We use pipe forms at Scott County Pueblo (14SC1), a seventeenth-century multiethnic community in western Kansas with Ndee (Dismal River) and Puebloan residents, to consider the community’s position ...within multiple regional interaction spheres. We first present a broad regional overview of Central/Northern Great Plains and Midwest, Northern Rio Grande, and Ndee pipe forms in the AD 1500–1700 period, tabulating the presence and absence of specific forms at 14 archaeological sites, before classifying two complete pipes and 49 identifiable pipe fragments recovered from 14SC1. Our pipe form comparisons better distinguish Ndee pipes from other forms than previous literature and confirm that 14SC1 pipes are fully consistent with the documented Ndee and Puebloan occupations at the site. Ceremonial beliefs and practices around smoking at 14SC1 were shared with other Ndee communities and the Northern Rio Grande region, presumably cementing regional relationships that facilitated the movement of other material culture and people. Although Dismal River territory extended into the Central Plains, we find almost no material evidence of diplomatic, social, or ceremonial engagement with Caddoan-speaking groups such as the Sahnish (Arikara), Čariks i Čariks (Pawnee), and kirikir?i:s (Wichita) peoples and Siouan-speaking groups to the northeast. We suggest that these differences in external relationships along the eastern and western Dismal River frontiers are linked to the history of Ndee migration.
Many Indigenous groups in North America have long-held practices of using migration and movement in response to environmental and social changes. Diasporic communities, composed of migrants ...maintaining significant connections to their former homelands, were likely once common in refuge areas of North America, but not always recognized by archaeologists. Many Puebloan peoples in the Northern Rio Grande region of the US Southwest used movement as a way to escape Spanish colonial control after AD 1600, yet retained connections to their homelands. This Puebloan diaspora had far-reaching consequences for Native peoples across the Southwest and neighboring regions like the Great Plains. Here, we briefly summarize how diasporas are defined globally and the ways in which these definitions could shift to help us model diasporas in North America. Using the Pueblo diaspora and a multi-generational Pueblo–Ndee (Apache) community in the Central Great Plains as example, we explore the intricacies of identifying diasporas for North America within the contexts of Indigenous resistance and adaptation.
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Puebloan women (if not entire families) were incorporated into Apache Dismal River communities in western Kansas. In at least one site (14SC1), ...Puebloan people lived in a small masonry pueblo. We evaluate the timing and nature of the Puebloan occupation at 14SC1 and its relationship to the Dismal River population at the site. We use a Bayesian analytical framework to evaluate different models of the pueblo's use history, constraining 12 radiocarbon dates by their stratigraphic data and then comparing this framework with different temporal models based on the historical record. We conclude that Dismal River people lived at 14SC1 prior to the appearance of Pueblo migrants, sometime between cal AD 1490 and 1650. Construction and early use of the pueblo by migrants from the Rio Grande valley occurred between cal AD 1630 and 1660, and the pueblo was closed by burning sometime between cal AD 1640 and 1690. Site 14SC1 lacks Rio Grande Glaze Ware, and its residents seem rarely to have engaged with the groups in the Southern Plains Macroeconomy. Our results contribute to studies of indigenous community formation and Puebloan residential mobility during the Spanish colonial period. Durante los siglos XVII y XVIII, las mujeres Pueblo (o posiblemente familias enteras) fueron incorporadas a las comunidades Apaches de la cultura Dismal River en Kansas occidental. Por lo menos en un sitio (14SC1), los indígenas Pueblo vivieron en un pequeño poblado de mampostería. Evaluamos la cronología y la naturaleza de la ocupación Pueblo en 14SC1 y su relación con la ocupación Dismal River en el sitio. Usamos un marco analítico bayesiano para evaluar diferentes modelos de la cronología ocupacional del pueblo, delimitando los rangos de doce fechas de radiocarbono por sus posiciones estratigráficas y luego comparando este marco con diferentes modelos temporales basados en el registro histórico. Concluimos que los indígenas Dismal River vivieron en 14SC1 antes de la aparición de los migrantes Pueblo en algún momento entre 1490 y 1650 cal dC. La construcción y el uso inicial del pueblo por migrantes procedentes del valle del Río Grande ocurrió entre 1630 y 1660 cal dC, y el pueblo fue cerrado por un incendio entre 1640 y 1690 cal dC. El sitio 14SC1 carece de vajillas del estilo Río Grande con engobe, y sus residentes parecen haber tenidos interacciones limitadas con los grupos que participaron en la macroeconomía de las Planicies del Sur. Nuestros resultados contribuyen al estudio de la formación de comunidades indígenas y la movilidad residencial Pueblo durante el período colonial español.
Archaeologists are increasingly moving past discussions of whether migration events occurred in the past to more nuanced discussions of the meaning surrounding the migrants’ belongings. Migrants used ...material culture as powerful memory objects, to create meaning and adapt to living in a new place and often with new people. There are relatively few archaeological examples of large-scale migration into the Great Plains in the wake of European invasion of North America. One exception to this is the migration of Puebloan peoples from northern New Mexico to the Central Great Plains during the Puebloan diaspora after 1600 CE. Sites attributed to this migration are discussed in context with recent work on meaning and materiality to reconsider the critical role that objects play in identity expression and cultural survival in new homelands.
•It is important to consider the indirect effects that colonialism had on indigenous peoples.•Spanish colonialism drove Puebloan peoples to migrate to the Central Great Plains.•Indigenous peoples ...living on the Plains used a middle ground space to interact.•Examine evidence of blended practices and ceramic technology from sites in Kansas.•Colonial boundaries were permeable and a range of indirect effects spread to neighboring peoples.
Historically, there have been many archaeological and ethnographic works that examined the impacts of colonialism on indigenous peoples where direct contact took place. More recently, archaeological scholarship has drawn increasing attention towards examining the far-reaching effects that colonialism had on indigenous peoples by considering communities on the periphery of colonial control. Here, I argue that it is the indirect or down-the-line effects of colonialism that can best inform us of the extent and intensity of social, economic, and demographic change seen in regions adjacent to colonial centers. This paper considers methodological frameworks utilized in several regions and applies elements of these models to the Great Plains of North America to examine the ways indigenous social networks and Spanish colonialism forever changed the lives of people living hundreds of miles away from actual colonies. Evidence of blended technological and manufacturing styles at sites in western Kansas point to a creolized Puebloan/Plains Apache community that formed as a direct result of the indirect effects of Spanish colonial activities, highlighting the significant role of the Central Plains middle ground for many Native peoples.
In the North American Great Plains archaeologists struggle to define interpretative frameworks to capture events, people and processes between 1500 C.E. and 1800 C.E. Europeans did not simultaneously ...colonize all of North America and for many groups, especially on the Plains, Indigenous peoples were impacted by European colonization yet not extensively written about. Although the term 'colonialism' is broad enough to encapsulate the direct and indirect consequences of colonial activities, it is difficult to highlight the sheer diversity of Indigenous responses to the effects of colonialism outside of the colonies themselves. Instead, the concept of 'pericolonialism' better frames these processes and calls attention to the importance of refuge spaces where Indigenous peoples were experiencing parallel impacts as their neighbours close to the colonies. A case study is provided from the Central Plains to show how an explicitly decolonizing approach can better capture the creative resistance to European colonial rule.
Protohistoric Ancestral Apache Dismal River groups (A.D. 1600–1750)
participated in large exchange networks linking them to other peoples on the
Plains and U.S. Southwest. Ceramic vessels made from ...micaceous materials
appear at many Dismal River sites, and micaceous pottery recovered from the
Central High Plains is typically seen as evidence for interaction with
northern Rio Grande pueblos. However, few mineral or chemical
characterization analyses have been conducted on these ceramics, and the
term “micaceous” has been applied to a broad range of vessel types
regardless of the form, size, or amount of mica in their pastes. Our recent
analyses, including macroscopic evaluation combined with petrography and
neutron activation analyses (NAA), indicate that only a small subset of
Dismal River sherds are derived from New Mexico clays. The rest were likely
manufactured using materials from Colorado and Wyoming. Seasonal mobility
patterns may have given Dismal River potters the opportunity to collect mica
raw materials as they traveled between the Central Plains and Front Range,
and this has implications for the importance of internal Plains social
networks during the Protohistoric and Historic periods.
Deer Creek is an eighteenth-century fortified site in Oklahoma that is featured in dozens of publications yet was not excavated until 2016. While archaeologists today acknowledge the site as a ...Wichita village, others have insisted Deer Creek is a European fort. Historical narratives bereft of archaeological investigation can prove problematic and have minimized the role of Wichita communities in economic relationships. The Deer Creek site was just one of many villages in the region where Indigenous peoples held significant power as they negotiated with European travelers and archaeological work can reveal the perspective of those who there.
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