Understanding the past is crucial for Ben Rosenkrans.
Rosenkrans is an archaeologist with an expertise in Southeastern Native Americans. He spoke to the Columbus Exchange Club Thursday afternoon and explained that Mississippi’s Native Americans weren’t at all like the portrayal of Native Americans in popular media.
“Teepees, riding on horses, feathered war bonnets — the Indians of this area knew nothing about that, never saw such things,” he said.
Archaeological records indicate Native Americans have inhabited the area for about 12,000 years, Rosenkrans said.
Bits of their culture remains scattered through the area, as mounds or various arrowheads and other cultural artifacts. The mounds are the most easily recognizable to the naked eye — from the older, domed, small ones that Rosenkrans said were primarily used for burials, to the large, rectangular ones he said served a range of possible purposes including places for temple construction.
Smaller artifacts are still common. Some, such as the arrowheads or tobacco pipes he showed Exchange Club members in a slideshow during his presentation, are scattered throughout the Golden Triangle.
There’s even a former Native American archaeological site that sits atop the Golden Triangle Regional Airport, he said.
“Quite a bit of excavation went on,” Rosenkrans said. “I was a part of some of that before the construction of that airport.”
He also pointed out that Native Americans weren’t’ necessarily conservationists, as they’re often portrayed. He said it wasn’t unusual to for them to kill an animal to take one part and to let the rest go to waste.
Some Native Americans in the Four Corners region in the western U.S. ultimately doomed themselves from resource overuse, he added.
“We can find shells and mussels and obscure species that went extinct several thousand years ago, and it was probably from the siltation in many of these creeks and rivers from their farming operations,” Rosenkrans said. “These guys were annihilating themselves. If we don’t understand that process and take note, we’re going to do the same thing.”
Rosenkrans said Native Americans have been influential in every war the United States has fought, including Ely Parker, a Seneca who served as General Ulysses S. Grant’s secretary and wrote the final draft of surrender terms at Appomattox to end the Civil War, or the Navajo Code Talkers who helped encrypt American communication during both World Wars.
He then lamented the United States’ treatment of Native Americans.
“I find it rather ironic because this nation has broken every promise that it ever made to the Native American Indians,” he said.
Alex Holloway was formerly a reporter with The Dispatch.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 48 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
