Geography and Its Impact

Cottleville is situated near the basins of three great rivers: the Ohio, the Missouri, and the Mississippi. The geological setting of Cottleville was in the Glacial Plains, which, during the ice age, is where giant glaciers deposited crushed and ground rock called drift. Wind carried fine rock and pulverized soil that blanketed the area. This process transformed the land and initiated the environmental and agricultural conditions we see today. However, Cottleville is now located in what geologists call the Middle Dardenne Basin, which is only 495 feet above sea level and has a land mass of 4.5 square miles.

Cottleville is one of the oldest towns in St. Charles County, located about 10 miles west of St. Charles and the Mississippi River, butting up to the Dardenne waterway. Indian trails turned into roads leading westward through Missouri for covered wagons and stage and mail coaches. Situated about a day'sjourney from the Mighty Mississippi, many early travelers would find themselves stranded when the Dardenne River — now Dardenne Creek — would overflow.

Cottleville encompasses about 100 acres that stretch from Dardenne Creek as the northern perimeter, the Crooked Creek as the western perimeter, Gutermuth Road as the southern perimeter, and Mid Rivers Mall Dr. as the eastern perimeter. The reason settlers in the 16th century chose this specific territorial layout was due to the vast amount of available natural resources. Crooked Creek and Dardenne River (Creek) frequently over ran its boundaries, laying down fertile silt for its neighbors.

"Cottleville lies within a virtual 'Garden of Eden'. This contributed to the growth and variety of prairies, oak and hickory forest, and river ecosystems each having distinctive flora and fauna that are easily accessible and provided a wide range of foods from which to select. The rich fertile soils that were widely available made farming a very productive enterprise for prehistoric and historic inhabitants alike. This region also contained the resources needed for organic medicines, wood construction and eventually manufacturing. Wildlife was very abundant and continues to be home to many deer, turkey, geese, ducks and birds." 1.

Many years ago, a variety of cultures inhabited Missouri, which was also known as the area with "those who have dugout canoes" or the "settlement of the big canoes" or even "Big Muddy." To date, the earliest residents that came to inhabit the Cottleville region did so approximately 8000 B.C. At that time, the landscape was considerably different from what we see today. The climate was more humid and rarely reached even 80 degrees. The flood plains near the rivers were strikingly fertile as a result of the frequent shifting of the water passages. "Forest composition on the floodplain was affected by two factors. One was the frequency and duration of flooding, and the other was the type of plant succession on land being built up by sedimentation" 1. As a result, this became a prime location for the first inhabitants to establish a community.

Many archeological projects have been performed within the last 40 years by Dan Haas and Roger Boyd. Archeological excavations have uncovered mollusks in backwater areas and streams. These hard shelled mollusks appear to not only have been used as a source of food, but as tools. The shells could be ground and used as binding agents for ceramic vessels, carved into jewelry, or used as digging instruments. The number of total recorded sites within St. Charles County is over a thousand and Cottleville had its share of cultures.

A camp 100 by 50 meters on a bluff top near the Dardenne Creek, reveals projectile points. 2.

Camps found on the Dardenne Creek within this period measure: 50 by 20 meters, 180 by 160 meters, 320 x 200 meters, and 120 by 80 meters. 3

Many other projects for archeological data have been performed in the St. Charles County area, resulting in a total of 82 reported sites from the Late Archaic Period. The Cottleville area has five of these sites documented on the Dardenne and Crooked Creeks as villages, campsites and lithic scatters.

These sites were identified by Joseph Harl, Patti Wright and Joseph Nixon in 1986. 5.

An article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 12, 1966, entitled "Traces of Early Indian Village are Found in St. Charles County," told of the Late Woodland Indian presence in Cottleville. The article describes 17 dark spots in the back yard of Ambrose Schulte, native of Cottleville, which when unearthed proved to be storage and refuse holes dating to about 1000 A.D. Schulte stated, "I had knocked a couple of feet of dirt off of a knoll behind a home we're building. I noticed some arrow heads, but didn't pay any mind because they're quite common in this part of the country."

Schulte owned a 35-acre site on Gutermuth Road, which is within eye sight of Cottleville. It was soon discovered that two round houses and a rectangular house had been there and that they were part of a village dating to slightly before the culture that built Cahokia Mounds. Legend has it that an ancient Indian cemetery exists near Schulte's property. Arrow points, as well as three point and four point arrow heads were found at the site. My father, Dennis Spellmann — a Cottle descendant — owned property near the Schulte farm and we could also find arrowheads every spring when the land was tilled to put in a large garden.

"Looking to Preserve History," an article in the St. Charles Post-Dispatch dated November 29, 1988, describes the story of Gerald and Georgette Bergen. Their three-story house was built in the 1890s by a physician who used the side building as the Cottleville doctor's office. Both the Doctor's office and the 1870 home still stand in the historic district. The Bergens restored the home and spent hours digging for artifacts with great success.

Some of the first Indian tribes known to have resided in Missouri were the Missouris, Dakotas, Iowas, Osages, and Poncas. "The Missouris was the chief tribe in the area of Cottleville with villages as large as 150 to 300 acres, but were finally absorbed in to other tribes. It is estimated that there were 300,000 Indians when the white man came." St. Charles Missouri Bicentennial Historical Program Book 1769-1969. Stephen Kochanski, then chairman of the Cottleville Trustees, was quoted as saying, "We know we can't stop progress but we want to try to save the historic part of the village." St. Charles Post- Dispatch, November 29, 1988. The appreciation of Indian cultures and history became paramount to many Cottleville residents.

What goes without saying is that...