A Mississippian Dugout Canoe from Northeast Arkansas

A MISSISSIPPIAN DUGOUT CANOE FROM NORTHEAST ARKANSAS Jeffrey M. Mitchem Parkin Research Station Arkansas Archeological Survey P.O. Box 241 Parkin AR 72373-0241 A paper presented at the 66th Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Archaeological Conference, Mobile, November 6, 2009. A MISSISSIPPIAN DUGOUT CANOE FROM NORTHEAST ARKANSAS Jeffrey M. Mitchem Arkansas Archeological Survey In the spring of 2008, the floodwaters in northeast Arkansas were the highest I’ve ever seen. The St. Francis River was about as high as I can remember, and some of the ditches and channels west of Parkin overflowed their banks and kept fields flooded for weeks. Ironically, many of those ditches were dug specifically to help control flooding on the St. Francis and its tributaries after the disastrous flood of 1927 (Daniel 1996). Every day on my way to work that spring I marveled at what looked like an enormous lake north of the highway after crossing the first of two bridges heading east from Wynne. The fields were covered by several feet of water as far as the eye could see, broken only by stands of cypress and other trees along the field edges. That area is called the Bay Bottoms, and it has no doubt experienced many floods in the past. I know the 2008 flood caused a lot of hardship for farmers and landowners, and nothing illustrated this more clearly than the plight of a family who reside in a mobile home right next to the waterway: The water was only about a foot from covering their roof, and it was that high for weeks. Coping with flooding is difficult for people today, but it must have been a monumental challenge for the prehistoric inhabitants of Cross County, especially since it probably happened more frequently. While they undoubtedly realized that the floodwaters brought nutrients that helped keep the soil fertile, the difficulties of day-to-day life during a flood would have been staggering. Even though the Parkin site and contemporary Mississippian villages in the region were surrounded by defensive ditches, these probably would not have kept the inhabitants dry during a major flood. As the water levels rose, the time would come when they would have to abandon their homes and head for higher ground until the waters receded. With no Red Cross or similar agency to provide help, it was up to them to pack up treasured belongings and as much food as they could carry, then canoe across or down the river to wherever higher ground was accessible. We have long assumed that the native peoples of this region regularly used canoes for travel. The fact that most Parkin phase sites are located along the St. Francis and Tyronza Rivers means that the most efficient way to transport people and materials from one settlement to another would have been by canoeing up or down the rivers. I often wonder if some of the cypress logs cut into barrel staves at Parkin’s early twentieth century Northern Ohio Cooperage and Lumber Mill were actually old canoes that had become dislodged from the river bottom and were floated down the river with the freshly cut logs. Of course, we’ll never know, but old canoes are found occasionally elsewhere in the Southeast, and many are in remarkable condition (Hartmann 1996; Ruhl and Purdy 2005; Wheeler et al. 2003). In Arkansas, only a handful of dugout canoes have been recorded. The Griggs Canoe, on permanent display at Toltec Mounds Archeological State Park, was found in the back yard of Mr. and Mrs. A. F. Griggs along the Saline River near the city of Benton in central Arkansas (Arkansas State Parks n.d.). It ended up on their land after flooding during the winter of 1982-1983, and they used it as a makeshift cattle trough for several months (Ann M. Early, personal communication 2008). They eventually contacted Ann Early (then at the Survey’s Henderson State University Station in Arkadelphia), and she arranged for it to be donated to Arkansas State Parks. Made from southern pine, it was constructed using metal tools, so we know it dates from sometime after European contact. Attempts to get a radiocarbon date were unsuccessful. Tree-ring samples were taken, but were not in good enough shape to yield an exact date. Nevertheless, two tentative dates of 1680 and 1840 were suggested (Arkansas State Parks n.d.). Although it was never treated with any kind of preservative, it has remained relatively intact with only moderate surface damage. The Peeler Bend Canoe has a long and complicated story. In 1999, residents of Benton discovered and removed the dugout from the Saline River. Found near Benton, it was exposed by low water levels (Trubitt 2002). They dug it out of the mud, finding what they thought was an anchor stone nearby. Because it was located in a navigable river, the canoe became the property of the state. Several problems then became apparent. First was where to store it. And second, how do you preserve it? When I heard about this, I chuckled, because as a graduate student at the University of Florida I had dealt with more than my fair share of canoes. I can remember large vats in the basement of the Florida State Museum with canoes soaking in them. It takes years of soaking in a solution of polyethylene glycol to get them to the point where they won’t disintegrate when they eventually dry out (Purdy 1991:Chapter 5). In the 1970s and 80s, Dr. Barbara Purdy was salvaging canoes from all over Florida, and gathering great information about their dates and styles, but after they were preserved, there was no room to store or display them in the museum. Eventually space was found in a dark basement at the University of Florida Medical School. At some point in the 1980s the Med School called the museum and said they needed the space, so the canoes needed to go. I vividly recall being in the group of graduate students recruited to help a few University employees load the preserved canoes into semi truck trailers. Some were so long that they stuck out the back of the trailers. We then took them north of the city to a state forest owned by the university, where we stored them in open-sided pole barns. They remain there today. Indeed, when over a hundred Archaic Period canoes were found in a lake near Gainesville, Florida in 2000, measurements and samples were taken in place, but none were removed for preservation (Wheeler et al. 2003). The storage and preservation obligations confronted the Arkansas Archeological Survey and the Historic Arkansas Museum once they took possession of the Peeler Bend Canoe. For temporary storage while trying to find grants to pay for the large amount of polyethylene glycol and a tank to soak the canoe in, the decision was made to sink the canoe in a pond on the property of Mr. Quin Baber. This was done because it is essential that the waterlogged wood not be allowed to dry out. If it dries, the wood cell walls collapse and the object will warp and crack badly or simply disintegrate. Once those types of damage occur, there is no way to restore the artifact to its former condition. Before being put in the pond, two radiocarbon samples were taken and yielded calibrated date ranges (one-sigma) of cal AD 1160-1260 and cal AD 1200-1280. In 2001, the Historic Arkansas Museum received funding to conserve the canoe. That meant the canoe itself had to be retrieved from the pond and transported to the museum. My colleague Skip Stewart-Abernathy was in charge of that, donning his mask and snorkel (in December!) and supervising the raising of the canoe and putting it on a trailer for transport. It took a lot of personnel and cooperation to accomplish this. Unfortunately it had sustained a nasty crack in the side during its initial recovery, but overall it was amazingly successful (Early and Stewart-Abernathy 2009). After about a year and a half of soaking, the canoe was stabilized and removed from the solution. Then the problem became where to display it. No museum in the state had room for a 24-foot long canoe. For a year or so, it was put on temporary display at the Historic Arkansas Museum while trying to find another location for it. In 2004, they were contacted by the Tunica RiverPark Museum in Mississippi, a new museum funded by the casino industry over there, and they agreed to loan it to them. It remains on display there today. The story of the third Arkansas canoe is a bit murkier, and certainly the opposite end of the spectrum of the Peeler Bend one. Called the Arkadelphia Canoe, it was secretly dug up from the mouth of the Caddo River sometime in the 1990s, then hidden away for years with no efforts at preservation (Ann M. Early, personal communication 2008). Eventually it was donated to the Survey’s Southern Arkansas University Station. It was then loaned to the Sam Noble Museum in Norman, Oklahoma. Eventually it was returned, but it had literally fallen to pieces. After being documented, the pieces were turned over to the Clark County Historical Association for display in their museum. Made from either pine or baldcypress, a radiocarbon sample yielded a calibrated date range of roughly A.D. 900-1100 (Mary Beth Trubitt, personal communication 2009). All three of those canoes were probably made and used by Caddo Indians, though the Griggs Canoe may well have been made by Europeans (Arkansas State Parks n.d.). Measurements of the Griggs and Peeler Bend Canoes show that they are both about the same dimensions, and their discovery provides tangible evidence that the rivers in Arkansas were the highways of the past. In late spring of 2008, the floodwaters in Cross County finally receded. Wynne resident Matt Guth decided to go for a boat ride on a western meander of the St. Francis River that is sometimes called St. Francis Bay or Cross County Ditch. As he was traveling downriver, he came upon a large wooden object on a sandbar in the river. He recognized it as a canoe, and returned with friends to recover it and move it to his house in Wynne. Fortunately, he knew to keep it wet, so he put it in a shady spot on tarps where it could be wet down as needed. He started contacting various institutions to find out whether it was authentic, how old it was, and other information. Eventually he called me, and he came to Parkin Archeological State Park to talk about it. The first thing that concerned me was ownership. It turned out that because it was found on a sandbar, the owner was the finder. If it had been in the river itself, it would have belonged to the state. If it had been found on one of the banks, it would have belonged to the adjacent landowner. This was actually a relief, because if it had been considered state property, we would have been responsible for it, with all the storage problems and costs that go along with that. He invited me to come to his house and look at it to record it and take some samples. I immediately took him up on the offer, accompanied by three state park employees. When we first saw it, I was amazed at the quality of preservation. It was exceptionally well-preserved, with one end completely intact and the other missing one small part. A crack in the bottom ran almost the entire length. There were clear tool marks, plus charred areas that revealed that it had been made by the burn-and-scrape method. I took measurements and lots of photographs. Matt allowed me to take a small sample for species identification and a larger portion for possible radiocarbon dating. To get the radiocarbon sample, I had to use a handsaw to cut a chunk out of the dense wood. I made it clear to him that the state of Arkansas was not interested in buying the canoe, and I explained to him the difficulties and expense involved in properly conserving it. Based on the remarkable state of preservation, I told him that I thought it probably dated from the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. Because of that, I said we probably wouldn’t bother trying to get a radiocarbon date, as it would be useless on such a recent object. We also had no funds to pay for dating. I was able to get a species identification very quickly from Dr. David Stahle of the Department of Geosciences at the University of Arkansas. He confidently identified it as baldcypress (Taxodium distichum). In addition, he said that the photographs I sent him showed that the rings and wood anatomy were perfectly preserved and that he could count at least 110 annual rings (David W. Stahle, personal communication 2008). Matt shared location information and I filled out a site form for the find location. It was assigned site number 3CS314. I told him to make sure that he kept it wet continuously, and he said he might build a tank to hold it until he could find someone who wanted it. Several months later, Matt called and said he wanted to pay to have a radiocarbon date run on the sample I had collected. I once again warned him that I thought it would be a waste of $375, but he decided he wanted to submit it anyway. I agreed to prepare the paperwork and package the sample for shipment to Beta Analytic. I mailed it in December, 2008. I was astounded when the results were returned in January. The calibrated (2-sigma) date ranges were cal AD 1310-1360 and cal AD 1380-1450! So the dugout that I thought was only one or two hundred years old is actually at least 500 years old. So much for my powers of guesstimation. The location where the canoe was found, along with the date, indicates that it is undoubtedly a Parkin phase vessel. It is the only known dugout from northeast Arkansas. It is 6.55 m long, 30 cm high, and 56.25 cm wide at the widest point. As mentioned before, the degree of preservation is remarkable. This is probably partly due to the fact that it was made of baldcypress, which is renowned as a type of wood resistant to rotting. I suspect that the canoe was probably buried for centuries under mud and silt in the river bottom, which also contributed to its preservation. The increased water flow in 2008 during the floods must have dislodged it and moved it downstream until it came to rest on the sandbar. Although I did not go to see the canoe again when we sent the radiocarbon sample, Matt assured me that it was still in good condition and that he was trying to find a buyer for it. He said that some interest had been expressed from Illinois and elsewhere. In February of this year, I received a message from Mark Esarey of Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site in Illinois, inquiring about a canoe purportedly from Arkansas that an archaeological society was considering buying and donating to their park. I filled him in on all of the details, and also pointed out some of the difficulties and costs involved in conserving it. Ann Early also wrote him about the Peeler Bend Canoe experiences. This past summer, I learned that the Illinois State Archaeological Society had purchased the canoe and indeed donated it to Cahokia. Transportation of the canoe was accomplished by members of the Cahokia Archaeological Society, who also constructed a tank in which it will be soaked for several years. Once it is preserved, plans call for it to be included in an upcoming exhibit entitled “The Indians and the River” (Cahokia Mounds Museum Society 2009). Although I would prefer that it had stayed in Arkansas, its acquisition by Cahokia is a good thing, because they are committed to conserving it and it will be displayed in one of the finest archaeological parks in the country. Fortunately, we were able to thoroughly document it before it went away. I look forward to seeing it in its new home. REFERENCES CITED Arkansas State Parks n.d. The Griggs Canoe: A Treasure from Arkansas’s Past. Brochure, Toltec Mounds Archeological State Park. Also electronic document, http://www.arkansasstateparks.com/images/pdfs/Toltecgriggscanoe.pdf, accessed September 24, 2009. Cahokia Mounds Museum Society 2009 Dugout Canoe Donated. The Cahokian. Summer. Page 12. Daniel, Pete 1996 Deep’n as It Come: The 1927 Mississippi River Flood. Reprinted. University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville. Originally published 1977, Oxford University Press, New York. Early, Ann M., and Leslie Stewart-Abernathy 2009 The Peeler Bend Canoe. PowerPoint presentation at the “Picture the Past” film and lecture series, Winthrop Rockefeller Institute Research Station, Arkansas Archeological Survey. Morrillton. Hartmann, Mark J. 1996 Development of Watercraft in the Prehistoric Southeastern United States. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Texas A&M University, College Station. Purdy, Barbara A. 1991 The Art and Archaeology of Florida’s Wetlands. CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida. Ruhl, Donna L., and Barbara A. Purdy 2005 One Hundred-one Canoes on the Shore – 3-5,000 Year Old Canoes from Newnans Lake, Florida. Journal of Wetland Archaeology 5:111-127. Trubitt, Mary Beth 2002 Update on the Peeler Bend Canoe: An Ancient Dugout Canoe from Saline County. Field Notes: Newsletter of the Arkansas Archeological Society 307:3-5. Wheeler, Ryan J., James J. Miller, Ray M. McGee, Donna Ruhl, Brenda Swann, and Melissa Memory 2003 Archaic Period Canoes from Newnans Lake, Florida. American Antiquity 68(3):533-551. 10 PAGE 10