October 2019 • Nebraskaland 49
Sandhills 400 years ago meant
bringing down bison and other
large game with wood and stone
tools. Bows and arrows or spears
with spear throwers were top
technologies. Butchering and hide
cleaning required stone blades
and scrapers, while bone awls and
stone drills were used to make
clothing.
Travel would have been grueling
in an era without horses, but
the Plains Apaches would have
journeyed far enough to encounter
surrounding groups and to trade
goods, which was possibly how
they acquired one unique little
arrowhead discovered within
the village. Made of shiny black
obsidian, it came from the Rockies
or the Southwest.
Although white people were
establishing their foothold on the
same landmass during this village's
era, European influence was still a
world away. The steady trickle of
fur traders would be 100 years to
come – the systematic eradication
of Plains Indians another hundred
more. But the Plains Apaches
left Nebraska before white men
appeared, the last departing in the
early 1700s. Likely pressured by
the Comanche from the west or
the Pawnee from the east, they
eventually formed lasting alliances
with the Kiowa to the south.
Stark contrasts exist between
these hardy peoples who lived
in the Sandhills hundreds or
thousands of years ago and the
budding archaeologists examining
what they left behind. But to learn
about these long absent cultures is
to respect their rugged way of life
and to wonder, as did Jodi Enders
after discovering the spear point.
"How long were they out hunting
that day?" she asks. "How far did
they walk? What was their camp
like? What were they like?"
Artifacts yet to be discovered
may cause theories to shift, ever
correcting as the sciences do.
Beneath our feet they lay – 30 feet
or half-an-inch below fields and
roadways, beneath buildings and
backyards. You likely passed over
a stone artifact today. What of
our things will survive thousands
of years, and what of that will be
worth finding? And those distant-
future people studying the 21st
century ... what will they think of
us?
N
Mark Harris is the associate
director of the University of
Nebraska State Museum.
Gathered around the fire late evenings, students like Will Roe talk about the day's adventures. Fieldwork is a struggle for some.
