Native Americans Prior to European Contact
The first people in the Red River Valley were ancestors of the American Indians. They were here after 10000 years ago. This estimate is based on findings at several archaeological sites with either radiocarbon dates, or diagnostic artifacts known from other parts of the continent to date to that time period, known to archaeologists as the Paleoindian. At Browns Valley Minnesota, near Lake Traverse, remains of an ancient man with these distinctive early artifacts was radiocarbon dated to 9050 years ago. This is one of the most famous of all Paleoindian sites in North America.
Carvings of birds and animals on rocks in various sites in what is today Minnesota and the Dakotas can be dated back thousands of years (the 'petroglyph' to the left is found in a state historic site just north of Mountain Lake Minnesota in the south central part of the state). Some of these carvings are estimated to be 5000 years old. But evidence of earlier human habitation exists in human and animal remains recovered by archaeologists and anthropologists. Buried kill sites of giant bison can be found in several sites around the Valley. The site of one kill is preserved at Itasca State Park, and is believed to be 8000 years old. Another such site was found near Kindred, ND. It dates to about 8000 years ago and lies in sediments along the Sheyenne River as it leaves the Sand Hills and flows into the Lake Agassiz basin. Extinct bison, stone tools, fire hearths, and the remains of a small shelter were found over an area suggestive of a very large camp; possibly indicating a group of 70-80 people.
In 1932, road builders at Pelican Rapids uncovered a fossilized skeleton of a young woman; this was later dubbed "Minnesota Woman" and was dated by researchers as being about 8000 years old. Other sites around the Upper Midwest contain evidence of copper mining and primitive smelting for tool and decorative use. These "early archaic" natives lived hard, precarious lives, followed animals on their seasonal migrations, and carefully learned to adapt themselves to the prevailing climates and environments -- so the remains tell us.
By the time of about 2000 years ago, a more complex culture Native American culture emerged call "Woodland" culture. The woodland natives resided for at least part of each year in the Valley region. They, like their predecessors, were hunters and gathers who could store some food surpluses in pottery made from clay and crushed rock. Minnesota State University Moorhead professor Michael Michlovic, noted in his paper on "Archaeology and Prehistory of the Red River Valley" that the decorative styles of pottery can tell us much about the "group identities and relationships in prehistoric times." By examining the pottery, Michlovic and others have been able to estimate the range of the Woodland culture in the valley and obtain solid information on the diet, migrations and interactions of the natives during that era. While many Woodland archaeological sites have been studied in the Valley, one notable locality is found near Glyndon, Minnesota. The site has a distinctive pottery style known as Blackduck. This is normally found in the lake-forest area of northern Minnesota and associated with moose, beaver, fish, bear and wild rice. In the Valley, however, about the only bone found was bison. The pottery was encrusted with burnt residues on the interior, which turned out to have indications that they were boiling maize (corn) in these vessels. Maize, a domesticated plant, was not previously associated with Blackduck or with any other northern Minnesota culture in prehistory.
A modest number of prehistoric cemeteries, or burial mounds are also found in the Valley. Based on early examinations of burial mounds discovered across the Upper Midwest, it is clear that these mounds belonged to a complex named the Arvilla culture. This also was part of the Woodland culture. (Excavation of such mounds is now prohibited by various statutes.)Dig
Michlovic also noted that "the last of the culture-historical periods in the prehistory of the Red River Valley is known as the Plains Village" culture, which appeared in the region sometime around 800-900 years ago. These natives were almost certainly related to some extent to the earlier Woodland bands. The Valley natives continued to rely on hunting, especially of bison. They gathered foods growing in the wild but also cultivated maize and tobacco and probably amaranth and chenopodium as well, in garden plots.
Several sites of these village people are found on the western perimeter of the Valley along the Maple River south of Embden. Here are found small acre-sized communities with defensive ditches up to ten feet wide and five feet deep. These were settled farmers living on bluff tops above the nearby river using some of the same types of pottery found in the Minnesota Woodland, but other types found in the James Valley to the west. Clearly, these people had connections across the Woodland-Plains boundary. The sites date to about AD1450.
The Plains Village artifacts are very similar to those used by the Oneota, a skilled group pf farming natives who moved into the eastern plains regions about 1100 years ago. Oneota natives may have been the ancestors of several plains "tribes" that European explorers and traders came into contact with in the late 17th and early 18th century -- the Omaha, Winnebago, Oto and Iowa.
In all, there is abundant evidence that the lands of the Valley were continuously and sometimes, intensively, used before the coming of the Europeans. While the evidence strongly suggests that native life in the Valley was mostly seasonal rather that year-round, by the latter part of the prehistoric period relatively sedentary farming villages were in existence. It is clear from this evidence that natives could make a claim to the land, and that the Europeans would have to take those claims into account as their settlements drew ever closer to the Red River.