Excavation Background - Garth, 1947 Archeological Report

Click here to open Endnotes in a separate window.

 

The present report, which is based on only six months of digging, half of the time with but a two-man crew, is perforce incomplete. The conclusions offered are tentative and may be radically changed later with the accumulation of new data. Although the five major ruins were located and in all but the grist mill the position of the wal1s established, in no case was there a complete job of excavation. Efforts were bent toward the most important desideratum, locating the walls, as it was feared funds were soon to be discontinued. Thus, in each case as soon as the walls had been located we moved on to search for another ruin. Only when all five had been located did we attempt to complete excavations in any one ruin. Considerable reliance was placed on a rich body of documentary material. Voluminous correspondence by the missionaries to the mission board in Boston is intact. (4) Also the facts that the missionaries were martyred and that Dr. Whitman not thirty years later was acclaimed by some as ... The Savior of Oregon" caused a large quantity of personal correspondence by the missionaries to be treasured by their friends and relatives and so preserved for our use. Probably the most helpful single item is the inventory of mission property drawn up after the massacre by the Rev. H. H. Spalding. (5) What we most lack is a contemporary drawing of the mission. The six or seven drawings in existence were made some years after the massacre from descriptions of survivors and so exhibit inaccuracies. None, for example, show the location of the First House.

Having only 100 years to reckon with we have been able to find out many of the events which physically affected the mission ruins after 1848. Most such information came from local residents long familiar with the area. I am particularly indebted to Mr. Ray Shelden for information regarding events during the past fifty years. For the earlier period Mr. William Reser, who has been in the valley since 1864, has given much valuable information. We know the various inhabitants of the site, where they built many of their buildings, when major floods occurred, the various farming operations carried on here, etc. This information is of considerable value in interpreting and dating phenomena encountered during excavation, such as fence lines, ditches, barbecue pits, and the like.

Ostensibly one would expect a 100-year period to be entirely too short to yield much in the way of stratification and dating. The location of the mission in rather low bottom land has fortunately caused the situation to be much the reverse. In some areas there is fourteen inches or more of deposition over the ruins-with. less in places higher and less subject to flooding. (6) A second factor of inestimable importance is that the site is in the main unplowed.. This was not through lucky chance or through the foresight of persons who inhabited the area in later years, but because the mission was built on alkali ground which would not grow crops and so has served as pasture. (7) Plowing would certainly have destroyed much of the stratification, the adobe wall lines, and other like features. The only major disturbances since 1848 have come in the mission house and mansion house ruins. In the former case three successive houses have been put over the old ruin and cellars were dug through the ruin deposit. Nevertheless, the presence of a farm house did discourage mutilation of the area by relic hunters. We are not so fortunate in the mansion house ruin, where digging for relics has occurred sporadically since the nineties. The locations of the remaining ruins were unknown, so that they were spared such destructive action.

The system of measurement and recording used is essentially the same as that employed at the Jamestown Archeological Project by J. C. Harrington. (8) The area was divided into 100-foot square lots, which were redivided into ten-foot 'squares. In order not to miss recognizing certain horizontal features such as the pattern of post holes and the indications of wall lines, several adjacent squares were excavated at the same time. Each square was taken down in 3-inch layers, the square being cleaned of loose dirt after each layer was removed and then examined for wall lines and other features. By so doing we were able to locate adobe walls, which were of earth almost identical to that which surrounded and covered them and thereby difficult to recognize in many instances.

As conditions in each of the ruins are quite different, partly due to the soil chemical content, moisture in the soil, soil overburden, and historical affectives before and since the massacre each will be considered by itself, as an individual problem.

 

Next: Excavation of the First House