Outdoors: Once plentiful, Native American artifacts have become hard to come by

My dad and I used to always look for Native American artifacts when we were hunting or after a farmer plowed his fields.

Today it is almost impossible to find any, as they are mostly picked over, crushed, or buried deep in the ground. For some of you who are still trying to collect them, your only chance now is spoil piles along big river systems.

As river systems collect siltation, they become shallow. To maintain a navigation channel, this has to be dredged. Most of the time the dredge material is deposited in barges to be used as fill as needed. Other times it is deposited along a river bank.

Here is a fine place to check for artifacts. Because many villages were placed along a river system for its water supply, this is a good place to try.

Most big river systems like the Mississippi and Illinois had large dams constructed to create a navigable waterway for commerce. This dredging is an ongoing thing, as tributary streams continue to deposit silt in them. The old canal systems like the Illinois and Michigan and the Hennepin were made obsolete by the deep waterways created back during the turn of the nineteenth century by the creation of the dams.

Years ago during one of my trapping seasons, I came upon a field that contained a tremendous amount of flint. This indicates a village, and back then it was a good place to look for pottery and arrowheads. When we found this area, I took Dad out there, and he gave me a crash course on identifying artifacts. The farmer collected a lot of relics, but also gave me many of them, as he had collected them for years right after plowing.

This was a very interesting hobby during my youth. I always tried to imagine how the early men looked and how they carried some of the tools we found. I once found an axe head that had to weigh almost 10 pounds. The owner couldn’t have run very far carrying that one, and he had to be built like a bull.

Do I still look? Yes; every time I see a new spoil pile, I investigate. I don’t find much today, as again most are picked over, but who knows?

One time I found an old quarter. The date was 1886. It is worth some collectors value, but I wouldn’t sell it for anything. Many of the things you may find have value only because you found them. I still have a small milk bottle labeled Wright’s Dairy, which has not been in business for over 100 years. This I found on an island on the Illinois River.

Outdoor report

Most of the waterfowl seasons are coming to a close. The coyote and squirrel seasons are still open. Squirrels are everywhere. Both red and grey are feeding most of the days and preparing places to raise their young. The same is true for coyotes. I don’t hunt them during the breeding season. Just don’t have the heart to do it. They are at the top of the heap for marketing during fur-buying times, so why cheat yourself?

Fishing has been very slow. I just received a report that walleye and sauger are hitting near the Peru area. They have not been hitting at all near Ottawa, but that could change.