The Humphrey site near Mullen is one of the premiere archaeological properties that has helped tell the complex story of the Plains Apache people and what life in the Sandhills was like hundreds of years ago. Named after a local amateur archaeologist who first reported the site in the 1940s, the property was reinvestigated in 2017-2018. Using ground-penetrating radar and other geophysical prospecting methods, archaeologists located several buried house ruins at the site. Excavation of these structures revealed details related to settlement, architecture, diet, trade, and conflict in the Sandhills.
Humphrey was occupied repeatedly by one or more Apache groups in the 1600s. The site was not just a campsite. The people who lived there built semi-permanent houses made from local cedar and juniper trees, which may have resembled southwestern-style Navajo or Apache hogans and wickiups. They were apparently food secure, selectively hunting bison, deer, antelope, birds, and turtles. They gathered local edibles, including chokecherries and grapes, and probably even established corn gardens. While corn varieties had been on the central Great Plains for hundreds of years by this time, having originated in central Mexico, raising corn in the Sandhills without irrigation is a feat in a climate similar to today’s.
The Plains Apache made dozens of clay pots for storage and cooking and had a diverse assortment of stone tools and weapons. The Sandhills has no outcrops of stone needed to make arrow points, knives, and scrapers, requiring trade networks or long distance travel to source areas located at least 150 to 200 miles away. At least one material, obsidian, originated as far away as New Mexico. No horse bones were identified during excavation, suggesting that travel would have been conducted on foot. Dogs were kept as domestic animals and may have hauled materials and supplies.
Humphrey represents the most northeasterly incursion of Plains Apaches into Nebraska. Evidence of European contact is limited to a single metal bead and two animal bones with metal tool cut marks. This area was traditional Pawnee hunting territory from the 1600s and shared perhaps with the Omaha and Ponca after 1700. Oral traditions by these three eastern Nebraska tribes refer to an awareness of and conflicts in the Sandhills with the “Padouca” which likely refers to Apaches. This conflict might explain why the Apaches ended up abandoning their homes on the Middle Loup River around 1700 CE, leaving behind only the archaeological site as we know it today.