Page 4 - RAGBRAI2012

DAY 2 - CHEROKEE TO LAKEVIEW MILL CREEK CULTURE

Some of the earliest Plains Indian villages appeared in northwest Iowa between
A.D. 1100 and 1250. Although the specific Indian groups or tribes who created them
remain a mystery, these communities, situated along the Big and Little Sioux rivers
and their tributaries, are known by the name of Mill Creek. Each village is composed
of tightly spaced, rectangular earth-and-timber lodges aligned in rows, often with an
encircling wooden palisade and ditch. Excavations reveal the presence of abundant
storage pits—mini root cellars—and an enormous variety of artifacts and other mate-
rial items. Bone digging implements, garden plots, and botanical evidence show that
maize (corn)-based farming was important but wild plants were also eaten and had
medicinal, ceremonial, building, decorative, and utilitarian purposes. Animal bone and
hundreds of bone and stone tools testify to hunting, trapping, and fishing. Most of
the four ceramic wares are of local clays and are types shared with contemporary
sites in eastern South Dakota and southwest Minnesota. Some vessels, however, in-
dicate copies or actual trade pieces derived from communities hundreds of miles away
including the metropolis of Cahokia on the Mississippi River near modern St. Louis.
In Iowa, of the 48 known Mill Creek sites, 26 occur along the Little Sioux River and
its tributaries, in Buena Vista, Cherokee, and O’Brien counties. Archaeologists have

investigated two of the deeply stratified
Mill Creek sites near the town of Chero-
kee, the Phipps (13CK21) and Brewster
(13CK15) sites.