Leary Site

About this property

Leary Site, also known as 25-RH-1 or Leary-Kelly Site is an archaeological site near Rulo, Nebraska and the Big Nemaha River. The site now lies entirely on the reservation of the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska. The area was once a village and burial site. On July 12, 1804, during their expedition into the Louisiana Purchase, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark stopped along the Nemaha River. William Clark set out and noted several mounds in the area, the smaller mounds he inferred to be most likely trash pits and where homes had formerly been and the larger mounds to be burial mounds. Frederick H. Sterns, faculty the Peabody Museum of the Harvard University, led an excavation of the site in the year 1915. During his excavations, he noted several lodges in the valley of the Nemaha River and many more on the neighboring Missouri River Bluffs. E. E. Blackman led a three-week excavation of the site in the summer 1926. By this time, the site had been further disturbed by the use of farming. During this three-week period, several shards of pottery were excavated. These pottery shards were shell-tempered as opposed to shard tempered or stone pottery, which is more common to this area. Blackman stated that by identifying the pottery, archaeologists would be able to then identify the people that inhabited the area. W. Duncan Strong identified the area as a site of the Oneota. This was one of the furthest western sites of this tribe, who normally resided in areas such as Missouri. In 1935, Strong's theory of the Oneota was evaluated by T. A. Hill, who was a member of the staff at the Nebraska Historical Society. Hill oversaw a three-week excavation at the site and was assisted by George F. Lamb and a crew of archaeologists. In the three-week period, the group of archaeologists managed to excavate 153 pits, one housing area, seven burial sites, and several scattered test pit excavations. Lamb and his crew also found several projectile points that varied in color, gray, pink, white, and brown and were made of flint. Two different samples of burnt pottery were sent to the University of Wisconsin for radiocarbon dating. The sample of pottery dated to 1210 AD and 1350 AD. In 1939 the University of Nebraska Archaeological Survey excavated two pits. In the late 1950s George A. Agogino and a crew of excavators went out to the site to dig test pits. Agogino at the time of the excavation taught anthropology course and the University of Nebraska. The pits the crew dug were about 18 inches in depth and contained femurs, tibias, and fragments of skulls. The remains were found to belong to at least three different individuals. In 1965, the Nebraska State Historical Society sent a crew led by John Garrett and Wendell Frantz on a ten-week excavation of the area. During this time the crew excavated 30 pits, three burials, a house, and several other features such as hearths.

Location

Categories

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.

More in Richardson County

Historic places, battles, and census history across Richardson County.

More historic places in Nebraska

Browse all historic places in Nebraska.

Conflict records

Explore 19,000+ military engagements across American history.

Nebraska history

Colonial settlement, territorial period, and statehood narrative.