Mound builders

Miamisburg Mound, the largest conical mound in Ohio, is attributed to the Adena archaeological culture.

Mound Builder is a general term referring to the Native North American peoples who constructed various styles of earthen mounds for burial, residential, and ceremonial purposes. These included Archaic, and Woodland period, and Mississippian period Pre-Columbian cultures.

The term Mound Builder was also applied to an imaginary race believed to have constructed the great earthworks of the United States, this while Euroamerican racial ideology of the 16th-19th centuries did not recognize that Native Americans were sophisticated enough to construct such monumental architecture. Reference to this alleged race appears in the poem "The Prairies"[1] by William Cullen Bryant. This fictional race has also, at times, been identified as the mythical Nephites, Lamanites, Jaredites, some of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, and others. The final blow to the myth that the mounds were not Native American in origin was dealt by an official appointee of the United States Government, Cyrus Thomas of the Bureau of American Ethnology. His lengthy report (727 pages, published in 1894) concluded finally that it was the opinion of himself and thus the United States Government that the prehistoric earthworks of the eastern United States were the work of Native Americans. Thomas Jefferson was an early proponent of this view after he excavated a mound and ascertained the continuity of burial practices observed in contemporaneous native populations.

Poverty Point in what is now Louisiana is a prominent example of early archaic Mound Builder construction from about 2500 BC. While other and earlier Archaic mound centers existed (see Watson Brake), Poverty Point remains one of the best recognized centers. Throughout the United States, the Archaic period was followed by the Woodland period, and moundbuilding continued. Some well understood examples would be the Adena culture of Ohio and nearby states, and the subsequent Hopewell culture known from Illinois to Ohio and renowned for their geometric earthworks. The Adena and Hopewell were not, however, the only mound building peoples during this time period. There were contemporaneous mound building cultures throughout the Eastern United States. Around 900-1000 AD the Mississippian culture developed and spread through the Eastern United States, primarily along the river valleys. The location where the Mississippian culture is first clearly developed is located in Illinois, and is referred to today as Cahokia.

Occupied between 1250 and 1600 C.E., Mississippi's Emerald Mound is the second-largest ceremonial earthwork in the United States.

The namesake cultural trait of the Mound Builders was the building of mounds and other earthworks. These burial and ceremonial structures were typically flat-topped pyramids or platform mounds, flat-topped or rounded cones, elongated ridges, and sometimes a variety of other forms. Some mounds took on unusual shapes, such as the outline of cosmologically significant animals. These are known as effigy mounds. The best known flat-topped pyramidal earthen structure, which is also the largest pre-Columbian earthwork north of Mexico at over 100 feet tall, is Monk's Mound at Cahokia. The most famous effigy mound, Serpent Mound in southern Ohio, is 5 feet tall, 20 wide, over 1330 feet long, and shaped as a serpent.

The most complete reference for these earthworks is Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, written by Ephraim G. Squier and Edwin H. Davis and published by the Smithsonian Institution in 1848. Since a large number of the features they documented have since been destroyed or diminished by farming and development, their surveys, sketches and descriptions are still used by modern archaeologists. A smaller regional study in 1931 by author and archaeologist Fred Dustin charted and examined the mounds and Ogemaw Earthworks near Saginaw, Michigan. Archaeological survey and recording of mounds is an ongoing task.

The mound builders included many different tribal groups and chiefdoms, probably involving a bewildering array of beliefs and unique cultures, united only by the shared architectural practice of mound construction. This practice, believed to be associated with a cosmology that had a cross-cultural appeal, may indicate common cultural antecedents. The first mound building is an early marker of incipient political and social complexity among the cultures in the Eastern United States.

See also

* Tumulus, Mounds (or barrows) of Europe and Asia

External links

* Mound Builders of the Eastern Woodlands Photo Galleries
* Lost Race Myth
* LostWorlds.org | An Interactive Museum of the American Indian
* LenaweeHistory.com | Section on the Mound Builders in a reprint of a 1909 history book by The Western Historical Society
* Free ebook of The Mound Builders at Project Gutenberg

References

* Thomas, Cyrus. Report on the mound explorations of the Bureau of Ethnology. Pp. 3-730. Twelfth annual report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1890-91, by J. W. Powell, Director. XLVIII+742 pp., 42 pls., 344 figs. 1894.