Archaeology | For Indians, ax marked first chapter of disaster

Curse of the Ax, a documentary film that premiered this month on Canada’s History Television, tells the story of an iron ax that was discovered at the Mantle site, a large Late Iroquoian village on the northern outskirts of Toronto, Ontario. Five centuries ago, the Mantle site was the largest site in the region, where 1,500 to 2,000 people lived.
The ax is significant because it predates the documented arrival of European explorers in the region by a century or more.It likely was brought to America by Basque whalers or fishermen who traded it to some coastal-dwelling Indian for animal furs. It then must have been passed from one tribe to another until it was eventually acquired by a resident of the Mantle site.
European artifacts also have been found at the late prehistoric Madisonville site in Hamilton County in southwestern Ohio. Although large by Ohio standards, it wouldn’t have compared to the Mantle site. Archaeologist Penelope Drooker estimated that Madisonville probably never had more than 300 residents. It was, nevertheless, one of the most important sites in the upper Ohio valley during this period.
Archaeologists have recovered nearly 500 metal and glass artifacts of European manufacture from the site, including several bits of Basque iron that might well have passed through the Mantle site. The Ohio finds represent the southernmost documented occurrence of this material.
In addition, there are a few artifacts from Madisonville, such as a small brass bell, that are known to have originated with the early 17th century expeditions of de Soto in the southeastern United States. Madisonville is the northernmost site where one of these bells has been found.
Basque iron and Conquistador brass turning up at American Indian villages long before any Spanish explorer, fisherman or fur trader had arrived in the region reveal just how cosmopolitan American Indian communities could be in the pre-contact period.
Far-flung networks of trade long had been a part of the indigenous cultures of America. Madisonville and Mantle were thriving communities in the 17th century at least partly because they served as interregional trading centers. Unfortunately, the advantages conferred by their strategic locations along trade routes would have disastrous, if unforeseeable, consequences. European germs inevitably followed the arrival of the tantalizing fragments of the strange and wonderful metals. Untold thousands of native people would perish in the resulting epidemics.
The late prehistoric cultures of southern Ohio persisted until these virulent new diseases swept through their villages. We don’t know with certainty what happened to the survivors, but in 1656, Ohio’s indigenous people made their first appearance in European historical accounts.
The Jesuit Relations recorded that the Iroquois Confederacy, seeking to expand its hunting grounds, brought “fire and war” to the people here.
Robin Bicknell, the director of the Canadian documentary, told the TorontoStarthat she called it the Curse of the Ax “because of everything that little piece of iron represented in terms of being the crest of a tsunami (of death), the dark shadow that was about to be cast over people. So it really was a curse.”
Bradley T. Lepper is curator of archaeology at the Ohio Historical Society.


 http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/science/2012/07/29/for-indians-ax-marked-first-chapter-of-disaster.html