Most of us that have lived in Crittenden County and love the history of our early days, have heard about the Indian tribe and their burial ground that was located at Tolu, Kentucky. Even today people still find evidence of their sites by finding arrow heads, bits of pottery, or other pieces of their culture in the fields around the Tolu area. The following article was written by Marion Clement Van Pelt, March 27, 1931.
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THE ANCIENT PEOPLE OF CRITTENDEN
Grim white skeletons, rows of them, gleaming in the moonlight.
Suppose you had entered such a spectacle, on an evening stroll. First a walk through a meadow, fragrant with blossoming alfalfa; then a trudge up a sloping hillside; and there before my eyes lay row upon row of these stark reminders of a people long gone. They seem to gaze at me knowingly, as the moonlight did weird tricks with the empty sockets, from which once looked out eyes of a fearless people. Were they wondering, as they lay there, what manner of man had come to view them, these people who once roamed our country, members indeed of our first families.
For this was all that was left of the lordly band of Indians, who hundreds of years ago, roamed the hillsides of Crittenden County, now happily winging an arrow into the plentiful game of the times; now engaging in a scene of grim cruelty; now defending their domain from an invading tribe. Yes, all these stories, and many more besides, lay revealed before us, as we stood, in almost complete silence, beside the burial places of these people of an ancient day.
These skeletons, some 700 or 800 hundred years old, lying in special array in the moonlight of a Kentucky summer's evening, were my introduction to our states ancient history, as it is read by archaeologists of the day. Even the novice could feel the romance of it all, and begin to weave tales, many of them no doubt true, from these relics of a pre-historic race.
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There is scarcely a farm boy in western Kentucky, who has not picked up in the fields from time to time, a flint arrow head, or a bit of broken pottery, and perhaps many have paused a moment at the thoughts, thus carelessly aroused, by these reminders of the red-skinned men and women who once made Kentucky their home. However, there are doubtless but few persons who have realized that in the fields they have tilled each spring, or in the hillsides they have trudged over each autumn, lie hidden sources of material, invaluable to that real writer of their state's ancient history, the archaeologists.
Thus it was last summer, on the farm of W. E. Dowell, near Tolu, that a chapter in this fascination record of the past was unraveled. Under the direction of Dr. William D. Funkhouser of the Department of Anthropology of the University of Kentucky, a series of excavations was conducted which resulted in the disclosures of much important data.
Dr. Funkhouser's party uncovered a ceremonial mound, and nearby the burial ground of the culture, or tribe of Indians known as Pre-Algonquins, who, six or eight hundred years ago lived their primitive lives in this section of the Mississippi Valley. The ceremonial mound, one of the largest yet unearthed in Kentucky and covering almost an acre of ground, was found just at the rear of the Tolu school building. One half of the mound was excavated by Dr. Funkhouser's group, and proved to be on the Council-House type, rectangular in shape. Four hundred post molds were uncovered, showing that the council house had been surrounded by a double row of heavy posts. Charred stumps of the posts were found in some of the molds. Between the posts, these ancient people had woven walls of twigs and branches, and had filled the spaces with wattle work, or coarse swamp grasses. Charred wattle work was found in a remarkable state of preservation.
The council-house faced the northeast, and thus protected from the prevailing winds of the region, all public rituals were held on its northeastern side, Dr. Funkhouser surmised; for, on that side was found the dome-shaped altar, where centuries ago, Crittenden County's people assembled for the ceremonies of their tribe. The altar was four and a half feet in diameter and four feet in height, and was plastered with hard-baked clay. There it stands, as it was when the women of that pre-historic tribe gathered before it, to hearken to the weird incantations of the tribal medicine men, their priests.
For within the ceremonial house proper, squaws were not permitted to pass. Not for them the privilege of watching the burning of sacrifices offered there. That no prying feminine eye limpse these scared rites, possibly accounts for the careful manner in which the wattle work filled each minute opening in the branch walls of the ceremonial mound.
The council house found by Dr. Funkhouser at Tolu had been destroyed by fire. This was in keeping with the custom attributed to many ancient people of burning their ceremonial quarters as a sign of grief or penance, or as a propitiatory offering to some god whom circumstances had led to believe was offended. Covered with a light layer of earth, the mound was found, much asit was left centuries ago, when it's pre-historic builders fired it.
A single skeleton was found by Dr. Funkhouser near the mound. This he identified as that of a young girl, of possibly 18 years of age; and by means of a very definite type of pottery taken from the grave, and belonging to the Gordon culture, a tribe from Tennessee, of a much later date than the pre-Algonquins whose mound it had been buried by. Dr. Funkhouser surmised that, while roving with her people through this section of the country, this maiden of centuries ago sickened and died, and her people, finding the soft made earth of the ceremonial mound, laid her in a shallow grave, with her face toward the rising sun. Leaving her to sleep undisturbed till the present time, her kinsmen returned to their native hunting grounds. Very significant artifacts, two bone needles, were found still clutched in the right hand of this Tennessee girl, indicating, Dr. Funkhouser said, that she was one of the master craftswomen of her tribe.
Near the ceremonial mound, much as the rural cemetery adjoins the rural church of today, is the burial ground of these ancient people. Taking advantage of a natural rise, the burial mound covers four acres and contains innumerable graves; only a small number being opened under the direction of Dr. Funkhouser, who located and described twenty graves during his month's stay in Tolu.
Two of the graves held a double burial, a male and a female, buried facing each other, with bodies touching. Another held the skeleton of an infant. Apparently tossed in without care, one on top of another to the depth of four bodies, seven skeletons lay in a common grave. This burial was probably the result of a massacre or a pestilence that had swept the tribe.
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The mighty warrior of the tribe lay in another grave, a personage of importance, he; for his people had buried him with three flint knives, 18, 12, and 8 inches in length; a polished beaver tooth; two mortuary pots, and two pieces of mica, evidently carried here from North Carolina, for none has been found in a nearer locality. The skeletons were in a remarkable state of preservation, due to the natural drainage of the mound. Buried near the surface many had been crushed by the continual cultivation of the land.
The shallowness of the graves is explained by the facts that these primitive people had no implements with which to dig; and with only a stick or a sharp stone, it was possible to fashion only the simplest grave.
After a body was placed in the grave and covered over, the women of the tribe for days carried
earth in buffalo skins to add to the mound. In memory of their departed tribesmen, warriors and braves no doubt dropped a handful of soil or a rock or two on the newly made grave, and thus the burial mound was formed.
Like all ancient people, the pre-Algonquins honored their dead. Traces of this reverence is shown by the various articles taken from many of the graves in the Tolu mound. The article each individual would need in the Happy Hunting Ground was placed beside the body. To the chief was given his spears, to the women, a flint hoe. Pottery was buried with both men and women.
The Indians who once lived along the Ohio River were a sturdy race; of short stature. None measured over 5 ½ feet in height. They had, however, bad teeth, and it is interesting to note that in that long ago time pyorrhea was prevalent.
Several of the skeletons uncovered by Dr. Funkhouser's party were taken to the University of Kentucky museums. The State of Kentucky is rich in Archaeological material, and has furnished many of the most valued specimens now on display in the great European museums, as well as those in the United States.
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It is tragic that practically all this valuable Tolu Indian history has been
taken from Kentucky, and that having shared it generously to the world,
there is not a museum in Kentucky designed to this history of the Ancient People of Tolu.
