In recognition of Native American Heritage Month in November, the Bridgeville Area Historical Society gave the podium to yours truly, to deliver a presentation reporting on their presence of these people in this area, down through the years. Since they never developed a written language, the information on which it is based is largely speculative, but is based on an impressive body of archaeological data.
The speaker began by tracing this presence from its earliest days through colonial times, up to the end of the eighteenth century. About twenty-five thousand years ago primitive people from Asia, accidentally perhaps, found their way across a land bridge between Siberia and Alaska and quickly spread across North and South America. These people were hunters, eager to take advantage of the large pre-historic animals that were prevalent here – giant beavers, mammoths, the great ground sloths, etc. The earliest evidence we have of primitive people in this apecific area are artifacts from the Meadowcroft Rockshelter, where archaeologists have found evidence of human habitation at least 15,000 years ago. As these primitive people proliferated, different groups ended up in different regions, each with its own unique environmental characteristics. Our area was part of the Northeast Woodlands Region, dominated by forests and the animals that lived in them. The Native Americans living here were true “hunter/gatherers”.
As the millennia passed, these groups evolved, and by 1000 AD they were well on their way to becoming semi-civilized (at least by Western criteria). This was the era of the Anasazi in the Southwest, of Cahokia in southern Illinois, and of the Mound Builders in the Ohio Valley. Each society was peaceful, practiced advanced agriculture, lived in semi-permanent villages, and was adept in tool making and pottery. The eastern-most culture in the Mound Builders were the Monongahela People in western Pennsylvania. We are fortunate that one of their settlements, the Drew Site, located in Bridgeville, has been the subject of a rigorous archaeological investigation and analysis; thus that we know a lot about the people who inhabited it eight hundred years ago.
Sadly, all these eolving cultures disappeared or regressed around 1400 AD. By 1600 AD they had been replaced by tribes with names we recognize today. In Pennsylvania, the Delaware occupied the eastern part; the Susquehannocks, the central part; and the Erie, the western part. North of them was the Iroquois Confederacy. The Iroquois had entered into a lucrative arrangement with Dutch traders from New Amsterdam, exchanging beaver furs for gunpowder and muskets. This empowered them to initiate a century of “Beaver Wars”, which culminated in 1698 with their having dominion over all of the Ohio Valley, as far west as the Mississippi River. Western Pennsylvania, and particularly our local region, had become their hunting ground. By the time the first English traders came into southwestern Pennsylvania, there were no permanent Native American settlements in this area.
The Drew Site is an excellent example of the Monongahela People. Archaeologists had been aware of the presence of artifacts on the Drew Farm, between Gould City Hill and Chartiers Creek, for a number of years. When it became evident that the construction of I-79 was destined to destroy this site, an emergency salvage project was initiated in the early 1960s; they were able to recover about 25,000 artifacts. The “dig” was led by archaeologist William Buker, with considerable help from professional and amateur helpers. Each piece acquired was documented and carefully archived. In 1970 Mr. Buker published an impressive report on the site, describing in great detail what they had found, and synthesizing the results of their analysis into a comprehensive picture of this specific settlement.
His conclusion was that this site was occupied about eight hundred years ago by thirty or forty persons. They lived in circular huts (wigwams) consisting of pole frames covered by bark or animal skins. Their diet came from roughly equal sources – agriculture (primarily corn, beans, and squash); foraging (nuts, berries, grapes, roots, etc.); Chartiers Creek (fish, fresh water mussels, and turtles); and hunting (deer, turkey, rabbits, squirrels, etc.). They were proficient at making tools – knives, arrowheads, scrapers, etc. from stone; drills, punches, fish hooks, etc. from animal bones; and handles for hammers and knives from wood. By this time the bow and arrow had been developed; the arrowheads they produced were small (3/4 inch) triangles.
The Drew Site people were also prolific makers of pottery. Buker’s team archived over 23,000 sherds (broken bits of pottery). Much to their surprise, the vast majority of these were “shell tempered”. It is common knowledge that clay as dug is not strong enough to withstand the necessary temperature for firing. Most of the potters in the Mound Builder era added finely ground limestone to their clay to temper it. The Drew Site folks, instead, used ground mussel shells as their tempering agent. The unique characteristics of this pottery prompted Buker to identify this specific culture as “the Drew Phase”.
A few years later another archaeologist, Richard George, postulated an interesting model. Realizing that the life-style of these people eventually exhausted the natural resources of the surrounding area, he suggested that the Drew Phase people relocated their settlement every twenty years or so and moved (at least twenty miles) up or down stream, and that the sites could be re-used, perhaps after one hundred years. This suggests that the only Native American occupation in this area at that time was one settlement, moving from site to site every twenty years. We are fortunate that our region’s heritage is so rich and that the archaeologists have been able to provide us with so much information about it.
The program series will take a month off in December, then return on its winter schedule with a program by Dick Gaetano entitled “The Legendary Route 66” at 1:30 pm, Sunday, January 28, 2024, in the Chartiers Room of the Bridgeville Volunteer Fire Department.