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Smoking a deer hide over a smudge pit. Photo: Bureau of
American Ethnology Bulletin 86, Plate 75.
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Hello everybody. It’s Joe Hearns here. Some of you
might remember me from past field seasons during which I worked as part of the
Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project crew. In addition to spending time at
the Fort site and in the lovely city of Niles, I have been working towards
completing a Masters thesis at Western Michigan University. My topic is an
exciting one: BONES!
More
specifically, I’ve been spending most of my days this past semester in the lab
identifying the numerous animal bone remains recovered from the decade’s worth
of excavation. Before I bore even myself describing the ins and outs of data
collection, I’m going to take this opportunity to explain what we might
possibly learn from this project, and how that might add to our knowledge of
life during the fur trade.
So
why study animal bones in the first place? Granted, those of us who grew up in
Michigan certainly have a relatively clear idea of what animals are around,
whether it’s the pesky raccoons digging through our trash bins, the deer never looking
both ways before crossing the road, the beaver that builds a secluded dam on a
forgotten creek deep in the forest, or even the Canada geese honking over our
heads and the wild turkeys spotted near the tree lines of our fields. However,
odds are against running into a black bear, the ever diminishing and protected
lake sturgeon, and the extinct passenger pigeon, all of which were visitors to
Fort St. Joseph and its inhabitants. Identification of these species’ remains,
and others like them, help uncover a history of animals found across our
present landscape, giving us insight into an environmental past different from
ours.
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You can see by comparing to the size of the penicil, bones
come in all
shapes and sizes. Even tiny
bird bones (the three on the right)
are preserved at Fort St. Joseph. Photo:
Joe Hearns
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Everyone
has to eat, and animal bones have long been seen as an excellent source of
information regarding the diets of people in the past. The decisions made when
preparing dinner is further evidence of daily life. As a modern example,
consider our vegetarian friends and family; their daily choices in food reflect
a specific attitude towards the consumption of meat. So, if we were to examine
the animal remains to look at dietary patterns of the folks at Fort St. Joseph,
we might find a reliance on certain animals over others. In 2004, Rory Becker
did just that for his Masters work and found some interesting patterns in the
collected bone data. Overall, the inhabitants of the site were found to be
using mostly locally available, wild animals as a source for meat, especially
white-tailed deer. The fact that their diet was more similar to the
Potawatomis’ with whom they traded, lived, and married speaks volumes about the
close relationships formed on the frontier.
However,
the use of animals does not end with a boiling pot of stew; this was the fur trade after all. Certain animals,
especially the beaver, white-tailed deer, and raccoon, were targeted for their
hides and pelts. This is where I began my work: How might we tell if animals
recovered from the site were used for food or for their fur? Who was processing
these animals and how did they do it? Where did this activity occur? These
questions about hide production and others might be answered by looking at what
are referred to as “site formation processes.”
Site
formation processes is a fancy term for asking, “How did all of this stuff get
here?” We do different activities in different places. For example, my dad is a
teacher and former high school administrator, but he is also an active gardener
and does many household projects involving woodworking. Think of how the
contents of a trash can in his home office looks compared to a much larger trash
can by his work bench. Now, compare these two trash cans to the bin for yard
waste, or even the compost heap by his garden. All of this waste disposal looks
different and is different because of
the activities my dad engaged in that produced this garbage. So, by looking at
the Fort Site’s animal bones, we might be able to see different activities in
the form of specific areas of activity, as cooking and hide production are very
different activities that will produce distinct patterns of “production waste,”
or, as I like to think of it, garbage.
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Raccoon mandible, maxilla, and possible
deer long bone.
Photo: Joe Hearns
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The
Gete Odena site on Lake Superior’s Grand Island might serve as a comparison for
the Fort’s animal bone assemblage in regards to examining processing animal
hides (see Skibo et al 2004). This site, dated to the period following European
contact, yielded over 1400 animal remains throughout the two seasons of
excavation. The overall species composition was dominated by large mammals,
such as moose, white-tailed deer, and black bear. In addition, smaller fur-bearing
mammals, especially beaver, marten, and muskrat, were also recovered. Although
this would have been a prime spot for exploiting waterfowl and spawning fish in
the warmer months, these species were not recovered to any large degree. The
absence of seasonal animal visitors to the site in the archaeological record
highlights a focus on the processing of mammals.
The
researchers at Gete Odena also noted the presence of five “smudge pits” at the
site. Smudge pits were used in processing to smoke animal hides (Skibo et al
2006). Essentially, these small narrow pits were dug and filled with pinecones,
small maize cobs, or other recently acquired, green plant material placed at
the bottom. The narrow walls, which reduce the amount of oxygen available to
the fire, and green material created a smokey, nearly flameless fire. Hides
were then wrapped around cone-shaped wooden framework constructed above the smoldering
pit. This process preserved the hide in a usable form, whether for personal use
and later manufacturing of clothing or as tradable goods, and also added the
golden color of processed hide.
Between
the species composition and the recovering of these smudge pit features, the
authors argued the inhabitants of this site primarily focused on medium and large-sized
mammals for the purpose of hide extraction and processing, although it is
certainly reasonable to suggest these animals were used as a food source as
well as a hide source.
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White-tailed deer rib with multiple
knife cut marks. Photo:
Joe Hearns.
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On
a recent trip to work with Dr. Terry Martin at the Illinois State museum, I was
able to collect data from three excavation units at the Fort St. Joseph Site.
Similar to Gete Odena, the animal remains were, by and large, medium and
large-sized mammals, especially white-tailed deer. Although some remains
enhanced the known diversity at the site in regards to the presence of fish and
waterfowl, the emphasis was mostly on these mammal species. Similarly, past
field seasons uncovered several possible smudge pits on the Lyne Site terrace
to the south of the Fort Site. More data needs to be collected and more work
needs to be done to draw connections between these pits and the animal remains
recovered at Fort St. Joseph, but these preliminary results suggest that hide
processing may very well have been taking place around the Fort St. Joseph
community.
These
preliminary data only begin to scratch the surface of my faunal analysis and
have only posed more questions. Once I start to discern patterns resulting from
daily activities, broader questions can be asked. Did production change over
time as prices shifted in the global fur market? Did it shift due to
over-hunting of species? Through these and similar questions, importantly, we
could begin to understand how the people living at the Fort used animal
resources to organize their lives in relation to one another within the larger
structure of the fur trade. -Joe
Hearns
