Background

Charles was born on May 5, 1871, in Mount Vernon, Iowa, United States; the son of Martha Maria Whittington Keyes and Marsden Keyes. Among his ancestors was Edmund Rice, an English immigrant to Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Education

Charles attended Mount Vernon public schools and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, United States, in 1894. After a brief career as a teacher and administrator in the Norway and Blairstown public schools, Keyes enrolled in graduate school at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, earning a Master of Arts degree in German, in 1897. He completed a Doctor of Philosophy degree at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, in 1923.

Career

Charles had been appointed to the Cornell College faculty in 1903 after teaching several years at the University of California at Berkeley. Keyes taught at Cornell for 38 years. Although he published articles dealing with ornithology and German philology, Keyes’s most important scientific contributions involved his archaeological investigations, a discipline in which he had received no formal training or education. His interest in archaeology may be traced to his teenage years in the mid-1880s, when he received two projectile points as gifts, apparently from family friends in Wisconsin and Indiana. He then began to find specimens on his own in the Mount Vernon area. He soon realized the importance of documenting his finds and began the first of a series of catalogs of his archaeological materials in 1897. He also learned that farmers in the Iowa and Cedar river valleys, his favorite hunting territory, already had many more specimens than he would be able to gather on his own, and determined that inventorying local collections would prove just as rewarding as personal finds. Thus through the first two decades of the 20th century, Keyes would visit people with artifact collections, identify or describe the materials in small catalogs or notebooks, and acquire such specimens as the owners were willing to give or sell. He described this work as being akin to that of “an itinerant country preacher.” Keyes employed this basic approach to his study of Iowa’s archaeological heritage throughout his career, although he abandoned the practice of buying specimens after 1910.

After World War I, interest in a state-level archaeological program began to develop, and Keyes’s expertise caught the attention of State Historical Society of Iowa Superintendent Benjamin F. Shambaugh. Two events may have spurred Shambaugh’s interest in Keyes. The first was Keyes’s 1920 publication in the Proceedings of the Iowa Academy of Science titled “Some Material for the Study of Iowa Archaeology,” which outlined a plan for a statewide survey. The second was Keyes’s 1921 survey of archaeological resources in the Iowa Great Lakes region, conducted over several weeks during one of Iowa Lakeside Laboratory’s summer sessions in natural history. The survey implemented his proposed research design. Keyes’s appointment as director of the Iowa Archaeological Survey at the State Historical Society came in 1922, and he spent his summers over the next 20 years traveling around the state conducting field surveys and interviews, preparing site maps, and recording field notes. Keyes also attended and helped organize professional archaeological conferences to elucidate Iowa’s place in midwestern prehistory. Keyes’s success in accumulating specimens for the State Historical Society and in developing and exercising his archaeological expertise was a reflection of his personal charm and strength of character.

In the early 1930s, Keyes collaborated with Ellison Orr of Waukon on several major archaeological investigations sponsored by the Iowa Planning Board, which oversaw Works Progress Administration projects in the state. These included a statewide survey of mound groups and village sites, excavations of Native American burial sites in northeastern Iowa, and survey and excavation of the earth lodge sites of the Glenwood locality in southwestern Iowa. Orr’s familiarity with many archaeological resources in northeastern Iowa, his skill as a land surveyor and excavator, and his dedication to careful documentation of his archaeological activities made him the perfect complement to Keyes. Their efforts led to the establishment of Effigy Mounds National Monument.

Upon Charles's retirement from Cornell College in 1941, Keyes continued his archaeological work full time. He directed field school excavations for several years at rock shelter sites at Palisades-Kepler State Park and supervised at least one graduate student thesis. In 1944 he was appointed visiting research professor of archaeology at the State University of Iowa.

Throughout his archaeological career, Keyes published articles in scholarly journals and in the popular press. As a public employee, Keyes felt obliged to place his archaeological work within the grasp of the average Iowan, and thus considered his contributions to periodicals such as the Palimpsest his most important ones. Keyes died at home in Mount Vernon at the age of 80.

Achievements

• His personal surveys and work for the State Historical Society of Iowa resulted in the accumulation of more than 108,000 artifacts and a correspondingly large set of notes, photographs, maps, correspondence, manuscripts, and memorabilia now known as the Keyes Archaeological Collection.
  
  Shortly after Keyes’s death, Smithsonian Institution archaeologist Waldo R. Wedel described the Keyes Collection as “the largest and most comprehensive extant assemblage of Iowa archaeological materials.” Former State Archaeologist Marshall McKusick observed that the collection “contains numerous outstanding specimens of aesthetic and interpretive importance.”
  
  

Works

More photos

• book

  • A History Of Certain Great Horned Owls ... 1912
  • Preliminary Annotated Catalogue Of The Birds Of Iowa

Connections

In 1902 Charles Reuben married Sarah Mary "Sadie" Naumann. They had two daughters, Catherine Ann and Margaret Naumann Keyes.

Father:

Marsden Keyes

Mother:

Martha Maria Whittington Keyes

Spouse:

Sarah Mary Nauman Keyes

Sister:

Carrie Ellen Keyes Lahman

Brother:

Harriett J Keyes Keyes

Sister:

Margaret Bertie Keyes Hoover

Brother:

Geneva M Keyes Kurtz

Brother:

Karl M. Keyes

Sister:

Florence Keyes Mitchell

Daughter:

Margaret Naumann Keyes

Margaret was a professor of Home Economics at the University of Iowa, and recognized as a national leader in the field of historic preservation.

Daughter:

Catherine Keyes

References

• The Biographical Dictionary of Iowa Iowa has been blessed with citizens of strong character who have made invaluable contributions to the state and to the nation. In the 1930s alone, such towering figures as John L. Lewis, Henry A. Wallace, and Herbert Hoover hugely influenced the nation’s affairs.
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