by Richard Green

Throughout most of the 18th century, the bulk of Chickasaws lived in elongated villages in northeastern Mississippi, in or near modern-day Tupelo, Mississippi. During the century, the villages were not static. As circumstances dictated, some villages expanded, some contracted; others were abandoned and new ones sprang up in the characteristic setting on ridge tops overlooking one or more streams.

As a result of this movement over that century, a large number of locations in Lee County contained Chickasaw sites. That is not to say that Chickasaws were confined only to modern Lee County, but most lived within its 418 square miles.

But where exactly? They left no enduring signs or monuments and gradually natural processes-mainly wind and water-obliterated or covered up nearly all the physical remnants of Chickasaw society. Many people, mainly farmers and artifact collectors, knew where some sites were. Often sites were revealed when plows and bulldozers accidentally kicked up artifacts and human remains. A handful of archaeologists had excavated a few villages and recorded them on maps kept by the state. But nobody had ever done a county-wide systematic survey.

Until 1981. That was the year John Stubbs received a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Harvard. He thought he wanted to be an archaeologist, but unlike a lot of others headed to professional careers, he wanted to experience archaeology before committing to graduate school. He was asking about opportunities when his advisor, Dr. Stephen Williams, received a call from Dr. Pat Galloway with the Mississippi Department of Archives and History (Archives and History). Her department was looking for an archaeologist to spend a year in Tupelo doing a surface survey of historic Chickasaw sites. No digging would be permitted.

Galloway didn’t just happen to call Harvard. She knew that two Harvard professors, Jeffrey Brain and Ian Brown, had studied a collection of Chickasaw artifacts on loan to them from the Smithsonian. And she knew that the archaeologists had been contacted by and met with three of Tupelo’s most experienced artifact collectors. And these three, Julian Riley, Banks Livingston and Steve Cook held perhaps the three largest collections of historic Chickasaw artifacts. They had allowed Brown to photograph their collections. Brown said he and Brain were “flabbergasted” by the extent, diversity and quality of the artifacts that dated from the 15th century to the early 19th century. Another archaeologist, David Dye, who also saw the collections said they were “mind-blowing.”

Galloway and others from Archives and History had met with Riley, Cook and three other collectors in Tupelo to begin a systematic study of those artifacts grouped according to where they had been found. Some 200 sites were to be recorded. In general, artifacts included trade beads, metal objects, silver, pottery and stone tools. With careful study of their origin and when they were made, archaeologists would be able to assign date ranges to the sites. While working with the collectors, it was also hoped that the collectors could be persuaded to stop disturbing Chickasaw graves.

On the first day, Galloway’s team recorded 25 grave lots of artifacts. But before they could reassemble, an article in the next morning’s newspaper resulted in the end of the collaboration. The state attorney general ruled that Mississippi’s prohibition against disturbing remains in cemeteries extended to Indian graves--even though they were not marked. So collectors could be prosecuted for digging up Indian burial sites. To collectors it seemed that the media, which had been presenting them in a positive light, as adventurers and educators, was now calling them criminals. Sources in the article referred to them as “pot hunters” and “grave robbers.”

Although Galloway had asked the attorney general to issue such a ruling, she said that the timing of the announcement was an unfortunate coincidence. Riley and Cook were not named in the article, but they thought they had been set up by Galloway and angrily refused to cooperate with her and Archives and History any further.

A few months later, John Stubbs, 22, was offered the one-year job by Galloway on behalf of Archives and History. In doing the survey, he was to get help from the collectors and persuade them to stop digging at the sites. Stubbs said it was like “walking into a hornet’s nest,” but with the confidence bestowed by youth and a Harvard education, he felt up to the task.

Of course, John Stubbs was not an archaeologist in 1981, though he was identified as such in the Tupelo newspaper. To be recognized by the profession as an archaeologist, a person would have to have at least a master’s degree in archaeology and two years of accredited field work. Nor did Stubbs have any experience with Southeastern Indian artifacts. But Galloway hired him because he would have three experienced and willing tutors at Harvard, Williams, Brown and Brain, who still had the Chickasaw artifacts on loan from the Smithsonian. Stubbs took what amounted to a “crash course in Southeastern Indian archaeology” from December until he reported to Tupelo in June 1981.

The project received support from the state and the city of Tupelo, which was mobilized by some Tupelo citizens. Some of them happily squired this Harvard grad around Tupelo society. Stubbs was paid a stipend and lived in an apartment in Tupelo. A vehicle was provided by Archives and History, which had its logo and name on the side. This association served to open some doors and close others. Riley and Cook agreed to help in a limited way, by giving him general directions of site locations.

The Chickasaw Nation was not directly involved, but Gov. Overton James had been notified by Galloway beginning in 1980 that Chickasaw graves in and around Tupelo were being “desecrated.” James wrote several strongly worded letters of protest to government officials, but he could do little more for several reasons. Tribal government was still small and without much income. And laws to protect Indian graves were non-existent or weak and not enforced. Furthermore, officials could do nothing about graves located on private property (where most were). But Gov. James realized that surveying Lee County sites and educating landowners could curb the destruction of sites, so he was happy to give the project his blessing. In return, he was given periodic updates on the project by Galloway.

Stubbs’s formal method of surveying involved dividing up the county into eight soil types. Then, he would survey at random about 10 percent of each of these areas. While such a survey is scientifically sound, he quickly found that he was wasting a lot of time locating the land to be surveyed, getting permission from landowners to survey the land, and covering a lot of ground that he could be reasonably sure contained no Chickasaw sites. How could he know? For one thing, sites always seemed to be on ridge tops, so it was a waste of time surveying around stream beds. Furthermore, it soon became apparent that Riley and Cook already knew where a large number of the Chickasaw sites were, and he could simply ask one of them about the area he proposed to survey.

Stubbs met many times with them, particularly Steve Cook, an engineer. Riley, a certified public accountant, was often too busy to attend these sessions. They wanted Stubbs to know that they had only been trying to salvage artifacts that would have been destroyed by bulldozers, road graders and plows. Why, they said, many times they had warned various state officials and archaeologists about the imminent destruction of Chickasaw village sites and gotten nowhere. No official had ever taken them seriously, they said, adding that they were through butting their heads only to be insulted.

While Stubbs believed that they were sincerely interested in protecting the sites, and that they had warned state officials in vain, he did not believe that all of their collections had resulted from salvage missions and surface surveys. By their own admission, they were expert with metal detectors, the implement most often used by collectors to find European trade goods. He got the impression that some collectors justified digging sites containing graves by rationalizing that they were saving these artifacts from the destruction associated with eventual development. This attitude was abetted, probably unwittingly, by a well-intentioned civic leader who was quoted in the paper, saying that in the next ten years “all traces” of the Chickasaw past would have been destroyed by farming techniques, natural erosion and community development.

Cook’s and Riley’s relations with Stubbs were cordial but not trusting. They gave Stubbs a copy of a 30-page paper they had written in 1980 on the general locations of Chickasaw village sites. In the paper, they supported their speculation with 18th century European documents and correspondence, but didn’t include the crucial corroborating evidence of having found certain artifacts in specific locales. And despite having shown their collections to Brain and Brown, they would not show them to Stubbs or discuss in detail where certain artifacts were found. It wasn’t personal.

It was more a matter of that being then, this being now. It was disappointing, however, not being able to correlate Stubbs’s surface finds with European trade goods held by collectors. This was especially frustrating because many trade goods could be dated chronologically whereas he couldn’t detect chronological differences in the Chickasaw pottery. In summary, Stubbs knew where the Chickasaws had lived, but not when, so he could not trace their movements through time.

Nonetheless, Stubbs headed out, sometimes with suggestions from Cook and Riley and sometimes to do his random sample. In any case, he introduced himself to the landowners, usually farmers. He would tell them he was doing a survey about where the Chickasaw Indians used to live. He’d heard that maybe they had some arrowheads or pottery on their land. Would they show him, so he could record it for his survey? He told them his work had been publicized in the paper, he might show them a copy, and his work would be reported on periodically throughout the project. Then, he’d tell them that if they would let him look at their artifacts they would be “helping science.”

Many of the landowners said sure, and took him right to the locations. Then, they wanted to know everything he could tell them about the Indians. Some told him they didn’t have time; a few said, “Git!,” and produced a shotgun. Wherever he found artifacts, he recorded them and the location in his notebook, took black and white and color transparencies and a small sample of the artifacts on the surface, usually of the plain pottery pieces favored by 18th century Chickasaws.

Areas with relatively heavy concentrations of pottery sherds and/or flints (for muskets) and chert (a rock used to fashion knives for scraping deer hides) were thought to be associated with village sites. Stubbs tried to estimate village sizes, but this was often not possible because of the condition of the land (erosion, overgrown with weeds and cedar).

Survey conditions varied, usually according to the season, from okay to “horrible”--to use Stubbs’s word from one report. This meant that some likely sites could not be surveyed if the land was in cultivation or if part of the prairie location favored by the Chickasaws had “returned to nature.”

As the first year was proceeding, Stubbs told everybody that a second year would be necessary, not only to cover enough land to make the survey scientifically valid, but also to give him more time to establish a better relationship with the collectors. Support was provided by the city of Tupelo, the Lee County Library and the Mississippi Committee for the Humanities, which funneled its grant money through a group named the Chickasaw Indian Cultural Center Foundation (CICC). With the grant money, the Foundation upgraded Stubbs from archaeologist to “scholar in residence.” In addition, Stubbs would be responsible for lining up speakers for six public education programs.

Through the efforts of the CICC, the events were well publicized, but they were not well attended. The box-like Lee County Library was perhaps an unattractive venue, and though most Tupelo residents probably were aware of the former Chickasaw presence, Stubbs got the feeling that most citizens could care less. The city’s priorities were Elvis Presley (who was born there), and the Civil War’s Battle of Tupelo, in that order.

This was disappointing to Stubbs because one of his main goals was to help develop within the community a mission to protect the remaining Chickasaw sites. He hoped to do this by increasing public awareness and education about the sites generally (for public consumption) and specifically (for landowners). If the leading citizens adopted the idea that it was wrong to plunder Chickasaw grave sites, an official or unofficial mechanism to monitor and protect the sites might emerge from the best of all possible places, within the community.

But it never happened. Another reason might have been that the information about site locations was not shared with the city. So if a developer filled out an application for a permit, there was no one in city hall to warn the developer that there might be Chickasaw burials in certain places on the property.

Stubbs felt the best form of protection probably came through his low-key approach with landowners. But, he walked a fine line giving out information. He wanted to interest them in his project, not turn them into collectors.

At the end of the two-year project, Stubbs felt like he had scrupulously surveyed 200 sites or perhaps 40 to 50 percent of the remaining Chickasaw sites in Lee County. Some he couldn’t get to, some had been destroyed or submerged under roads or housing divisions. Long Town, the village where the Colberts once had lived, had been obliterated by a subdivision called Lee Acres.

Stubbs moved back to Boston and enrolled in the graduate archaeology program at Harvard. He spent part of the first few months completing his report for Archives and History. It filled three, three-ring binders that was about nine inches thick. He took a portion of the artifacts with him but mailed those back to Archives and History after he was through. He planned to build on the Chickasaw project after he received his Ph.D in archaeology from Harvard.

In a 1987 note to Sam McGahey, then chief archaeologist with Mississippi Archives and History, Stubbs wrote that he was about two years from completing his Ph.D. Meanwhile, he wrote that if anyone ever works seriously with the Chickasaw collection and has questions, “I would be more than happy to help...” And he said that once his professional education was over, he “hoped to get back to the Chickasaw in some fashion.” Then, he added, “but who knows exactly what will happen.”

Postscript

John Stubbs never did return to the Chickasaw project and is now a college counselor at a private prep school in the Atlanta area. His survey report, photographs and journals are stored at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History in Jackson. The artifacts have been in the custody of Mississippi State University archaeologist Janet Rafferty ever since she re-analyzed them in the early 1990s. Both she and archaeologist David Morgan wrote separate published articles on these artifacts. Either or both articles may be obtained for a nominal charge by contacting the Chickasaw Nation Library, (580) 436-2603. Stubbs’ site designations are included on topographical maps maintained in confidence by Archives and History. Another set is owned by the Chickasaw Nation. Stubbs says his project, which ended twenty years ago, could be part of a promising Ph.D. dissertation.