Diversity in height, body build, and facial structure indicate that the Indians originated in various parts of Asia. Common characteristics, however, such as shovel-shaped incisors, stamp all of them as clearly of “Old Mongoloid” stock. Old Mongoloid man brought with him to America only a few possessions, chief of which were spears, skins for clothing, and scraping and hide-working tools. In time his way of life gave rise to Paleo-Indian culture.
Paleo-lndian Culture. Known also as Early Hunter, Clovis, or Folsum culture, Paleo-Indian life developed on the high plains east of the Rocky Mountains. It centered on the quest for large game such as mammoths, mastodons, or large hairy elephants, giant sloths, horses, camels, and a large variety of buffalo, all of which became extinct about 6000 B.C. Such hunting was best done by small nomadic groups, and it is likely that the Early Hunters were organized into small family units, perhaps with the oldest male as chief.
The most characteristic artifact left by Paleo-Indian culture was a fluted spearpoint, identified by channels from the base to the tip on each flat side, evidently as an aid in securing the point to the shaft. The discovery of fluted points in the Ohio, Kanawha, and Potomac valleys indicates activity by Early Hunters over much of the state. Fluted points have been found in the greatest numbers along the Ohio River between Saint Marys and Parkersburg, particularly around the latter city.
Archaic Cultures. Forced to adapt to new conditions when the large game became extinct, the Early Hunters either succumbed to lack of food or blended into a new Archaic culture. The Archaic foragers apparently arrived from Asia somewhat later than the Paleo-Indian migrants. They were most numerous from about 7000 to about 1000 B.C., particularly in the centuries following the disappearance of Paleo-Indian culture. Archaic man first lived by gathering nuts, berries, roots, and edible plants and by hunting small game animals. Later, he became somewhat more selective in his food gathering, in some cases concentrating on acorns and small shellfish from the rivers.
Archaeological excavations at Saint Albans in the late 1960s revealed one of the oldest radiocarbon-dated sites in the eastern United States. The stratigraphy, which provided only one type of projectile point at each level, indicated that Indians, perhaps in family groups, had frequented the site since about 7000 B.C. probably to gather shellfish from the Kanawha River. Flooding in unusually wet periods evidently caused interruptions in occupation of the site.
West Virginia had several variants of Archaic culture. The Panhandle Archaic, principally in Ohio, Brooke, and Hancock counties, relied heavily upon freshwater clams from the Ohio River for food. Distinctive spearpoint types, grooved adzes, atlatls, and tools of bone have been found in the large refuse heaps, or middens, at Archaic campsites. Excavations of a 4,000-year-old campsite at Globe Hill, Hancock County, revealed that Archaic people continued to hunt game, especially deer and small animals. The Montane Archaic cultures in the eastern parts of the state made use of quartz, quartzite, hematite, sandstones, and other non-flint rocks to make spearheads and tools normally fashioned from flint. The Buffalo Archaic, at Buffalo, on the Kanawha River, with a comparatively recent radiocarbon dating of 1920 B.C., was probably Transitional Archaic. This stage featured the cultivation of some plants, such as the sunflower and perhaps goosefoot and pigweed, the advent of soapstone and some crude pottery vessels, and the beginnings of burial ceremonialism.
Early Woodland Culture. The fusion of the three elements of cultivation of plants, making of pottery, and burial ceremonialism characterized the cultural stage known as Early Woodland. In essence, Early Woodland was the same as Adena culture, which developed and held sway in the middle Ohio Valley between present Louisville and Pittsburgh in the millenium preceding the birth of Christ.
Early Adena culture lasted from about 1000 B.C. to about A.C. 500. It featured circular houses of poles, wickerwork, and bark. Simple burial mounds contained some stemmed projectile points, plain tubular pipes, whetstones, and pottery that was thick, crude, grit-tempered, and cord-marked, with barrel shapes and flat bottoms.
Late Adena blended Early Adena and Hopewellian cultures, which began to develop in the Illinois Valley about 500 B.C. and in time became the most influential culture in the eastern United States. Late Adena artifacts include whetstones, often carved with abstract bird designs, and carved tubular pipes showing Hopewellian characteristics. Pottery often had incised decoration along round, solid lug handles. Remains of both Early and Late Adena cultures include stone and copper gorgets, shell and copper beads, solid copper bracelets, and cones and hemispheres of stone, usually hematite.
Mounds and Earthworks. The most distinctive Adena legacy in West Virginia and the Ohio Valley consists of hundreds of earthen mounds. The Adena people and their Hopewellian and Mississippian successors built mounds over the remains of chiefs, shamans, priests, and other honored dead or as temples and houses for chiefs. They exposed the bodies of common folk after death, and, once they were denuded of flesh, burned the bones. They then buried the remains in small log tombs on the surface of the ground. The forces of Nature and the cultivation of the soil by European settlers later removed nearly every trace of these burials.
The most striking prehistoric earthwork in West Virginia is the Grave Creek Mound at Moundsville. The largest of its kind in the United States, it originally measured 69 feet high, 295 feet in diameter at its base, and 60 feet in diameter at its flat top. Joseph Tomlinson, the first owner of the site of the mound, refused all proposals to open it. In 1838 a descendant, Jesse Tomlinson, believing that it might hold treasures, consented to its exploration. Excavations revealed that it had been built in two stages on a low natural eminence. A vault, or log tomb, about twelve feet long and eight feet wide, in the center of the original mound contained skeletons of a man and a woman, about 650 circular bone and disc beads, and an atlatl. A timber-covered passageway from the north side of the mound indicated that access to the vault remained for some time after the burials. Thirty-four feet above that tomb, another was found to contain a skeleton, ivory and shell beads, a gorget, copper bracelets, and many pieces of perforated mica. A small, grayish sandstone tablet, about one and one-half by two inches in size and covered with mysterious markings, was allegedly found in the upper vault, but reputable authorities consider the stone a hoax.
Adena mounds were numerous in the South Charleston-Dunbar area of the Kanawha Valley. A mound 35 feet high and 175 feet in diameter at the base, yet standing at South Charleston, was opened in 1883-84 under the direction of the Smithsonian Institution. Excavators found a vault with five skeletons, one in the middle and the other four surrounding it in such positions as to suggest that they may have been live burials. The center skeleton was seven and one-half feet long. With it were bracelets, spearheads of black flint, hematite celts, mica plates, and large quantities of shells and beads. Nearby, another mound held a skeleton surrounded by ten others, extended horizontally with their feet pointed toward the central figure.
Scarcely less interesting are walls and other earthworks of Indian origin. Those at Bens Run, Tyler County, are the most extensive of their kind in the United States. Two parallel circular walls about 120 feet apart enclose some four hundred acres of land, within which are two small mounds, a cross wall running the entire length of the enclosure, and inner walls parallel to but not touching the outer ones. On a nearby hilltop are mounds and other evidences of ancient burial grounds. In another direction two large stone platforms or roadways extend for 192 and 100 feet. Between them is a large earth mound covered with stones in such a manner as to suggest that the area was used for religious ceremonies, possibly some form of sun worship.
Earthworks on top of a mountain overlooking the village of Mount Carbon on the upper Kanawha have baffled archaeologists. Stone walls around the mountain crests partially enclosed rock cairns, flint quarries, and work areas. In the absence of any other acceptable explanation, it must be presumed that they had a religious purpose. Strip mining has virtually destroyed the walls, and a housing development has all but obliterated village remains.
Middle Woodland Mound Builders. The identity of the builders of the earthworks at Mount Carbon and others at Pratt remains uncertain, but they were very likely Armstrong or Buck Garden people, who dominated the Kanawha Valley from about A.C.