SPOTLIGHT ON ARCHAEOLOGY: CHICKASAW ANCESTRY DRIVES SOUTHEAST STUDENT

Donna Rausch began studying archaeology because she was interested in learning more about her lineage. She ended up learning more about herself.

Rausch, a student at Southeast Missouri State University and a speaker at one of the lectures the college has scheduled during Missouri Archaeology Month, is the great-great-great-granddaughter of a governor of the Chickasaw nation after it was relocated to Oklahoma. But she grew up in Texas, far removed from any Native American culture.

Rausch said her learning about both the history of her Chickasaw lineage and the study of the culture have helped her understand herself.

"You won't know where you are going until you know where you came from," Rausch said.

The same can be said for the human race as a whole, said Dr. Carol Morrow, an associate professor of anthropology at Southeast Missouri State.

Many of the same factors influence human behavior today as they did during the Stone Age. People and civilizations are still influenced by extremes in weather, war, disease and mass movements.

"People think of archaeology as the study of prehistoric sites, but it's really the study of human behavior," Morrow said. "It lets us answer some of the basic questions about humanity."

Missouri Archaeology Month, held each September, helps increase public awareness of archaeology.

In Southeast Missouri there is archaeological evidence right under your feet, Morrow said. There were hundreds of Mississippian settlements in this area. Mississippians were corn growers and mound builders who lived in this area about 1,000 A.D.

"Ask any farmer in the area. They often uncover artifacts when they plow their fields," Morrow said.

Rausch has been studying the Mississippians because the Chickasaw tribe grew out of that culture.

She became interested in archaeology at age 6 when told of her Native American heritage. But the 44-year-old had to wait until her two children were grown to study it. She went back to school four years ago.

"I became interested in archaeology from my lineage, but I became passionate about it after I went to a Wickliffe mound, which in 1818 was still Chickasaw hunting grounds. The Chickasaw come from the Mississippian culture," she said.

She soon realized she was learning much about the history of the Chickasaw but nothing about the culture.

Then at a university-sponsored powwow last year she met LaDonna Brown, a full-blood Chickasaw raised in the culture. They have become close friends and study mates.

"She taught me about the Chickasaw culture, and we've worked together on the history," Rausch said. That history includes how the Chickasaw lived before contact with whites, their removal from their homelands and how the culture has changed since the move.

As she became closer to those raised in the Chickasaw culture, Rausch said she noticed that her personality traits matched theirs.

"The things I like, the way I behave, the things I'm capable of, I've learned many of these are cultural things," Rausch said.

In addition to understanding herself better, learning more about the Chickasaw culture also has helped Rausch understand the Native American issues of today, she said.

"All the things I do, what I feel, I never knew why," Rausch said. "I always felt different. Now I have a better understanding of who I am."