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12,000 YEARS OF HUMAN OCCUPATION

        Projectile points and other artifacts in the Clinton County Courthouse display cases define the record of some 12,000 years of human occupation in Clinton County.
A fragment of a Clovis point dating to 8,000-12,000 B.C. may be the oldest sign of people in this area. The most modern artifacts are distinctive Susquehannah-style arrowheads said to be the last stone darts made locally. By the late 1600s, most eastern Native Americans stopped working stone and shaping clay pots. They turned to metal points and brass pots traded by Europeans.
        "Jacob, My Friend", by Barry C. Kent, makes that point well. His novel covers the life of a Dutch trader a "historical character" who lives with the Gandastogues/Susquehnannocks in the 1600s. Through Jacob's sorrowing eyes, we watch a powerful people decline, largely through the onslaught of disease and trade goods brought by European traders.
        A majority of the collection in the courthouse acquired by the Clinton County Historical Society is from long-time collector Edwin Long, Jr., 69, of Flemington. He wanted to keep the artifacts together and in the county where he and his father found them. Most of his collection opens a 7,000-year window dating from 6,000 B.C. to 1,000 A. D.
        When asked which of his collection he prizes most, he mentions two pieces. One is a hardened slate gorget drilled with two holes.
It may have hung at the throat of a chief.   "It's old, probably more than 2,000 years old," he says. "But my biggest thrill was finding a clay pot sticking out of a dirt bank. In that field, topsoil had been moved, and it had rained, otherwise I may have missed it. The pot is probably A. D., the Woodland period.  "Three of the courthouse display cases are small enough to travel.  Long and the Society's Native American Collections Group want a mobile collection, that can be used for educational purposes. A video accompanying the traveling exhibit is presently in the planning stages.
        Artifact dating in the display cases follows four conventional periods: Paleo Indian, Archaic, Woodland, and Historic. According to Gary Fogelman in "Artifacts and Early Cultures on the Susquehanna's West Branch," Paleo Indians were here from 8,500 to 8,000 B.C. (perhaps 1,000 or 2,000 years earlier.) The Archaic breaks into four phases: Early, Middle, Late, and Terminal.  Early Archaic ranges from 8,000 to 6,500 B.C., Middle from 6,500 to 3,500 B.C.; Late from 3,000 to 2,000 B.C., and Terminal from 2,000 to 1,000 B.C.  The three phases of Woodland are Early, 2,500 to 500 B.C.; Middle from 500 B.C. to 500 A.D.; and Late from A.D. 500 to 1,500 A.D.
The Historic Period technically begins in 1492 when Europeans arrived. For the West Branch, Europeans had little impact until the middle 1600s.
        Also displayed in the courthouse are artifacts from The International Paper dig held by the Society. Some 5,000 pieces cropped up in Flemington, along the Bald Eagle Creek. Most pieces are shards and about 100 are of display quality. Fifty of those are on display. Most of this Late Woodland collection dates to about 1000 A.D.
        The dig conducted in 1997 by Richard Hunter, Terrence Epperson, Patricia Machrigal and Jeffery Psensky of Trenton-based Hunter Research, Inc., was required before the IP Plant could build a large addition to their facilities.  Additional finds appeared during construction of the Lock Haven city levee. Artifacts recovered had ties to the Lenni Lenape, Shawnee, the Northern Iroquois tribes, the Owasco people of New York State, and tribes from the Great Lakes region. European-influenced artifacts were also uncovered.Long explained his collection is the result of a lifetime of searching. As a boy, he accompanied his father, Ed Senior. Sometimes his uncle went along. Their love of the hunt rubbed off on him.
        Almost all of Long's finds represent Clinton County inhabitants. He and his father found artifacts on the Great Island, McElhattan, Sugar Valley, Beech Creek, and just across the county line in Blanchard. "It hurt to see Sayers Dam built," says Long. "Probably millions of points were covered up."
He also found points near the Castanea fire hall, and says the nearby fields along Bald Eagle Creek were often and well searched. Fields near the old Buffalo Inn on Route 150 were productive as well.
        Speaking of this region's importance to Indians, Long says, "We're located at a cross roads of Indian trails and towns. There were towns on Bald Eagle Creek and at Kettle Creek, Pine Creek, and on the West Branch. And, of course on the Great Island. Several Indian trails came through here. The fields, the flats, were good places to plant corn and squash, two staples of the Indian diet. The creeks gave them fish.  So there's good reason to expect darts and other artifacts," he says. "But finding them is hard, lonely work. You can't daydream. Often you see only an edge or a tip sticking out of the ground. You have to learn what to look for."
        Europeans didn't arrive here until the early 1600s so Indians living here before that weren't identified. Archeologists could only identify older groups by location of artifact finds (Shenk's Ferry people, for instance).  Iroquoian (the Five Nations) and Susquehannock, the latter also of Iroquoian stock, were among the earliest groups identified by Europeans. The time period is the early 1600s through the 1700s. By the middle 1700s, the Lenni-Lenape stopped briefly and built villages.  Before Europeans came, the Lenni Lenape-Delawares lived along the East Coast, in what is now Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and parts of eastern New York. The Delawares chased Henry Hudson on his return down the river that bears his name.
William Penn treatied with Delaware chiefs for land. In 1737, his successors cooked up the infamous Walking Purchase. The day-and a-half, 65-mile race walk took in part of Bucks, Pike, Carbon, Lehigh, and almost all of Northampton counties. Most of their Pennsylvania homeland was lost to the Delawares.
Lenape as well as Shawnee, Nanticoke, and Tuscarora came here, according to "Indians of Clinton County" by Louis Winner. The Shawnee, Nanticoke, and Tuscarora drifted here from the South.    All the land grabs caused rage. In 1755 at Selinsgrove, Indians struck back, and the frontier flamed. The Great Island was thought to be a staging point. At least two military expeditions were mounted against Jersey Shore and Great Island towns.  One by Captain Hambright (Pennsylvania Archives, Vol. 3, pages 41 and 42) took place in 1756.  Another better-recorded invasion was led by Col. John Armstrong whose 300 volunteers marched from Fort Shirley (present day Shirleysburg, Huntingdon Country) September 30, 1763. His command destroyed grain and other provisions at Great Island as well as the bark houses and crops at the Delaware village Myonaghquia (present day Jersey Shore). See "The Indian Wars of Pennsylvania" by C. Hale Snipe.
        By that time, pottery making, flint knapping, and other traditions had been mostly abandoned. Metal was stronger, firearms killed better, brass pots lasted longer. Indians traded for them and grew dependent on the white man. Their history in stone is nearly the only tangible evidence of their long stay here. We thank collectors for preserving it.

Notes:
According to Gary Fogelman, many of the stone points called arrowheads are atlatl spear points. Native people did not get the bow and arrow until about 2,000 years ago. Prior to that, the atlatl was the weapon of choice. It was a spear thrown from a wooden handle. A spur on the other end of the handle accommodates the spear. The handle extends leverage of the arm to throw the spear with great force and accuracy.
People may well have been in this area before 12,000 B.C. Stone tools at the famous Meadowcroft dig in southwest Pennsylvania have been dated from 13,000 to 16,000 B.C. *The First Americans* by J. M. Adovasio with Jake Page describes Meadowcroft and early human occupation of Pennsylvania.
Moravian missionary David Zeisberger sets us among 18th century Ohio, New York, and Pennsylvania Indians. See *David Zeisberger*s History of the Northern American Indians", Wennawoods Publishing, Lewisburg, PA, 1999.
*The Conquerors,* *Wilderness Empire,* and *The Frontiersmen* by Allan Eckert sends us back to a time when the West Branch was the eastern frontier.

---By Harlan Berger a good friend and volunteer of CCHS, thanks!