Mastodons to Mississippians , livre ebook

Mastodons to Mississippians
TRUTHS, LIES, AND HISTORIES OF NASHVILLE
Betsy T. Phillips, series editor
As a lead-up to Nashville’s 250th anniversary in 2029, Vanderbilt University Press is publishing an ambitious new series consisting of twenty-five small volumes designed to bridge the gap between what scholars and experts know about the city and what the public thinks it knows. These are the stories that have never been told, the truths behind the oft-told tales, the things that keep us in love with the city, and the parts of the past that have broken our hearts, with a priority on traditionally underrepresented perspectives and untold stories.
MASTODONS TO MISSISSIPPIANS
ADVENTURES IN
NASHVILLE S DEEP PAST
AARON DETER-WOLF & TANYA M. PERES
VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY PRESS
Nashville, Tennessee
Copyright 2021 Vanderbilt University Press
All rights reserved
First printing 2021
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Deter-Wolf, Aaron, 1976– author. | Peres, Tanya M., author.
Title: Mastodons to Mississippians : adventures in Nashville’s deep past / Aaron Deter-Wolf and Tanya M. Peres.
Description: Nashville : Vanderbilt University Press, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021009786 (print) | LCCN 2021009787 (ebook) | ISBN 9780826502155 (paperback) | ISBN 9780826502162 (epub) | ISBN 9780826502179 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Nashville (Tenn.)—Antiquities. | Mississippian culture—Tennessee—Nashville. | Mounds—Tennessee—Nashville. | Indians of North America—Tennessee—Nashville—Antiquities. | Paleo-Indians—Tennessee—Nashville. | Archaeology—Tennessee—Nashville. | Paleontology—Tennessee—Nashville.
Classification: LCC E99.M6815 D48 2021 (print) | LCC E99.M6815 (ebook) | DDC 976.8/5501—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021009786
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021009787
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
1. Making Sense of Nashville’s Deep Past
2. The Nashville Cat
3. Furry Elephants and the First Nashvillians
4. Modern Floods and Ancient Snailfishing on the Cumberland River
5. Earthen Mounds Meet Urban Sprawl
Nashville-Area Learning Opportunities and Further Reading
Notes
About the Authors
ILLUSTRATIONS
FIGURE 1.1. Sketch of Shumate’s “Grand Monster Tennessean”
FIGURE 1.2. Map of archaeological and paleontological sites in and surrounding Davidson County
FIGURE 1.3. Archaic period marine shell gorget and beads from the Fernvale site
FIGURE 1.4. Sketch of a Mississippian period house
FIGURE 1.5. The 2015 Tennessee Archaeology Awareness Month poster
FIGURE 2.1. Animal bones recovered from the First American Bank site
FIGURE 2.2. November 17, 1909, headline describing caves located beneath Public Square
FIGURE 2.3. The vertical profile of the First American Cave site
FIGURE 2.4. Bob Ferguson examines the sabertooth canine found at the First American Cave site
FIGURE 2.5. Reconstruction of the head of a Smilodon
FIGURE 2.6. Original Nashville Predator’s logo
FIGURE 2.7. Tennessee Division of Archaeology personnel inspect the First American Cave
FIGURE 3.1. The jaw of an American mastodon from the Harpeth River
FIGURE 3.2. Sketch showing a mammoth, a mastodon, and a First American hunter
FIGURE 3.3. Excavations at the Coats-Hines site
FIGURE 3.4. Fluted Paleoindian period spear points from Davidson County
FIGURE 3.5. MTSU students collect soil samples at the Coats-Hines site
FIGURE 4.1. An Archaic shell midden exposed along the Cumberland River
FIGURE 4.2. Archaeologists inspect an Archaic period site following the May 2010 flood
FIGURE 4.3. Pleurocerid (aquatic snail) remains from an Archaic period site
FIGURE 4.4. An Archaic period feature eroding along the Cumberland River
FIGURE 5.1. Mississippian ceramic effigy bottle from the Belle Meade/Logan site
FIGURE 5.2. Map of Mississippian sites in the Nashville area
FIGURE 5.3. Mississippian strap handle ceramic bowl
FIGURE 5.4. Excerpt of the Brentwood Library site map showing the Mississippian period village
FIGURE 5.5. Drought cycles for Middle Tennessee during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries AD
FIGURE 5.6. Detail from a 1786 map of plantations along the Cumberland River
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank our many colleagues and the members of the Nashville community who spoke with us about their research, experiences, and memories of Nashville archaeology. Alan Brown, Brian Butler, John Broster, Larisa DeSantis, John Dowd, Nick Fielder, Shannon Hodge, Don Hubbs, David Sims, Kevin Smith, Jesse Tune, David Wilson, Ron Zurawski, and others graciously shared their expertise during uncertain times. Mauricio Antón, David Dye, Lacey Fleming, Les Leverett, Noël Lorson, Robert Sharp, Debbie Shaw, and the staff of the Tennessee State Museum all contributed or assisted with images. We also wish to thank Tennessee state archaeologist (now retired) Mike Moore, for over a decade of support, encouragement, and steady guidance.
We offer acknowledgment to the Native American communities and individuals who for millennia have made their homes in the Cumberland River valley of Middle Tennessee, and whose ancestral sites have been displaced by historical and modern development. Through careful and considerate examination of the archaeological record we hope to increase understanding and respect for these cultures, their accomplishments, and their legacies.
CHAPTER 1
Making Sense of Nashville’s Deep Past
In 1845 workers digging a well on William Shumate’s farm, located seven miles south of Franklin, uncovered a giant skeleton. Around fifty feet below the surface the well shaft encountered a fissure in the limestone bedrock, at the base of which lay a collection of massive bones belonging to an American mastodon. This was not the first mastodon discovery in America, or even in Tennessee. By that time, remains of Mammut americanum , an extinct species of ice age elephant, had been recovered from various locations throughout the eastern United States for more than a century. Those skeletons were enthusiastically reported on in newspapers and historical texts, and displayed with great fanfare in natural history museums of the era. 1 In his 1823 work The Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee , Judge John Haywood, also known as the “Father of Tennessee History,” reported discoveries of at least five fossilized elephants in Tennessee. 2 By 1845 and the discovery on Shumate’s farm, the total number had climbed to nearly twenty. 3
Like many fossil skeletons of the era, the Shumate Mastodon was displayed for the public’s viewing pleasure. There was, however, a twist: mounted upright on two legs and improved by the addition of wooden pieces to replace missing portions of the skull and pelvis, the skeleton was billed not as an ancient elephant, but rather as the remains of an Antediluvian giant human ( Figure 1.1 ). 4 The “grand Monster Tennessean” was first displayed at the old courthouse in Franklin, where the price of admission was set at twenty-five cents. The skeleton then moved north to Nashville in December of 1845, where it was installed alongside an average-size human skeleton. Due to popular demand, the price of admission increased to thirty cents, though with a 50 percent discount for servants and children. From Nashville, the exhibit embarked on a tour to New Orleans, where the fraud was quickly recognized by a medical professor. The skeleton disappeared from public view, although not before convincing thousands of visitors that the Nashville area was once home to an ancient race of giant humans.

FIGURE 1.1. Sketch of Shumate’s “grand Monster Tennessean.” When exhibited in Nashville in December 1845, the mastodon remains were mounted upright beside an articulated human skeleton for scale. After James X. Corgan and Emmanuel Breitburg, Tennessee’s Prehistoric Vertebrates , Tennessee Division of Geology Bulletin 84 (Nashville: State of Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, 1996), fig. 1.
It is not unusual for those digging holes in Middle Tennessee to uncover pieces of the deep past. Historical documents from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries record what seems to be a near-continuous stream of encounters with ancient remains. Those range from accidental fossil discoveries such as the Shumate Mastodon to deliberate excavations of ancient Native American sites by antiquarian scholars from the likes of Harvard’s Peabody Museum. In the middle of that spectrum fell the interested public of Nashville and Middle Tennessee, some of whom spent their leisure time collecting fossils or digging up Native American sites in search of artifacts and curiosities. This trend continues today, as Nashville’s growing population and associated development expand throughout Middle Tennessee and spur both formal archaeological studies and accidental encounters with the past.
During the first decades of the twenty-first century there have been occasional, brief peaks of public interest in our city’s deep past. These are typically in response to ancient Native American sites being threatened or impacted by development efforts, such as the large May Town Center project proposed for Bells Bend in 2008, or construction of the new Nashville Sounds stadium in 2014. For the most part, however, the city’s ancient past