Franklin County, Nebraska

For Another Day

(Editor’s note: This week’s article is the third in a series about an archaeologist site southeast of Naponee, which was visited by Rena during a recent dig.)

Archaeologist Rob Bozell told me his employer is the State Historical Society and it has a contract with the Nebraska Highway Department.

Funding for the Society’s work comes largely from grants from the Nebraska Department of Roads, so ninety percent of his job is walking Nebraska’s roads to check for possible past Indian inhabitation. This is done before a new road is built or one is widened. Soon, He or other members of his staff will be walking Hwy. 136 before the new project adds new shoulders to the road. Creek crossings are focal points to be studied.

Bozell made it plain that all the statements made below in this article are probably not factual. Nobody will know anything for sure until the results are known from an analysis report. The charcoal samples will be sent to a lab in Florida, and ti will be at least two months before the certainty of the information is known. The state will study the bones. In summary, it is the notion of the archaeologist that the bones at the dig site are of a child-maybe 10 to 12 years old. This Indian child’s remains could be at least 800 years old. I thought the teeth seemed very worn down. He reminded me this was a child, so these were probably his baby teeth, and since corn was the Indian’s main diet, the constant grinding on the teeth from eating the corn would have ground them down. Had the child lived it would have soon been getting adult molars.

After showing Bozell the site up on the top of the bank where we thought the children’s graves were, he looked at them and thinks they are to big to be a grave and that they might indeed be the remains of square small earth lodges. We see two of the lodge remains very plain with indentations of about 6 to 8 inches in the ground. He thinks it probable that a third one was situated over where the bank is falling away near the assumed Indian burial. There we saw only about a third of its remaining floor with the other two thirds partially broken off and laying at the bottom of this now maybe 12 foot bank. Our leader thinks it possible that the child was buried in the refuge pit of this third earth lodge to the south and that this bank had been eroding away for a hundred years or more.

There were three earth lodges in a group we know of. Bozell had a soil sample probe that he plunged far into the middle of what would be the earth lodges. Two out of three of the samples came up with black charcoal in them, looking like the charcoal was about a foot or two down into the dirt. This ground has never been worked to Herman’s recollection. Up on top of this hill would have been a perfect place for a village. From this vantage point the tribe would have had control of its area says the man in charge of the dig. As I stand over this purposed earth lodge, I want to know what’s down there? Young Bozell says, there are so many sites like this one in Nebraska and too many of them have been dug into. He hoped it would be left natural and unknowing to us. He thought it probable that these earth lodges of the prehistoric Indians roaming our Franklin County were built between 1000 AD and 1400 AD. I guess he is right! Leave well enough alone…but when you are a historian it’s so hard to walk away and leave the wondering behind. From the top of this bank I can see to the south, the old farmhouse and barn and farmyard of Jacob and Herman Schnuerle quietly deteriorating. It seems destiny has the same future for their old house as it did for the earth lodges of the ancient Indian. I think the study of Franklin County during the pioneer time of 1870’s and 1880’s is old. What I have learned today tells me I have been studying modern times and there is so much more for me to know of these native people. After all they were the first people to walk our area long before the pioneers. Their simplicity of life helped to preserve our land in a natural and healthy way. They existed, roaming our Franklin county area for thousands of years before our pioneers and never damaged our environment, keeping it clean and well preserved for us.

The last thing we did on this day was to go and dig up the teeth and bone pieces that I had reburied on the top of the hill. When we were here a couple of weeks ago, down at the foot of the bank I picked up two teeth and some bone fragments and put them in my shirt cupped in front of me. Pat said, “Mom leave them there.” But I just couldn’t leave them lying on the ground to be tromped to bits. So defying what my oldest son said, my grandson Shane helped me dig a small hole back up on top of the hill and down into the would be grave and we redeposited the remains there and staked it with a red flag. I had lots of help on this day, from three little boys, trying to locate the teeth. They were just as excited as the rest of us and so curious. They sat patiently most of the time and watched with wonder what was going on.

This is fact: a 1989 law reads if a burial site is in danger of being disturbed, or lost as was the case here, the bank was eroding away. The bones can be removed, and the State of Nebraska has one year to study the remains. If it can be determined what tribe this person belonged to, the tribe can claim these remains. If the tribe doesn’t claim these remains, or if it can’t be determined what tribe the bones belonged to, the remains are to be returned to the county that they are taken from and reburied in the local cemetery. The same is law goes for Caucasians. If the bones were found to be a pioneer after the study is complete, it would be returned to the family. If relatives could not be found, the remains would be returned to the county and reburied in a local cemetery.

Time will tell the answer to this story of the body found in an eroding bank on Rebecca Creek.

Are we right in our guesses, or will I have a whole different story to write about when the results come back? Everything Herman has told me has turned out to be correct. I still have a little doubt about the children’s graves not being on the hill. Herman listened carefully to his older brother Bill. He had told Herman the name of the family to contact about the children’s graves. It’s still a mystery and, in the end, the solving of the mystery might be left up to the discretion of the readers mind.

I have good memories of the dig site. It’s like the world stopped long enough for my mind to preserve a mental image. I was at the bottom of the hill with Mr. Bozell when I happened to look u p the 12-foot bank to see above me a calming site. There sat 91-year-old great-grandpa, Herman Schnuerle in his old red metal chair that he brought along to assure himself of a front row seat. On the ground in front of him sat h is son, Neil, and around him sat his three grandsons, the youngest was on his lap. The children were as close to the edge of the bank as they could safely get. Three generations of a family were in our midst. Five generations of the Schnuerle family have lived on this Rebecca Creek with in a century, and it looks to me like there will be many more Schnuerle generations living here in the future.

Whether it be Indians or Caucasians who lived off the land over the years, they loved their families and gave them the best they had to offer.

The heads of strong old age are beautiful beyond all grace of youth.
They have a strange quiet: integrity, health, and soundness to the full.
They’ve dealt with life and been tempered by it.
From Promise of Peace Robinson Jeffers

Rena Donovan, For Another Day.

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