Kalamazoo & St. Joseph County Michigan finds -- Potawatomi

[MichiganMan]

Hello all. My name is Terry. I have not hunted Indian artifacts in over 25+ years. But recently, while cleaning out our family farm I found a few odds and ends somehow made it through the years when I was 1) a bad boy and 2) a lot of my artifacts were stolen or scattered to the four winds. What remains is probably nothing compared to the beautiful artifacts I did have. We have property that butts up to the Pine Creek Reservation in Athens, Michigan: These are the Nottawaseppi Huron Band of the Potawatomi, and I will make the assumption that the bigger part of what I found will be related to this tribe. Of all I found or my friends found we never did much, if any, research on these things.
The house that I lived at is about a mile from our family farm and was rumored to have been an Indian campground. WE never seriously hunted artifacts as teenagers but would lackadaisically look whenever our buddy would come down and plow a spot by the house with his Ford 8N tractor and a 1 or 2 bottom plow. And even then it was a "Wow, look what you found!" and then the artifact would disappear onto a shelf or into a drawer. Time passed and the house was sold and I was best friends with the son of the couple who bought it. Kind of private hippie-types but not extreme. So they always wanted to let the land "rest" and no plowing or artifact-finding was ever done again. Fast-forward to today, well... last year really, and I saw the step-father of my best friend [who is in prison] and I stopped by to chat with him after not having chatted for years. To make a long story short I highly doubt even I would be able to seriously look for artifacts on that property again. But it's not out of the question. I even thought of contacting Western Michigan University to see if they had an archeological team that might be interested in doing a search... but time and change fades those ideas into a misty, smokey, and rainy London evening.
Now my 10 minute talk with the owner of the property did produce a new-found gusto to make the effort to try and get my foot in the door, to search around our family farm, and the surrounding farms to see if I can establish certain--"campgrounds", trails, and other clues to figure out the best areas to start hunting. And after I get back into the swing of things and some knowledge and good finds I will then approach the seriously serious spot to try find the good stuff.
The pictures I post will no doubt be a hodge-podge of artifacts and just "rocks". I will post all I found and if those with the knowledge would please weed out the real stuff from the not-real stuff, and the stuff that is "a possible".
Later on I will draw a to scale picture of one artifact I remember finding that blew my socks off!

I definitely have "artifact fever" and am passionate like a little kid but consider me new to this as I need to learn about this-the right way-as if I was starting afresh (which I am).
Surprisingly I do not have any arrowheads.
So I will post a picture of one artifact; and then I will set all I gathered together and take a few pictures of that. I had a thing for round rocks and some of them may be just that... nice naturally round rocks... but enough of me...







What is it? It's obviously not a "natural" rock formation. Notice how the edges are "cut" into it like a barb on a hook...

 

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[MichiganMan]

I know these are probably boring pictures of ho-hum things but just bear with me to sort out the "good", if any, from the not good.
The one thing looks like a petrified pecan and is obviously not an Indian artifact but I found it at our farm nevertheless. Of course I could be wrong. It (pecans) could have been brought north by the Indians. Check out this article: Growing Pecan Trees in the North - Organic Gardening - MOTHER EARTH NEWS Very interesting...
The heart-shaped rock miffs me... doesn't seem like something an Indian would do but what do I know...?
I'm not sure what the petrified bone is from: I assume an animal of some kind. Anyway, that is all I found at the farm. I will have to stop off at my childhood friend's place to see if any of what we found made it through the years of turmoil and he still has it/them. Thank you to all for bearing with me.

 

[MichiganMan]

This is a rough drawing of one of the coolest artifacts we found as teenagers. It had that WoW! factor to it. It was heavy and as I examined the hole through it I got a puzzled look on my face when I saw "threads" or "rifling" like in the barrel of a gun. I was like "how could Indians do this?" I knew it was legit but this question bounced around in my head for years until I saw a similar holed "drilled" into another artifact on the internet a month or so ago. I just never figured out how they did it(?)
It was heavy and the edges were "flaked" like shale. The "drilled" hole is drawn for purposes of you seeing what I saw. Sorry, but I am not a very good artist but you should get the jist of what I am describing.



We also found a few round clay balls? about an inch in diameter; which we assumed to be some type of "ball" used in a game of sorts. They obviously were not rocks. At least that is what I remember.

Oh yea, and this mortar:

 

[rock]

Thanks for posting your collection for us. Is there anyway that we could see the one round gray top left in the first pic? Please use the marco setting and take the pic outside in day light. Thanks, rock

 

[The Grim Reaper]

Have at it guys. I'm staying out of this one.

 

[jamey]

hi michiganman,i only see rocks,as there are tons of those like that in michigan,but thanks for your post because it made me think that they may have traded those types of hard round rocks.

 

[MichiganMan]

And is this mortar just a rock, a natural formation? Not being flippant; if you guys say it's just a rock then I will believe you. It's like growing and breeding tomatoes... you can't save every plant you have to learn to cull those less-desirable and move on otherwise you will waste precious time "reading into" what's not there.


Also, on the round rocks; if they were some type of tool I would suppose some type of wear or use would be seen on them. All I see when I examine them is plow/disc/chisel plow scrapes.

 

[MichiganMan]

Have at it guys. I'm staying out of this one.

Don't worry GR, I can take it. I don't see Thunderbirds on every rock.

But I do have some solid research that the Indians visited my ancestors often in the 1830's and 40's.

 

[GatorBoy]

They all look natural to me including the last one which would be considered an Omar

 

[GatorBoy]

Michigan has some great artifacts and if you could get access to any of those ancestors properties I would also run a metal detector over them since copper culture was large in that area

 

[GatorBoy]

 

[The Grim Reaper]

MichiganMan, I apologize for my comment. It just seems like the last few times I have responded to these type of posts it hasn't gone real well.

To be 100% honest with you, what I see looks mostly natural. There may be a Hammerstone or two in there if we could examine them closer. You seem to have the passion for it so keep at it and you will find some artifacts.

Do you still have the piece you drew the picture of? What you drew looks like a Bannerstone and a winged type. I would really like to see that.

Here is a tray of Michigan Points that I acquired for my states collection.

 

[MichiganMan]

They all look natural to me including the last one which would be considered an Omar

That makes sense now GB because back in the late 70's we were going to Canada fishing every year: To a place calledNorth Caribou Lake about an hour fly-in from the city of Armstrong, Ontario, Canada. Or, to a lake called Lac le gardeur in Quebec. It is quite possible that the Omar was picked up there on the shores of the lake. And of course Hudson Bay is only a "glacier's throw" from either place

From Wiki-- Visually, they may resemble omarolluks, a naturally occurring feature of sedimentary rock occurring exclusively in the Belcher Islands, an archipelago accounting for 0.25% of Hudson Bay, whence they are thought to have been spread by glaciers.[SUP][2][/SUP]

 

[GatorBoy]

And like the Grim Reaper said I would love to see the one you drew.
You quite honestly sound like you have the right attitude and the passion to do real well.. I wish you the best of luck

 

[MichiganMan]

Michigan has some great artifacts and if you could get access to any of those ancestors properties I would also run a metal detector over them since copper culture was large in that area

These properties are both still in our family. One was 160 acres and the other around 240. But we have expanded to a satisfactory 2,000 acres of which we plant about 1,500 acres of corn and soybeans: So 500 acres of woods and miscellaneous to hunt. Both have creeks running through them. That's why I got the AT Pro so I could do a little creek hunting.

 

[GatorBoy]

Ahhhh.. Perfecto.. That's my DD coil on the table

 

[rock]

Thanks for posting your collection for us. Is there anyway that we could see the one round gray top left in the first pic? Please use the marco setting and take the pic outside in day light. Thanks, rock

The reason I picked the grey one is because I thought it might be Granite which usually doesn't form in a round shape from what I have seen. The others are either Sandstone or Quartzite. Now don't get me wrong they did like to use Quartzite cobbles for grinding stones. I have found a few made from it in my area. They made them square for some reason instead of round. As the others have said the other ones in your collection are geofacts. HH, rock

 

[MichiganMan]

The reason I picked the grey one is because I thought it might be Granite which usually doesn't form in a round shape from what I have seen. The others are either Sandstone or Quartzite. Now don't get me wrong they did like to use Quartzite cobbles for grinding stones. I have found a few made from it in my area. They made them square for some reason instead of round. As the others have said the other ones in your collection are geofacts. HH, rock

Thanks Rock and all others. I appreciate your wisdom. Could you guys tell me how the very first rock in the first post is a natural geofact? the edges on the one side look like they are cut in to the side in my opinion. Not sure how something like this would form in nature....?

 

[releventchair]

All that ground sounds exciting. You are hours driving from here north of you and that puts you closer to an ancient East West route below Mi. Too the West coast and along the coast of Lake Mi. led to popular destinations during summer and where pottery was made and eventually forts were built farther north. I,m confident their is great hunting where your at. Having found little in the way of artifacts gets me imagining use of many other finds. Were smooth rocks put in or near fire then used to heat water in hide or bladder bags? Or in pots? Or foot warmers? L.o.l.. but part of the allure I guess.
Get combing them fields after rains, it would be neat to see some inspiration. H.H.

 

[GatorBoy]

Beside the fact that type of stone would not serve the function that it seems to resemble.. A human would have to grind those marks into the stone and there's no evidence of that.
My guess is along time ago it separated from a much larger stone that had much longer indentions maybe similar to this natural stone I have