Late Prehistoric Cultural Affiliation Study, Grand Portage National Monument, Minnesota

Clark, Caven

Archaeological Consulting Services conducted a late prehistoric cultural affiliation study for Grand Portage National Monument. The project included developing a background on the issues involved in linking the late prehistoric (A.D. 700 to 1600) record of often vague or poorly defined archeological cultures with a historic record in which conjectured band, tribal, and/or linguistic identities are known. The purpose of this project was to provide the basis for determining cultural affiliation in the event of the unintentional discovery of human remains or cultural items under The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 (NAGPRA), and to provide for the Monument a synthesis of its late prehistoric archeological record. Grand Portage occupied a unique position as a major entrepot for the early fur trade of the Upper Country; its reasons for selection by the Northwest Company being a sheltered bay and access to the river roads of the interior. The present-day National Monument includes not only the Depot on Grand Portage Bay, but also the site of Fort Charlotte on the Pigeon River and a portage trail linking the two, all of which are within the present lands of the Grand Portage Band of Minnesota Chippewa. Excavations at both the Depot and Fort Charlotte have produced a wealth ofinfonnarion regarding the fur trade. However, late prehistoric artifacts, features., and sites have neither been identified nor reported with the same enthusiasm as the fur trade materials. It is for this reason that a cultural affiliation study of the Monument required a simultaneous focus on the archeology of the Monument and immediate vicinity, to provide a site-specific context for the study, and a more broadly based examination of the archeology and historic resources of the region. The tenn Ojibwe is used throughout the report and, as will be seen, has a variety of meanings depending on the context ofits usage. Chippewa is used here only in its legal sense or in direct quotes, and of course the Ojibwe people's name for themselves, Anishnabeg, is acknowledged and respected. The name Sau/teau:.r:, apart from specific quotes and contexts in this discussion, is used to differentiate this group of seventeenth century migrants from the Sault Ste. Marie area from the Northern Ojibwe who, I argue, resided for at least 600 years in the western Lake Superior Basin.