Carcajou Point site facts for kids

The Carcajou Point site (47JE2, aka the Carcajou site, Carcajou village or White Crow's village) is located in Jefferson County, Wisconsin, on Lake Koshkonong. It is a multi-component site with prehistoric Upper Mississippian Oneota and Historic components.

The site was occupied by Native Americans as late as the 1820s and 1830s, when the Winnebago tribe resided there. At that time, it was called "White Crow's village" after the name of the chief.

History of archaeological investigations

For many years Carcajou Point was known as a locality where Native American and early European antiquities were present. The archaeologist W.C. McKern referred to the Carcajou Village site on a list of uninvestigated sites in 1945. In 1957 the site was excavated under the auspices of the Wisconsin Archaeological Society, and in 1962 Robert Hall created a site report to discuss the findings and compare them to other Oneota sites in Wisconsin.

Significance

The pottery at Carcajou Point helped to provide some detail to the Oneota cultural identity. The distinctive curvilinear decorations on the shell-tempered pottery indicated a clear influence to local Middle Mississippian sites and was used by Hall to define the Koshkonong Focus of the Oneota Aspect. The radiocarbon dates obtained from the site were the first in the region, and helped archaeologists provide a chronology for the Oneota culture.