Brief History of the Indians of the Ozark Area

The earliest occupants of this area were the Paleo Indians who lived here between 9500 B. C. to 8000 B.C. The people of this era hunted large game animals, mainly mammoth and large prehistoric bison. They lived in very small bands, following the herd animals and never stayed in one place very long. Therefore, very little is found of the Paleo people except for a few Clovis points on occasion.

The next distinctive group to live here were the Archaic Indians from 8000 B C to 500 B.C. These people relied more on fishing, wild food gathering, and hunted deer and smaller game animals, with the decline of the larger game. The Archaic era in artifacts is evidenced by the appearance of ground stone tools in the form of adzes, axes celts, and grinding bowls.

The Woodland Indians (500 B C —A D 900) were the next to emerge as another separate era of development .Woodland people began to create pottery and also began to cultivate crops, as evidenced by garden tools such as hoes and spades found at Woodland era sites.

The Mississippian people (A D 900-1541) began to live in larger villages and were relying more on agriculture, their main crops being corn, squash, and beans. The bow and arrow was introduced at this time, with the “birdpoint”, or the true arrow point being a prevalent artifact on these sites pottery changed front the Woodland clay-tempered, to using ground shell for tamper and more decorative touches were also added.

June 18, 1541, with the arrival of Ilernando DeSoto, marked the end of the prehistoric era and the beginning of the historic era in the history of the Indians of Arkansas.

In the Ozark area, the Osages occupied all of the land north of the Arkansas River until 1808. They were finally moved to Indian Territory in Oklahoma in 1825.

In 1817, the U.S. government gave the Cherokee people a sizeable piece of the land taken from the Osage. The Cherokee land grant extended from the Arkansas river in the south to the White river in the north, comprising most of north central Arkansas The Osage, unhappy with this situation, led many raiding parties against the Cherokee. For protection, the Cherokee invited the Shawnee to move onto their lands to create a buffer between themselves and the Osage. As a result, the Shawnee took the brunt of the Osage attacks.

In 1828, the Cherokee were moved to Oklahoma, and the native people as a group held no more land in this area, however evidence of their occupation still exists along the riverbanks, along the creek banks, in freshly plowed fields ,and almost everywhere people live today can be found the remains of where people once lived thousands of years before. Arrowheads, grinding bowls, hoe blades and scraping tools practically litter this area. The people may be gone now, but their presence lingers in the bluff shelters and creek side campsites where they once lived long ago.

References
Crossroads of the past-Frank Schambach & Leslie Newell Paths of Our Children-George Sabo

Southeastern Indians-Charles Hudson

Information compiled by Sue Foster