To a passerby, a patch of grass that’s been used as a pasture since 1902 near Millarville, Alta., doesn’t look like much, but really, it houses key history of one of Alberta’s most famous cowboys.
John Ware, one of Alberta’s first non-white settlers, moved from the southern United States to Canada following fortune and cattle herds. Ware, his wife Mildred, and their four children lived on the now-pasture from 1888-1902.
“He (Ware) died in 1905, and by doing archeology, we’re looking at the daily life of a family, quite literally from the ground up, by looking at the goods they were using and looking at their home and how they constructed it,” said Dr. Lindsay Amundsen-Meyer, an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Calgary.
Amundsen-Meyer is part of a UCalgary-funded team of archaeologists that was on-site for around four-and-a-half weeks, with an average crew of six per day. This year marked the first of the team’s three-year funding.
During a single-day expedition to the site in 2017, Amundsen-Meyer found a square nail, an item from Ware’s time period. Heading back to the area in 2024, the team hoped to find things like intact structural remains, artifacts and belongings.
Last year, in about a day of non-invasive geophysical methods like ground-penetrating radar, magnetometry work, evidence was found of the remains they were looking for.
“Our focus this year was basically on two depressions that we identified, one of which we believed to be the cellar of his house, one of which we thought was the outhouse,” Amundsen-Meyer said.
“I do think that we found his house and there are intact structural remains, wooden structural remains in that cellar depression.”
The team also targeted an area near the home that testing suggested may be a garbage dump full of household goods, and found well-dated discarded belongings from the Ware’s occupation.
“We were really hoping to find a garbage dump, because all of those belongings and the goods they’re using, really are very informative,” Amundsen-Meyer said. Finding the structural remains was a bonus for the project.
Household items found, including an ink bottle, Mildred Ware’s handwritten letters, and a safety pin, will be stored at the Royal Alberta Museum in Edmonton. Additionally, a conservator with the museum is helping the excavation team preserve the structural remains in place for when they return next year, a UCalgary press release read.
When the team returns in 2026, they aim to expose the entire structure and see how it was built.
Artifacts counter the myth of lacking black prairie presence
Amundsen-Meyer said that having artifacts makes history tangible. The work and excavation put into the Ware homestead have helped disprove the notion that Black history in the prairies is lacking.
“We just need to tell the stories, and another way to tell the story and to show daily life and to show that presence early on, and it’s very concrete,” she said.
“It’s not like we’re just talking about it or reading a history book, like we can literally touch the artifact, that’s where there’s a real power in doing archeology on these black heritage sites and celebrating them and sharing them with the community.”
Members of the black community were able to work with the team during excavation, an important piece of the project for Amundsen-Meyer.
“We’ve been able to work with and to have black community members out working with us, training youth in that community, which is underrepresented in heritage,” she said.
“Our work at the John Ware homestead is just another way of looking at and celebrating that early black heritage that we have here.”
