Artifacts reveal history

Page 13

COLD LAKE - Although Edgar Duckett has been picking arrowheads out of his garden for over forty years, only recently has his farm been declared an official archeological site. Since the late 1930's, when he first homestead on Ethel Lake, approximately 20 miles west of Cold Lake, Duckett has collected thousands of arrowheads, prehistoric tools, hide scrapers and broken flakes of rock implements.

His private collection grew and through the years interested individuals would visit and view the items but not until Esso Resources of Canada announced plans to develop the oil deposits near the farm did the collection take on new meaning.

The automatic survey of the Esso lease site unearthed some interesting facts. A historical site overview, undertaken in 1977 of the development area and adjacent lease areas located 27 prehistoric campsites and isolated artifact finds dating back 8,000 or more years. Along with those were more recent finds - 14 historic cabins, camps and other structural remains dating from 1900 to post-World War II. The find was exciting and opening many possibilities.

Esso commissioned a preliminary report in 1980 and the result of these findings culminated into a full-scale dig complete with two professional archaeologists. The two, Ed McCullough and Gloria Fedirchuk, along with local volunteers, dug for two weeks and sifted and measured and catalogued items unearthed by the pailful. The plentiful amount of artifacts is staggering and McCullough says this area was a camp that shows continuous use and season occupation for 10,000 years.

He explains this area was a stopping place on a travel corridor that stretched from the Northwest Territories to South Dakota. It shows the people who travelled this corridor were a highly mobile group who went north and south trading among themselves for thousands of years. Some groups were displaced by others more dominant and other groups broke off and formed new bands but one fact is clear - there were pre-historic aboriginal people killing game, tanning hides and living off the land long before the area was populated by settlers.

At the farm, now an official historic site, numerous pits have been dug. Each pit is carefully marked off to exactly one meter square and one meter deep. At the Duckett site there are approximately 9,000 square meters of pits and a minimum of 10 artifacts are found per pit.

So far, they've found Beaver River sandstone native only to Ft. McMurray and Knife River flint native to North Dakota. Scrapers, knives, arrowheads and bones of pike and buffalo were prized finds and lastly pottery was discovered. Obsidian was found also that is only native in Yellowstone National Park.

While all these artifacts show conclusively that aboriginal people were in the area long before the advent of the fur trade, the local Indian people have shown no interest in the site at all. "We haven't been approached by any of the local reserves or band representatives," says McCullough. Curiously enough, the history of the area shows the Chipewyan people, the largest Indian groups nearest to the site, were not the original inhabitants. Rather, the area was populated by the Beaver, Sekani and Sarcee people long before the Chipewyans came to the area.

An evaluative study presented to Esso Resources by the archaeologist shows the progressive movement of the various Indian tribes from the stone age through to the present day.

All the artifacts, after cataloguing and dating, will be separated into classifications. Some are museum quality specimens but most will go into storage at the Archeological Survey of Alberta, a department of Alberta Culture. They are available for loan to a museum if the local area wanted to display them for educational reasons they could apply to Alberta Culture to do so.

Formerly, many local artifacts were discovered and kept in private collections. Many historic sites were vandalized and destroyed before data could be gathered. Howevr, because of the constant destruction, the Alberta government passed the Alberta Historical Resources Act in 1973 to protect heritage resources which includes archeological sites, kill sites, burial grounds, fur trade sites, buildings, fossil beds, etc.

McCullough said there are also fossil beds in the area but they are buried very deep and would be a costly process to unearth them.

The major finds, collected by Edgar Duckett, have become part of a permanent display set up in the Grand Centre Esso Resources office and open to viewing during office hours. The display includes drawings and explanations of the various groups of early mankind who utilized the area and left their tangible presence behind as a memorial for posterity.