June, 2013

We are pleased to announce that we will soon be nominating the Delaware Town site (23CN1), located near Springfield, Missouri, to the National Register of Historic Places. You may remember from earlier issues of this newspaper that the Tribe has collaborated with archaeologists from Missouri State University to further more than ten years of excavations and surveys of the area. The information gained from excavations at Delaware Town will significantly contribute to our understanding of our Delaware and national heritage, as it represents the only archaeological excavation of a residence associated with the Delaware occupation in the Missouri Ozarks. This site is situated within the historical context of the early movements of the Delaware and other Eastern Woodland tribes to regions west of the Mississippi River in order to continue their traditional lifeways away from the bloodshed and missionary efforts that were increasingly present on the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes frontiers following the American Revolution.

According to the historical literature, some Delaware groups first began moving into the Ozarks, along with other groups of their Shawnee, Kickapoo, Piankashaw and Peoria allies, in the 1780s. They first established villages in the eastern Missouri Ozarks. These Delaware and Algonquin immigrants were slowly pressured to points further west as American encroachment and harassment substantially increased west of the Mississippi following the Louisiana Purchase and the War of 1812. As these allied groups moved into the western Missouri Ozarks, the so-called main body of Delaware who had remained along the White River in Indiana agreed to the Treaty of St. Mary’s, 1818, in which they ceded all land in Indiana in exchange for “a country to reside in, on the west side of the Mississippi.” Then-Missouri territorial governor William Clark assigned the Delaware lands in southwest Missouri on the eastern border of the Osage Reservation. It was at the Delaware Town site that the Indiana Delaware and the Ozark Delaware coalesced in a linear riverine village along the James River from 1820 to 1822, and remained there until leaving for their Kansas reservation in 1830. During these years, Delaware Chief William Anderson, who had risen to prominence amidst the nativistic revivals in the Indiana villages, was looked to as the principal spokesperson for the newly-coalesced James River Delaware. Anderson also provided leadership for the neighboring Shawnee, Kickapoo, Piankashaw, and Peoria villagers who settled in and near the Delaware reservation and subordinated themselves to them, whom they still considered as their “Grandfathers.”

The Delaware Town site is the archaeological remains of what was once a residence associated with this last Delaware and multi-tribal settlement present along the James River from 1821 to 1830. Delaware Town can thus significantly contribute to our understanding of this important but underrepresented time period in American history. Current information about this time period is based largely on the archival record and historical publications that have interpreted such collections. I am not aware of any archaeological interpretations that have been produced based on the material culture from these Eastern Woodland settlements beyond the survey reports and conference papers that have come from research on the Delaware Town site. Although the Delaware Town site and others like are known and documented, their presence and significance may be underrepresented in the historical and archaeological record due to the often transient nature of these sites (often occupied for a decade or less) and their close similarity in material culture with other, non-Indian, historic-period frontier settlements. Documenting and preserving the Delaware Town site and emphasizing its veiled uniqueness, can thus significantly contribute to our knowledge of the Ozark region’s history. It is the only site of which I am aware that has yielded both archaeological evidence of the experience of Delawares and allied Algonquins in the Ozark region.

The value of this work to the Tribe is that it helps preserve this important component of Delaware history. Archaeological sites are destroyed every day when they are not actively protected. Once successfully added to the National Register of Historic Places, the Delaware Town Site would enjoy further protections under federal law from potential development that is currently threatening the integrity of the site. Who knows what we will learn from this site if it is preserved for the future?

Brice Obermeyer
Director, Delaware Historic Preservation Office