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Mound Builders

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For other uses, see Mound builder.
Miamisburg Mound, the largest conical mound in Ohio, is attributed to the Adena archaeological culture
Great Mound or Conus in Mound Cemetery, part of the Marietta Earthworks in Ohio

Mound Builder is a general term referring to the American Indians who constructed various styles of earthen mounds for burial, residential and ceremonial purposes. These included Archaic, Woodland period (Adena and Hopewell cultures), and Mississippian period Pre-Columbian cultures dating from roughly 3000 BCE to the 16th century CE, and living in the Great Lakes region, the Ohio River region, the Mississippi River region.[1]

While descendants of mound builders are alive today, none are aware of the civilizations that produced the mounds, so research into this culture is strictly archaeological.

Name and culture

The term "mound builder" was also applied to an imaginary race believed to have constructed these earthworks, because Americans from the 16th-19th centuries generally thought that Native Americans did not build the mounds.

Alligator Effigy Mound, Ohio

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. The best known flat-topped pyramidal structure, which is also the largest pre-Columbian earthwork north of Mexico at over 100 feet (30 m) tall, is Monk's Mound in Illinois at Cahokia.

Some effigy mounds were made in unusual shapes, such as the outline of culturally significant animals. The most famous effigy mound, Serpent Mound in southern Ohio, is 5 feet (1.5 m) tall, 20 feet (6 m) wide, over 1,330 feet (405 m) long, and shaped as an undulating serpent.

The mound builders included many different tribal groups and chiefdoms, probably involving an 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.

Archaeological surveys

Many engraved conch shell artifacts, such as this gorget from a mound in Spiro, Oklahoma, have been found.

The most complete reference for these earthworks is Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, written by Ephraim G. Squier and Edwin H. Davis. It was published in 1848 by the Smithsonian Institution. Since many of the features the authors documented have since been destroyed or diminished by farming and development, their surveys, sketches, and descriptions are still used by modern archaeologists. All of their sites located in Kentucky came from the manuscripts of C. S. Rafinesque. 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.

Reports of early European explorers

Hernando de Soto, the conquistador who traversed what became the southeast United States in 1540-42, encountered many different Mound-builder peoples, perhaps the descendants of the great Mississippian culture. The Mound-building tradition was still alive in the southeast during the mid-sixteenth century. De Soto observed people living in fortified towns with lofty mounds and plazas and surmised that many of the mounds served as foundations for priestly temples. Near present-day Augusta, Georgia, de Soto encountered a Mound-building group ruled over by a queen, Cofitachequi, who told him that the mounds within her territory served as the burial places for nobles.

The Nodena Site, possibly the Province of Pacaha encountered by de Soto
The Kincaid Site, a Mississippian settlement in southern Illinois

The artist Jacques Le Moyne, who had accompanied French settlers to northeastern Florida in the 1560s, likewise noted many Native American groups using existing mounds and constructing others. He produced a series of watercolor paintings depicting scenes of native life. Although most of his paintings have been lost, some engravings were copied from the originals and published in 1591 by a Flemish company. Among these is a depiction of the burial of an aboriginal Floridian tribal chief, an occasion of great mourning and ceremony. The original caption reads:

Sometimes the deceased king of this province is buried with great solemnity, and his great cup from which he was accustomed to drink is placed on a tumulus with many arrows set about it.

— - Jacques Le Moyne 1650's

Maturin Le Petit, a Jesuit priest (1619), and Le Page du Pratz (1758), a French explorer, both observed the Natchez in what was later Mississippi. With a population of some 4,000 people, the Natchez were devout worshippers of the sun, occupying at least nine villages and presided over by a paramount chief—known as the Great Sun—who wielded absolute power. Both observers noted the high temple mounds the Natchez had built so that the Great Sun could commune with God, the sun. His large cabin was built atop the highest mound, from

which, every morning, he greeted the rising sun, invoking thanks and blowing tobacco smoke to the four cardinal directions.

— - Le Page du Pratz 1758

[2][3][4]

Later explorers to the same regions only a few decades after mound-building settlements had been reported found the regions largely depopulated, the settlements vanished, and the mounds untended. Since there had been little violent conflict with Europeans there during that period, the most plausible explanation is that European diseases like smallpox and influenza had wiped out most of the Native Americans who had comprised the Mound-builder civilization.[5][6][7][8]

Mound building cultures

The Poverty Point site in Louisiana
The mound of the Great Sun of the Natchez

Watson Brake located in the floodplain of the Ouachita River near Monroe in northern Louisiana, United States. Watson Brake consists of an oval formation of 11 mounds from three to 25 feet tall connected by ridges to form an oval near 900 feet across. It has been dated to about 5400 years ago (appox. 3400 BC). In the Americas, Mound building starts at an early date, well before the pyramids of Egypt were constructed. Watson Brake is considered the earliest mound complex in North America and is the earliest dated complex construction in the Americas. Watson Brake's dating is nearly 2,000 years before the better-known Poverty Point, which was previously thought to be the earliest mound site in the United States. With Watson Brake's discovery and dating, pre-agricultural, pre-ceramic American societies were shown to be more complex than previously thought.

Poverty Point in what is now Louisiana is a prominent example of early archaic mound builder construction (c. 2500 BCE - 1000 BCE). While earlier Archaic mound centers are known, Poverty Point remains one of the best-known early examples.

The Archaic period was followed by the Woodland period (c. 1000 BCE). 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 900–1450 CE 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.

Fort Ancient is the name for a Native American culture that flourished from 1000-1650 C.E. among a people who predominantly inhabited land along the Ohio River in areas of southern modern-day Ohio, northern Kentucky and western West Virginia. The Fort Ancient culture was once thought to have been an expansion of the Mississippian cultures. It is now accepted as an independently developed culture descended from the Hopewell culture.

This was an archaeological culture in the lower Mississippi River Valley in western Mississippi and eastern Louisiana. Good examples of this culture are the Medora Site, in West Baton Rouge Parish, La, and the Anna, Emerald Mound, Winterville and Holly Bluff (Lake George) sites located in Mississippi. [9] Plaquemine culture was contemporaneous with the Middle Mississippian culture in the Cahokia site in St. Loius, Missouri. It is considered ancestral to the Natchez and Taensa Peoples. [10]

Alternative explanations

Through the mid-nineteenth century, European Americans did not recognize that Native Americans built the mounds of the eastern U.S.

A key work in increasing awareness of the origins of the mounds was the lengthy 1894 report by Cyrus Thomas of the Bureau of American Ethnology. He concluded that the prehistoric earthworks of the eastern United States were the work of Native Americans. A small number of people had earlier reached similar conclusions: Thomas Jefferson, for example, excavated a mound and noted similarities between mound builder funeral practices and the funeral practices of Native Americans in his time.

Several alternative explanations were put forward as to the origins of the mound builders:

Vikings

Benjamin Smith Barton proposed the theory that the mound builders were Vikings who came to North America and eventually disappeared.

Ancient world immigrants

Other people believed that Greeks, Africans, Chinese or assorted Europeans built the mounds. Euroamericans who embraced a Biblical worldview sometimes thought the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel had built the mounds.

Book of Mormon inhabitants

During the 1800s, a common folklore was that Jews -- particularly the Lost Ten Tribes -- were the ancestors of Native Americans and the mound builders. The Book of Mormon (first published in 1830) contains the most enduring evidence of this belief, with a narrative that describes two waves of immigration to the the Americas from Mesopotamia: the Jaredites (ca. 3000 - 2000 BCE) and an Israelite group in 590 BCE (called Nephites, Lamanites and Mulekites). The Book of Mormon depicts these settlers building magnificent cities, only to be later destroyed by warfare around 385 CE.

Some Mormon apologists have realized that The Book of Mormon narrative is a description of the mound building cultures, but in recent decades, other Mormon scholars have adhered to the view that a Mesoamerican setting is the most likely. It should be noted however, that the more recent Mesoamerican setting for the Book of Mormon, has evolved from the ideas of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) who were influenced by the publicized findings of Central American stone ruins (some time after the publication of the Book of Mormon)[11].

Black civilizations

Other groups that have developed explanations about the mound builders are certain sects affiliated with the Black nationalist Moorish Science philosophy. They argue that the mound builders were an ancient advanced Black civilization that developed the legendary continents of Atlantis and Mu as well as ancient Egypt and Mesoamerica. Like other mound builder explanations, these black groups also posit that the American Indians were too uncivilized and unable to develop cities and the technology necessary for building these mounds.

Divine creation

The Reverend Landon West claimed that Serpent Mound in Ohio was built by God. He believed that God built the mound himself and placed it in Eden, which apparently was in Ohio.

Mythical cultures

Some people went so far as to attribute the mounds to mythical cultures: Lafcadio Hearn suggested that the mounds were built by people from the Lost Continent of Atlantis.

Effects of alternative explanations

The mound builder explanations were not just hoaxes but honest misinterpretations of real data from valid sources. Both scholars and laymen accepted some of these explanations. Reference to an alleged race appears in the poem "The Prairies" (1832) by William Cullen Bryant.[12]

Justification to remove Indians

The removal of most Indians from the mound builder regions by the 1830s, by means of the Trail of Tears, was partly justified by the theory that the Indians had destroyed the mound builders. Because one theory was that the mound builders may have been ancient Europeans, the removal of the savage Indian tribes was justified in order to reclaim European land, as well as to ensure the safety of civilization.[citation needed]

Assumption construction too complex for Indians

One belief was that American Indians were simple beings who could not have constructed such magnificent earthworks and artifacts. The stone, metal, and clay artifacts were thought to be too complex for the primitive Indians to make. However, in the American Southeast, Northeast, and Midwest, there were numerous Indian cultures that were sedentary and participated in agriculture. Numerous Indian towns had walls surrounding them for defense. If they were capable of this type of construction, building mounds should have been no more difficult. People who believed that the Indians were not responsible for the earthworks also used the more plausible argument that they could have not built them because they were nomadic peoples who followed their food. In this view, they could not have devoted the time and effort to construct mounds and other time-consuming projects.

When most Europeans first arrived in America, they never witnessed the American Indians building mounds; when asked about the mounds, most of the Indians did not know anything about them. Yet there were numerous written accounts about the Indians' construction of the mounds by Europeans. One detailed account was by Garcilaso de la Vega, who wrote about how they built the mounds and the temples that were placed on top of the mounds. There were even French expeditions that stayed with Indian societies who built mounds.

Assumption construction older than Indians

People also claimed that the Indians were not the mound builders because the mounds and related artifacts were older than Indian cultures. Caleb Atwater's misunderstanding of stratigraphy led him to believe that the mound builders were a much older civilization than the Indians. In his book, Antiquities Discovered in the Western States (1820), Atwater claimed that Indian remains were always found right beneath the surface of the earth. Since the artifacts associated with the mound builders were found fairly deep in the ground, Atwater argued that they must be from a different group of people. The discovery of metal artifacts further convinced people that the mound builders were not Native Americans. The Indians were not known to engage in metallurgy. This was another incorrect conclusion based on the false assumption that all Indian cultures are similar. Some artifacts that were found in relation to the mounds were inscribed with symbols. The Europeans did not know of any Indian cultures that had a writing system, so they assumed a different group had created them.

Hoaxes

Several hoaxes were based on the mound builders.

Newark Holy Stones

In 1860, David Wyrick discovered the "Keystone tablet", containing Hebrew language inscriptions written on it in Newark, Ohio. Soon after, he found the "Newark Decalogue Stone" nearby, also claimed to contain Hebrew. It was later discovered that Reverend John W. McCarty created these "Newark Holy Stones" and put them in a place where Wyrick would find them.

Davenport tablets

Another hoax related to the mound builders was the discovery of the Davenport tablets by Reverend Jacob Gass. These also bore inscriptions that later were found to be fake.

Walam Olum hoax

The Walam Olum hoax had considerable influence on perceptions of the mound builders. In 1836 Constantine Samuel Rafinesque published his translation of a text he claimed had been written in pictographs on wooden tablets. This text explained the origin of the Lenape Indians in Asia, told of their passage over the Bering Strait, and narrated their subsequent migration across the North American continent. This “Walam Olum” tells of battles with native peoples already in America before the Lenape arrived. It was assumed by others that these original people were the mound builders, and that the Lenape Indians overthrew them and destroyed their culture. David Oestreicher later branded Rafinesque's story a hoax. He argued that the Walam Olum glyphs derived from Chinese, Egyptian, and Mayan alphabets. Meanwhile, the belief that the Native Americans destroyed the mound builder culture had earned widespread acceptance.

Kinderhook Plates

The Kinderhook plates, "discovered" in 1843, were another hoax of material planted in Native American mounds. This hoax, however, had the aim of discrediting the supposed translation powers of Mormon prophet Joseph Smith.

See also

Panoramic view from within the Great Circle at the Newark Earthworks in Newark, Ohio (wall of which can be seen in the background)

Notes

  1. ^ See Squier p. 1
  2. ^ Mallory O'Connor, Lost Cities of the Ancient Southeast (University Press of Florida, 1995)
  3. ^ Ephraim Squier and Edwin Davis, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley (Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, vol. 1. Washington DC, 1848)
  4. ^ Biloine Young and Melvin Fowler, Cahokia: The Great Native American Metropolis (University of Illinois Press, 2000)
  5. ^ Davis Brose and N'omi Greber (eds.), Hopewell Archaeology (Kent State UP, 1979)
  6. ^ Roger Kennedy, Hidden Cities: The Discovery and Loss of Ancient North American Civilization (Free Press, 1994)
  7. ^ Robert Silverberg, "...And the Mound-Builders Vanished from the Earth", originally in the 1969 edition of American Heritage, collected in the anthology A Sense of History [Houghton-Mifflin, 1985]; available online here.
  8. ^ Gordon M. Sayre, The Mound Builders and the Imagination of American Antiquity in Jefferson, Bartram, and Chateaubriand, Early American Literature 33 (1998): 225-249.
  9. ^ "Mississippian and Late Prehistoric Period". Retrieved 2008-09-08.
  10. ^ "The Plaquemine Culture, A.D 1000". Retrieved 2008-09-08.
  11. ^ See the anonymous newspaper article titled "ZARAHEMLA" (Times and Seasons, October 1, 1842, Volume 3, Number 23, p. 927) featuring excerpts from John Lloyd Stephens 1841 bestseller, Incident of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan. Stephens’ own conclusions that the Central American stone ruins which he and Catherwood documented, were not of any great antiquity went unheeded by excited LDS readers.
  12. ^ Bryant, William Cullen, "The Prairies" (1832)

References

  • Abrams, Elliot M. (2005). The Emergence of the Moundbuilders: The Archaeology of Tribal Societies in Southeastern Ohio. Athens: Ohio University Press. ISBN 9780821416099. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  • 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.
  • Feder, Kenneth L.. Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology’’. 5th ed. New York: McGraw Hill, 2006.
  • Squier, A.M., E.G. (1847). Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley. Washington: Smithsonian Institute. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
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