National Significance of the Loess Hills Archaeology

Prepared for the

Loess Hills National Scenic Byway Council

and

Golden Hills Resource Conservation and Development

(RC&D)

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Supplemental Information for All-American Road Nomination:Archaeological Resources and National Significance of the

Loess Hills National Scenic Byway

Photograph of Loess Hills, western Iowa.

Introduction

The Loess Hills, known to scholars and laypeoplealike as one of North America’s natural treasures, isalso one of North America’s archaeological treasures.This unique landscape harbors hundreds of well-pre-served earthlodge dwellings and palisaded villages builtby the ancestral Plains Indians. The archaeological

legacy of the Loess Hills lies in the rich archaeologicalrecord that boasts of over 1,000 Late PrehistoricGlenwood earthlodges in the south and pairs of pali-saded Mill Creek villages and ancient cornfields in thenorth. These two very differently expressed ancestralPlains Indian cultures occupied the Loess Hills at thesame time and provide an unparalleled opportunity to

Prepared byUniversity of Iowa Office of the State Archaeologist

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Map of Late Prehistoric sites in the Mill Creek and Glenwoodlocalities.

Map of the concentration of Late Prehistoric archaeologi-cal sites in the Glenwood region.

Mid-nineteenth century painting of a Mandan village byGeorge Catlin.

explore 300 years of cultural diversity in this uniquelandscape. Transcending time, the archaeologicallegacy of the region is also tied to the struggle for Na-tive Indian rights and events that would be instrumen-tal in leading the nation toward protection and reburialof Native Indian remains. These characteristics areintrinsic to the archaeology of the Loess Hills and theyare of unequivocal national significance.

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Late 19th century photographs of Omaha earthlodges.

Artistic reconstruction of Late Prehistoric earthlodges in the Loess Hills landscape.

Between A.D. 1100 and 1300 people living onthe eastern margin of the Great Plains chose the LoessHills as their home. Of the more than 1,500 archaeo-logical sites currently inventoried across the sevenLoess Hills counties over 1,000 are earthlodge dwell-ings, prehistoric residential sites antecedent to the nine-teenth century Plains earthlodges variously describedand illustrated some 700 years later by Lewis and Clark,George Catlin, Karl Bodmer and other early travelerswho explored the Missouri and Platte river valleys.

What the cliff dwellings of the ancestral Pueblopeoples are to Southwestern archaeology, theearthlodges of the ancestral Plains Villagers are to Mid-west and Plains archaeology—remains of the forma-tive time when the first farming-based sedentarysocieties emerged across North America. Today, archae-ologists estimate that as many as 1,000 earthlodgedwellings once covered the hills and valleys in thesouthern Glenwood locality, all within a ten-mile ra-dius of the confluence of the Platte and Missouri riv-ers.

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At the northern terminus of the hills where the BigSioux and Missouri rivers meet is another focal pointfor late prehistoric settlement called Mill Creek. Whilethe numbers of known sites in this Big Sioux localityare overshadowed by the astonishing number ofearthlodge dwelling sites (as many as 1,000) in thesouth, the compact Mill Creek villages form virtual‘mini-tells’ similar to ancient Mesopotamian mounds.And like their Near Eastern counterparts, Mill Creekvillages developed as palimpsests of occupational de-bris and mud-walled houses that over time created el-evated deposits two to three meters above the prevailingflat landscape of the Missouri River valley floodplain.

While both Mill Creek and Glenwood people livedin semipermanent villages, grew corn, developed a richmaterial culture repertoire—including decorated pot-

tery vessels—were contemporaneous, and left the LoessHills at about the same time, they can be considereddistinct societies based on other fundamentally differ-ent characteristics. One of the most important differ-ences between these societies originates in the layoutof their communities and patterns of settlement—MillCreek villages were nucleated and fortified whereasGlenwood settlements were dispersed and unfortified.Both Mill Creek and Glenwood inhabitants of the LoessHills region maintained contacts with people livingbeyond it, including those of the Plains to the west andthe Mississippi River drainage to the south and east.Both groups appear to have left the region by A.D. 1300.Why these first farming peoples chose to make thisunique region their home, how they interacted, whatcircumstances ultimately shaped their different experi-

Regional map showing the distribution of Mill Creek sites along the Big Sioux drainage.

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ences, and why they both ultimately abandoned the re-gion are just a few of the important questions that guidecurrent archaeological inquiries into the everyday lifeof these late prehistoric peoples.

Glenwood and Mill Creek societies vary onlyslightly in the material objects traditionally consideredby archaeologists as distinctive features of a society.However consideration of the organization of their com-munities and social relations suggests that there are es-sential differences. The numbers of well preservedvillages and earthen lodge dwellings in the Loess Hillsregion is unprecedented; the well preserved extant ar-chaeological deposits a rich laboratory. The researchquestions posed transcend individual sites and regionsas they confront issues of political and economic orga-nization, power relations, and general processes of cul-

ture change. The first farming societies in the LoessHills region, in all their material richness and diversity,are nationally significant because of the unparalleledopportunity they pose to explore the varied lifeways ofthe ancestral Plains Indians on the eve of Euroameri-can contact.

As a gateway west in the historic period, and as agateway to the Plains and Missouri River valley in thelate prehistoric period when North America’s first farm-ing societies, pioneers in their own time, were explor-ing new frontiers, lifeways, and identities, the LoessHills represent a jewel in America’s historic crown. Inthe sections following are brief historic and late prehis-toric theme overviews that speak to the rich and di-verse cultural heritage and legacy of the Loess Hillsregion.

An aerial photograph and an artist’s depiction of the Wittrock Mill Creek village.

Left: a modern reconstruction of an earthlodge. Right: the base of an excavated Glenwood earthlodge.

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Map showing the path of the Lewis and Clark trail up theMissouri River and through the Loess Hills landform in Iowa.

Modern map tracing the original drawing by Pierre-JeanDe Smet in 1839 illustrating Indian villages in the CouncilBluffs region.

Loess Hills Historic Legacies: Gateway to theWest

A boundary region between the western plains andeastern prairie biotic communities and positioned alonga major interior river corridor, the Loess Hills is a placeof deep history and rich archaeology. The NationalScenic Byway follows the Missouri River valley tra-versing some 220 miles of the Loess Hills from Ply-mouth County in the north to Fremont County in thesouth. The City of Council Bluffs commemorates boththe cultural and natural landscape of theregion, taking its name from the localitynearby where Lewis and Clark held theirfirst councils with Native American peoplesin 1804. The Loess Hills National ScenicByway through western Iowa follows theMissouri River north along the westernedge of Iowa paralleling the Lewis andClark Trail and offering some of the samesights and scenes witnessed by the famousparty. Sgt. Charles Floyd, the only fatalityof the Lewis and Clark Expedition, is bur-

ied on a bluff in the Loess Hills in what is now SiouxCity, Iowa and in 1960 a monument erected near hisburial place became the first declared U.S. NationalHistoric Landmark. A few decades after the Corps ofDiscovery expedition, westward expansion ushered inwaves of missionaries, traders, artists, and settlers, someof whom left behind maps and drawings of a numberof Euroamerican and Native Indian settlements; theseresources are important tools for archaeologists seek-ing to document these locations.

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In 1853 the Mormon migrations also passedthrough the area and their camps are part of the histori-cal and archaeological inventory of the Loess Hills.Attracted to the rich agricultural potential of the valley,a group of Mormon’s split from the main wagon trainand camped in an area known as Preparation Canyon,now a state park in Monona County. Some continuedtheir trek west, but others chose to settle in the LoessHills. In 1859 Abraham Lincoln ascended the hills atCouncil Bluffs to scout locations for the First Trans-continental Railroad. In 1865 the Steamboat Bertrandsank just twenty miles north of Omaha, Nebraskaenroute from St. Louis carrying supplies to the gold-fields of Montana and a treasure trove of informationon 19th century life for archaeologists a century later.

Today the Steamboat Bertrand Collection housed at theDeSoto National Wildlife Refuge represents the onlypublicly-accessible collection from a sunken steamboat;the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service maintains this LoessHills-related collection under the Preserve Americamandate that focuses attention on nationally significantarchaeological resources.

Transportation corridors over land and along wa-terways, breathtaking vistas, diverse biological com-munities, narrow but steep canyons, springs and caves(used for shelter or as hideaways for such notable out-laws as Jesse James), and rich agricultural soil are someof the reasons why people have been coming to theLoess Hills region for as long as the North Americancontinent has been inhabited. The prehistoric archaeo-

logical inventory of the region includesover 1,500 sites across seven countiesand spans more than 10,000 years in-cluding the earliest Paleo-Indian biggame hunters, the oldest known Na-tive American cemetery in Iowa, mul-titudes of late prehistoric agriculturalcommunities, and settlements of dis-placed early historic Indians. However,it is the late prehistoric period thatstands out in the Loess Hills and of-fers the visitor to the region a spectacu-lar and contrastive view into the livesof ancestral Plains Indians.

The late prehistoric Indians whooccupied the Loess Hills and other ar-eas along the Missouri and Platte riv-ers were ancestral to the native Indiangroups encountered by travelers andexplorers in the 18th and 19th centu-ries—the Mandan, Arikara, Hidatsa,and others. Prior to Euroamerican dis-placement, Indian populations were notstatic. In many parts of North Americademographic cycles in the late prehis-toric period speak to changing alliancesand territories as landscapes became in-creasingly domesticated by early agri-cultural societies. Loess Hill’sarchaeological sites hold the potentialto provide data to help unravel thecomplexities of these shifting politicaland geographic alignments.

Archaeological excavation of the Bertrand shipwreck.

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Loess Hills Archaeological Intrinsic Quality:Gateway to the Plains and Beyond

What the cliff dwellings of the ancestral Pueblopeoples are to southwestern archaeology, theearthlodge dwellings of the ancestral Plains Villag-ers are to Midwest and Plains archaeology—the for-mative period of time when the first farming-based,sedentary societies emerged across North America. Inthe Loess Hills the focal centers of settlement are at theconfluence of the Platte and Missouri rivers (MillsCounty) in the south and along the Big Sioux River(Plymouth and Woodbury counties) in the north. Bothareas are home to a number of very important late pre-historic sites, including mounds, cemeteries, and spe-cial use sites (chert quarries, gardens, fish weirs), aswell an array of farmsteads and villages. As a result ofthe conspicuous late prehistoric presence in the LoessHills region—particularly as evidenced by the aston-ishing numbers of earthlodge dwellings in theGlenwood locality—the Loess Hills became a primetarget of 19th century antiquarians followed by 20th cen-

Upper left: a modern reconstruction of a Glenwood earthlodge. Lower left: late 19th century photograph of Plains Indianearthlodges. Right: an extrapolation of an excavated earthlodge below the ground surface and a reconstructed drawing ofan earthlodge as it may have looked above the ground surface.

Map showing the dense concentration of Late Prehistoricearthlodges in the Glenwood locality.

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tury local avocational and eventually professional ar-chaeologists who have recorded hundreds of earthlodgesin the Glenwood area and several large villages in theBig Sioux River area. This process of discovery is on-going, with several new earthlodge sites documentedin the past year.

The Loess Hills landscape itself can be viewedthrough filters of art and archaeology by contrastingearly artistic renderings of the lands and residences ofnative Indians by 19th century Euroamerican antiquar-ians and explorers with painstakingly recorded imagesof excavated historic and prehistoric Indian sites andresidences by 20th century archaeologists. Applicationof archaeological analysis techniques which serve tocapture data on the expansion, contraction, and displace-ment of native and Euroamerican populations overnearly a millennium between A.D. 1100 and A.D. 1846contributes to our understanding and valuing of the past.The story tellers are people who call the Loess Hillshome and archaeologists who have come here to work,some at the invitation of community members and oth-ers in front of bulldozers. The complex geology of theregion encompassing the deep loamy floodplains of theMissouri River and fine loess-capped hills led to im-portant pioneering work in the field of geoarchaeology.

Photograph of Paul Rowe, a pioneer in the archaeology ofLoess Hills.

Map of the locations of Late Prehistoric dwelling sites inthe Kullbom area and along Pony and Keg creeks.

Before professional archaeologists came to the area PaulRowe and other interested citizens were stewards andpioneers of archaeology in the Loess Hills during thefirst half of the 20th century. As the early culture histo-ries of the Plains were being written in the first half ofthe 20th century, Glenwood and Mill Creek sites be-came important “culture type” sites for the region.

Perhaps nowhere in the Midwest and Plainsregions are there more dense concentrations of lateprehistoric dwelling sites than in the Loess Hills atthe confluence of the Platte and Missouri rivers nearthe modern town of Glenwood. Located on the hill-tops and valleys of Pony and Keg creeks, these lateprehistoric locations are known to archaeologists assome of the finest examples of Central Plains TraditionNebraska phase sites, typically comprised ofsemisubterranean, rounded, earthlodge residential struc-tures with extended entryways. While many currentlyinventoried sites evidence only one or two lodges, thereare a few known cases, notably the Kullbom site(13ML10), where as many as 15 lodge structures occurrelatively close to one another.

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Upper left: an electromagnetic map of Double Ditch , a MillCreek village site in Iowa.Lower left: a surface survey map of the Litka site, a MillCreek agricultural field showing crop rows.Right: Wittrock Mill Creek village site map.

and in terms of community layout. Mill Creek sites ap-pear to be evenly spaced along river and creek terraces.Settlements covered up to 10 acres and are recogniz-able today rising some two to three meters above thesurrounding landscape. These rises are comprised ofan accumulation of occupational debris formed by con-tinuous or repeated residence in the same place overseveral generations. Villages were typically surroundedby fortifications and within the village walls were builtrows of up to 20 closely-spaced rectangular wattle–and-daub structures. Surrounding the village were single ordouble ditches containing wooden post palisades. Thatthe walls surrounding villages were for defense fortifi-cations is suggested by an apparent human trophy skullrecovered from the Broken Kettle site. Not only are theruins of Mill Creek villages visible on the landscapetoday, but their ancient corn fields are also recogniz-able. Mill Creek peoples practiced ridged-field farm-ing, a testament to the important role agriculture playedin their economy. Both Glenwood and Mill Creek settle-ments were abandoned by A.D. 1300. Why the regionwas abandoned at this time and what became of these

In northwest Iowa, the Big Sioux drainage washome to another late prehistoric group, designated byarchaeologists as the Mill Creek culture. WhileGlenwood sites in the south appear to be dispersedacross the landscape, Mill Creek settlements were muchmore structured both in their location on the landscape

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early residents who farmed the Loess Hills hillslopesand valleys for 200 to 300 years are important ques-tions that archaeologists from around the country areinterested in answering.

Archaeological Thematic Frameworks

The late prehistoric archaeology of the Loess Hills,boasting intact villages and households, a rich array ofutilitarian and esoteric material goods, a well-preservedzooarchaeological and botanical record, and data onsettlement patterns and chronology offers a regionallyunequalled record with which to address important uni-versal themes that engage professionals and the publicalike in questions about population displacement andmigration, agriculture-economy-environmental rela-tions, and landscapes (cultural, political and natural).The archaeology in the Loess Hills touches on themesof population movement and change during the LatePrehistoric period just prior to Euroamerican contactand the well-preserved dwelling sites offer unparalleledopportunities to explore family formation and conceptsof gender, family and the division of labor. Just as ourown agricultural economy today is diversified, rangingfrom small-scale family and community-based farmsto large-scale, conglomerate, agri-industries, NativeAmerican farmers also were diversified. The Glenwoodand Mill Creek ruins offer opportunities to explore theeconomic history of early agriculture on the plainsand prairies by Native Americans. Loess Hills ar-

Upper: carbonized corn remainsrecovered from a Glenwood site.Left: an artist’s interpretation of alate prehistoric woman using abison scapula hoe to tend hergarden.

chaeology also presents an unparalleled opportunity tostudy and interpret to the public not only the variedways past farming peoples made a living, but also howchoices people made about their settlement locationsand livelihoods may have transformed the environ-ment. By telling accurate stories of the lifeways ofthese early Loess Hills residents we can engage the in-terested public in relevant economic and environmen-tal issues experienced by Native Americans andcompare them to environmental issues we face intoday’s world.

The physical remains of late prehistoric Glenwoodand Mill Creek settlements are not only unprecedentedin their numbers but in the well-preserved layouts oftheir dwellings, villages and agricultural fields that offerclues to how people lived, worked and interacted. Theopportunity to study and interpret aspects of daily lifebetween two differently organized cultures aloneunderscores the significance of the Late Prehistoricarchaeological cultures of the Loess Hills. The richlypreserved material record boasts not only of themundane everyday items needed to make a living, butthe esoteric items that speak to connections with thesecular world and beliefs of other peoples and places.Buffalo, deer, and raptors provided materials forclothing, tools for tilling the land, and items used totrade with neighbors near and far. It is here that we seethe earliest use of deer scapula hoes, commonly usedamong the historic Plains Indians to till the land. Wefind intricately carved fishing lures from shell and

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archaeologists working in the Loess Hills are beginningto unravel the varied uses and forms of decorated andundecorated vessels used to prepare, cook, store, andserve food. Feathers and talons from eagles and hawks,so prevalent in Plains Indian culture, have perhaps theirearliest expression in the archaeological record of theLate Prehistoric period in the Loess Hills. Stonescrapers and bone awls speak to the importance of hideproducts among both the Glenwood and Mill Creekpeoples and their importance as items of trade, perhapsto acquire elaborately carved shell masks, ear spools,and finely crafted ceramic vessels attested to at MillCreek and Glenwood sites—objects that moved widelyamong people who resided in the towns and villagesthat dotted the major interior rivers of the Midwest andSoutheast between A.D. 1,000 and 1,300.

Through the rich material culture repertoire of MillCreek and Glenwood peoples it is possible to exploreregional variations in interactions among indigenouspeoples and their interactions with the late prehistoricworld as it was known at the time. Elaborate ceramictrade vessels, exotic materials, and masks speak to thesocial use of material items in spheres that may havepertained to play and warfare, personal adornment,shared cosmologies, and perceived uses of ceramic ves-sels and particular design motifs. There is ample evi-dence in the archaeological record that late prehistoricagricultural societies in the major interior rivers wereinteracting—exchanging ideas and material goods. Thecontexts in which these interactions took place, how-ever, remain elusive and the subject of much archaeo-logical discussion and debate. Mill Creek peoples livedin fortified, nucleated villages (but Glenwood peoplesdid not), engaged in intensified field agriculture (com-pared to perhaps subsistence gardening characteristicof Glenwood peoples), and may have produced a vari-ety of items for personal use as well as trade, includingbison robes, feathered capes and headdresses, and hawkand eagle-skin medicine bags. These practices raisequestions about changes in the internal organization of

Left: a 19th century painting of a buffalo by George Catlin.Right: a photograph of an eagle soaring over the LoessHills.

Upper: Bone and shell tools for farming, fishing, andanimal processing; bison scapula used as a hoe, bonefishing hooks, bone awls, a fish effigy made of shell, andstone scraping tools.

production and labor, external relations, and the usesof material cultural to form identities, alliances or tobestow prestige and power. These are questions thatare universal to the archaeological study of the varied

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Upper: plain and decorated Mill Creek ceramic vessels . Lower left:ceramic ear spool from Broken Kettle site. Lower middle: a fragmentfrom a Long-nosed god mask made of marine whelk shell. Lower right:a thin, engraved vessel from the Siouxland Sand and Gravel Site,Woodbury County.

Glenwood culture artifacts from Mills County. Upper row: ceramic pipe, engraved shell pendant, ceramic jar and waterbottle. Lower left and center: ceramic animal effigy fragments. Lower right: effigy pipe.

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late prehistoric chiefdom and tribal societies thatemerged in the major interior rivers of the Midcontinentand Southwest, whose influences were wide-rangingand of unprecedented scale.

Both the Glenwood and Mill Creek culturalmanifestations offer a rich laboratory for the study andinterpretation of economic and cultural diversity as itrelates to how people made a living and interacted witheach other, their neighbors, the land, and people frommore distant places. As a result of the regional variationexpressed by Glenwood and Mill Creek cultures, thearchaeology of the Loess Hills offers an unprecedentedopportunity to explore differences in the way peopleuse culture to express beliefs about themselves andthe world they inhabit. Both groups grew a similarsuite of domesticated and wild native plants (sunflower,elderberry, bulrush, tobacco, and little barley) andtropical cultigens (corn, beans, and squash) anddepended on a variety of wild animal resources, butpracticed different types of agriculture and emphasizeddifferent kinds of wild resources. Mill Creek peoplesappear to have practiced intensive field agriculture,investing labor in the preparation of ridged fields,perhaps to increase crop yield or buffer climatic effects.Glenwood peoples appear to have practiced an extensive

Surface contour map of Litka site, a Mill Creek garden.

Upper: fish bones. Lower: shell pendant, beads, and gorget,and bone fish hooks.

form of swidden (slash and burn) horticulture wherefields are cleared of timber and brush and burned beforeplanting and then allowed to lay fallow for long periodsof time before reuse.

These different types of farming practices havedifferent labor and technological needs and lead to dif-ferent kinds of people-land-technology relations. Bothgroups used similar tools and natural resources—earth,mud, wood, stone axes—to construct their homes andvillages, but did so in different ways and on differentparts of the landscape. Both hunted and fished, but whilethe Mill Creek people focused on bison and perhapsraptors for manufacturing hide and feathered items,Glenwood peoples seem to have placed emphasis onsmaller mammals and fish. Effort was spent on tech-nologies related to fishing and the importance of fishto their lifeways is further reinforced by discovery ofexquisite clamshells carved in the likeness of fish. Deerand elk along with smaller mammals, even rodent-sizedones, occur in varying quantities at both Mill Creekand Glenwood sites and may reflect diversity in diet,but also periods of dietary stress resulting either from

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state and federal political and governmental institutionscame together to shape policy and to lay the groundwork for the formation of national policy and institu-tions for the protection of Native American graves andscared places.

First in the Nation in Native Indian Policy: ACase in Point

Not only is the astonishing concentration of pre-served earthlodge dwellings and palisaded villagesin the Loess Hills of national significance, but LoessHills archaeology has played a central role in the veryhistory of archaeology as a discipline and in leadingthe nation toward the protection and reburial of NativeAmerican Indian remains in the establishment of theNative American Graves Protection and Repatria-tion Act (NAGPRA). In the late 1960s into the 1970s,American Indian groups nationwide were increasinglyspeaking out for equal rights and self-determination.Objections were raised about the common practice ofdisplaying American Indian human remains in muse-ums. Concerns were expressed about the protection ofthe physical remains and spirits of their ancestors.Within this rising national activism, the American In-dian Movement (AIM) was founded in 1968. Inadvert-ent discoveries of human remains in three locations inthe Loess Hills in the early 1970s propelled Iowa intobeing the first state in the nation to pass laws that pro-vide legal protection for all human remains regardlessof age or origin found on public or private land, and forthe reburial of native Indian remains. These three sitesbecame focal points instrumental to the enacting ofchanges in the Iowa legal code and creating of prece-dent that led to similar legal changes in other states,ultimately presaging the 1990 passage of the federalNative American Graves Protection and RepatriationAct (NAGPRA). In the early 1970s, extensive archaeo-logical investigations were undertaken as part of U.S.34 highway work in the Glenwood area, crossing east-west through the Loess Hills. Several graves were en-countered at one site; the graves of Euroamericansettlers were disinterred and immediately reinterred ina nearby cemetery, but the grave of an American In-dian was boxed up and shipped to Iowa City for study,along with artifacts from the project. Outrage over thisincident spurred Maria Pearson (Running Moccasins),Yankton Sioux, to become an active vocal advocate forIndian rights and burial protection for the next threedecades, not just within Iowa, but also nationally andinternationally. Support from the Iowa Governor and

Stone arrow points.

environmental (drought or soil depletion) or social (raid-ing and warfare) factors. Both cultures shared the useof the bow-and-arrow and utilized a variety of stoneand feathers to manufacture arrows, used undoubtedlyfor both hunting and defense. Both groups interactedwith their neighbors but did so at different scales andperhaps for different reasons. By around A.D. 1300 thesettlement pattern data suggest a demographic decline.Researchers have postulated that the apparent declinein local Glenwood and Mill Creek populations mayindicate that they were displaced by intrusive popula-tions, or that environmental factors such as drought orsoil depletion led to people moving out of the area. Asarchaeologists refine the occupational histories of themany residential sites in the late prehistoric inventoryit will be possible to construct demographic cycles (up-turns and downturns) that take into consideration bothsocial and environmental causes, including droughts andtheir potential affects on resource depletion (tree har-vesting, construction, soil fertility).

Finally, the archaeology of the Loess Hills alsooffers an unparalleled opportunity to illustrate the cen-trality of people, place and time to shaping politicallandscapes in the past and present. In the section be-low we illustrate how in the Loess Hills, tribal, local,

Stone axe.

Bear teeth.

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the remaining portions of the Siouxland Sand andGravel cemetery and surrounding area were purchasedby the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation and the prop-erty will become part of Stone State Park.

In 1975, excavations at a borrow area for nearbyschool construction uncovered human remains justoutside of Council Bluffs and in the central part of theLoess Hills. Once again law enforcement, Indian ac-tivists, and archaeologists were involved. The then-newState Archaeologist, Duane Anderson, contacted MariaPearson for advice and assistance. She became a liai-son with the other Indian leaders. Removal and reburialof the remains by a local undertaker was preferred ini-tially by the Indian groups. However, when it waslearned that the undertaker’s method of removal was touse a bulldozer and backhoe, archaeologists using trow-els and shovels seemed a better and preferable methodfor disinterment. Agreement was reached to allow aphysical anthropologist to examine the remains locally,followed by reburial. This was a turning point in In-dian-Archaeologist relations. The methods used in theidentification, analysis, and reporting on the findingsof human remains served as the model for what wouldbecome the legal process for the handling of humanremains in discovery situations in Iowa.

Human remains inform on population demograph-ics, diseases, stresses from diet and warfare, social alli-ances, and trade networks. They also speak to sacredplaces and cultural values, both in the past and present.The requirement to examine and report on all remainsprior to reburial provides a net increase in the amountof information developed on ancient Iowans, comparedto the near-absence of such examinations prior to pas-sage of the reburial law. For example, human remainsuncovered at the Turin site in the 1950s are the earliestdated burials known in Iowa. In spite of this signifi-cance and the nationwide coverage of the find at thetime, the remains were not analyzed and results pub-lished until the 1980s following the reporting provi-sions of Iowa’s law prior to reburial. These resultsprovided an important contribution to the poorly knownMiddle Archaic populations in the eastern Plains andcentral North America. Analysis of burials eroding froma Middle Woodland site in Harrison County in the 1980sprovided information on a small, stressed populationand among the earliest evidence of scalping in NorthAmerica.

What happened in Iowa was a statement to thecountry that American Indians and archaeologists canwork together in a respectful relationship to achievecommon goals. Maria Pearson was instrumental in ad-vocating for Indian rights and burial protection at the

Photograph of Maria Pearson (Running Moccasins)of the Yankton Sioux.

overwhelming public support led to a precedent thatboth Indians and archaeologists would eventually agreeupon, that the remains of Native Americans should betreated in the same fashion as non-Indians. This con-cept would eventually become the heart of Iowa’s buriallaws.

At the Siouxland Sand and Gravel Site(13WD402), north of Sioux City, human remains wereunearthed in 1972 during quarry operations. Membersof the AIM, local museum officials, law enforcement,and archaeologists converged on the site. Unfortunately,armed confrontation and dissenting viewpoints of howthe situation should be handled resulted in nothing be-ing resolved and much cultural information lost. In theend a substantial portion of this significant prehistoricburial complex was destroyed. It is estimated that asmany as 200 individuals were interred at this location.Items interred with the dead included a wolf mask, long-nosed god mask, and shell beads perhaps speaking tothe identities or status of certain individuals as well asexquisitely engraved vessels similar to those found atlate prehistoric Caddoan sites in eastern Texas. Theseassociated items indicate wide-ranging trade networksand date the cemetery site to the late prehistoric period,suggestive of strong ties to the Mill Creek culture. Evi-dence from this site expands the known cultural con-tacts of Middle Missouri tradition societies. Recently,

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state, national, and international levels. Maria activelyworked with a number of national American Indian or-ganizations pressing for a federal law about repatria-tion. She was involved with the development of theWorld Archaeological Congress (WAC) 1989 Vermil-lion Accord, a document promoting mutual respect be-tween archaeologists and indigenous people, and the1990 WAC First Code of Ethics. Often referred to asthe “Founding Mother of the modern Indian repa-triation movement,” and “the Rosa Parks ofNAGPRA,” her efforts embodied the concept that“while we cannot remake the past, we can all endeavorto learn about the past as understood from differentperspectives, and resolve to work for a better futurethat will be more inclusive of diversity and sensitive togroup and individual identities.”

Maria Pearson helped archaeologists nationallyand internationally realize that they are not the onlystewards of the past. Indian people, too, are concernedabout ancient sites. These sites are not just sources ofinformation about the past but are the places whereancestors lived, worshiped, and were laid to rest. Theseplaces still resonate with living people. Maria also em-phasized that human remains needed special attentionand that the principles of respect and fair treatment mustapply to Indian burials and bones. Confrontation, fol-lowed by compromise and joint action among Indiansand archaeologists, led to passage of Iowa’s burial pro-tection and reburial law, broadened awareness and ledto similar actions in other states, and ultimately to thenational NAGPRA scene.

The public benefits by hearing and reading aboutthe successful working relationship that was achievedamong people from different cultures and with various

attitudes toward a sensitive topic. A wide range of co-operative projects on Iowa’s Indian heritage has resultedfrom the development of trust, understanding, and mu-tual respect. Through collaborative efforts with a pub-lic that values the past, landowners with a stewardshipethic, supportive descendant groups, and cooperativeagencies and organizations, Iowa has maintained itsnational leadership in burial protection on both privateand public land. By being proactive, Iowa anticipatedand ethically solved many problems far in advance ofthe federal NAGPRA law. The archaeology of theLoess Hills has thus played an integral role in thedevelopment of modern laws and best practice meth-ods involving human remains and has also led to im-portant contributions to knowledge about past humanadaptations in the region.

People, Place, Time and Preservation

The Loess Hills, sandwiched between the westernplains and eastern prairies and accessed by the Mis-souri, Platte, and Big Sioux rivers, was a crossroads ofenvironments, cultures, native peoples, immigrants, andinnovations. It is a place of rare natural beauty anddeep history, a North American gem valued for its natu-ral, cultural, and ancient landscapes. Two intrinsicqualities of the archaeological record of the LoessHills—the unprecedented concentration of well-pre-served earthlodge dwellings and villages that speakto contrasting ways of life among the ancestral PlainsIndians; and, events instrumental in establishingNAGPRA—are of unequivocal national significance.

Today there are over 1,500 inventoried prehistoricarchaeological sites in the seven Loess Hills countiesand an untold number of sites yet to be discovered.While the entire spectrum of prehistoric sites can befound in the Loess Hills, it is the vast numbers ofearthlodge dwellings and palisaded villages of the an-cestral Plains Indians that captured the attention of theearliest explorers, antiquarians, and archaeologists tovisit the region. Based on excavation and analysis ofextant sites archaeologists have learned a great dealabout the livelihoods and material culture of these firstfarmers in the Loess Hills. The earthlodge dwellingsin the south are all within a day’s travel of the confluenceof the Platte and Missouri rivers and those in the northare equal distance to the Big Sioux and Missouri junc-tion. Ongoing and future research is poised to trace thepathways of the earliest settlements from the Missourifloodplain up into the hills following tributary streamsnamed Pony, Keg and Broken Kettle creeks.

Photograph of the location of the Turin burials. This site isthe oldest human cemetery discovered in Iowa, dating to 3000BC.

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Footprint of a recently discovered Glenwood earthlodge site (13ML102) prior to excavation. Inset photograph on leftshows an excavated Glenwood earthlodge.

Cultural descendants of these ancestral Loess Hillsresidents include the Three Affiliated Tribes – theMandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nations in North Dakota,and the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma. Scenes of theirearthlodge way of life were captured by some of thefirst Euroamerican travelers up the Missouri and Platterivers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centu-ries. The ancestral earthlodge dwellings in theGlenwood locality shaped from earth not unlike the hillsthemselves, have much to tell us about traditional ar-chitecture, community layout, cultural values, and de-mographics. The interiors with their deep subfloor pitsonce filled with corn, bison scapula hoes, fishing lures,and decorated pottery have much to say about economy,agriculture, trade, and alliances. Nearby, cemeteriescontinue to teach us about cultural values and nationaldiplomacy. In the span of only a few generations, thefirst Loess Hills farmers abandoned their homes leav-ing behind depressions in the landscape, iconic foot-prints that remind us of their former presence.

The archaeological intrinsic qualities of the LoessHills region speak to human population movements andchange that set into motion a period of deep historystarting with the domestication of the landscape by thefirst farmers, the emergence of the Plains village tribes,their eventual displacement, and later, significant in-fluence on national policy and interactions betweennations, tribal governments, and native peoples. AllAmerican Road status for the Loess Hills National Sce-nic Byway will go a long way to ensure that the exist-ing and yet to be discovered archaeological sites in theLoess Hills that contribute to these stories will be pre-served for the benefit of future generations. Future ar-chaeological and ethnographic research focused onprehistoric and historic occupations in the Loess Hillswill result in enriched regional histories of the Mis-souri River valley and Plains and will promote caretak-ing of the rich cultural heritage of the Loess Hills.