Swamp, New Hanover, Vol. III
By Robert Wood
This is a collection of 60 articles on the history of Swamp, New Hanover, Pa., which appeared in the "Community Connection" newspaper from July 2007 to July 2008. Articles include: An Interesting Civil War Letter; Arrowheads; Beekeeping in the Old Days; Butchering Day on the Farm; Falkner Swamp Reformed Church Schools; The Frey-Bertolet Family of Swamp; The Goschenhoppenn Folk Festival; Log Houses in the New Hanover Area; Medinger Redware; The Pennsylvania German Kitchen Garden; The Swamp College; among others.
Volumes I and II by Robert Wood are also available and similar:
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Robert Wood, 3012 Reifsnyder Road, Gilbertsville, PA 19525

A sample article about arrowheads from Swamp, New Hanover Vol III

Arrowheads

New Hanover area farmers’ plows would often turn up “arrowheads” on high ground near streams. In bygone years we would spot them before the gardener’s hoe or the horse drawn cultivator or just walking around plowed fields after a rain washed them off. Bisected by the Minister Creek and with the Swamp Creek nearby, a ridge on our family farm produced thousands of points which we eagerly collected, always looking for unbroken or “perfect” specimens.

Although some archeologists might find little value in these surface finds as none of them are in their original matrix, my collection does, I think, yield important information about Native American pre-history in this area since the thousands of artifacts are from the same site. One conclusion that can be drawn is that the site was more or less continuously inhabited for at least 12,000 years because the artifacts span all eras of Indian pre-history.

When Lord DeLaWarre, governor of Virginia, explored the Delaware River in 1610 he noted the large number of Indians living there. Later named the Delaware Indians by Europeans, they however called themselves the Lenni Lenape or the “original People,” a group loosely bonded by common totem symbols and dialect. (Since this is a historical article, I will use the old term “Indian” rather than the more PC “Native American”.) When the Lenni Lenape settled here is unknown as earlier populations inhabited this region since the retreat of the Wisconsin glacier about 14,000 years ago.

The artifacts that are left here are stone. All organic materials--- wood, skins, cloth, bones--- have long since decayed away in the damp, acidic soil of New Hanover. Elsewhere in the state and Eastern U.S. there are shelters and caves that yield some organic material which archeologists use to piece together a historical narrative.

Probably going unrecognized by us young collectors were bits of pottery since we were mainly interested in “arrowheads” and other worked stone tools like axes and knives.

The stone points illustrated with this article are arranged chronologically with the oldest at the top. Shown here in the top row are stabbing lance points representative of the paleo and early archaic eras which emerged soon after the ice sheet melted when grass lands gave way to mixed hardwoods. The people who made them were highly nomadic with a hunting economy and tailored skin clothing. Following the migrating herds, small bands of nomadic hunters who may very well have downed the ice age mega-fauna such as musk ox, mastodon, caribou and the like. My finds also include choppers, knives, and scrapers associated with butchering large animals.

The second row from the top has examples of broad spear points. These are representative of the archaic era, a broad span of time from roughly 8000 BC to 2000 BC Many of them are made of a beautiful jasper. It is believed the life became less highly nomadic with seasonal camps within large family territories. They had domestic dogs (now extinct), made a variety of chipped, pecked, and polished stone tools such as grooved axes and lived a hunting-fishing-gathering nomadic life.

The third row from the top show what we typically call “arrowheads,” but aren’t arrowheads at all but are spear thrower points. The bow is a late arrival coming on the scene only a few thousand years ago. For most of the time, the Indians’ main hunting weapon was not the bow but the spear thrower. Called an atlatl, the spear thrower worked like an extension to the arm. Gripped in the throwing hand, the atlatl was a stick about two feet long with a hook at the end that engaged a socket at the back of a dart which was fletched like an arrow but much larger. This extension to the arm developed more torque and a much higher speed to the projectile. In fact there was recently a movement afoot to make the atlatl a legal weapon to use for deer hunting in Pennsylvania. A common find is a curious stone object shaped a bit like a butterfly with a hole drilled through it longitudinally which is now known to have been a weight affixed to the end of the atlatl. Centrifugal force acting on the stone weight would cause the atlatl socket and dart to stay out in a larger arc as it was hurled overhand and so develop more speed.

The bottom two rows show true arrowheads. These point are small, many about the size of a quarter or smaller. The bow arrived on the scene during the transition from hunting to a gardening economy around 2,000 BC Agriculture and gardening led eventually to a semi-permanent village life. Eventually by the late woodland period hunting and fishing perhaps supplemented the garden rather than the other way round.

The history of the Eastern woodland Indians as it is pieced together by archeologists is one of a gradual transition from highly nomadic big game hunting to hunting-gathering and eventually to more settled village life centered around agriculture.

By the time the Germans arrived in Swamp, the Indians had been acculturated to European presence for almost a hundred years. Bartering with Dutch fur traders in the early 17th century and later with the Swedes, the Indians developed a hunger for European trade goods that wiped out Pennsylvania beavers and made serious inroads in the populations of many fur bearing creatures. Payments for furs and later for the land itself were made in iron and brass pots, axes, awls, needles, scissors, knives, guns, powder and shot, blankets, bells and beads and the inevitable casks of rum. To William Penn’s credit, when he bought Indians’ land he paid a fair price in trade goods. In any case, the early colonial period represented the decimation of the native population although some few individuals remained here until the early 19th century.

New Hanover was never glaciated; the ice sheet terminated near Easton. During the glacier this area was grassland watered by summer melt water and rain. The tall summer grass supported herds of extinct mega-fauna (large animals). Ironically, in the lee of the glacier the winters here were relatively dry and snow free, just intensely cold. Thinly scattered across the entire United States is a unique lance point called a “Clovis” point named after Clovis, New Mexico, where it was first found and identified mixed with the bones of a mammoth kill. The point is a finely made lance point with a characteristic central groove. There is apparently legitimate speculation among some archeologists that it was made by pre-Indian ice-age hunters that migrated from Europe by skirting the ice sheet. Ocean levels then being 300 feet lower than now, the configuration of the land masses would have made this less impossible than it seems today. I have not found a Clovis point here in New Hanover, but I understand that some collectors have. I would be interested in hearing from them.