MACKINAW CITY, MICHIGAN—According to a Michigan Live report, a collection of trade goods and other artifacts has been uncovered in the root cellar of a row house in Colonial Michilimackinac, the site of a fort and trading post built in the eighteenth century by the French on the Straits of Mackinac. Most of the items, which include a large fishhook, a silver brooch, a brass button, fragments of about half of a creamware plate and part of a saucer, date to the period of British occupation of the fort, between 1760 and 1770. Archaeologist Lynn Evans said the team of excavators also uncovered a Catlinite MicMac pipe. A reed would have been inserted into the stone bowl of such three-part pipes, which were used by Native Americans and some French Canadians. A French military button, parts of a bone-handled table knife, and the brass ramrod pipe to a gun have also been recently unearthed. To read about another discovery in Michigan, go to “Leftover Mammoth.”
