FSTS 21BL0004 Knutson Dam Site

Northern Headwaters Region on Minnesota Map

Northern Headwaters Region

The Knutson Dam Site
Site Number(s):		21BL4
County:		Beltrami, MN
City Township:		Brook Lake Twp.
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The continuity of human occupation common to many sites in the Northern Headwaters area can also be found at the Knutson Dam Campground Site, where a precontact Late Woodland community was succeeded by early 19th-century Ojibwe presence. The site is particularly significant for the evidence it contains of the Late Woodland people sometimes known as the Psinomani culture.

Representative Sandy Lake ceramics from the Knutson Dam Campground Site.

Located at the outlet where the Mississippi River flows from Cass Lake, the site was noticed by explorer Zebulon Pike in 1805, who reported a trading station on the north side of the outlet. Nearly a century later Jacob Brower documented the presence of mounds. Artifacts collected at the site in the 1950s were classified as Blackduck with a small Sandy Lake component.

Volunteers with the U.S. Forest Service, assisted by personnel from the Leech Lake Heritage Sites Program, excavated the site in the summers of 1987 and 1988. In 1989, students from a University of Iowa archaeological field school continued the work in cooperation with the Forest Service.

In 1987 these volunteers at the Knutson Dam site participated in the "Spirit of the Headwaters" program.

Leech Lake Excavation Crew, 1988. Note light colored fill overlying darker cultural layers in wall profile.

Archaeologists uncovered thousands of lithics and ceramic potsherds characteristic of the people who made Sandy Lake ceramics (sometimes known as the Psinomani culture).

Projectile Points from the Knutson Dam Site. Ten of the thirteen total projectile points recovered from the site are small unnotched triangular points characteristic of the Psinomani cultural component.

Catlinite and ceramic pipes from Knutson Dam.

Artifacts associated with a documented 19th-century Ojibwe presence were also found, but the duration of the Ojibwe occupation was not determined.

Euro-American ceramics excavated from the Knutson Dam site.

Historic metal artifacts: (a) fragment of a brass "hawk bell" (b) iron needle (c) brass bracelet (d) band from a brass trade ring (e) piece of cut kettle brass cut from a kettle (f) a lead musket ball.