Pictured, from left, are Hunter Davis and Dana Northam. They are working in Ball State University’s Applied Anthropology Laboratory identifying a portion of the Syracuse-Wawasee Historical Museum’s American Indian Artifact collection.

SYRACUSE — The Syracuse-Wawasee Historical Museum, in collaboration with Ball State University’s Applied Anthropology Laboratory, has begun curating the J.P. Dolan American Indian artifact collection.

This year-long project is being funded by a $17,000 Heritage Support Grant from the Indiana Historical Society made possible by Lilly Endowment Inc. and a matching fund of $3,550 contributed by local residents.

Throughout 2018, the museum will strive to educate the public on the importance of the treasure we have right here in our own community. Currently there is a museum exhibit on the area’s historic period which begins with the first contact of the Native Americans with the French, c. 1680.

The cultures represented by projectile points in the Dolan Indian Artifact Collection housed at the Syracuse-Wawasee Historical Museum are primarily prehistoric. As the Ice Age ended, Paleoindians (ca. 10,000 – 7500 B.C.) appear to have been the earliest Native Americans populating North America.

This culture adapted to cooler climates and different vegetation than we have today. Most likely they were small bands of roaming hunter-gatherers with bone and chipped stone tools for killing and dressing large animals like the mammoth and mastodon, as well as smaller game.

During the Archaic occupation of what is now known as Indiana (ca. 8000 – 700 B.C.), increased population and climate are more similar to what we know today was seen. Early in the period, they were hunter-gatherers with elk, deer and bear as their favorite prey. Notching of their stone spear points expanded their tool technology and they began to use the atlatl spear thrower.

By the Middle Archaic Period, stone axes appeared. At long last, the nut bearing trees came to the northern woodlands followed by smaller game providing a welcome diet change. Further variety was provided by fishing and gathering shellfish. As the period progressed into the Late Archaic years, the people appeared to be less nomadic and likely scheduled their lifestyle according to the changing seasons.

The use of ornaments and stone tools such as hoes, hammer stones, mortars and nutting stones increased. This period’s Glacial Kame group has been identified in the Cedar Point area of Lake Wawasee. Small burial mounds appeared in the late stages of this era.

During the Woodland (ca. 1000 B.C. – 1200) era, mound building continued, horticulture was practiced and pottery emerged. Interregional trade networks exchanged raw materials and artifacts. During the Late Woodland period, the bow and arrow appeared using the first true “arrowheads,” small triangular chipped stone projectile points.

Agriculture consisted mainly of planting maize, beans and squash. In northeastern Indiana, the Late Woodland era apparently continued until just before first contact with historically recorded cultures in the early 1600s.

The best known Mississippian (ca. 1000 – early 1600s) site in Native Americans is Angel Mounds, the largest settlement of its time in what is now southwestern Indiana along the Ohio River. The fortified town with a large plaza and flat-topped mounds upon which were built the houses of chiefs and temples served as the social, political and religious center for a large area of villages.

In our next article, we will feature the Miamis and Potawatomis, the primary tribes appearing in the historical record of what we now know as northern Indiana.