Native Americans in Brown County
no pottery, no containers. They began to try to cultivate plants, growing squash and gourds for containers and domesticating berries and cattail in their first gardens. Artifacts reveal that as time progressed they began to contact others, trading for flints or other materials from far away.
They developed the atl-atl, a spear-throwing stick which increased leverage and so gave a longer throw and greater impact on target.
Native Americans were certainly traveling through the area by the Early Woodland Period, about 1,000 B. C. to 150 B. C., but the period is usually marked by the introduction of ceramics, and very little pottery has been found here.
During the Mississippian Period, 1000 to 1450 A. D., Native American cultures increased in size and complexity. The Mississippi River valley was the home of large permanent
agricultural settlements like Cahokia, in Collinsville, Ilinois, Moundville in Alabama, and the Angel Mounds site along the Ohio River in Indiana.
Before white settlers arrived, Brown County was governed by the Shawnee tribe. They gave rights to the Delaware to hunt here and the Miami got the ceremonial rights to Browning Mountain, according to local native American enthusiast Teed Howard.
“ They met there at least once a year, probably during the solstice, although it’ s not part of their oral history today,” he said.
Historian Sam Johnson wrote that the natives who lived mainly in Brown County were living a different, harder lifestyle than those
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