cache. The Adena and Hopewll cultures lived in huge villages and farmed, fished, hunted, and gathered nuts and berries in a specific area. They had very large and far flung trade routes that extended all the way to the north for copper from upper Michigan to the Gulf Coast region for shells to make ornaments and Beads. They even obtained obsidian from the west to make some of their ceremonial Knifes and Blades.

Typical Adena Points are stemmed and like the ones at 12, 3, 6, and 9 in this picture.


Typical Hopewell Points and artifacts are like these.






The Ft Ancient Culture, 600 AD to 1650 AD
The Ft Ancient culture was also very prevelant in Scioto county and the surrounding areas. I know of at least 5 or 6 Ft Ancient villages located with a few minutes drive of Portsmouth in every direction. The one probably most famous is The Fuert Village and Mounds located just north of Portsmouth on the terrace where UPS and the Dog Pound set. This was a huge village at one time and even though it was excavated a long time ago and on numerous occasions, it is still giving up artifacts in a dig that is ongoing right now. The Ft Ancient people also had very large villages and they hunted, fished, farmed and lived in the same areas for hundreds of years. A lot of their villages were surrounded by huge circular walls of logs stuck into the ground for protection from attacks by other villages. Their diet consisited of a lot of fish and mussels which is evident by the huge amounts of fish bones and mussel shells that are found in the trash pits, or middens. The arrowheads were for the most part triangular in shape, some serrated, and were very thin and sharp. They also made numerous different types of Beads out of shell, bone, and copper. They made all kinds of types of Pipes as well and these were made from different materials such as sandstone and Ohio Pipestone which can be found in the hills right above Clay High School.

Here are some typical Ft Ancient artifacts including points, drills, beads, pipes, bone tools, pottery, etc.

These first four are all from the Fuert Site.





These are from the Goldcamp Site which is in Lawrence County.






These are from the Hardin Village Site which is in Greenup County, Ky.





These are from the Schisler Site located just south of Lucasville behind the ODOT garage.


This is from a small village site close to Wheelersburg.

Thanks Burg Grad.....great pictures.

The Hopewell mounds and earthworks once stretched from Clay Township to across the river into Kentucky.

The Feurt Hill site (near Clay High) was the source for all those stone pipes....there once was The Stone Pipe Inn on Rt. 23.

My theory is that the Hopewell Culture was linked not only by the river systems but also by a large road with religious significance. Archaelogists have some proof of the road from Chillicothe to Newark but it is my guess that it extended all the way to Portsmouth.

The Portsmouth site may have been a large village one yet most Hopewells lived in small clan hamlets and probably had winter and summer lodges.

I've explored the Mordecai Hopewell farm and found it to be one of the largest Hopewell sites but with very little evidence of habitation. Most of the Hopwells lived near Paint Creek or the North Fork of Paint Creek near Frankfurt.

You are welcome Doc. I have a few Pipes made from the Pipestone located up above Clay High School and as a matter of fact you can go up there right now and find some laying around where they doing some logging. I went up and got me a few pieces and made a nice Turtle out of one piece and a Buffalo out of another.

Here as some pics of the Turtle after it was finished and one of the Buffalo as I was in the process of making it.

Excellent info and pics. I really enjoyed reading and viewing your posts.

Thats a nice collection, and a good read. I would like to get out and find some things around Portsmouth.

jumpman wrote:Excellent info and pics. I really enjoyed reading and viewing your posts.

Thanks Jumpman, appreciate the comment.

OZZIEOHIO wrote:Thats a nice collection, and a good read. I would like to get out and find some things around Portsmouth.

Thanks Ozzie, I appreciate that. If you are serious about finding some artifacts then head to Frankilin Furnace after they plow the fields and then they get a good rian on them and you will find something. For that matter, I find them right along the river bank by Dicks Pizza and the trestle which is right close to your house. Just go walk the beach when the water is really low and you might get lucky.

Here's some pictures of some recent finds. These were all found in 2008.

WOW first time I looked at this thread bg those pics and the info is awesome. My son and I when he was little would look for things like that along what we called the sand pits in the Rome Proctorville area. Found some things we called arrowheads but mainly had fun looking together. That was when he was little and dad was still cool

The fields up there have just been plowed I may go up there and look around

dragoncoach56 wrote:WOW first time I looked at this thread bg those pics and the info is awesome. My son and I when he was little would look for things like that along what we called the sand pits in the Rome Proctorville area. Found some things we called arrowheads but mainly had fun looking together. That was when he was little and dad was still cool

Dont worry DC, They just go through phases, youll get back to being cool.

FIDO wrote:Other than the obvious arrows, any clue on what the other pieces are?

Great Thread BG!

I don't want to sound like I'm bragging, but yeah I know what everything is in those pictures. I have been doing this for 44 years so there isn't much I don't know about the artifacts in our area.

Dragoncoach, thanks for the comments. I know what you mean about dad not being cool anymore. My son used to go hunting with me all the time when he was little, but once he reached about 13 or 14 years old and got interested in sports and girls he didn't have time for dad. Now he is 18 and will be heading to tOSU in the fall. Man, they grow up way to fast.

Here's a few of my latest finds.

A really nice Effigy Pipe.



A nice Triangle Point and some Beads.


This was all found on June 3rd.


This was all found on June 4th.


Found in May.


Found in April.


A few pieces I bought.

An interesting fact that I picked up from the fight over the Indian Head Rock taken out of the OHIO River was that it might have been part of the great mound system and earthworks of the Hopewell which extended even across the river into Ky and was described by the psychic Edgar Cayce.

The Hopewell were more known for their mounds, yet at the original Hopewell farm between Chillicothe and Frankfort there was a large Panther effigy that was dismantled and destroyed during early excavations.

Now I won't dispute what Edgar Cayce had to say about anything, but as for that rock, I can assure you it was not part of the mound system of Portsmouth and Kentucky. It was called Indian Head rock because of the round Charlie Brown looking face that was chiseled into it by early settlers and obviously done with modern tools. It got it's mystical Indian allure from a book about the mounds of the Ohio River valley written in the mid 1800's. The authors, upon hearing about this Indian Head rock tried to visit it, but it was under water, so they drew a picture of it from "eyewitness" accounts that looked like the bust of an Indian Statue from the shoulders up, complete with Facial features and all. A far cry from the Charlie Brown face that is actually carved into a very non-descript boulder. If you study any of the effigies done by Native American you will notice they are rubbed into the rock, not chiseled. Also, if the Indian Head carved into the rock was of Hopewell origin, it would have been about 1000 years or more older than the names and house shape that was carved in by the white man, so it would have had much more weathering and wear from exposure to water, wind and wave. It didn't. It doesn't take much deductive reasoning to figure out if some of the names carved into the rock only about 200 years ago are almost faded, a face caved in that soft stone would not have lasted a thousand years. Sad thing is, the archaeologists from Ky knew this from the very beginning, but kept their knowledge to themselves and cost parties on both sides a lot of wasted time and money on what was essentially just graffiti. So if you ever get caught carving, or for that matter, spray painting anything in the State of KY, you can just claim you are making future native American history for the state. That is my2cents.

I agree with your 2cents.....2 cents.

What these Cayceites were saying was that it has obviously been there forever....even in Hopewell times....and of course the initials and face were something added thousands of years later......but that's stuff from the radio series "Up All Night" which explores UFO's and Bigfoot and Mothman.....you get the picture.

The Stone Panther effigy at Mordecai Hopewells farm was an indicator that they used stone as part of their religion. The Chillicothe paper in the 1800's even had a crude picture of it before it was dismantled at Paint Creek between Frankfort and Chillicothe.

The Feurt Archaeological Zone

by Geoffrey Sea

The Feurt archaeological zone north of Portsmouth is the most important of only six major Eastern Mississippian archaeological sites in the region of southwest Ohio and northern Kentucky, where the Eastern Mississppian culture flourished between around 800 AD and 1200 AD. The only other Eastern Mississippian site of rival importance is the Sunwatch site in Dayton. Sunwatch, which has been preserved and partially restored, is now a major tourist attraction – an option at Feurt that is made more difficult with each increment of destruction.

The Eastern Mississippian culture has been called “Fort Ancient” since around 1900, but the Fort Ancient site itself, in Warren County, Ohio, is now known to predate the culture by about 500 years. The culture associated with Feurt is now known to be a distinctive extension of the larger Mississippian Civilization that had its center at Cahokia, Illinois. The eastern branch of the Mississippian Civilization had distinctive lifestyle and artistry particularly evident at Feurt because of the large quantity and diversity of artifacts found within the zone.

The Eastern Mississippian culture has been considered as ancestral to the modern Shawnee and Miami tribes, however, genetic evidence may point to a closer link to the Eastern Siouan tribes including the Tutelo, the Osage, and the Kansa. Recent evidence suggests that the Eastern Mississippians were genetically different from the earlier Adena-Hopewell Civilization responsible for a far larger number of area mounds. The Eastern Mississippians appear to have been a group that moved up the Ohio Valley into the Portsmouth area between 600 and 800 AD, with its descendants moving back down the Ohio Valley after Ohio’s reoccupation by Algonquians between 1100 and 1300 AD.

The Feurt site as a whole includes five prehistoric components:

1. A set of three burial mounds that were excavated in 1916 by William C. Mills
2. A village complex located near the mounds near the dog pound on the western side of Route 23,
3. More than a dozen nearby artifact scatters identified on the Ohio Archaeological Inventory, including one directly underneath the south end of the newly constructed retaining wall. These peripheral sites occupy a small terrace on the eastern side of Route 23, bounded by four dramatic conical knolls to the north, east, and south. The Clay School sits at the center of this small terrace, occupying a substantial part of it.
4. Hilltop sites on top of the knolls, which were likely used as smoke signal stations.
5. A chert quarry in the hillside that produced a type of slate also quarried in the 19th century.

The Feurt archaeological site was named after William C. Feurt, whose estate encompassed virtually the entire archaeological zone in the early 20th century, when extensive excavations by William C. Mills were conducted. Mills, who had already excavated the renowned Adena Mound in Chillicothe, was responsible for naming both the “Hopewell” and “Fort Ancient” cultures.

William Feurt was the grandson of John Davidson Feurt, a Justice of the Peace, who was the son of Gabriel Feurt, a veteran of the War of 1812. Gabriel, a descendant of French immigrants had purchased the entire tract in 1898 from the French company that founded the settlement at Galipolis. Gabriel and John Davidson were strong supporters of Henry Clay, accounting for the naming of Clay Township. As Whigs who became Republicans, the Feurts were close associates of the Pike County Barnes family, who built their family home overlooking the major earthwork complex of Pike County. The Barnes and Feurt homes, considered the finest period homes in their respective counties, also show architectural collaboration.

Mills unearthed 345 skeletons from the three mounds he excavated at Feurt, many adorned with necklaces made of wolf, dog and panther teeth. He found tens of thousands of artifacts at the site, including many long, narrow, serrated points of a characteristic type now called “Feurt-type.” Numerous bird effigies and characteristic “cross-hatch” or rattlesnake-skin patterned pottery pieces were also unearthed. One etched piece of slate depicts an elaborate creature interpreted as a “fish-serpent” or underwater panther. Charles Wertz conducted separate excavations at the site, yielding the bulk of his collection, which now comprises the permanent prehistory exhibit at the Museum of Southern Ohio in Portsmouth.

The Feurt site is one of only four in Ohio where prehistoric worked bones or bills of the sandhill crane have been discovered, all associated with the Eastern Mississippian culture.(i) The other finds included two in Ross County and one south of Zanesville.(ii) The significance of this particular bird is that it is the sacred bird of the Miami tribe, thus taken to demonstrate a continuity of tradition between the Eastern Mississippians and the central Algonquians of the post-Columbian period. The historic name of the Miamis was Twightwee, derived from Twatwa, which means sandhill crane in the Miami dialect. This is also a possible derivation of the name Miami as applied to both the tribe and the two Miami rivers, since Miami was a generic word for “sacred bird,” itself derived from Memee, the name of the Passenger Pigeon in Miami dialect. The sandhill crane is now extirpated in Ohio; the last nesting in the state was reported in 1926.

_____________________________________

i Goslin. Robert M., 1950 “Animal Remains from a Prehistoric Ohio Indian Site,” Ohio Indian Relic Collectors Society Bulletin 25 : 16-22. See also James L. Murphy, “A Worked Sandhill Crane Beak and Mandible from the Richards Site, Muskingunl County, Ohio,” Ohio Archaeologist.

ii Goslin, Robert M., 1952 “Mammal and Bird Remains from the Cramer Village Site,”Ohio Archaeologist 2(4): 20-21; Parmalee. Paul w..and Orrin C. Shane. III, 1970 “The Blain Site Vertebrate Fauna,” Pp. 185-218 in Blain Village and the Fort Ancient Tradition in Ohio, by Olaf H. Prufer and Orrin C. Shane. III. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press.

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Excellent pictures and great reading! Thanks for sharing!

William Feurt was the grandson of John Davidson Feurt, a Justice of the Peace, who was the son of Gabriel Feurt, a veteran of the War of 1812. Gabriel, a descendant of French immigrants had purchased the entire tract in 1898 from the French company that founded the settlement at Galipolis. Gabriel and John Davidson were strong supporters of Henry Clay, accounting for the naming of Clay Township. As Whigs who became Republicans, the Feurts were close associates of the Pike County Barnes family, who built their family home overlooking the major earthwork complex of Pike County. The Barnes and Feurt homes, considered the finest period homes in their respective counties, also show architectural collaboration.

Mills unearthed 345 skeletons from the three mounds he excavated at Feurt, many adorned with necklaces made of wolf, dog and panther teeth. He found tens of thousands of artifacts at the site, including many long, narrow, serrated points of a characteristic type now called “Feurt-type.” Numerous bird effigies and characteristic “cross-hatch” or rattlesnake-skin patterned pottery pieces were also unearthed. One etched piece of slate depicts an elaborate creature interpreted as a “fish-serpent” or underwater panther. Charles Wertz conducted separate excavations at the site, yielding the bulk of his collection, which now comprises the permanent prehistory exhibit at the Museum of Southern Ohio in Portsmouth.

The Feurt site is one of only four in Ohio where prehistoric worked bones or bills of the sandhill crane have been discovered, all associated with the Eastern Mississippian culture.(i) The other finds included two in Ross County and one south of Zanesville.(ii) The significance of this particular bird is that it is the sacred bird of the Miami tribe, thus taken to demonstrate a continuity of tradition between the Eastern Mississippians and the central Algonquians of the post-Columbian period. The historic name of the Miamis was Twightwee, derived from Twatwa, which means sandhill crane in the Miami dialect. This is also a possible derivation of the name Miami as applied to both the tribe and the two Miami rivers, since Miami was a generic word for “sacred bird,” itself derived from Memee, the name of the Passenger Pigeon in Miami dialect. The sandhill crane is now extirpated in Ohio; the last nesting in the state was reported in 1926.

I grew up in Twin Valley....went to school and taught in Rubyville......graduated from Portsmouth Clay.....all a stones throw from Feurt Hill...which for many years I thought was Fort Hill.

Wertz is a legend in Native American collections.......but after viewing it I think either they're not showing all 0f it....or amateurs have some better collections.

Now I know why I grew up in Clay Township...should have guessed.

Granted, I'm changing counties, but have any of you been to Fort Ancient State Park over on the western side of our state - Warren County - near Lebanon? I grew up in Wilmington, near there, and have been many times. There's a great museum in addition to a beautiful park.
There used to be paths where you could walk/run up and down over the mounds; and unearthed skeletons laid out on display - no more to either of those out of preservation and respect.
The name "Fort", given to it by English explorers, is totally inappropriate. It is now generally believed to have been a ceremonial/social site - rather than a "militaristic defensive" site.
It is laid out with amazing astronomical precision. The gaps between Mounds line up with the sunrise on the summer and winter solstice dates and also measure the parameters of moon's revolution around the earth. They hold a Summer Solstice observation day every year.
The development of the Mound Building culture marks a huge shift in "society" - from purely nomadic hunter-gatherers always on the move to a culture that had developed agrarian skills and could stay in one place, build dwellings, and grow their food rather than chasing it.
And therefore had the "spare time" for some people to observe and think, and to study and record the stars and the seasons, and to build permanent places for ceremonial "events".
http://ohsweb.ohiohistory.org/places/sw04/index.shtml
http://fortancient.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Ancie ... anon,_Ohio)