McLEAN COUNTY HISTORY & GENEALOGY NEWS
By Euleen Rickard
For over five hundred years the Indian has been the symbol of the Americas. Karen Muller’s book “Along the Inca Road’ traces the Incas of the Andes through Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile and Peru. In Mexico, Guatemala and other countries we have the history of the ancient Mayan and Aztecs and in the United States we have the history of the Apache, Iroquois, Sioux, Cherokee and others. Even the Eskimo and the Totem Poles of Alaska remind us of the Indian.
From history we know of the Indians that inhabited this area and through genealogy we know that some of us have an Indian heritage as many of our white ancestors chose Indian mates. Livermore Mayor Eldon Eaton recalled a history that his uncle wrote years ago in which he told of the Pickaway Indians that lived in the Pleasant Hope and Buel area. His uncle wrote that Pleasant Hope was once called Pickaway.
It was during the 1930s when Franklin Roosevelt was president that we learned of the ancient Indian inhabitants of McLean County. President Roosevelt had promised a “New Deal” for Americans and new government agencies were designed to bring the country out of the Great Depression. One of the agencies was the Works Progress Administration (WPA). It created jobs for both “blue collar” and “white collar” workers. In addition to putting unemployed workers back to work building roads, bridges, schools sidewalks et cetera, there were projects for other kinds of occupations such as musicians, artists, actors, writers and archaeologists.
In 1933 when federal money was available to institutions that sponsored projects, William Webb of the University of Kentucky founded a statewide program for archaeology and between 1933 and 1942 seventy-two archaeological sites were excavated. In McLean County there was the Kirtley site near Buttonsberry, the Ward site on Cypress Creek, the Cabbage site on Green River near Livermore and the Sanders Barrett site on Pond River.
Many of the workers were unemployed miners and none had training in the work. They learned quickly and worked carefully, taking pride in their work. They learned to remove the earth without disturbing the artifacts or skeltons. They worked twenty days each month and most were paid thirty cents an hour, some slightly more as they gained skill. More that 85% of the federal money allocated went to the workers.
The excavation was well documented by reports and photo-logs. A wooden tower was built over the site that allowed the photographer to look down on the layout. Mr. John Elliott, an archaeologist working at the Kirtley site used an Eastman camera that cost $400.00, an emormous amount of money at that time. He said he was a novice with the camera and it was big and cumbersome but his photographs documented the site well. He photographed every day and logged the day, the location and the time each photo was made.
Virginia Davis knew Mr. Elliott and in a letter to her in 1996 he recalled his time at the Kirtley site, writing, “I took over the WPA project that was already in progress in December 1937. My crew were men from Island and environs, mostly unemployed coal miners. They were a fine bunch of men and I enjoyed every minute of my work with them. The archaeological projects were under the direction of the University Of Kentucky and I nominally worked for them, although paid by the Federal Government. Our mission was first to provide employment and secondly to explore and excavate prehistoric Indian sites. Most of McLean County sites date from between 6000-8000 years before the present, especially the shell heaps along Green River.”
At the time I was a fifteen-year old living in Island and remember the Island and Buttonsberry residents being very curious about the “goings on” out on the Kirtley farm. Many thought it was a foolish project, wasting government money. It was the talk of the town and the surrounding area. So many of the curious converged on the site that John Elliott feared that they would interfere with the progress of the excavating. The dig was just over the hill from my Grandparents home and I recall going with a group of friends. We were not allowed to touch any of the artifacts but did get to look at them.
The Kirtley site displayed patterns of thirteen houses, some with walls more than twenty feet in length. The large collection of artifacts excavated included pottery fragments, stone axes, beads and bone fishhooks. Nearly one third of the burials were infants. Some were buried with dogs at their feet.
Several years ago a group of pictures taken at the excavation sites was exhibited at the Owensboro-Daviess County Library. They are now housed in the University of Kentucky Museum of Anthropology Collection. Perhaps some day they will allow us to show them in our museum.