Photo by Ellen Ferrera
Dean Mesnard with a portion of his primitive artifact collection. Mesnard is also an accomplished wood sculptor.

•November 6, 2019•
By Ellen Ferrera
for The News Progress

Although Native American civilizations are long gone from the local prairie, collectors of artifacts reveal how they lived.
Thousands of years ago after the glaciers receded North America was populated by Native Americans who traveled down the East and West coasts into the Great Plains in their search for food and shelter.
While those civilizations no longer exist their artifacts have remained in the land and today are greatly prized by collectors, not only for their beauty, but also for what they teach us about the earliest Americans.
Central and Southern Illinois were heavily populated by Indian communities -Cahokia being one of the most famous sites in the U.S. – and artifacts are still being discovered to this day.
David Cole of Sullivan and Dean Mesnard of Decatur have both acquired impressive and magnificent collections of early American Indian artifacts.
Cole, who is the Executive Director of the Moultrie County Counseling Center, began finding arrowheads and other artifacts as a child and began collecting seriously about 20 years ago. He builds his collection today primarily by trading with other collectors at trade shows.

“The joy in collecting for me is in discovering the people, their lives, tools, pottery and how these items were used in their daily lives,” Cole said. “It is always thrilling to find pieces and I have some that are 9,000 years old.”     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.