Fig. 3. Paleo-Indian [spearheads] from the William Small collection. A, B, and C are [Clovis] points; D, a [Folsom] point. All are from Illinois.
Their belongings, by our standards, were pitifully few, their way of life laborious, full of hardship and danger, but their needs were simple and their means of meeting them doubtless seemed ample to these hardy hunters. The [chief] weapon was a thrusting spear with a chipped [flint] head and a long shaft to keep the hunter as far from harm’s way as possible when attacking the dangerous animal. The narrow width of the spearpoint made it easy to withdraw from a wound and attack again. Our evidence that the Paleo-Indians (as the Big Game Hunters are commonly called) lived in Illinois are these same [spearheads] ([Clovis] and [Folsom] types), usually grooved or fluted lengthwise of the blade, which are scattered over much of the Illinois prairie as isolated finds. No campsites of this [people] have yet been discovered in Illinois, as they have been in Pennsylvania, Alabama and several southwestern states. We can only surmise that in Illinois the hunters also had [stone] hammers and chipped flint scrapers as they had elsewhere.
Having arrived in the great central valley between the Rocky Mountains and the eastern ranges, the herds probably moved slowly from one browsing ground to another in the open corridor between glaciers. It may have taken them many years to reach what is now the United States. Eventually the herds wandered back and forth across the [Mississippi] Valley, and some favorable spots came to be used as camping grounds again and again by the same or different families. Such places would appeal immediately to the campers because of their protection from rain and the piercing glacial winds, the presence of a plentiful supply of wood and water. The possibility of our gaining a better knowledge of Paleo-Indian life in Illinois rests on the discovery of such a site, difficult now to recognize because it may no longer provide wood, water, or shelter of any sort.
There are in southern Illinois a number of simple linear [stone] piles known locally as “stone forts,” all in the same type of land structure. Each forms an obstruction five to fifteen feet in height across a narrow neck or ridge leading to the plateau top of a near-vertical-sided “promontory” projecting out into a stream valley, making an excellent corral, with no fence necessary except across the entrance. They may have been used in late Paleo-Indian times and on into the [Archaic] [period] for impounding large game and/or driving them over the cliff.
[ARCHAIC] MAN, FIRST SETTLER IN ILLINOIS (8000 to 2500 B.C.)[6]
We have reason to believe that the Big Game Hunters wandered over Illinois and the adjoining states during the last advance of the glaciers. Around 12,000 B.C. the climate in the Midwest became milder, the glaciers “retreated,” and the mighty torrents—the [Mississippi], the Ohio and the Illinois that had torn irresistibly down their valleys—shrank into smaller, less turbulent rivers that occupied but a fraction of their former beds. The great shaggy mammoths, musk oxen, the ground sloths and the giant beavers moved westward toward the mountains or to the north.
Some of the Big Game Hunters with their families may have followed the retreating glacier and the herds; others stayed behind in country to which they had grown attached. With the great herds gone, the human families remaining in Illinois had to hunt the game animals that now frequented the area—deer, elk (wapiti), bear and smaller mammals. The large hunting party was no longer practicable. The game roamed over the country singly or by twos or threes and had to be stalked by one or two hunters. Families were compelled to live widely separated one from another in order to secure ample food throughout the year. Thus developed a new way of life which we call the [Archaic] [phase] or [culture].
The hunter, as time passed, learned the secret habits of the deer, bear and raccoon and the more sluggish fishes. His wife and daughters learned the haunts and ways of the smaller animals, the rodents, turtles and lizards, discovered where edible greens, wild tubers, nuts and fruits grew and where mussels and snails abounded in creeks and rivers. With increasing knowledge [Archaic] man made better and fuller use of his changed and changing surroundings, food became more plentifully available, life easier and less hazardous though still very difficult from our standpoint.
Fig. 4. Hafted primitive [stone] adze and grooved [ax], with modern steel-bitted ax in the background. (B.B.)