Native American Paths in Pennsylvania: Where did they get that stuff?
Mapping
the Pennsylvania Native American Trails Using Geographic Information Systems to
Discover the Possible Origin of Chert Associated with a Paleo-Indian Site.
Yusuf
Sharif
A fellow classmate has been working on a project about a Paleo Indian site here in Central Pennsylvania called the Shoop Site. The Native Americans at the site used Chert to make their stone tools. Some theories state that the Chert came from a quarry in New York State. This experiment will try to prove that the Onondigon Chert actually came from cobbles found by those Indians along the trails that they traveled when moving back and forth from Pennsylvania to New York. In order to prove this, an old map of Pennsylvania Indian Paths was scanned, registered with the help of Mike Gagnon at the PA DEP, and brought into ESRI ArcView 3.2, GIS software. The paths from New York state to Central Pennsylvania were digitized and converted into a Shape file. Pennsylvania Surface Geology and Glacial Formation maps and files were downloaded from the Pennsylvania Spatial Data Access (PASDA) web site http://www.pasda.psu.edu/. of which, the ArcInfo export files were converted into ArcView shape files with the help of Tom Whitfield at the DCNR. When all the layers were combined, a relationship can be seen between where the Indians traveled from New York into Pennsylvania along the paths and possible sources of Onondigon Chert. This experiment found that the Native Americans could have found a Chert source along the trails as they traveled; in the limestone formations in the surface geology and in the Susquehanna River, deposited there by the glacial movements pushing New York (Onondigon) Chert down into Pennsylvania.
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