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1940s digs uncovered artifacts

BY GEITNER SIMMONS
SALISBURY POST

“The Island,”some of them would later call it.

“The Island” would answer some intriguing questions about Rowan County’s past, but then raise still more.

One of those at the front of the group was Vance Eller, an energetic 29-year-old who had been collecting arrow points along the Yadkin for nearly two decades. Eller had scouted out the sand island near Trading Ford on his own in 1939. He found an unusual concentration of Indian artifacts.

Now, seven years later, High Rock’s waters had finally fallen enough to allow entry once again, and Eller was helping an archaeological team make its way, slowly but steadily, to “the Island.”

Archaeologists, college professors from Catawba College and Duke, Catawba students, locals interested in Rowan history — all joined together over a three-month period to perform a systematic excavation on a portion of the island. Excavation ended in December 1946 due to rising waters. Catawba faculty and students conducted a second dig there during October 1948 before the rising water level compelled them to leave. No further digs have been conducted at the site.

The excavations revealed a treasure trove of artifacts from Indians who lived along the Yadkin during the “Uwharrie”cultural period from 1300 to 1500 A.D. The Guatari Indians who lived near Trading Ford and greeted a Spanish expedition under Captain Juan Pardo in February 1567 belonged to the Uwharrie culture, archaeologists say.

At “the Island,” Eller and his colleagues found a layer of blackened sand just below the surface sand. This “occupation layer”soon yielded hundreds of pot shards plus tools made of stone or bone; stone jewelry; stone pipes; and postholes from structures.

The team also discovered the complete skeleton of a Native American woman.

Because the site of Guatari has not been pinpointed, the excavations at “the Island” provide one of the closest snapshots yet of what Indian life in Rowan was like around the time of European contact.

The 1940s excavations have led most archaeologists familiar with the Pardo expedition to believe Guatari probably lies beneath the waters of High Rock. The section excavated in the ’40s might even be part of what later became the Guatari settlement.

Unexpected finds

“Every weekend a bunch of us would go out,” says Eller, now 82, recalling the digging of trenches as part of the field work. “We moved a lot of dirt, but it was all sandy.”

In the decades since the 1940s digs, Eller, a retired Salisbury florist, has retained a keen interest in archaeology and Indian life.

Geiger Omwake, a Delaware archaeologist who headed the digs at High Rock, had speculated that the digs might turn up items from around 1700-01, when the English explorer John Lawson came through North Carolina, including Trading Ford.

“We had thought it had to be the Saponi,”Eller says, referring to the Indians Lawson met. “But it wasn’t.”

The nature of the pottery, arrowheads and other items indicated the Indian settlement dated earlier, from the Uwharrie period. For instance, the excavations turned up no polished or sculptured stone artifacts associated with a post-Uwharrie native culture.

The sand island site had probably been a small village or a segment of a large village, the team leaders concluded. Indians had probably lived at that particular 4,700-square-foot location for 2.5 years to 7.5 years, it was estimated, judging from the amount of broken pottery.

Pottery fragments had been found to fit together even though they were from rather widely separated pits and from various depths. That meant, the archaeologists said, that the artifacts were from a single occupation, instead of being from different time periods.

In addition to Omwake and Eller, the main members of the excavation team were Catawba College faculty members Bruce Wentz, a professor of psychology and philosophy; John Bass, dean of men; and Lionel Whiston, a professor of religion. Also in the leadership team were the Rev. Neil Carson Williams Sr., pastor of Coburn Memorial Methodist Church in Salisbury, and Julian Wilbur of Salisbury.

Donald Dearborn, dean of Catawba at the time, surveyed the site, laid the plots and mapped the significant features. Dearborn, who would become president of Catawba in 1963, co-wrote an October 1953 article on the excavations that appeared in Southern Indian Studies, a journal published by UNC-Chapel Hill. Charles D. Howell, a professor of biology at Catawba, co-wrote the article.

One of the most unexpected discoveries was the female skeleton.

“The skeleton was found in a flexed position facing east,” Dearborn wrote. “Most of the bones were in a state of extreme fragility.” After being handled, the bones “crumbled to pieces.”

The skeleton was partially reassembled using a specialized cement, studied briefly and reburied. The remains were judged to be those of a woman.

A trading crossroads

It’s no surprise that the Trading Ford area would turn up large numbers of Indian artifacts, says Eller, who shared a decades-long friendship with Omwake. Trading Ford truly was the trading crossing roads for Indians from throughout the region, Eller says.

Still, he says, the team at High Rock “didn’t find any trading goods.”The items instead illustrated the tools and other artifacts associated with domestic life among Uwharrie culture Indians.

For one thing, the Indians apparently ate well. “We found lots of pigeon bones and turkey bones,” Eller says.

Some of the Indian refuse pits were absolutely stuffed with large piles of empty shells of freshwater mussels the Indians had eaten.

The team also found stone weights that had been used to secure fish nets on the river, Eller says.

Dearborn listed additional findings, including:

• Sixty pits, including fire pits with charcoal-filled bottoms, and refuse pits with large quantities of bone, shell, flint, chips, pottery and stone artifacts.
• Forty-six postholes, which might have been left by poles for structures. But, Dearborn wrote in the 1953 article, “so far no certain pattern has been worked out from them to indicate buildings or palisades (timbered fort-style walls).”
• Various tools:celts (resembling chisels), drills, hammerstones and pestles, all of stone. Tools made from antlers, possibly used to make flints. Awls made from bone.
• Arrowheads numbering 446 in all. Only 40 of them were perfect; 336 were fragments.
• Four stones with holes bored in them, apparently for use as pendants.

The digs turned up 6,892 pottery shards of one inch square or larger. Some 717 rim shards were recovered, which were estimated to represent 200 different pots.

Most of the shards were of a reddish-yellow clay tempered with sand and grit. The pots were decorated in various ways:horizontal lines, diagonal markings, circular marks, designs made by netting or by cords.

Omwake reconstructed two of the pots. Each stood about 12 inches in diameter and 15 inches high and are now on display at Horizons Unlimited. He used plaster to fill in about one-third of each pot.

Everyone involved in the excavations was instructed to be on the lookout for European items such as glass beads, rusty nails and Old World-style crockery.

“However, no such materials were discovered,” Dearborn wrote. “So, we concluded that this site antedated the contact with white men, and was occupied and abandoned before 1700 —before the Saponi were in this region.”

Only a 4,700-square-foot area was studied, Dearborn wrote, “which may be only a peripheral area of the original village. ...

“The total area of the village has not been explored, by any means. The site is known to be at least one quarter of a mile long, and possibly more.

“At its extremities,”Dearborn wrote, “it may reveal things not found in the area exploited.”