Hopewell begat Iroquois

Reasons why Michigan may have been its birthplace

    When John T. Blois excavated Indian mounds south of Detroit in 1837 his impression was it was “a Middle Woodland site with Hopewell affinities.” He describes the essence of a new people. There were two root Hopewell cultures, Havana (originally Illinois) and Ohio, and these Michigan proto-Iroquois show signs of being influenced by both.

    Middle Woodland would include both Adena and Hopewell, as well as the Meadowood Interaction Sphere, pre-Iroquois but not the Iroquois. It dates from 1000 BCE to 500 CE. Blois’ impression is to me an accurate description of the blending of both Algonquin-speaking hunter-gatherer-fishers with the more horticulturally tending Hopewell. This, it seems, was the combination which created the Iroquois.

    Acording to James Fitting in Late Woodland Cultures of Southeastern Michigan. “The late Middle Woodland sites in southeastern Michigan seem to have some relationship, perhaps, very distant, to the Ohio Hopewell sites,” he wrote. He is speaking of a continuity, Iroquois backing up to Hopewell. The odd thing is most Michigan Hopewell sites are more closely associated with the original Illinois Havana Hopewell.

    Fitting: “The Late Woodland level at the Fort Wayne Mound contains material which easily falls within the Younge Tradition.…” This is his name for the Iroquois-speaking people of southeastern Michigan. Their three phases are named Riviere au Vase, the oldest, Younge, the first site excavated, and Springwells, the final stage. In time they range from 500-1400 AD, Michigan’s Iroquois Millennium.

    So here he is describing the transition from Middle Woodland with Hopewell leanings, to Late Woodland (between 500 and contact). The process took hundreds of years and happened in Lé Detroit, the aquatic corridor between Lakes Huron and Erie.

    This is important because when we speak of the origins of Iroqouis we agree on Ontario, New York and Pennsylvania. Quebue, a location I’m usually remiss about, is certainly a point of origin as is Michigan, the new kid on the block. As a point of origin for Iroquoian-speaking people, Michigan is at least as deserving as the others, and maybe more.

    It might be that Iroquois happened in Michigan first, and geography supports that possibility, meaning the quickest way to get to southern Ontario from Illinois or Ohio is through Lé Detroit. I tend to believe it happened almost simultaneously in several places as the central Hopewell Interaction ceased, which economically meant the long distance trade network which spanned the continent for some reason shut down. I’ve never read of any signs of violence. Weather has been indited, a cold streak that lasted several years and dug down into the people’s reserves and changed them, changed their view of the central tenets of trade and maybe religion.         

    Though as Brad Lepper has shown us in his essay “The Newark Earthworks: Monumental Geometry and Astronomy at a Hopewellian Pilgrimage Center,” their level of astronomical knowledge was extremely high, and the engineering skills necessary for creating such a high civilization do not vanish into thin air. They are treasured and passed down.

    Migration is necessary for the “Hopewell affinities” to be found in the vicinity of Detroit. It might have been Hopewell influence that migrated or it might have been actual Hopewell influencers. Such is the case with Upper Mississippians. Did citizens from Cahokia migrate north to Wisconsin,  Minnesota and Michigan? Or was it simply ideas which floated north to be so well implemented  as to cause us to question whether it was one or the other? I tend to think the ideas came first, but in most cases were followed by Cahokian practitioners. I think the same is true in these Lé Detroit Hopewell-era mounds.

    There is a seeding of more than ideas going on here. Humans interacted in the age old way to create something new, discernible in this mound as these Younge un’s, whom I’m calling Lé Detroit Iroquois or Lé Detroit Huron or Lé Detroit Huron-Wendat or simply Wyandotte. Lé Detroit encompasses both sides of the corridor between Huron and Erie, that is Michigan and Ontario, though Canadian anthropologist Gary Warrick does not mention this connection in his paper ‘Iroquoian Prehistory of Southern Ontario’. I think that’s a shame, but he is not alone in his oversight.

    He wrote, “Based on AMS-dated maize remains from other contexts in Illinois, Ohio and Tennessee, maize entered Ontario from the south and west where it appears at least two centuries earlier.” South and west of Ontario is Michigan and strengthens my case that Lé Detroit was the preferred point of entry to southern Ontario circa 900 AD.

    He goes on to say “It is uncertain whether maize agriculture diffused to in situ Middle Woodland populations in southern Ontario or was carried to Ontario by migrating Princess Point people.” Princess Point and Riviere au Vase were contemeraneous. Their ceramic and lithic traditions were only ‘slightly different’. One is in southern Ontario, the other southeastern Michigan.

    Warrick: “Princess Point was defined by David Stothers (1977) and originally encompossed sites from Grand River, Ausauble River and Point Pelee in southwestern Ontario. … The Ausable and Point Pelee sites contain slightly different artifact assemblages from Princess Point, are called Riviere au Vase and are considered part of the Western Basin Tradition, central Algonkians, who occuipied extreme southwestern Ontario, eastern Michigan and northwestern Ohio (Murphy and Ferris, 1990).” He is talking about our Michigan Iroqouis, but he says they are ‘central Algonkians.’ Trouble is he is citing Murphy and Ferris.

    In their essay ‘Current Perspectives of the Late Prehistoric of the Western Lake Erie Region: An Alternative to Murphy and Ferris,’ David Stothers and his famous others took Murphy and Ferris to task about this exact issue. Stothers says M&F have their wires crossed. Riviere au Vase is not central Algonkian. It is Michigan Iroquois and in this paper Warrick does not realize that fact and its geographic, economic and cultural implications. Michigan Iroqouis, Fitting’s Younge Tradition, are overlooked generally but Murphy and Ferris misallocating them as Algonquin doesn’t help.