The Red Ocher people were an indigenous people of North America. A series of

archaeological Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...

sites located in the Upper

Great Lakes The Great Lakes, also called the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes spanning the Canada–United States border. The five lakes are Lake Superior, Superior, Lake Michigan, Michigan, Lake Huron, H ...

, the Greater

Illinois River The Illinois River () is a principal tributary of the Mississippi River at approximately in length. Located in the U.S. state of Illinois, the river has a drainage basin of . The Illinois River begins with the confluence of the Des Plaines ...

Valley, and the Ohio River Valley in the

American Midwest The Midwestern United States (also referred to as the Midwest, the Heartland or the American Midwest) is one of the four List of regions of the United States, census regions defined by the United States Census Bureau. It occupies the northern c ...

have been discovered to be a Red Ocher burial complex, dating from 1000 BC to 400 BC, the Terminal Archaic – Early

Woodland period In the classification of :category:Archaeological cultures of North America, archaeological cultures of North America, the Woodland period of North American pre-Columbian cultures spanned a period from roughly 1000 BC to European contact i ...

. Characterized as shallow burials located in sandy ridges along river valleys, covered in

red ochre Ochre ( ; , ), iron ochre, or ocher in American English, is a natural clay earth pigment, a mixture of ferric oxide and varying amounts of clay and sand. It ranges in colour from yellow to deep orange or brown. It is also the name of the col ...

or hydrated

iron oxide An iron oxide is a chemical compound composed of iron and oxygen. Several iron oxides are recognized. Often they are non-stoichiometric. Ferric oxyhydroxides are a related class of compounds, perhaps the best known of which is rust. Iron ...

(FeH₃O), they contain diagnostic artifacts that include caches of

flint Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Historically, flint was widely used to make stone tools and start ...

points, turkey-tails, and various forms of worked

copper Copper is a chemical element; it has symbol Cu (from Latin ) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkish-orang ...

. Turkey-tails are large flint blades of a distinct type. It is believed that Red Ocher people spoke an ancestral form of the

Algonquian languages The Algonquian languages ( ; also Algonkian) are a family of Indigenous languages of the Americas and most of the languages in the Algic language family are included in the group. The name of the Algonquian language family is distinguished from ...

. Red ochre has a long history of use in North America; as early as the Folsom tradition during the Paleo-Indian period, certain localities in New Mexico and Wyoming were being mined for the substance.Tankersley, Kenneth B., et al.
They Have a Rock That Bleeds: Sunrise Red Ochre and Its Early Paleoindian Occurrence at the Hell Gap Site
. ''Plains Anthropologist'' 40.152 (1995): 185-194: 187. The people today known as Red Ocher were first identified by the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

in 1937. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Red Ocher Culture was a topic of great interest among archaeologists who were trying to better define the burial culture through various methods of research. Since then, intermittent archaeological works have been published dealing with specific sub-topics within the burial culture and supported by more reliable AMS carbon dates. Nevertheless, many important archaeological questions regarding the Red Ocher burial manifestation and cultural phenomenon are still without answers.

Etymology

This culture used powdered red ocher in their burials. There is considerable variation from site to site in the few sites with this artifact. Robert E. Ritzenthaler, Curator of Anthropology, Milwaukee Public Museum and George I. Quimby; Curator of North American Archaeology and Ethnology; Chicago Natural History Museum Chicago Natural History Museum; Fieldiana Anthropology; Volume 36 March 27, 1962 No.11; Chicago Natural History Museum; Chicago, Illinois; 1962 The term "Red Ocher" was first used in 1937 as a description from three sites in central Illinois. Some additional sites have since been recognized as Red Ocher because of their cultural similarity to these. There is not a broad synthesis of the existing information and it is easily confused with the Glacial Kame culture.

Location

It is found in

Wisconsin Wisconsin ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest of the United States. It borders Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michig ...

Michigan Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. It borders on Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash River, Wabash and Ohio River, Ohio rivers to its ...

Iowa Iowa ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the upper Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west; Wisconsin to the northeast, Ill ...

Indiana Indiana ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Michigan to the northwest, Michigan to the north and northeast, Ohio to the east, the Ohio River and Kentucky to the s ...

, and

Ohio Ohio ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the ...

. The sites are from eastern Iowa to central Ohio and from southern Ohio to the

Manitoulin District Manitoulin District is a district in Northeastern Ontario within the Canadian province of Ontario. It was created in 1888 from part of the Algoma District. The district seat is in Gore Bay. It comprises Manitoulin Island primarily, as well as a ...

of Ontario. Most of the sites are in southeastern

, northern

, and the southern half of the

Lower Peninsula of Michigan The Lower Peninsula of Michigan – also known as Lower Michigan – is the larger, southern and less elevated of the Geography of Michigan, two major landmasses that make up the U.S. state of Michigan; the other being the Upper Peninsula of Mic ...

. This area of Red Ocher culture is a co-occupant with Glacial Kame. It seems probable that the Old Copper merges into both Red Ocher and Glacial Kame.

References

Archaic period in North America History of Indigenous peoples of North America Extinct Indigenous peoples of the Americas {{NorthAm-native-stub

Etymology

Location

See also

Further reading

References