The Chickasaw Indian Villages Defined by Glass Bead Dating
by Stephen R. Cook
, May 2006
Copyright Registered:
Paper1 - TX0006164499 2005
Paper2 - TX0006164500 2005
Paper3 - TXu001274016 2005
Dedicated to . . .
Cayce Banks Livingston (1917 - 2012)
who pioneered Chickasaw archaeology with Moreau B. Chambers and Jesse D. Jennings
Introduction
Paper 3 serves as a companion to the two other papers on this website: Paper 1: The Chickasaw Villages (Cook 2005) and Paper 2: Dating the Chickasaw Beads (Cook 2005). In Paper 1, an encapsulated decade-by-decade history was accompanied with interpretative village locations/maps. Many village location conclusions were reached, but several remain. For instance, two of the villages from Adair's 1720 description on Coonewah Creek were not located. Paper 2, Dating the Chickasaw Beads, presented a glass bead type/variety system, a glass bead sequence of major and minor glass beads and dated the major beads from that sequence.
Like Paper 1, this paper principally concerns the Chickasaw from 1675-1805 when the 1720 villages described by Adair (Paper 1 Figure 1) occupied the ridges of Town, King's, Coonewah and Chiwapa creeks. However, earlier villages areas are considered herein as glass bead trade predated the historical record regarding village locations (see Paper 1 Table 1 and Paper 2 Table 5).
This paper will plot the approximate location of the features that contained the major (and a few minor) glass beads sequenced and dated in Paper 2: Dating the Chickasaw Beads. The maps that will be used for the plots include the base attributes of the interpretive maps developed for Paper 1: the contemporary creek locations and the identical association of 7.5-minute USGS quadrangle maps. See Figure 1.
Using Figure 1 as a base, this paper will present a series of village zone maps that will illustrate the location of major (and some minor) glass bead features. The usage of minor beads represents the earliest sequenced and latest dated beads, see Table 1. The number of features containing the combined major and minor bead type/varieties represented in Paper 2 are recorded on each map.
Interviews
As stated in Paper 2, an interview was conducted with eight Tupelo area collectors. During this process it became apparent that one collector who had diligently maintained feature provenance could not geographically associate two glass bead types/varieties, IA/IIIA Opaque and WID. To mitigate his memory, these beads, which have comparable early trade dates, will be mapped together. In fact, a number of the maps will include grouped major and minor beads. The database represents 188 features, which will be located within 28 village zones. Note that most features contained several types/varieties of beads; therefore, the feature count noted on the maps should exceed the feature count. In addition, a number of minor bead type/varieties sequenced in Paper 2 will not be mapped as they were sequenced but not dated due to the relatively small number of features.
Recall too from Paper 2 that glass beads sized very small and small (less than 6mm) were not considered in the feature database. Therefore, only beads sized at least medium (6mm and larger) are used herein. In addition, as stated in Paper 2, all of the features that were discovered professionally within the area of study, Figure 1, were excluded. For example, the burials at OT8 dug by Chambers and Jennings, including MLe14 or the Chickasaw Indian Village on the Natchez Trace Parkway are excluded since the beads were not available for classifying and sizing.
The 188 features, represented by whole numbers tagged to each zone, are distributed on Figure 1, Village Zone Areas Feature Distribution. Although several zones do note contain representative features, all zones have produced either features or surface collections representing glass bead types/varieties used in Paper 2 and herein. When appropriate, that information will be shared.