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By Christina Wise, Staff Writer
The Advertiser-Tribune (Tiffin, OH)
07-23-95
Volunteers at Heidelberg College's archaeology lab are busy sorting through 200-year-old artifacts that last month were unearthed in a soybean field. The bullets, buttons and bayonet are believed to be from the 1794 Battle of Fallen Timbers.
But a more recent battle -- one that pits modern development against historic preservation -- brought the artifacts to Tiffin.
The 180-acre site where Heidelberg Professor G. Michael Pratt and more than 100 skilled workers and volunteers spent two weeks digging up tiny bits and pieces of history is located in Maumee but owned by the city of Toledo.
It could have been the parking lot of a shopping mall. And it may still if plans to turn the site into a historic park don't come to fruition. Or if Toledo decides to sell anyway.
Toledo bought the land eight years ago with plans to sell and profit. One corporation already has a 14-month option to buy 430 acres of Toledo-owned land adjacent to the historic battlefield. If the corporation succeeds in developing an office park there, it may be rewarded with an option to buy the land on which the battle was fought.
But the zoning, part agricultural, doesn't allow for the type of development Toledo had envisioned. So, this January, the city applied to Maumee for a change in zoning. The answer was no.
"When Toledo asked for the zoning change it became real imperative that we do this dig," Pratt said. "The Maumee Valley Heritage Corridor has been concerned about that land being developed. I knew I was right. They knew I was right, too."
The Maumee Valley Heritage Corridor, a group of citizens working to protect the historical significance of sites in the communities that dot the river, had been long arguing to have the Toledo-owned land probed for artifacts.
The group believed Pratt's theory that a bloody battle had been fought on a two- to four-acre tract of that land, and didn't want artifacts that may lay there forever lost under blacktop, Pratt said.
The executive officer of Toledo Mayor Carty Finkbeiner maintains that city officials welcomed the dig.
"We wanted to see what the presence was at that site before we built a shopping center there," Tom Carothers said. "We were very anxious to get to the bottom of that, no pun intended."
But for two years, Toledo officials would not authorize a dig -- until it became part of the criteria for a zoning change.
"Their feeling was, the battle site has already been found," Pratt said.
But the battle marker -- located three quarters of a mile away from the soybean field where the battle now has been pinpointed -- was chosen primarily for its scenic view of the river, Pratt said.
Also, it was near Turkeyfoot rock. Turkeyfoot, leader of the Ottawas in the battle, had rallied the Indian forces while standing on this rock. When Turkeyfoot died, legend has it, so did the Indians' will to fight and they ran away from the battle.
There is no mention of Turkeyfoot in any historic journal or letter about the Battle of Fallen Timbers, Pratt said. He believes Turkeyfoot is a mythological character created in the hopes of establishing a rich American history.
"America wanted to create an image of itself that had a history just as big as Europe's," Pratt said, adding the name Turkeyfoot can join those of Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone in the category of historic accuracy.
By piecing together journals and letters of the men who actually fought in the battle, taking into consideration what their vantage point was and what was probably hearsay, Pratt knew the battlefield wasn't by the monument.
"America was land-hungry then," Pratt said. "There are a lot of descriptions of the way the trees looked and the ravine and terrain that just didn't match with where the monument was."
Those descriptions combined with accounts of the battle led Pratt to the area bounded by I-475, SR 24 and North Jerome Road. When Pratt and his battalion of workers entered the part-soybean field, part-woods area June 10, it was less than 20 minutes before the first bullets and buttons were discovered.
By the dig's end June 23, with almost 500 artifacts recovered, Pratt was victorious and the Toledo-owned land was deemed an archeological treasure.
And thanks to Pratt's contract through the Maumee Valley Heritage Corridor, those treasures now are in Tiffin.
Lab work began July 10 in the two-story house that's home to Heidelberg's archaeology department and, as of Thursday, more than 200 hours of volunteer work has been completed toward a final report that is to be written and turned over to Toledo and Maumee sometime in August.
It's likely the bulk of the artifacts, though still owned by Toledo, will remain at Heidelberg, with Pratt acting as curator. Only some of the most striking finds -- the bayonet, a musket ball yanked out of a gun before fired -- will be displayed.
"Toledo doesn't want a display of 300 musket balls," Pratt said. "They probably want five."
Efforts are being made to turn the battle site into a park, where tourists can witness where the battle lines were drawn and look at some of the artifacts recovered. Pratt heartily endorses the idea.
But Carothers said no decisions have been made about the land.
If a shopping mall ends up next door to the site, well, Pratt said he won't mind. "Better that it's by a shopping mall than under it."
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