Oneota

The Oneota are a cultural complex of the Eastern Plains and Great Lakes, flourishing from about AD 900 to 1700 and regarded as a major component of the Upper Mississippian world. Villages such as Aztalan on the Crawfish River in Wisconsin combined maize-bean-squash farming with bison hunting and wild-rice gathering, supporting dense riverside towns. Oneota potters made globular shell-tempered vessels with short necks, strap handles and wavy or zigzag decoration on the upper half, a ware archaeologists trace across Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska. The sequence runs from an Emergent horizon around 900-1000 through Developmental and Classic phases to a Historic horizon after 1650. The culture is believed to have transformed into the Siouan-speaking peoples of the protohistoric era, such as the Ioway, Oto, Missouria and Ho-Chunk, carrying Upper Mississippian life into the fur-trade age. Earthlodges, calumet ceremony pipes and long-distance exchange in catlinite and marine shell mark Oneota sites across the prairie peninsula.