The deep human frame

People in the valley before the documented villages — the published sequence at valley strength, and the Mishawaka-ground site test

The frame's boundary: This entry takes the human record only as deep as the published sequence carries it. The documented peoples of this ground — the Miami and Potawatomi valley, the village at the rapids, the chiefs, the treaties and the removals — stand whole in the Tribes leg of this build and are not re-told here. What belongs to the deep frame is the time before names: the millennia the archaeology of the valley and the state chronology describe, printed at the strength of the sources, which speak at valley and state scale, not at this township's.

Habitable from the ice's going: The professional reconnaissance literature for the river's lower valley — Cremin and others, "An Archaeological Reconnaissance Survey to Locate Remains of Fort St. Joseph," Western Michigan University Archaeological Reports No. 22 (1999), written for the fort ground at Niles — states the valley's premise plainly: "the broad outlines of Native history prior to European contact can be identified. As in other areas of the upper Midwest, the region probably first became habitable at the end of the Pleistocene epoch. The last 14,000 years (terminal Pleistocene and Holocene epochs in geologic time) represent a time of great environmental change in the St. Joseph River valley of southwest Michigan." The boundary prints with the quotation: that is the lower valley, Berrien County ground, in a professional survey report — the strongest published statement of the deep frame this section's search reached, and it is a valley statement, not a Mishawaka one.

The state sequence: The frame the valley's finds are hung on is the state's published chronology — the Indiana Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology's Cultural Chronology of Indiana (Jones and Johnson; James R. Jones III, State Archaeologist) — which spans almost 12,000 years: Paleoindian, about 10,000 to 7500 B.C., the makers of the Clovis, Agate Basin and Hi-Lo points; Early Archaic, about 8000 to 6000 B.C.; Middle Archaic; Late Archaic, about 4000 to 1500 B.C.; Early Woodland, about 1000 to 200 B.C.; Middle Woodland, about 200 B.C. to A.D. 600; Late Woodland, about A.D. 500 to 1200; Mississippian; and Historic, from about A.D. 1650. It is a state frame, printed at state strength: it says what succession of cultures the published record recognizes in Indiana, and no part of it, by itself, puts a camp on Mishawaka's ground.

The county's published archaeology: At county strength the published scholarship concentrates where the marsh and the river meet. A University of Notre Dame senior thesis directed by Mark Schurr (Davis, "Environmental Analysis of Settlement Patterns in the Late Archaic to Early Woodland Transition in Northern Indiana") mapped the recorded sites of LaPorte and St. Joseph counties — forty sites across the two-county study area, drawn from the state database — against topography, soils and drainage, choosing the span because it crosses the coming of ceramics and because "the Kankakee Marsh has a long history of occupation over time"; its study design expected the later, more sedentary sites on upland edges near the marsh and the river. A Western Michigan University study of the whole valley (Kohley, 2013) carried the site distributions of the Late Woodland, proto-historic and historic periods — in its periods, A.D. 600 to 1690, the fort years 1691 to 1781, and 1782 to 1850 — and describes the valley's river-oriented economy in the period before contact, after Holman and Brashler: "hunting in the winter, maple sap collecting in spring, fishing in both spring and summer, collecting riverine resources, and harvesting nuts in the fall." One convention divergence is printed whole: the state chronology closes the Late Archaic about 1500 B.C., while the Notre Dame thesis, following the local school, runs it 4000 to 700 B.C. — the two bound the same transition differently, and both bounds are the record's.

The Mishawaka-ground test: For Mishawaka's own ground, the test this section and the Tribes leg together ran is negative, and it is printed at its true size. The state's complete site record is the Indiana State Historic Architectural and Archaeological Research Database, SHAARD, maintained by the Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology from cultural-resource projects, inventories and National Register nominations; it is restricted to professional access, and its contents cannot be searched from outside it. The negative is therefore bounded exactly: in the published record — the survey reports, the theses, the state chronology, the county histories — no archaeological site on Mishawaka's ground has been printed, for any period of the deep sequence. What the published record does support is the valley around it: habitable from the ice's going, occupied through the sequence the state chart names, and thickening toward the river towns the Tribes leg documents. No site locations are given in this section for any period, published or otherwise.

Sources: Cremin, Lutes-Kurtzweil, McMillan & Nassaney, Archaeological Reports No. 22, Western Michigan University (1999) — the lower valley's habitability statement; Indiana Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology, "Cultural Chronology of Indiana" — the state sequence and its dates; Davis, "Environmental Analysis of Settlement Patterns in the Late Archaic to Early Woodland Transition in Northern Indiana," University of Notre Dame undergraduate thesis (dir. Mark Schurr) — the forty-site two-county mapping, the marsh occupation statement, and the 4000–700 B.C. Late Archaic bound; Kohley, "Change and Continuity: Native American and Euro-American Settlement Patterns in the St. Joseph River Valley," Western Michigan University (IMAGIN, 2013) — the valley distributions and the river-oriented economy, after Holman & Brashler (1999); the Tribes leg of this build — the rapids village site test, negative in the published record.