Paleoethnobotanical Inquiry of Early Euro-American and Ojibwa Gardens on Grand Island, Michigan Janet Silbernagel; Susan R. Martin; David B. Landon; Margaret R. Gale Northeastern Naturalist, Vol. 5, No. 3. (1998), pp. 249-276. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1092-6194%281998%295%3A3%3C249%3APIOEEA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Z Northeastern Naturalist is currently published by Humboldt Field Research Institute. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/journals/hfri.html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers, and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community take advantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. http://www.jstor.org Tue Oct 23 19:28:25 2007 1998 NORTHEASTERN NATURALIST S(3): 249-276 PALEOETHNOBOTANICAL INQUIRY OF EARLY EURO-AMERICAN AND OJIBWA GARDENS ON GRAND ISLAND, MICHIGAN ABSTRACT - Exploratory archaeobotanical analysis was conducted on Grand Island, Michigan, in concert with current botanical inventories and historic document research. Our goal was to synthesize these three forms of data in the study of early cultural-plant use. We describe indigenous and Euro-American plant relationships on Grand Island, and the patterning of plant remains between individual sites. Botanical materials in four of five samples showed greater correspondence to current flora than to historic accounts of plant representation. Still, from most samples we recovered a good depiction of historic food plants. A well-defined feature sample yielded the greatest quantity and diversity of culturally important botanical material. The results support integration of documentary with archaeological sources to identify plant remains with cultural meaning. INTRODUCTION Vegetation history interests many people for different reasons: as an indicator of climate change and past floralfauna distributions, a tem- plate for restoration, or for information about past cultures (Popper and Hastorf 1988). But must we rely on pollen stratigraphies drawn from isolated peat bogs and lakes to reconstruct past environments, or to examine how cultural groups provided for their basic needs? What other means do we have to pursue these types of historical ecology questions? Archaeological sites are often targeted for cultural-plant history clues by their strategic locations vis-a-vis anthropogenic envi- ronments and fortuitous preservation of environmental data (Forney 1992. unpub.; Popper and Hastorf 1988). Accompanying plant remains from archaeological contexts, historic documents can furnish leads to the vegetation of recent past and its cultural interplay via paleoethnobotany (Crumley 1994, Popper and Hastorf 1988). ' Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, 149 Johnson Hall, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164-6414; Social Sciences Department/Archaeology Laboratory, Michigan Technological University. 1400 Townsend Dr., Houghton, MI 49931; ' School of Forestry and Wood Products, Michigan Technological University, 1400 Townsend Dr., Houghton, MI 4993 1 We were drawn to Grand Island, Michigan, U.S.A., for investigation of its cultural plant communities. The island lies in a southern bay of Lake Superior (Fig. 1) with dramatic geology and microclimate. uncom- mon plant communities, and a rich cultural history many centuries old. Grand Island was designated as a National Recreation Area in 1990, and is expected to receive substantial public interest and recreation use (USDA 1994). We undertook research on the island's cultural landscape to contribute to the evaluation, restoration, protection. and interpretation of its di\7erse heritage. By combining archaeobotanical remains with docu~nentarysources and current field recovery. we have set the stage for continued exploration of Grand Island's vegetation history and greater understanding of its culture-plant relationships. Meanwhile. we have uncovered the patterning of Grand Island's plant remains and peeled back the overlay that current flora deposit on archaeobotanical assemblages. Figure 1. Sediment sample site locations on Grand Island. Michigan with catalogue numbers and abbreviated codes. Dashed lines indicate section bound- aries. Inset: Location of Grand Island within Michigan, U.S.A., and Lake Superior vicinity. 1998 J. Silbernagel et al. 25 1 Our objective was to describe cultural-plant relationships of early historic Ojibwa and Euro-American groups on Grand Island, and assess site differences in plant remains. This was accomplished by synthesiz- ing ethnohistoric (documentary) reports and current flora with archaeo- botanical remains, including pollen, phytoliths, and plant macroremains. This approach is based on two assumptions. First, current species composition influences assemblage patterns. With knowledge of current flora contribution, interpretations about past cul- tures based on plant remains may be more accurate (Smart and Hoffman 1988). Second, neither documentary sources nor archaeobotanical re- mains are fully accurate or complete, but used together, provide a clearer picture of past cultural-plant uses. For this study we have assumed that the historic record is an accurate baseline for plant use against which we compare archaeological plant remains and current floristic surveys. FIELD SITE DESCRIPTION Grand Island sits less than one kilometer north of Munising, Alger County, Michigan (Fig. 1, inset). It is approximately 55 square km (5500 ha), 13 km long and six km wide, with roughly 43 km of shoreline. Aside from one private parcel, the island is primarily under the management of the Hiawatha National Forest. Three areas on the island with documented historic settlements or gardens were selected for evaluation (Benchley et al. 1988, Roberts 1991). These areas included: Williams Landing, Figure 2. Murray Bay Shoreline, Grand Island, Michigan, ca. early 1900s. Photo courtesy of Hiawatha National Forest. Photographer unknown. 252 Northeastern Naturalist Vol. 5, No. 3 Murray Bay shoreline (Fig. 2), and the Farm Complex. Native American and Euro-Americans have inhabitated and gardened in the Williams Landing and Murray Bay areas, which lie along the Lake Superior shoreline, for centuries (Fig. 3). The Farm Complex lies upslope from the lakeshore and was developed in more recent history (1900-1950). It contained a maple sugar bush, orchard, and cultivated fields. CLIMATE Climatic data for the city of Marquette, approximately 64 km west of Grand Island, illustrate the dramatic influence of Lake Superior. High summer temperatures experienced in nearby inland communities are rare, and winters are moderated by lake air. Relatively moist air above the lake contributes to higher levels of cloudiness and snowfall. The frost-free season for Marquette averages 159 days. The number of frost- free days on Grand Island may be greater than in Marquette, particularly in the south-facing and protected Murray Bay area, due to lake-moder- ated temperatures (Ruffner and Bair 1977). Figure 3. Timber cruise map of William's Landing area, Grand Island, Michi- gan, Township 47 north, Range 19 west, section 22. 1928. Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Co. Each square represents one quarter section, or approximately 114 mile by 114 mile. Sites noted on the drawing are: 1) orchard, 2) vicinity of old fields and gardens, 3) root house and 4) William's cottage. The farm complex would be slightly north and west of the upper left corner of this drawing. 1998 J. Silbernagel et al. 253 GEOMORPHOLOGY AND SOIL The Grand Island area experienced a series of continental glacial advances and retreats during the past 100,000 years. The most recent advance. the Marquette, was a sub-stage of the Wisconsin stage and left substantial marks on Grand Island sandstone formations. largely erasing evidence left by previous glaciers. Geomorphic features such as wave- cut bluffs and scarps, terraces, beaches, etc. are largely attributed to post-glacial lake activity (Dorr and Eschman 1971, Saarnisto 1974). Today much of Grand Island has only a thin layer of soil over sandstone bedrock (0.6 m to 1.5 m). In some places the bedrock is exposed. Sands, sandy loams. loamy sands, and few areas of sandy clay loans and muck soils occur on the island. In an early soil survey of the Munising area, Rice and Geib (1905) mapped three soil types on Grand Island: dune sand, Miami sand, and muck. Their notes also provided some clues to early cultivation: ". only a small proportion of the vast area of the Miami $and has been cleared and farmed, but enough has been done to demonstrate that the type is surprisingly fertile for so sandy a soil. The grains