#Etzanoa

[dailyhistoryposts]

Pre-contact Native American Cities

There were a number of large population centers in the Americas. I will be focusing on those in what is now the US and Canada, but large cities also existed south of the Rio Grande.

Generally considered the greatest pre-Columbian Native American city, Cahokia once sat directly across the river from what is now St. Louis, Missouri. It was settled around 600 CE and existed from 1050-1350 CE, with its apex around 1100 CE. Cahokia likely had more than 20,000 people living in (thousands more than London, at the time) and was the most influential urban settlement of the Mississippian culture.

Cahokia, on the Mississippi River, was an important center for trade and agriculture. It maintained trade links with communities from the Great Lakes to the Gulf Coast and had people living outside the main urban center. Cahokia, and the Mississippians who built it, were known for their incredible urban planning and the mounds that made up the city center. Today, the Cahokia Mounds are a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Second, the Poverty Point (named after a 19th-century plantation on top of it) culture was centralized in what is now northeastern Louisiana. Like Cahokia, it had a number of important mounds for urban life. It was constructed over multiple generations, and radiocarbon dating suggests that earthwork construction was in progress from 1800-1200 BCE. Poverty Point is one of the most ancient cities in the Americas. Poverty Point had a rich material culture include fired earthware, copperwork, and stone vessels. They had manufacturing and long-distance trade.

Third, the Calusa (Caloosahatchee) people of the southwest coast of Florida, on the coast of the Gulf. They also built mounds and, at the time of European contact in the 16th century, had a population in the 10,000s. They were likely the only indigenous North Americans who established a kingdom without practicing agriculture, using the abundant fishing resources instead. The main mound, Mound Key, was a manmade structure with canals, watercourts, and other features. The Calusa were notable for their carved-wood art and their sophisticated engineering and architecture. A single manor on Mound Key was capable of holding 2,000 people.

Fourth, the Mogollon culture was one of the major cultures of southwest America. It had multiple large and dense settlements, but one that's considered a proper city. Called Paquimé, it was settled from 1130-1450 CE. It had a population in the thousands, who lived in multi-story buildings and an irrigation-based agricultural economy. They had a complex system of water control that included drainage, reservoirs, channels, and sewage. The city had a market, ballcourts, and the production of copper and ceramic objects.

The final city to discuss is Etzanoa. Located in what is now Arkansas City, Kansas on the Arkansas River, it actually flourished after and alongside European contact, mostly with the Spanish. Etzanoa housed approximately 20,000 people. It was a seat of power for the Wichita and a trading hub.

[Image Description: A black and white map of the United States. States are outlined but not labeled. Five stars mark the location of cities. Cahokia is on the border of Arkansas and Illinois. Etzanoa is on the border of Kansas and Oklahoma. Poverty Point is on the border of Louisiana and Mississippi. Mound Key is in southern Florida. Paquimé is slightly below New Mexico.

[archaeologicalnews]

Drone survey reveals large earthwork at ancestral Wichita site in Kansas

A Dartmouth-led study using multisensor drones has revealed a large circular earthwork at what may be Etzanoa, an archaeological site near Wichita, Kansas. Archaeologists speculate that the site was visited by a Spanish expedition, led by Juan de Oñate, a controversial conquistador, in 1601. The earthwork may be the remains of a so-called "council circle," as it is similar to several other circular earthworks in the region, according to the study's findings published in American Antiquity.

"Our findings demonstrate that undiscovered monumental earthworks may still exist in the Great Plains. You just need a different archaeological approach to recognize them," explained lead author, Jesse J. Casana, a professor and chair of the department of anthropology at Dartmouth. "Our results are promising in suggesting that there may be many other impressive archaeological features that have not yet been documented, if we look hard enough," he added. Read more.

[tlatollotl]

Of all the places to discover a lost city, this pleasing little community seems an unlikely candidate.

There are no vine-covered temples or impenetrable jungles here — just an old-fashioned downtown, a drug store that serves up root beer floats and rambling houses along shady brick lanes.

Yet there’s always been something — something just below the surface.

Locals have long scoured fields and river banks for arrowheads and bits of pottery, amassing huge collections. Then there were those murky tales of a sprawling city on the Great Plains and a chief who drank from a goblet of gold.

A few years ago, Donald Blakeslee, an anthropologist and archaeology professor at Wichita State University, began piecing things together. And what he’s found has spurred a rethinking of traditional views on the early settlement of the Midwest, while potentially filling a major gap in American history.

Using freshly translated documents written by the Spanish conquistadors more than 400 years ago and an array of high-tech equipment, Blakeslee located what he believes to be the lost city of Etzanoa, home to perhaps 20,000 people between 1450 and 1700.

They lived in thatched, beehive-shaped houses that ran for at least five miles along the bluffs and banks of the Walnut and Arkansas rivers. Blakeslee says the site is the second-largest ancient settlement in the country after Cahokia in Illinois.

On a recent morning, Blakeslee supervised a group of Wichita State students excavating a series of rectangular pits in a local field.

Jeremiah Perkins, 21, brushed dirt from a half-buried black pot.

Others sifted soil over screened boxes, revealing arrowheads, pottery and stone scrapers used to thin buffalo hides.

Blakeslee, 75, became intrigued by Etzanoa after scholars at UC Berkeley retranslated in 2013 the often muddled Spanish accounts of their forays into what is now Kansas. The new versions were more cogent, precise and vivid.

“I thought, ‘Wow, their eyewitness descriptions are so clear it’s like you were there.’ I wanted to see if the archaeology fit their descriptions,” he said. “Every single detail matched this place.”

Kacie Larsen of Wichita State University shakes dirt through a screened box to see what artifacts may emerge. David Kelly / For The Times

Conquistadors are often associated with Mexico, but a thirst for gold drove them into the Midwest as well.

Francisco Vazquez de Coronado came to central Kansas in 1541 chasing stories of a fabulously wealthy nobleman who napped beneath trees festooned with tinkling gold bells. He found no gold, but he did find Native Americans in a collection of settlements he dubbed Quivira.

In 1601, Juan de Oñate led about 70 conquistadors from the Spanish colony of New Mexico into south-central Kansas in search of Quivira in the hopes of finding gold, winning converts for the Catholic Church and extracting tribute for the crown.

According to Spanish records, they ran into a tribe called the Escanxaques, who told of a large city nearby where a Spaniard was allegedly imprisoned. The locals called it Etzanoa.

As the Spaniards drew near, they spied numerous grass houses along the bluffs. A delegation of Etzanoans bearing round corn cakes met them on the river bank. They were described as a sturdy people with gentle dispositions and stripes tattooed from their eyes to their ears. It was a friendly encounter until the conquistadors decided to take hostages. That prompted the entire city to flee.

Oñate’s men wandered the empty settlement for two or three days, counting 2,000 houses that held eight to 10 people each. Gardens of pumpkins, corn and sunflowers lay between the homes.

The Spaniards could see more houses in the distance, but they feared an Etzanoan attack and turned back.

That’s when they were ambushed by 1,500 Escanxaques. The conquistadors battled them with guns and cannons before finally withdrawing back to New Mexico, never to return.

This bluff overlooks the spot where many believe Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate met a delegation of Etzanoans. David Kelly / For The Times

French explorers arrived a century later but found nothing. Disease likely wiped out Etzanoa, leaving it to recede into legend.

Blakeslee enlisted the help of the National Park Service, which used a magnetometer to detect variations in the earth’s magnetic field and find features around town that looked like homes, storage pits and places where fires were started.

Then, relying on descriptions from the conquistadors, he discovered what he believes was the battle site in an upscale neighborhood of Arkansas City.

Volunteers using metal detectors found three half-inch iron balls under the field. Blakeslee said they were 17th century Spanish cartridge shot fired from a cannon. A Spanish horseshoe nail was also found.

It all lent credibility to the detailed accounts left by the conquistadors.

The battlefield sits in Warren “Hap” McLeod’s backyard.

“It’s a great story,” he said. “There was a lost city right under our noses.”

McLeod, 71, offered a quick tour of the area.

He started at Camp Quaker Haven overlooking the spot where Oñate would have encountered the Etzanoans. McLeod then drove up to the country club, the highest point in the city of roughly 12,500 people.

“Lots of artifacts have been taken from here,” McLeod said.

In 1994, thousands of relics were unearthed during road construction. In 1959, the renowned archaeologist Waldo Wedel wrote in his classic book, “An Introduction to Kansas Archeology,” that the valley floor and bluffs here “were littered with sherds, flints, and other detritus” that went on for miles.

“Now we know why,” McLeod said. “There were 20,000 people living here for over 200 years.”

Local rancher Jason Smith, 47, said he had seen collections “that would blow your mind.”

“Truckloads of stuff,” he said. “Worked stone tools, flints. One guy had 100 boxes at his house.”

Russell Bishop, 66, worked at the country club as a kid.

“My boss had an entire basement full of pottery and all kinds of artifacts,” he recalled. “We’d be out there working and he would recognize a black spot on the ground as an ancient campfire site.”

Bishop, who now lives outside Denver, has coffee cans full of arrowheads. He spread some on his counter.

“I don’t think anyone knew how big this all was,” he said. “I’m glad they’re finally getting to the bottom of it.”

Kansas State Archaeologist Robert Hoard said that based on the Spanish accounts and the evidence of a large settlement, it’s “plausible” that Blakeslee has found Etzanoa.

Still, he would like more evidence.

The early Great Plains had long been imagined as a vast empty space populated by nomadic tribes following buffalo herds. But if Blakeslee is right, at least some of the tribes were urban. They built large towns, raised crops, made fine pottery, processed bison on a massive scale and led a settled existence. There were trade connections all the way to the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan in Mexico.

"So this was not some remote place. The people traded and lived in huge communities," Blakeslee said. "Everything we thought we knew turns out to be wrong. I think this needs a place in every schoolbook."

And that may just be the beginning. Blakeslee has found archaeological evidence in Rice and McPherson counties for other large settlements extending for miles, which he believes existed around the same time as Etzanoa.

He has published his findings in the peer-reviewed journal Plains Anthropologist, and next spring he will present his evidence for Etzanoa at the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A bigger excavation is planned for next summer.

The Wichita Nation, based three hours south in Anadarko, Okla., is watching all of this carefully. Experts believe the Etzanoans were their ancestors.

“The accounts of Oñate and Coronado have been interpreted for years,” said Gary McAdams, cultural program planner and historic preservation officer for the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes, which number about 3,300. “We had a suspicion it was settled like this, but now it’s starting to be documented, which makes it feel more real.”

In the meantime, Arkansas City is trying to determine how to promote its new claim to fame. Etzanoa remains mostly underground or on private land. Yet that hasn’t deterred interest.

“We get about 10 calls a day to see the lost city,” said Pamela Crain, director of the Convention & Visitors Bureau. “The vision is to have a visitors center. The other key is to persuade landowners to allow people onto their property.”

Professor Donald Blakeslee of Wichita State University shows a black pot unearthed by student Jeremiah Perkins, behind him. David Kelly / For The Times

Russell Bishop still has the arrowheads he collected as a kid in Arkansas City. David Kelly / For The Times

Limited tours began last spring, focusing on key historical and archaeological sites. Town leaders are hoping for a UNESCO World Heritage site designation.

Back at the dig site, all eyes were on Jeremiah Perkins as he lifted the hefty black potsherd from the dirt.

Blakeslee dropped into the pit for a closer look. It was the largest artifact of the summer, perhaps 12 inches high.

“That’s a nice big cooking pot,” he exclaimed.

Yet many mysteries remain about the people of Etzanoa.

“How were they organized? How did they farm the bluffs? How did they maximize bison herds?” Blakeslee asked. “The questions go on and on and on.”

And the thought of that made him smile.

[talesofdrunkennessandcruelty]

Archaeologists explore a rural field in Kansas, and a lost city emerges

[techmaqofficial]

Drone Survey Reveals Wichita 'Council Circle' Monument on a Ranch in Kansas

Drone Survey Reveals Wichita ‘Council Circle’ Monument on a Ranch in Kansas

[ad_1]

Modern-day drone sensors can sometimes detect what’s invisible to the human eye, such as the remains of a historical city called Etzanoa or the ‘Great Settlement’ in the fields of Wichita, Kansas – remains that have been buried for hundreds of years.

  Researchers think they’ve found what’s known as a ‘council circle’ monument in Etzanoa, and while no one is quite sure exactly what these…

[t5ltherapy]

Archaeologists explore a rural field in Arkansas City,Kansas, and a lost city emerges http://dlvr.it/R1Wd3P http://dlvr.it/R1Wd3P

[shamandrummer]

Pre-Columbian Council Circle Discovered in Kansas

Archaeologists using new drone-sensing technology have found evidence of an enormous, horseshoe-shaped trench hidden beneath a Kansas ranch. The rounded earthwork, which may be part of the largest pre-Hispanic settlement north of Mexico, appears to be what's known as a council circle. To date, researchers have identified five such structures across 22 sites in the area. Ancestors of the modern Wichita and Affiliated Tribes lived in what is now southeastern Kansas between about 900 and 1650 A.D. They lived in grass-roofed pit houses; hunted bison; and farmed crops like squash, beans and corn.

Over time, erosion filled the newly discovered earthwork with topsoil, concealing it from view. But modern sensors can detect subtle differences in temperature and foliage between the filled trench and the earth around it. The researchers located the ditch through a combination of drone surveying and LiDAR, infrared and thermal imaging.

Relic hunters who looted the region in the 1800s gave council circles their name, but the earthworks' actual purpose remains unclear. Researchers have previously posited that the structures served as the site of ritual ceremonies, housed community elites or offered protection from invaders. Archaeologists now suggest that sites including the just-detailed trench were part of Etzanoa, a population center dubbed the "Great Settlement" by Spanish conquistadors.

Spanish colonizers first encountered Etzanoa in the 1590s, when an unauthorized group traveled north in search of Quivira, a mythical city of gold. Though the expedition ended violently, one survivor managed to return and inform the Spanish of what he'd seen. In 1601, conquistador Juan de Onate marched to the settlement, captured a resident and tortured him until he revealed the city's name.

Archaeologists first excavated the site of the newly discovered council circle more than 60 years ago. But by 1967, they felt that they had discovered all of the mounds and earthworks located along Walnut River. Thanks to new technology, contemporary researchers have proven these predecessors wrong. Led by Dartmouth anthropologist Jesse Casana, the study's authors used nighttime thermal imaging to measure how daytime heat dissipated from the soil. The ancient ditch, which measures roughly 165 feet in diameter and 6.5 feet thick, is filled with looser soil than the tightly packed prairie around it; as a result, it holds more moisture and radiates less heat at night.

Casana and his colleagues identified the ditch as a cooler, darker horseshoe shape in a warm landscape. They then followed up during the day with photography and infrared imaging. The team also reviewed previous aerial and satellite images, spotting the circular formation in photos taken in June 2015 and July 2017. Researchers plan to continue exploring the site with remote-sensing techniques, which will hopefully enable them to develop precise targets for future excavations.

This article first appeared in the September 2020 issue of Smithsonian Magazine

[richlayers]

Another perfect day in Kansas. #etzanoa #nativehistory (at Arkansas City, Kansas)

[kawuli]

Using freshly translated documents written by the Spanish conquistadors more than 400 years ago and an array of high-tech equipment, Blakeslee located what he believes to be the lost city of Etzanoa, home to perhaps 20,000 people between 1450 and 1700.

They lived in thatched, beehive-shaped houses that ran for at least five miles along the bluffs and banks of the Walnut and Arkansas rivers. Blakeslee says the site is the second-largest ancient settlement in the country after Cahokia in Illinois.

The early Great Plains had long been imagined as a vast empty space populated by nomadic tribes following buffalo herds. But if Blakeslee is right, at least some of the tribes were urban. They built large towns, raised crops, made fine pottery, processed bison on a massive scale and led a settled existence. There were trade connections all the way to the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan in Mexico.

"So this was not some remote place. The people traded and lived in huge communities," Blakeslee said. "Everything we thought we knew turns out to be wrong. I think this needs a place in every schoolbook."

[historical-nonfiction]

The discovery of a town of 20,000 could put south-central Kansas on the map as the second-biggest settlement of Native Americans found in the United States, a Wichita State anthropologist says. The city was believed mythological for centuries. Spanish accounts of a permanent settlement with 20,000 Native Americans in it were thought to be exaggerated.

With new archaeological evidence of Etzanoa emerging, historians and archaeologists are having to rethink what they know about what North America looked like before Columbus.

[vagabondretired]

Dig this Dorothy: Locals have long scoured fields and river banks for arrowheads and bits of pottery, amassing huge collections. Then there were those murky tales of a sprawling city on the Great Plains and a chief who drank from a goblet of gold. A few years ago, Donald Blakeslee, an anthropologist and archaeology professor at Wichita State University, began piecing things together. And what he’s found has spurred a rethinking of traditional views on the early settlement of the Midwest, while potentially filling a major gap in American history. Using freshly translated documents written by the Spanish conquistadors more than 400 years ago and an array of high-tech equipment, Blakeslee located what he believes to be the lost city of Etzanoa, home to perhaps 20,000 people between 1450 and 1700. They lived in thatched, beehive-shaped houses that ran for at least five miles along the bluffs and banks of the Walnut and Arkansas rivers. Blakeslee says the site is the second-largest ancient settlement in the country after Cahokia in Illinois.

[libr-tumbl-alternative]

A Kansas archaeology professor believes he's found the lost city of Etzanoa, spurring a rethinking of traditional views on the Native Americans' early settlement of the Midwest. . Powered by AutoBlogger.co