Osage

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 23 Jan 2002, Justin McBride wrote:
> > Sorry, what is Oneota.  Ohio-Nebraska-Dakota ?
>
> I got this from http://www.angelfire.com/wi/oneota/
>
> Oneota: an archaeological culture in upper central U.S., ca. AD 900-
> ca. AD 1700. ...  Shelltempered pottery typifies Oneota sites and
> serves as the diagnostic artifact for the Oneota tradition" (Tiffany
> 1982:1, in Gibbon). The pottery is often decorated with parallel wavy
> or zig-zag lines.

And areas or lines of punctates or "dots."  These are thought by some to
represent, somewhat abstractly, the patterning on hawk tails, four of
them, arranged around the pot.  The pots are pretty much globular in
shape, small, with rims and small handles.  In some peripheral areas, the
pottery is tempered with grit or other materials.  Shell-tempered pottery
is characteristic of several Mississippian cultures, including Cahokia(n).
The lime helps to make corn cooked in the pots more nutricious.

> On the prairie lands, bison and corn play a crucial role in
> subsitance. In the forests, wild rice, deer, corn and squash are also
> important.

In general the subsistance patterns look a lot like those in the area at
contact - horticulture, hunting of large herding animals, and systematic
exploitation of the available small game and wild plants.  House forms and
sizes vary with locale and time.  Both small camps and large settlements,
sometimes with simple defensive works, are found.  A few field systems
have been located.  Village sites were occupied for relatively short
periods, and sites often show signs of reuse by similar groups over time.

> Geographically, Oneota extended over much of Iowa, into
> Missouri, Minnesota, much of Wisconsin (up to the Door Peninsula),
> western and perhaps north-eastern Illinois and perhaps Michigan.

Psinomani (should be PsiN-omani) is found in more the eastern Dakotas,
too, and there are several Oneota sites in eastern Nebraska and Kansas.
The number of known Oneota sites in western Illinois is now fairly
extensive.

The term Oneota is an old name for one the rivers in Iowa now
imaginatively called "Iowa" (I think).  I forget which - Iowa hydrography
is not one of my strong points!  Something in the North East.  The name is
supposed to be of Iroquois origin.  The original form was Oneonta, but
that variant has never been used by archaeologists.  The name is supposed
to have been collected from displaced Iroquoian-speakers and applied in
English by Euroamericans unable to distinguish local and immigrant Indian
populations.  (I forget where I read this last - probaly somewhere in the
Journal of the Iowa Archeological Society.)  I think the original Oneota
focus was Orr (named for Ellison Orr), in NE Iowa, identified by Mildred
Mott, later Mildred Mott Wedel, and assigned by the direct historical
method (ehtnographical equivalent of guilt by association) to the Ioway.

To give this a linguistic twist - I think the Proto Mississippi Valley
word for pot is something like *rex(e) ...  Most of the MV Siouan groups
seem to have stopped making pottery in the 1700s, so that by the time
anyone thought to make any detailed notes on the subject the people they
asked were quite vague about the whole process of making them, let alone
specifics of form and decoration.