Moccasin Bluff Site

About this property

The Moccasin Bluff Site (also designated 20BE8) is an archaeological site located along the Red Bud Trail and the St. Joseph River north of Buchanan, Michigan. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977, and has been classified as a multi-component prehistoric site with the major component dating to the Late Woodland/Upper Mississippian period. The terrace between Moccasin Bluff and the St. Joseph River was home to temporary camps as early as 6300 B.C. Around A.D 500, inhabitants here traded with other groups of Native Americans from Illinois and Indiana. By A.D. 1100-1400, more permanent villages were established here, and the residents farmed the local lands. By the late 1820s, European settlers moved into the area to log and farm the land. The US government then adopted a policy of moving the local Potawatomi out of the area and further west. This eventually led to the Potawatomi trail of death. The bluff is said to be named for Cogomoccasin, leader of one of the nearby displaced Potawatomi villages. In 1948, the site was excavated by a University of Michigan team, which found pottery, burials and remnants of maize and storage pits. In 2002, Michigan State University excavated a wetland area at a lower elevation that had not been previously examined. The Moccasin Bluff Site is located on a terrace along Red Bud Trail. The terrace overlooks a wide bend in the St. Joseph River containing a pair of islands. The site is protected by a half circle of hills to the north, west and south. The site is significant in being one of the few prehistoric sites in western Michigan showing evidence of intensive occupation over a long time period. This has resulted in a rich midden which yields a large quantity of artifacts. The deposits are not stratified, but the artifacts themselves, supported by radiocarbon dates and comparison to other sites, are diagnostic of several periods of Native American prehistory, ranging from c. 8500 BC to the 1600s A.D. or just prior to European contact. The Archaic (c. 8500–1500 BC), Early Woodland (c. 1500-100 BC) and Middle Woodland (c. 100BC–500 AD) are represented based on the types of artifacts recovered. However, the main occupation was in the Late Woodland period (c. 500–1500 AD) with evidence of Upper Mississippian (c. 1000–1500 AD) occupation and/or influence as well. The excavations yielded pit features, prehistoric artifacts, animal bone and plant remains. There were no trace of dwellings found at the site. Nor were there post molds that might have indicated the presence of structures. The researchers concluded that the lack of structural features may be due to the fact that the main part of the site was destroyed during the construction of the Red Bud Trail Highway.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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