Historical Archeology at the Village on Pawnee Fork, Ness County, Kansas

Summary

Extensive inventory and excavation by avocational archeologist Earl Monger and two episodes of evaluative testing by Kansas State Historical Society archeologists in 1976 and 1977 have confirmed the location of the Cheyenne-Oglala village that was destroyed by the order of Major General Winfield S. Hancock in April 1867. Monger’s work and the Society investigations exposed several concentrations of burned and broken historic Euroamerican materials, together with some other artifacts that are clearly of American Indian manufacture. The artifact concentrations correlate with the piles of Indian belongings that Hancock’s troops collected and burned following the villagers’ flight from the military expedition. The archeological context of the artifactual materials matches well with the various historical descriptions of the village and its destruction.

Historic trade goods or Indian annuity materials recovered during the excavations include tin cups of the Civil War era, a variety of buckles that probably represent harness or tack, firearms parts, helmet and uniform buttons, iron kettle and oven fragments, coffee mill parts, bottle glass and crockery, and sheet brass scraps. Artifacts of American Indian manufacture include chipped-stone projectile points, a stone maul, ochre deposits, and a buffalo stone—a baculite fossil that was modified into a bison fetish. No clear evidence of lodge structures was observed, although several small post molds were identified.

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Contact(s): Midwest Archeological Center, National Park Service; United States Department of the Interior

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