What Happened to all the Alewives in Lake Michigan?

Alewives are small fish native to saltwater but migrate to freshwater rivers and streams to spawn. They are also called River Herring, Sawbelly, Gaspereau, and Kyak. Alewives are a type of herring similar to Atlantic herring and are a good source of protein and omega-3s.

Small Alewive (Herrings) Quickly Grow to Maturity.

Alewives, a non-native species, entered the Great Lakes through canals, lacking natural predators, allowing their numbers to explode.

In the 1960s, the government began a program to restore the balance of the Great Lakes ecosystem. With the intentional introduction of predators to control the exploding alewife population, non-native salmon species like Coho and Chinook were introduced into the Great Lakes. These salmon preyed heavily on alewives, bringing their numbers down significantly.

Alewives primarily fed on zooplankton. A reduction of zooplankton populations in Lake Michigan due to invasive zebra and quagga mussels also contributed to their decline by limiting their food supply.

Eventually, the alewife population reached a more balanced level within the Lake Michigan ecosystem. While die-offs still can occur, they are far less frequent and much smaller than the massive beaching events of the 1950s through the 60s.

Alewives are sensitive to sudden temperature changes. Cold weather snaps following warmer periods could shock massive numbers of fish, leading to die-offs. 

Thousands of alewives cover a beach near downtown Chicago after being washed ashore by Easterly winds. Migrants from salt water, the fish pack Lake Michigan. After they spawn, they die. Chicago Park District crews have the messy, smelly job of clearing the beaches and freshening the air.

The sheer vastness of their population meant that these die-offs resulted in millions of dead fish washing ashore, creating a foul-smelling mess on Chicago's beaches.

Alewives are still present in the Great Lakes but in much lower numbers.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Schiller Woods Forest Preserve Magic Water Pump on Irving Park Road, Particulars.

The pump is located in Schiller Woods Forest Preserve in Schiller Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Google Maps: 41°57'08.8"N 87°50'38.6"W 

It was installed in 1945 to serve picnickers, just another of the hundreds of water pumps erected in the forest preserves of Cook County. 

It is a hand-operated pump that draws water from an aquifer. Many local residents believe the water has magical properties, improving health and vigor. Some believe the pump's water extends the life of anyone who drinks from it regularly, leading to the nickname "Chicago's fountain of youth." The pump is the most used of over 300 pumps maintained by the Forest Preserve Department of Cook County, necessitating yearly repairs. The pump handle was briefly removed in 1974 due to impurities but restored in 1975 after the water cleared.

There is no scientific evidence to support the claims that the water from the pump has any magical properties. However, many people swear by the water, and the pump remains a popular destination for people seeking a healthier lifestyle.

People say it has a specific taste and is unlike other waters. And it's not. It's the best water in the world! You've heard it's magic, right? I don't know if it is or if it has the rejuvenating qualities they say. But I don't try other pumps. 

It has been said that the Pope blessed it. "Holy water — that's what they call it." In 1979, Pope John Paul II visited the Northwest Side of Chicago. The Pope's motorcade drove along Nagle and Milwaukee avenues and the Kennedy Expressway and barely slowed down.

Those who swear by the Chicago's fountain of youth pump have said a lot of things: You hear it tastes better than tap water; it keeps colder for longer; it contains holistic qualities; it's good for heart and teeth; it's unfiltered and therefore not chlorinated or fluoridated; the water from this pump will keep you young an unnaturally long time.

There is no scientific evidence to support the claims that the water from this pump has magical properties.

The pump is located at the intersection of Irving Park Road and Cumberland Avenue. It is open from dawn to dusk. There is no fee to use the pump. If you're interested in visiting the pump, it's recommended that you go during the week. Remember to bring your own bottles to fill with water.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Trout (Amusement) Park, Elgin, Illinois. (1890s-1922)

Trout Park in Elgin, Illinois, has a long and interesting history. 

The park was originally owned by Dr. P.W. Pratt, who enclosed a 70-acre parcel of land known as "Cedar Swamp" and began a fish hatchery on the site in 1872. It is situated on the east side of the Fox River, 1½ miles north of Elgin.

The hatchery was successful, and the park became known as "Trout Park." In the 1890s, the park was also home to an amusement park, which featured a variety of rides and attractions.

The park became a popular resort for pleasure seekers, especially Germans from Chicago. In 1895, the city of Elgin purchased the park and opened it to the public.

In the early 1900s, Trout Park was home to an amusement park, a botanical garden, and the Trails & Treasures Tea Room. The amusement park featured a carousel, a roller coaster, and other rides. The botanical garden was filled with various plants, including rare white cedar trees. The Trails & Treasures Tea Room featured a wall of windows with a view of the river and was a trendy spot for afternoon tea.

In 1910, Trout Park became home to Elgin's first semi-professional baseball team, the Elgin Kittens. The Kittens played their home games at a stadium in the park that could seat 3,500 spectators. The team played in the Northern Association, a minor league baseball league, from 1910 to 1912.

Trout Park remained a popular destination for Elgin residents throughout the 20th century. 

The park was designated an Illinois Nature Preserve in 1972 due to its rare white cedar trees and other natural features. Today, the park is still popular for hiking, fishing, and picnicking.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Galew, Ph.D.

Illinois' Moniker: The Sucker State.

You probably recognize Illinois’ state nickname as "The Prairie State," which dates back to the 1840s. On the other hand, "Land of Lincoln" was made the official state slogan of Illinois in 1955. In fact, Illinois' exclusive use of the Land of Lincoln insignia was later authorized by a special U.S. copyright. 

The name and image of Illinois' most famous adopted son have become synonymous with the state and are on Illinois license plates and 'Welcome to Illinois' highway signs.

Most people don't realize that Illinois had a less noble sobriquet for much of the 19th century, "The Sucker State." And although there is no doubt that this nickname was associated with Illinois, the origin of the term is subject to debate. There are at least three interpretations.

One explanation involves a practice that was fairly common among travelers and inhabitants of the prairie. When water was needed, long, hollow reeds were thrust down into crawfish holes, and the water was literally sucked up, as through a straw. Such watering holes were called "suckers" in the local vernacular.

Another explanation derives from the fact that the central and southern portions of Illinois were originally settled by pioneers from Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee, all tobacco-growing states. The sprouts around the main stem of a tobacco plant are commonly referred to as "suckers." These sprouts are cut off and discarded before they sap the vital circulating fluid of the plant, taking the nutrients away from tobacco plants 20 to 30 useable leaves. Most settlers of the area were poor and, in fact, had moved to Illinois in hopes of a better life. Society at that time, as throughout most of our nation's history, tended to look down on poor migrants as a burden. It was expected that these particular settlers would fail in their new venture and perish, like the tobacco sprouts that were cast off as undesirable. They were derisively called "suckers," and the term came to refer to the entire region of Southern Illinois, which at the time held most of the state's population.

Probably the most popular explanation of how Illinois came to be known as the Sucker State involves the state's first lead mine, which was opened in 1824 near Galena. As word of the mine spread, thousands of men descended on Galena in search of work. Most came from Missouri and southern Illinois, traveling north on steamboats up the Mississippi River to Galena in the spring, where they would work until autumn and then return home. These travels corresponded to the migration pattern of a fish called a “sucker,” and the name was attributed to these workers by Missourians as a witticism. With six to seven thousand men coming to the Galena mines each year by 1827, the mass influx and exodus generated considerable strains and rivalries. In retaliation for the derisive term “suckers,” Illinoisans started calling Missourians “pukes,” a reference to the way in which Missouri had vomited forth to Galena the worst of her residents.

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The white sucker is a species of freshwater cypriniform fish inhabiting the upper Midwest and Northeast in North America. It's also found as far south as Georgia and as far west as New Mexico. The fish is commonly known as a "sucker" due to its fleshy, papillose lips that suck up organic matter and aufwuchs (plants and animals adhering to parts of rooted aquatic plants) from the bottom of rivers and streams. Other common names for the white sucker include bay fish, brook sucker, common sucker, and mullet. 

The White Sucker

Over Illinois’ 205-year history, the state’s residents have been called other names. The Land of Lincoln, as well as The Prairie State, are considerable improvements.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Griggsville, Illinois, "The Purple Martin Capital of the Nation."

Due to the town's location between the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers in southern Illinois, Griggsville has a severe mosquito problem. 

A Male Purple Martin is dark and glossy blue. Females are brown in color.

In 1962, local businessman and nature enthusiast J.L. Wade encouraged the city to build birdhouses for purple martins, renowned for consuming more than 2,000 mosquitos daily, making them "America's Most Wanted Bird." 

Over the years, Griggsville built more than 5,000 birdhouses, which led to the town's nickname, "The Purple Martin Capital of the Nation."

The Purple Martin Highrise of Griggsville, Illinois.

Additional Reading: Lost Towns of Illinois - Griggsville Landing, Phillips' Landing, Phillips' Ferry, and Phillipsburg, Illinois.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Derecho Weather Events in Illinois.

JUNE 3, 2014 WEATHER ALERT: A major severe weather outbreak has begun across the central Plains Tuesday afternoon, with a possible "Derecho" [1] evolving during the overnight hours. The threats would be extremely heavy rain with flooding, large hail, and wind gust greater than 70 mph. 

The northern extent of the thunderstorms will clip Chicago early Wednesday, June 4, 2014, morning, bringing the threat of flooding and headaches for the morning commute. It is possible local strong winds will reach part of Chicagoland as well.

PAST DERECHO ILLINOIS EVENTS:

• Illinois/Michigan Derecho - July 16, 1980
• I-94 Derecho - July 19, 1983
• Midwest Derecho - June 18, 2010
• Iowa-Illinois-Michigan-Ohio Derecho - July 11, 2011

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

---

[1] A DERECHO is called an "inland hurricane" due to the hurricane-like conditions that occur over land with this weather phenomenon. This term refers to a type of thunderstorm complex that is at least 240 miles wide. These violent severe thunderstorm clusters produce widespread and long-lived, straight-line wind damage. Hail, flooding and isolated tornadoes can also occur with Derechos. Making them even more dangerous, Derechos often occur at night. Fewer people may be aware of dangerous weather situations at night than during daylight hours.

The Great Epizootic; an equine influenza in 1872-1873 starting in Canada, and killed horses all over North America.

Bloomington, Illinois' streets were eerily quiet for several weeks in late November and early December 1872. Horses were missing from the normally bustling downtown and surrounding neighborhoods. In the age before the internal combustion engine and the automobile, it was challenging to get from here to there without flesh-and-blood horsepower.

The Great Epizootic, which had already ravaged the East Coast and major inland cities such as Chicago, had finally reached Bloomington. Nearly every horse, mule, or donkey for miles around was sick or dying, relegated to barn or stable until the highly virulent strain of equine influenza burned through the area.

It was over, and it was challenging to shuttle passengers and goods from railroad depot to factory, store, or home since dray and omnibus lines (respectively, delivery trucks and taxis of the day) had no healthy animals. Public transportation also halted, given that horses in Bloomington-Normal and hundreds of other communities were needed to pull street railway cars. (This was before the electric era.)

The equine influenza was known as the horse flu or, more popularly, the horse epizootic (a word for a non-human epidemic). Symptoms included fever and shivering, a nasty cough, and a yellowish discharge dripping from their nostrils and mouths. For several days or more, infected horses would be listless, with heads cast down and little interest in either food or water, unable to pull or carry loads.

The 1872 North American epizootic was its most recorded outbreak in history.

Equine influenza first appeared in late September in horses pastured outside of Toronto. Within days most animals in the city's crowded stables caught the virus. The U.S. government tried to ban Canadian horses but acted too late. Within a month, border towns were infected, and the "Canadian horse disease" became a North American epidemic. By December, the virus reached the U.S. Gulf Coast, and in early 1873 outbreaks occurred in West Coast cities. It was still sweeping through Arizona Territory settlements as late as March 1873. The epizootic eventually reached Cuba, Mexico, and Central America.

At this time, the germ theory of disease was still controversial, and scientists were 20 years away from identifying viruses. Horse owners had few good options for staving off infection, and they disinfected their stables, improved the animals' feed, and covered them in new blankets. One wag wrote in the Chicago Tribune that the nation's many abused and overworked horses were bound to die of shock from this sudden outpouring of kindness. At a time when veterinary care was still primitive, others promoted more dubious remedies: gin and ginger, tinctures of arsenic, and even a bit of faith healing.

The percentage of horses infected in the continental U.S. is placed anywhere from 80 percent to the high 90s. Mortality rates were highest in urban environments, reaching 10 percent in some cities. However, more often than not, the 1872 outbreak killed between 1 and 2 percent of the horse population in any given community.

In the absence of horses and vehicles, the streets of Chicago were saved from utter desertion by vehicles drawn by hardy humans or oxen.

Every aspect of life was disrupted. Saloons ran dry without beer deliveries, and postmen relied on "wheelbarrow express" to carry the mail. Forced to travel on foot, fewer people attended weddings and funerals. Desperate companies hired human crews to pull their wagons to market. Worst of all, firemen could no longer rely on horses to pull their heavy pump wagons.

Post-fire, Field, Leiter & Co. Store in the Singer Building, Northeast Corner of State and Washington Streets, Chicago, 1873.

When equine influenza decimated Chicago's horses in 1872, Field, Leiter & Co. (Marshall Field and Levi Ziegler Leiter) used oxen. "All orders filled promptly and shipped the same day!" they boasted.

The epizootic reached Bloomington the third full week of November. The Daily Leader, a long-defunct Bloomington newspaper, reported on November 22nd that nearly all the horses in the downtown Ashley House stable had a "suspicious cough." There were other ominous signs as well. "One of General [Asahel] Gridley's horses is down and is pronounced a clear case [of the epizootic]," added the paper. "Dr. [Asa P.] Tenney also has a horse that is not expected to live."

The Pantagraph agreed with its competitor that the epizootic was here. "It is now estimated that about 200 horses have been attacked in this city within three days," announced the paper's November 23rd edition.

Oxen unaffected by the epizootic were drafted into service, and human muscle often supplanted horsepower for two long weeks. "Many of the grocery merchants are delivering groceries with wheelbarrows and handcarts," commented the November 29th Leader, "and in some instances, wagons are hauled through the streets by men." Marion Chuse, the chief engineer of the Bloomington Fire Department, announced that horses of engine company No. 1 were out of commission, and in the event of a fire, he called for volunteers to "man the ropes."

Clover Lawn, the residence of David and Sarah Davis on the city's east side (now the David Davis Mansion state historic site), was completed in the year of the Great Epizootic. On November 29th, Sarah Davis mentioned the outbreak in a letter to her husband David, then a U.S. Supreme Court justice. "The sickness of the horses makes it inconvenient to get coal hauled — and to save the coal we have on hand — we burn large logs in the furnace," she wrote.

Yet within a week of that letter, influenza's grip on the local horse population began to loosen. Street railway service was up and running by December 7th, and once again, the horse enjoyed dominion over Bloomington's thoroughfares. Thankfully, local fatalities were few, probably numbering fewer than a few dozen in the city.

During the early days of the outbreak, the Daily Leader Newspaper commented on the prospect of life — if only for a week or two — without horses. "The people of this city," the paper stated, "will have an opportunity to learn the value of the noble horse and how much we depend upon 'man's best friend' among the brute creation for comfort and convenience."

MARSHALL FIELD AND COMPANY ARTICLES

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

The History of the Paleo-Indian, the Hopewell Culture, of the Albany Mounds, in Albany, Illinois.

One of the most important archaeological sites in Illinois, Albany Mounds, contains continuous human occupation over the last 10,000 years. The Albany Mounds date from the Middle Woodland (Hopewell) period (200 BC to 500 AD), older than either the Cahokia Mounds (700 AD to 1650 AD) or Dickson Mounds (800 AD to 1250 AD) of the Mississippian period.

The indigenous people who lived here as early as 500 BC were part of the Hopewell culture, so named because their existence was first learned of on the Hopewell farm in Ohio, where similar mounds had been built. It is not known what the people called themselves or what language they spoke.

The region around Chillicothe, Ohio, was the center of the ancient Hopewell Culture. This Paleo-Indian culture had trade routes extending to the Rocky Mountains. They built earthen mounds for ceremonial and burial purposes.

The "Hopewell culture" doesn't refer to a particular Indian tribe; instead, it’s a name for a distinctive set of artifacts, earthworks, and burial practices characteristic of sites found in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.

These artifacts show significant artwork of the Hopewell-Havana phase.
Vessels A and B were about the size of a modern 5-gallon bucket.

While still obtaining food largely through hunting and gathering, Woodland peoples began practicing basic horticulture of native plants. Woodland peoples are distinguished from earlier inhabitants by developing pottery and the building of raised mounds near large villages for death and burial ceremonies.

It is believed that their culture seemed to decline somewhere about 350 AD. From about 200 BC to 300 AD, the Albany Hopewell constructed over 96 burial mounds at this site. It was, and still is, one of the largest mound groups in the nation. It is the largest Hopewell culture mound group in Illinois. The Albany Hopewell built their mounds on the bluff tops above the village and on the terraces adjacent to the village.

The site was well suited to the Hopewell culture, which was not an Indian tribe but rather a term referring to the period of time in Paleo-Indian history marked by trade, communication, and a sharing of ideas throughout an extensive area of the continent. They preferred to build their villages at the base of bluffs along the floodplains of major rivers, such as the Mississippi, that offered transportation. At Albany, with the adjacent Meredosia Slough, which served as flood drainage for the Mississippi and Rock Rivers, there was an abundant source of food and water. The waters, forest, and prairie provided food and fuel for the Hopewell.

Today, about 50 mounds remain; thirty-nine of the mounds remain in good condition, while eight have been partially destroyed through erosion, excavation, or cultivation. Other mounds were totally destroyed by agricultural activities, railroad, and highway construction, site looter. Still, others were destroyed in the process of being scientifically excavated in the early 1900s by the Davenport Academy of Natural Sciences.

Burial artifacts include non-local materials indicating the existence of trading networks with Indians from other areas. The site of the nearby village remains privately owned. The mounds were placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.

In the 1990s, the site was “restored" to a natural appearance, and of about one hundred acres of the prairie was re-established.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Looters of Prehistoric Native American Archeological Sites is a Big Problem in Illinois and the Mississippi Valley.

CATCHING PREHISTORIC SITE LOOTERS
Southern Illinois District Court vs, Mr. Leslie Jones (results below in sub-section).

As Geoff Donaldson sprinted across a barren southern Illinois crop field at dusk on January 26, 2007, he breathed aloud a prayer: "Lord, please make me invisible."

The 35-year-old uniformed officer of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was trying to wriggle into his Ghillie suit, full-body camouflage that makes a turkey hunter resemble a mossy tree stump. He wasn't hunting turkey that evening, though. He was stalking a thief. And, after a year of cat-and-mouse, Donaldson wanted his man.

Disguised in deep-cover camouflage known as a Ghillie suit,
Geoff Donaldson of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in
Southern Illinois caught a major looter on video.

In March of 2006, Donaldson received a tip: A car was often seen parked on private land near a remote corner of Cypress Creek National Wildlife Refuge, about 25 miles east of Cape Girardeau. He found the vehicle, peeked inside and found some hand-digging tools. People sometimes gather ginseng in these parts, he knew. But something didn't feel right.

The next day Donaldson was hiking along a creek bottom when he spied a man upon a ridge spur below a bluff acting "skittish." His name was Leslie Jones, of Creal Springs, Illinois. Jones had facial hair, Donaldson recalls, and a trim, muscular physique, "the picture of an axman."

Among tall oaks and maple trees, Jones kept hunkering over something, then glancing up. Donaldson dropped out of sight and tried to sneak in for a closer look. When he arrived a few minutes later, Jones was gone, though his handiwork remained: Hundreds of square yards of federal soil were torn up.

"It looked like hogs had gotten into it," Donaldson recalls. He noted several piles of broken spear points and stone chips. It appeared that Jones, for months, had been systematically unearthing Native American artifacts.

Picking up an arrowhead or digging a small hole on federal property might lead to a citation, but looting that causes damage in excess of $500 is a felony. Donaldson contacted the U.S. attorney's office, which listed the evidence they'd need for a felony conviction: a video of Jones excavating the material, then pocketing it and returning home. "You've got to be kidding me," Donaldson thought.

For the next ten months, he and his colleagues spent more than 300 man-hours spread out in the woods, waiting for Jones. Digital cameras at the ready, they sat on watch through sweltering summer humidity and cold winter rains. Sometimes, officers from the U.S. Forest Service or Illinois Department of Natural Resources joined the party.

"We kept just missing him," Donaldson groans.

Around 4 a.m. on that late January day in 2007, the team took up positions in the shadows of the forest. Hours crawled by and still no sign of the thief. Late that afternoon Donaldson radioed to the others: Pack it up. On their drive back to the staging area in Marion, Illinois, word came that Jones' car was parked near the refuge.

Donaldson remembers racing back to Cypress Creek under a darkening sky. "The idea is to become one with nature," he says. He reached the top of the bluff and scanned below for Jones. Nothing.

Then he inched down the slope toward Jones' "honey hole" — the site of the most intense digging. A tedious half-hour later, he was standing smack in the middle of it. All was quiet for several moments. Then he heard the thrashing of leaves.

Donaldson peered over his left shoulder and froze. A mere twenty feet away, Leslie Jones had stopped in his tracks. He was gripping a hand shovel and staring at Donaldson's neck. The officer assumed his cover was blown and prepared to show his badge. But Jones only blinked, looked past him and trudged off to dig someplace else. The camouflage had worked. "It was a heart-pounding experience," Donaldson recalls.

Geoff Donaldson and other agents at the federal and state levels spent nearly a year chasing down artifact thief Leslie Jones.

He shot enough incriminating video of Jones to secure a search warrant. When federal and state agents raided Jones' residence the next day, they discovered thousands of artifacts stored in old ammunition boxes, coolers and paint buckets.

Archaeologists later determined that about 900 artifacts came from the refuge. A third of these were stone tools left by Native Americans that no human hands had likely touched since about 1,000 BC, or earlier, the scientists reported.

But authorities also seized an additional 12,000 Indian artifacts of uncertain origin. Among these were needles and hooks made from animal bone, clay figurines, pottery shards and something more unsettling: fragments of human skulls, femurs, jaws, and teeth.

"It was particularly disturbing that there was no hesitation picking up human remains," says Tim Santel, a Fish and Wildlife special agent.

Jones confessed to making money off the stolen artifacts by selling them to collectors. "He may have gotten spear points worth hundreds of dollars," suggests Mark Wagner, a Southern Illinois University Carbondale archaeologist who evaluated the seized items. "We don't know. They've all disappeared into this dealer network."

In his illegal hunt for artifacts, Leslie Jones, 50, of Creal Springs, Illinois, tore up enough federal soil to fill a semitrailer.

Leslie Jones was a familiar face to local law enforcement, having been arrested twice for growing marijuana on someone else's land. "I assume he was selling it," says Sheriff Elry Faulkner. That he was mixed up in the illicit trade for both artifacts and drugs was no isolated incident.

Folks have been picking around for arrowheads throughout the Midwest for generations. But now, archaeologists report that a nefarious breed of looter is stripping history wholesale from public and private soil. The worst ones are essentially grave robbers who come armed, often in the dark of night, to plunder Native American burial grounds. Some hawk the artifacts on eBay or other sites. Others use them as currency for drugs.

Deep in the Ozark Mountains, where authorities say the methamphetamine epidemic is again gaining steam, addicts known as "twiggers" (tweakers who dig) have been mining rock shelters and caves for anything of value — possibly even skeletal remains. The weird nexus between looting and meth has been noted by experts for several years, especially in the Pacific Northwest. Today, these shady characters are leaving their footprints in America's heartland.

"What's really frustrating is that archaeological sites are nonrenewable," says Neal Lopinot, a Missouri State University archaeologist. "Once they're destroyed, that's it. They're gone."

The bluff line running south from Cahokia Mounds to Dupo, Illinois, is "crawling" with archaeological sites, observes Julie Holt, who chairs the anthropology department at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. "You can't put a shovel in the ground without hitting something," she says.

Extensive looting of an archaeological site.

In the 1800s digging into Indian burials was something families did on Sunday outings. At the time, it was widely believed that the earthwork mounds along the Mississippi and eastward had been built by an advanced race that was squeezed out by the more primitive Native Americans.

As a result, if you plucked an intriguing item from a mound, you'd probably have no qualms about taking it home to display on the mantel, says Iowa-based archaeological researcher Bob Palmer.

"In some parts of the country people still find mound-digging to be acceptable," Palmer notes. Last fall, roughly 60 miles downriver from St. Louis, a landowner reported the damage to the burial mound on his property, prompting Dawn Cobb of the Illinois historic preservation office to drive down to investigate.

"There was this huge, gaping hole with human remains scattered around," Cobb remembers. Illinois, like Missouri and Arkansas, has a law protecting unmarked graves. If someone gets an owner's permission, they can dig on private property. However, if they hit bone, they must stop. That law clearly failed to deter anyone in this case.

"We had no leads," Cobb says. "The hole was at least a year old. There's nothing the landowner can do from a legal standpoint."

South of the bootheel, on the Arkansas side of the Central Mississippi Valley, Terry Melton feels that frustration. The 42-year-old chicken farmer has been running looters off his family's land in the Strawberry and Black river bottoms for at least a decade. None has been convicted. On one occasion, he felt threatened enough by a trio of them to brandish an AK-47.

"There's got to be something down here worth selling, otherwise the idiots wouldn't keep coming back," Melton says, bouncing his pickup truck over a potholed dirt road as he heads toward a remote soybean field surrounding two small burial mounds.

The Meltons have been farming this flat expanse for at least a century. Humans first occupied it 10,000 years ago, according to radiocarbon dating of artifacts. Scientists have identified at least 40 ancient human skeletons in this area, where looters have struck three times since last October.

Juliet Morrow of the Arkansas Archaeological Survey began a meticulous excavation of one of the mounds in June 2009. "It's really depressing," she says. With a furrowed brow, she points out bone fragments and evidence of haphazard digging. The site is important, she says, because nothing is known about the Archaic period (8,000 BC to 1,000 BC) in Arkansas.

Melton says he's found so much trash over the years that he knows which brand of cigarettes and beer the trespassers like most (Marlboro Lights and Busch). He once even found a sock that someone used to wipe his butt.

Other clues are more subtle. The reason that dozens of small holes dot the soil, Morrow notes, is that looters slide fishing rods and old radio antennas deep into the ground to feel for something hard. Sometimes, they'll paint their shovels white to make them easier to see in the dark. You can tell they come at night, she adds, because they inadvertently leave behind perfect spear points, some 4,000 years old.

She can't say how much one of those might be worth to a looter. "Professional archaeologists do not appraise anything," she explains. "It's priceless; you can't put a dollar value on it."

The major prize for looters in this area used to be decorated ceramic pots dating back to the time of first European contact 500 years ago. But whole vessels are fairly rare now, and on these northeast Arkansan mounds, only shards remain.

Terry Melton's cousin, Jamie Nunnally, has parked his truck and joined the group. Clad in camouflage overalls, he says he once fired shots in the air to scare looters off his nearby field. "We'll probably never get it stopped," he says. "I quit calling the law."

Both cousins remember the wild nighttime chase of June 13, 2005. They caught two thieves leaving the mound around 12:30 a.m. and pursued them at high speeds through the bottoms. The perpetrators not only dropped their bag of stolen artifacts, but they also jumped a small bridge, lost their muffler and ditched their pickup, leaving a shovel inside. The sheriff's deputies from two different counties showed up. No convictions resulted.

Melton complains that the judge won't discipline the looters, even though it's always the same crowd. Nunnally claims these individuals have also been picked up by the sheriff on drug-related charges. He's convinced they sell artifacts to buy dope.

The situation makes Morrow furious. "Maybe the judge or prosecuting attorneys consider this a petty crime," she says, exasperated. "But it's a felony."

A deputy did recently come out and collect evidence, she notes. But that only happened because the sheriff's office was pressured by Carrie Wilson, a member of the Quapaw Tribe of Oklahoma, which claims the area as ancestral territory.

"I can be very persistent," Wilson says later in a phone interview. "But Julie needs to be careful. I need to be careful. There would be people very glad to see us go away. You have to understand, there is a contingent that's dangerous. And sometimes, you're not dealing with somebody with a full deck."

After the scientists leave, Melton and Nunnally stroll through the field, searching for arrowheads. They regularly plow through the mound sites to plant crops. For Melton, that's not the same as digging into a grave. Farming activities are exempt under the burial protection law, he points out.

Back in his pickup, climbing out of the bottoms toward the nearest town, Melton admits, "I love history, and I'd love to dig. But I won't, out of the simple reason that there are dead people down there. It's about respect. Even if they're 4,000 years old, it's still a person."

Farmers in Missouri's Franklin and Jefferson counties have been bristling lately, says Joe Harl of the Archaeological Research Center in St. Louis. Here, where the Ozark Mountains begin to roll west and south, he hears more and more landowners complaining of unwelcome surface collectors — and sometimes diggers — on their property.

"Many have said they're going to get guns," Harl reports. "It's worse than the [illegal] deer hunters."

The problem is not confined to private land. Mark Twain National Forest covers approximately 1.5 million acres of Missouri, most of it in the state's southeastern quarter. Heritage program manager Keri Hicks says Mark Twain has the most caves in the national forest system, and a majority "have been looted into oblivion" since about the 1950s.

These days, an e-mail will trickle in every couple of months from a forest employee who's discovered a hole, shovel or screen, says Hicks. When someone checks on it, they might find that the disturbance is a couple years old or more.

"We don't have enough law enforcement to be effective with trying to protect or monitor it," Hicks says.

Archaeologist James Halpern says he and another employee have been assigned to 515,000 acres in the southwestern portion of the forest. "It's pretty hard to check everything," says Halpern. "There are tons of sites and places on the forest I've never even heard of, let alone been to."

On the Ozark National Scenic Riverways, where 135 miles of the Jacks Fork and Current rivers are designated federal property, authorities write about five citations per year for pilfering arrowheads, says park archaeologist James Price. Each carries a $225 fine.

There was one major case there in the last decade, says Jodi Towery, a federal law enforcer on the Riverways. Looters wearing headlamps came cruising in at night on ATVs. They tore two feet down into a 20-by-30-foot plot. Towery caught them on camera but couldn't positively ID them. When a mushroom hunter stole one of her cameras, word spread that the site was under surveillance — and the digging ceased.

This particular case taught her one thing: "Some of the people who collect artifacts are also known to do drugs. It's kind of the same crowd."

Sergeant Kevin Glaser of the Southeast Missouri Drug Task Force has also noticed that connection. The number of meth-lab incidents has tripled from 2008 to 2009 in the ten counties under his supervision, he says. And he's noticed something odd: "We've gone into meth houses, and we'll literally find tubs of arrowheads."

Larry Keen, the supervisor of the Southwest Missouri Drug Task Force, also reports that he often finds artifacts during meth busts. Keen says "I think whenever they get high, they've got to do something, so they wander around and get arrowheads and rocks."

There's probably more to it than that, says Richard Rawson, a professor at UCLA's School of Medicine. For 35 years he has studied addiction, with an emphasis on methamphetamines. He says meth users can stay up for days, focusing intensely on a redundant task until they collapse from fatigue.

Rawson says he has not heard of any link between meth users and arrowhead hunting, but, he reasons, "Somewhere in the background of their thinking, there's some motive for getting these things. They're not out there collecting leaves."

Special agent Robert Still recalls catching a woman stealing artifacts from the Buffalo National River in northwest Arkansas. She grew so agitated that she pulled out a revolver and a large knife. "I had to disarm her," says Still. Then there was the looter who came lunging at him with a jagged-edged garden tool. "We've had officers shot over this type of stuff."

If theft here is more dramatic, so is the scenery. The flinty blue hills arcing across the horizon — known as the Boston Mountains — are the highest on the Ozark Plateau. Steep slopes of cedar, hardwood, and pine drop down into streams lined by limestone bluffs. Tucked back into the hillsides are hundreds of rock shelters and caves, all of them rife with history — and vulnerable to plunder.

"Industrial-strength looters" have been invading the Buffalo River for several years, says federal archaeologist Caven Clark. He's worked at numerous parks in the western United States, including the Ozark National Scenic Riverways. Southeastern Missouri has a problem, he adds, but not like here. "When I got here, what I found was more looting than I'd ever seen before." Much if it, he says, is linked to drugs.

Of the 350 caves and rock shelters in and around the Buffalo, more than 95 percent of them have been worked over, Clark estimates. In the last three years, he says, 22 serious cases were reported, some of which went to federal court where the pillagers were prosecuted under the federal Archaeological Resources Protection Act. Passed in 1979, the act prohibits looting on federal property.

Crooks target the sheltered sites because humans have huddled in them for millenniums and artifacts have accumulated. Compared to the wet caves of the eastern Ozarks, the sites here are relatively dry, which has helped preserve the bark fiber sandals, fabrics, and cordage. "Those things would fetch an unbelievable price," Clark says, but they are very rare.

The serious thieves wear camouflage and burrow ferociously into the ground. "I've seen some holes you could probably drop a Volkswagen into," says Clark, adding that they also leave plenty of trash. "We joke that Mountain Dew might as well be probable cause."

Special agent Still estimates that 70 percent of the archaeological crimes he's worked have some drug connection. Caven Clark has seen the same correlation. "Bad boys are bad boys," he says.

What complicates investigations, he continues, is that the artifacts are often used as currency and bartered for drugs. Looters know, for example, that a nice Dalton point (8,500 BC to 7,900 BC) might be sold on the Internet for a couple hundred dollars or more, while a more generic point might get $10 to $40 from a collector.

"If you're in a bluff shelter all day," Clark says, "you're all pumped up on drugs, and you find six points you can turn into $20 each — there's money to be made."

Outside federal property in this part of the state, "a new wave of looting has been seen in epidemic proportions" over the last ten years, according to Jerry Hilliard, assistant station archaeologist at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. He fields eight to ten calls a year from a landowner or sheriff's deputy about such crime. "And that's the tip of the iceberg," he says, "because university people are sometimes the last people to get called."

Landowners can't report looting if they're not aware of it, according to Arkansas state archaeologist Dr. Ann Early. But even if they're aware of illicit digging, she adds, they might still keep mum to avoid unwanted attention. "A lot of digging may be going on in the counties, and the sheriffs may know nothing about it," says Early.

Hilliard is alarmed by the scale of the thievery. He says backhoes and dump trucks have been used to secretly haul huge amounts of unsifted soil away from sites. In 2003 a group in Madison County rigged a pump from a stream to a power-sprayer then blasted the inside of a nearby cave to uncover valuable items.

More recently, in Carroll County, another gang fired up a generator and ran lights into a cave. There, they cooked crank and dug several trenches five feet deep in search of ancient objects. Authorities on the scene later collected scattered human leg bones.

The group even tried to sell a human skull at a flea market, Hilliard says. "I think there is a weird underworld of selling, buying and trading of human skeletal material because I've heard these kinds of stories over the years," Hilliard says. "I'm not sure I'd want to get into that world.

Special agent Still believes there is a black market for human remains, though he's had no direct contact with it in the Midwest. After interrogating numerous grave robbers, he's noticed that "typically human remains still tend to give people the heebie-jeebies." They might use a human bone as a poker for their campfire or play with them and bat them around, he says, but generally, they leave the bones onsite.

If you stumble across ancient remains on federal property and then fail to report them, secretly remove them or try to sell them, you're guilty of violating the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act enacted by Congress in 1990. Anti-looting laws have not been warmly received in the deep Ozarks, where, jokes Clark, "digging is a custom among our people."

Hilliard agrees that quirks of highland culture play a role at the state level, too. "Government intervention has always been something that rural folks in the Ozarks have been very skeptical of," he says. "They don't want to be told what they can or can't do on their land."

Agent Still remembers how one man guilty of looting informed him in 2007 that only a prison term could stop him from digging. Sure enough, during the sentencing process, he was caught stealing in the exact area of his original offense.

"It's an addiction," Still says.

The artifact collector show held annually in Collinsville, Illinois, is one of the largest in the country. Before this year's [2010] event, on March 20 and 21, organizer Floyd Ritter said he'd be welcoming 3,000 visitors from across the nation. But anybody trying to hawk items unearthed from burial grounds, he says, was banned.

Asked how he could tell if an artifact was robbed, Ritter responds, "There's no way to tell."

Many archaeologists distinguish between good and bad collectors. The good ones, they say, display a good-natured curiosity about an arrowhead. The bad ones disregard the law and the artifact's history and care only about finding the highest bidder. They amass their inventories from low-level looters.

The finest specimens find their way to major dealers, who in turn sell them overseas, mostly to the Japanese, says Larry Zimmerman, an anthropology professor at Indiana and Purdue universities. "On the high-end stuff," he says, "Americans have been pretty much the middleman."

Zimmerman says collectors' shows, such as the one at Collinsville, are often "an archaeologist's nightmare." But eBay also worries him. Five years ago, as chair of the Society for American Archaeology's ethics committee, he lobbied the auction site to at least concede that the online antiquities trade is keeping looters in business.

"They basically said, 'Thank you very much for your concern,'" remembers Zimmerman. "They weren't very helpful." But he does point out that eBay will shut down any auction of human remains or artifacts known to be stolen.

"The problem is that eBay is so big, it's unmanageable," Zimmerman says. "Even if they had ten eBay cops, they couldn't control the antiquities trade."

Leslie Jones was sentenced January 25 in the Southern District of Illinois for his crimes at Cypress Creek National Wildlife Refuge. Archaeologists calculated that he had churned up enough soil to fill a semitrailer, (details below).

"That's going to haunt him for the rest of his life," says Geoff Donaldson.

Dr. Julie Holt of SIUE was not as impressed. "The judge gave that guy a slap on the wrist," she complains. "Do you think if he dug up your grandma, he'd get 30 days? No. He'd be in prison for a long time with psychological testing. But somehow, it's OK if it's a Native American burial."

Donaldson says the origin of the skeletal material seized from Jones' residence is still under investigation. The offender declined to comment for this story.

Unlike Jones, most people sentenced for Archaeological Resources Protection Act violations don't end up in prison. In Bob Palmer's analysis of federal prosecutions from 1996 to 2005, he determined that 83 looters were found guilty. Of these, less than a fourth of them did any time and the ones who did serve no more than a year.

Last June federal agents swooped into southern Utah and arrested two dozen people suspected of playing a role in a network of illicit Indian artifact trading. (Curiously, two suspects and one informant have since committed suicide.) Announcing the raid, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar hailed a "new chapter" for protecting such items. The time of the U.S. government "simply looking the other way," he said, "is over."

Meanwhile, Native Americans like Carrie Wilson look with anxiety toward the future. "Somebody's looting a site every day, whether a rock shelter or some other place," says Wilson, who consults for various Native American tribes and claims Quapaw, Peoria, and Eastern Shawnee heritage.

"If they're not looting, agriculture is destroying our sites in such numbers that in a few years, there won't be sites left."

SOUTHERN ILLINOIS DISTRICT COURT VS. MR. LESLIE JONES

In January 2007, Mr. Leslie Jones was observed by Fish & Wildlife Service Refuge Officers digging and removing these artifacts from an archeological site on the Refuge. The site, as it was later determined, minimally dates to the Middle to Late Archaic to Middle Woodland periods (6000 BC to 400 AD). It is suggested that, based on the artifacts found, Indians used this site for stone tool production, cooking, and other domestic activities.

In late January of 2007, law enforcement officers and special agents from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, U.S. Forest Service, Illinois Department of Natural Resources, and Johnson County Sheriff’s Office seized 13,232 artifacts from Jones’ residence during the execution of a federal search warrant. These artifacts included pottery, clay figurines, tools, and over 200 pieces of human skeletal material. Jones later admitted living off the artifacts he collected and sold. 

Seized Indian artifacts from Leslie Jones residence.

“The damage caused by Leslie Jones can’t be measured in simple dollars,” said Tim Santel, Resident Agent-in-Charge for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (Indiana, Illinois, Missouri). “These sites give us an unprecedented glimpse into the past. He has done devastating harm to the site, as many of these artifacts are lost forever, denying the American public much in the way of understanding past human existence.”

Staff from the Shawnee National Forest and Southern Illinois University-Carbondale assessed the estimated value of the damage to the site at more than $150,000.  

“Archeological sites are similar to a museum,” said Mark Wagner, Staff Archaeologist, Center for Archaeological Investigations at Southern Illinois University – Carbondale. “We wouldn't tolerate someone going into a museum and removing an object because they felt like it. These items don’t belong to archeologists, they were stolen from the American public.”

According to Mary McCorvie, Forest Archaeologist at Shawnee National Forest, public awareness and interest play a role in combating and preventing similar crimes.

“In Southern Illinois, we have a rich history of human occupation for 12-14 thousand years,” said McCorvie. Taking these pieces destroys critical pieces of our historical puzzle. It's important the public know how important and fragile these links to the past are, and the role they can play in combating this.

We've found that the public's interest in preservation is critical to reducing vandalism. People are aware of a number of sites like this that contain significant cultural resources, and we'd love them to both refrains from taking found artifacts, and report suspected incidences of vandalism or theft.”

Under the Archaeological Resources Protection Act, it is a felony to disturb, alter, remove or damage archaeological sites and objects that are over 100 years old on Federal lands. Archaeological sites and artifacts are also protected by 36 Code of Federal Regulations, which prohibits digging in, excavating, disturbing, injuring, destroying, or in any way damaging prehistoric, historic, or archaeological resources, structure, site, artifact, property; or removing said items. Persons found guilty of offenses against the Archaeological Resources Protection Act could be punished by not more than two years in prison and not more than $250,000.00 for the first offense. 

On January 20, 2010, Leslie Jones, (then 50), of Creal Springs, Illinois, was sentenced to 30 days in a federal prison, 500 hours community service [ditch digging (he is experienced)], five years of probation, and to pay $150,326.06 in restitution to Cypress Creek National Wildlife Refuge, for excavating, collecting, and transporting illegally taken archaeological resources from a prehistoric Indian site on the southern Illinois refuge. In his plea agreement, signed October 2009, Jones admitted selling the articles to interested collectors to supplement his income. Jones's case was prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of Illinois.

Compiled by Dr.Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

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Help preserve our history by leaving archaeological sites and artifacts undisturbed and reporting any looters or evidence of looting activity that you see.

The mission of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is to work with others to conserve, protect and enhance fish, wildlife, plants, and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people.

---Department of the Interior, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.