Keyes, Charles Reuben

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Volume 24 | Number 1 Article 3
1-1-1943
Indian Rock Shelters
Charles Reuben Keyes
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Recommended Citation
Keyes, Charles R. "Indian Rock Shelters." The Palimpsest 24 (1943), 8-15.
Available at: https://ir.uiowa.edu/palimpsest/vol24/iss1/3
Indian Rock Shelters
The term “rock shelter” is not a particularly 
happy one; however, it has long been in use with 
a meaning understood by all students of the early 
American Indians, and so is likely to continue in 
service. The name is a general one applied to any 
place of habitation in, or adjacent to, a cliff where, 
with or without the addition of a lean-to, protec­
tion could be had from cold and rain and snow. 
Winds were ordinarily taken care of by the nat­
ural location of the shelters in timbered ravines 
with forest-covered hills above them.
In Iowa these shelters are most common in 
Allamakee, Clayton, Dubuque, Delaware, Jack- 
son, Jones, Linn, and Cedar counties, where the 
massive limestone cliffs contain or afford many 
locations suitable for human habitation. They are 
always open enough for good illumination, the 
dark, deeper caves, if used at all, having served 
only as places of deposit for secondary human 
burials, that is to say, burials of bones only from 
primary dispositions that had been made else­
where.
Up to this time about a hundred Indian rock 
shelters have been verified for this northeastern
8
INDIAN ROCK SHELTERS 9
Iowa region, and undoubtedly this is a part only 
of the number that actually exist. It would take a 
long time to explore all the cliff-lined ravines in 
Iowa and to make the necessary tests. In smaller 
numbers the rock shelters are found also outside 
of the counties mentioned, wherever, indeed, cliffs 
affording the appropriate conditions occur. Some 
of these habitation sites are barely large enough to 
afford protection for three or four persons; others 
are large enough to furnish good quarters for a 
small community of five or six families.
Probably the prehistoric Indians chose the shel­
ter of the cliffs as home sites for the same reasons 
that Captain Minott chose his little cavern in one 
of the ravines of the Palisades of the Cedar. Such 
sites were ready for occupation with a minimum 
expenditure of labor, or none at all, and they were 
safe and comfortable. Though serving a common 
purpose, the shelters used show a considerable 
variety of form and location. No fewer than six 
different types occur in Iowa, all with their char­
acteristic deposits of kitchen refuse, in which are 
mingled various objects made by the hands of the 
occupants, the raw materials for making these, as 
also the refuse that resulted from the making 
processes.
There are shelters where a level part of the 
ravine, or narrow valley, floor lies immediately
10 THE PALIMPSEST
adjacent to and so, in part at least, is protected by 
a vertical cliff. A second type was probably pre­
ferred to this — a site also on the level valley 
floor, but under the shelter of an overhanging 
cliff. Because of its better drainage and better 
outlook, a third location, supplied by nature in 
small numbers only, was probably even more pref­
erable — the summit of a broad talus slope be­
neath a cliff overhang. For reasons that geolo­
gists could no doubt explain, nature was especially 
prodigal in producing a fourth type of shelter, 
quite the most common one used by the early In­
dians — caverns in the cliff walls at the tops of 
talus slopes. These were well lighted through a 
broad arched opening, the level floor of the shelter 
forming the chord of the segment. A small shelter 
of this kind at the Palisades of the Cedar has 
already entered our story as Minott’s Cave. Such 
shelters would surely provide a maximum of living 
space and comfort, along with a minimum need 
for any added protection, indeed none at all dur­
ing a large part of the year. A fifth shelter type 
is known by one example only — a picturesque 
level shelf running along the face of a vertical 
cliff and partly overhung by the cliff wall above it. 
And finally, the massive cliffs of the Maquoketa 
contain a sixth kind of shelter, two examples only 
— little rooms that are situated high in a vertical
INDIAN ROCK SHELTERS 11
cliff wall and, except for a few precarious finger 
and toe holds, quite inaccessible.
Did the prehistoric Indians (for evidence is 
lacking that the later Indians known to white men 
ever occupied these shelters) choose their cliff 
homes with reference to their facing, as away, for 
example, from the prevailing winds of winter? 
There is no evidence whatever that they did this. 
The known inhabited shelters face in all possible 
directions. Since they were situated deep in the 
ravines, with forest protection both in front of 
them and above them, and often with an opposing 
cliff wall as an additional buffer, it probably didn’t 
make a great deal of difference whether the rock- 
girt home faced in this direction or in that. Ap­
parently just two main conditions had to be met — 
the cavern or cliff overhang had to be well lighted, 
and it had to be high and dry above the usual 
level of high water.
What evidence of former human habitation is 
found in the rock shelters, and what about the 
amount of this? As the shelters were home sites, 
where people built fires, ate, slept, made needed 
tools, weapons, utensils, clothing, ornaments, and 
the like, some proof of these processes will remain, 
but only, of course, to the extent that some of the 
products, or by-products, are not subject to rapid 
decay. Few things are less destructible than the
12 THE PALIMPSEST
ashes and charcoal of campfires, and these will be 
found from top to bottom of the refuse deposits. 
As stone was used for the making of many of the 
weapons and domestic utensils, the refuse chips 
and spalls will be found in large numbers, and 
even good specimens of the raw material that 
never saw use. Much of the kitchen refuse will 
endure for long periods of time, especially as the 
soil becomes mixed with ashes, the alkaline re­
action of which helps to counteract the acidity that 
promotes disintegration.
It is to be expected, therefore, that the bones of 
animals, birds, fishes, and reptiles, and the shells 
of mollusks, will remain to tell at least part of the 
story of food resources. Even a few nut shells 
may be preserved. If the inhabitants had pottery, 
as all the known prehistoric peoples of Iowa did 
have, the fragments of the broken vessels will 
make up a large and very important part of the 
finds preserved for careful laboratory study. So 
important are potsherds, indeed, differing, as they 
do, from one culture boundary line to another, 
that they take first place in the thinking of every 
archaeologist whose labors have to do with pot­
tery-producing sites. Fortunate it is to find at the 
ancient places of habitation objects of such pre­
eminent diagnostic value.
A few things found in the shelters may be
INDIAN ROCK SHELTERS 13
whole instead of broken: domestic implements or 
ornaments, such as flint knives, scrapers, drills, 
milling stones, abraders, bone awls, or an occa­
sional bead or pendant. The flint arrowheads are 
few in number, and stone axes are rarely found. 
These were generally used abroad and lost there. 
Neither will such articles as were buried with the 
dead, or placed as offerings in or near some sa­
cred shrine, ordinarily become a part of the shelter 
refuse. Thus it is seen that, if one is in search of 
beautiful and perfect specimens for a showcase, a 
rock shelter is hardly the best place to find them. 
If, however, one wishes to learn about the daily 
lives of those who preceded us in this land, then 
the rock shelters become a primary source of in­
formation, along with the larger village sites. 
Clues to the life processes of people of a remote 
past will here be found in considerable variety 
and, because of their concentration within a small 
space, in an astonishing abundance. The Iowa 
rock shelters often have deep deposits of refuse, 
from a depth of two feet up to as many as six or 
seven. But of course it takes some diligent dig­
ging and sieving, as well as some careful planning 
and organizing, to separate it out properly.
What Indians occupied the rock shelters? Ex­
cavations and tests in about half of the Iowa 
shelters show that they belonged to tribes pos­
14 THE PALIMPSEST
sessing an Algonkian type of culture. Were they 
not then actual members of the far-ranging Algon­
kian stock? They may have been such, but in the 
Middle West some tribes not Algonkian are 
known to have adapted themselves quite fully to 
the Algonkian ways of life, even to their pottery 
traits. In the present state of knowledge, caution 
indicates the use of some general descriptive term. 
For the forest dwellers with a certain group of 
traits the name Woodland Indians has come into 
quite general use, and their culture pattern too is 
known as Woodland.
When did the Woodland people occupy the 
villages and rock shelters which today are the 
most common and most widely distributed fea­
tures of our Iowa archaeology? There is no cer­
tain answer at present to this often asked and very 
natural question. The seventeenth-century ex­
plorers of the Iowa country mention a few tribes 
of Woodland Indians, such as the Peorias and 
the Miamis, but these were temporary sojourners 
only in the region west of the Mississippi, fugi­
tives for a short time before the fierce eastern 
Iroquois. The Indians who were well established 
in Iowa in the seventeenth century, and who left 
an archaeology very different from that of the 
Woodland, were members of the Siouan stock, 
Ioways and Otoes, and possibly a few others.
INDIAN ROCK SHELTERS 15
Sometime in the prehistoric past, before the seven­
teenth century, the peoples who left a Woodland 
archaeology in every corner of what we now call 
Iowa lived here for a long period of time and then 
departed. Traditions are lacking as to the time, 
the reasons, or the direction of their going. 
Strange facts these, apparently, but American 
archaeology is today too young a science to fur­
nish us with any total picture.
Charles Reuben Keyes


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