1. The Converse Mounds: New Research on Michigan's
Greatest Hopewell Site
By John R. Halsey
State Archaeologist
Michigan Historical Center
Lansing
The Converse Mounds (20 Kt 2) lay on the west side of the Grand River
in the City of Grand Rapids, Michigan. From the late 1850s to the the
mid-1880s, the area containing the mounds was platted and developed.
The mounds ironically bear the name of the most important early developer
of this area, James W. "Deacon" Converse. During these "improvements" the
mounds were leveled by construction crews, the fill was pushed into low
areas, and the mounds disappeared.
Although local antiquarians undertook limited excavations in many of
the mounds, no full reports survive, only partial accounts with little
in the way of illustrations (e.g., Coffinberry 1962a, 1962b, 1964a, 1964b;
Coffinberry and Strong 1876). Nevertheless, people were watching, and
artifacts were recovered from both prehistoric burial pits and intrusive
historic graves (Baxter 1891:15-18; Belknap 1922:41-45).
The illustrations accompanying this article were scanned from photocopied
reproductions of original artifact drawings, handwritten notes, and
sketches. For legibility purposes, we have taken the liberty of transcribing
the original handwritten notes. Care has been taken to maintain the
approximate placement and size of the text relative to each drawing
or sketch; however, some words could not be interpreted, and some
gaps and uncertainties remain. Images are not represented at a 1:1
scale. |
|
|
click
on image to enlarge |
The most spectacular discovery was a Hopewellian
burial pit trenched through by a water line on May 30, 1885. This
find yielded large
nuggets of copper and silver, copper panpipe jackets, copper celts,
drilled effigy and true bear canines, platform pipes, and an effigy
beetle done in antler.
This discovery and the subsequent placement
of the artifacts in Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History and
Harvard's Peabody Museum preserved the raw material for subsequent
analyses (Fitting 1971; Halsey 1990; Harms and Halsey 1988; and
Quimby 1941a, 1941b, 1943, 1944).
Following the 1885 find, there is no record of additional discoveries.
The number of mounds and the exact locations of most were forgotten. |
|
|
| |
|
| |
click
on image to enlarge |
| |
 |
click
on image to enlarge |
|
 |
|
 |
The Converse Mounds became a sad archeological footnote. Our best
Hopewellian site was reduced to a handful of artifacts scattered
among museums. Other artifacts had vanished into private collections
or even the jeweler's crucible. The 1941 "Goodall Focus" summary
by George Quimby, himself a Grand Rapids native, seemed the closest
thing to a "final" report there would ever be. |
| |
click
on image to enlarge |
| Grand Rapids grew to be one of Michigan's largest and most
important cities. The west bank of the Grand was built up, and
buildings were torn down and new ones built. Ultimately, like
so many American cities, Grand Rapids was divided up by high-speed,
limited-access highways. One of these crossed directly over the
area once occupied by the Converse Mounds. However, by 1998 it
was apparent that the section of US 131 in this area was not
up to contemporary design standards and required reconstruction. |
 |
|
| |
|
|
Because of the possible continued survival of subsurface
burial pits and the significance of the site, it was the
joint decision of the Michigan Department of Transportation
(MDOT), the Michigan State Historic Preservation Office,
and the Office of the State Archaeologist, Michigan Department
of State (MDOS) that the time had come to reassess all
available information pertinent to the locations of the
individual
mounds of the Converse group vis-à-vis the proposed realignment
of the right-of-way.
Commonwealth Cultural Resources Group
(CCRG) of Jackson, Michigan, was selected to do a land-use
history, a Phase I survey of the right-of-way, and a
review of archival holdings in Grand Rapids. |
|
click
on image to enlarge |
 |
 |
|
The comprehensive archival research by CCRG's
C. Stephan Demeter included a review of newspaper accounts
contemporaneous with the developments on the west bank, as
well as the holdings of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology
and Ethnology and the Public Museum of Grand Rapids at the
Van Andel Museum Center. It also published for the first
time a trove of manuscripts, maps, and artifact drawings
in the Porter Collection, Local History Department, Grand
Rapids Public Library. These documents had been created by
Grand Rapids residents who had known the mounds most of their
lives and were eyewitnesses to their destruction (Demeter
and Robinson 1999). Although a few archeologists were aware
of their existence, these documents had not previously been
so thoroughly examined and compared with other documentation.
Some were by Wright L. Coffinberry, Grand Rapids' best
known antiquarian.
|
| The most useful documents were pencil-drawn maps showing
the mounds in 1850, another done in 1887 showing the
locations of mounds in relation to local landmarks, and
vertical sections through a mound at three-foot intervals.
There were also pencil drawings of artifacts (many rendered
1:1), including complete and restored pottery vessels
from the mounds, many accompanied by date and provenience
information. These had all been done by Thomas W. Porter,
a local sign painter who possessed a fair artistic talent. |
|
| |
click
on image to enlarge |
click
on image to enlarge |
|
|
|
|
The range of ceramics from the mounds and
present in the Porter drawings confirms earlier conclusions
that the Converse Mounds were built in middle to late
Hopewellian times, whereas the nearby Norton Mounds group
(20 Kt 1) was almost exclusively early Hopewellian (Griffin
et al. 1970). Porter's drawings of other sherds reveal
a Late Woodland period of occupation. In addition, the
mound group was also the site of a sizeable village in
historic times.
|
|
click
on image to enlarge |
click
on image to enlarge |
click
on image to enlarge |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Demeter's research revealed a maximum
total of 29 mounds, but there is a substantial
margin of error in location for most of them. Initial
plans for highway relocation indicate that the
locations of only one or two mounds will be affected.
These areas will be archeologically tested prior
to construction to avoid a recurrence of the 1885
Decoration Day discovery.
References
Baxter, Albert
1891 History of the City of Grand Rapids
Michigan. Munsell & Company, New York.
Belknap, Charles E.
1922 The Yesterdays of Grand Rapids
The Dean-Hicks Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Coffinberry, Wright L.
1962a Coffinberry Manuscript - Article IV.
The Coffinberry News Bulletin 9(8):88-91.
1962b Coffinberry Manuscript - Article
IV (continued).
The Coffinberry News Bulletin 9(10):115-116.
1964a Coffinberry Manuscript (Starting
Article 11, "That Archaeological Find").
The Coffinberry News Bulletin 11(1):8-9.
1964b Coffinberry Manuscript (Article
11, continued).
The Coffinberry News Bulletin 11(3):25-26.
Coffinberry, Wright L., and E. A. Strong
1876 Notes Upon Some Explorations of Ancient Mounds in the Vicinity
of Grand Rapids, Kent County, Michigan.
Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science 24:293-297.
Demeter, C. Stephan, and Elaine H. Robinson
1999 Phase I Archaeological Literature Review and Above- Ground
Assessment of the US 131 S-Curve Crossing
of the Grand River in the City of Grand Rapids, Kent County, Michigan.
Report No. R-0292. Commonwealth Cultural Resources Group, Inc., Jackson,
Michigan.
Fitting, James E.
1971 Rediscovering Michigan Archaeology: Notes on the 1885 Converse
Mound Collection.
The Michigan Archaeologist 17(1):33-39.
Griffin, James B., Richard E. Flanders, and Paul
F. Titterington
1970 The Burial Complexes of the Knight and Norton Mounds in Illinois
and Michigan. Memoir No. 2.
Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Halsey, John R.
1990 Weatherly's Antler Beetle.
The Michigan Archaeologist 36(3-4):115-122.
Harms, Richard H., and John R. Halsey
1988 Wright L. Coffinberry: A Renaissance Man in Western Michigan.
Michigan History Magazine 72(5):24-32.
Quimby, George I., Jr.
1941a The Goodall Focus: An Analysis of Ten Hopewellian Components
in Michigan and Indiana.
Prehistory Research Series 2(2). Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis.
1941b Hopewellian Pottery Types in
Michigan.
Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters 26:489-494.
1943 The Ceramic Sequence within the
Goodall Focus.
Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters 28:543-548.
1944 Some New Data on the Goodall Focus.
Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters 29:419-423.
About the Author: Dr. Halsey
is the State Archaeologist, whose office is in
the Michigan Historical Center, Lansing MI 48918. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
