Moccasin Bluff site

Moccasin Bluff, on a terrace above the St. Joseph River near Buchanan, preserves one of western Michigan’s richest records of long-term Native American occupation. Used first for temporary camps by about 6300 B.C., it later became part of exchange networks by about A.D. 500 and supported more settled farming communities between about A.D. 1100 and 1400. Excavations beginning in 1948 uncovered pottery, burials, maize, storage pits, hearths, tools, animal remains and other artifacts that reveal daily life, seasonal activity and ties to wider cultural traditions. The site also links this deep Indigenous history to the nineteenth-century displacement of nearby Potawatomi communities.

Michigan · United States