Traveling Resource Trunks

Lifestyle Changes Over Time: Late 1600s to mid 1700s

Suggested Adaptations for Puzzles from the Past: Problem Solving Through Archeology

This time period is represented on the yellow stratigraphy cards. Additional information for each is available on the card itself. Use the following objects from the trunk:

Metal arrow point - Indians began to use metal for arrow points soon after contact with Europeans.

Glass beads - Small glass seed beads became widely available to Indians through fur trade. They were used to compliment, or replace, earlier forms of decoration such as quillwork.

Horn button - The button became available through the fur trade.

Pot section - The pot is of a style made and used by the ancestors of the Wichita Indians.

Tipi ring - (This is a photograph on the card. No object is available for this card.) Tipis were types of mobile houses. The only thing that remains of these structures are rings of stones once used to hold the edges of the tipis to the ground. These can still be found in some remote locations in Kansas.

The Native Americans living at this location between the late-1600s and the mid-1700s continued to benefit from the technological innovations seen initially in the objects of 1470 to 1570 A.D. (the bow and arrow, crop cultivation, and pottery), but the artifacts left behind also signal adaptations made after contact with Europeans. These people continued to hunt with bow and arrow, but they no longer chipped their arrow points from stone. They traded for ready-made points or shaped their own from scrap metal. Items such as the glass beads and horn button indicated that other changes were occurring in regard to self-expression through decoration and ornamentation. Yet, the presence of native-made pottery demonstrated that not all traditions were relinquished, even though the people probably had access to metal pots and pans through trade. The tipi ring suggests that this group lived a nomadic, or semi-nomadic lifestyle. The evidence of a full-sized Plains tipi in this layer indicates that these people had horses, one of the most important changes brought about through European contact. (The size of the tipi increased as the horse replaced the dog as the primary means of transporting the tipi.)

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Lifestyle Changes Over Time

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