Mound builders
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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 dating from roughly 3000 BCE to the 1500s, and living in the Great Lakes region, the Ohio River region, and the Mississippi River region.
The term "Mound Builder" was also applied to an imaginary race believed to have constructed these earthworks, because Euroamericans from the 16th-19th centuries generally thought that Native Americans did not build the mounds.
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[edit] The Mounds and Their Structure
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 tall, is Monk's Mound 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 tall, 20 wide, over 1330 feet long, and shaped as a serpent.
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.
The most complete reference for these earthworks is Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, written by Ephraim G. Squier, Edwin H. Davis and Samuel Morton. It was published by the Smithsonian Institution in 1848. Since many 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. All of their sites located in Kentucky came from the manuscripts of the deceased 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.
[edit] Eras
The Moundbuilding cultures can be divided into roughly three eras:
[edit] Archaic era
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 existed (see Watson Brake), Poverty Point remains one of the best-known early examples.
[edit] Woodland period
Throughout the United States, the Archaic period was followed by the Woodland period (c. 1000 BCE - 1000). 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.
[edit] Mississippian culture
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.
[edit] The Moundbuilder Myth
Through the mid-1800s, Native Americans were generally not believed to have built the mounds of the eastern U.S.
A key work in the widespread recognition of the true origins of the mounds was the lengthy 1894 report of Cyrus Thomas of the Bureau of American Ethnology, which 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 alternate explanations were forwarded as to the origins of the mound builders:
Benjamin Smith Barton proposed the theory that the mound builders were Vikings who came to America and eventually disappeared. Other people believed that they were Greeks, Africans, Chinese or assorted Europeans. The Ten Lost Tribes of Israel were often given credit for the mounds by Euroamericans who embraced an Anglo-philic worldview, in the guise of a Biblical worldview. The Book of Mormon (first published in 1830) claimed that Israelite groups (called the Nephites, Lamanites or Jaredites) settled in the Americas and built magnificent cities (including large burial mounds), only to be later decimated by warfare. 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. Some people went as 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.
The removal of most Indians from the mound builder regions by the 1830s, by means of the Trail of Tears, was partly justified by theory that the Indians destroyed the mound builders. Because people thought that the mound builders were sometimes believed to be ancient Europeans, the removal of the Indians was justified in order to reclaim their land.
The mound builder myth was not just a simple hoax, but a misinterpretation of real data from valid sources. The myth was widely accepted by scholars and laymen. Reference to this alleged race appears in the poem "The Prairies" (1832) by William Cullen Bryant [1] The widespread acceptance of the myth was based on a number of factors.
One was the belief the American Indians were simple beings that 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 even 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 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 Europeans first arrived in America they never witnessed the American Indians building mounds; and 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.
People also claimed that the Indians were not the mound builders because the mounds and related artifacts were older than the Indian culture itself. 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 claims that Indian remains are always found right beneath the surface of the earth. Since the artifacts associated with the mound builders are 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 because the Indians were not known to engage in metallurgy. This was another ignorant perception that was based on the 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 it was another group who created them.
[edit] Hoaxes
Several hoaxes enforced the Moundbuilder Myth, leading people to believe in the myth even more.
In 1860, David Wyrick discovered the “Keystone tablet”, containing Hebrew language inscriptions written on it in Newark, Ohio. Soon after, he found the “Decologue” tablet nearby, also claimed to contain Hebrew. It was later discovered that a Reverend John W. McCarty created the stones and put them in a place where Wyrick would find them.
Another hoax related to the mound builder myth was the discovery of the Davenport tablets by Reverend Jacob Gass. These were also tablets with inscriptions on them that later were found to be fake.
The Walam Olum hoax had considerable influence in the mound builder myth. Constantine Samuel Rafinesque published in 1836 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, arguing that the Walam Olum glyphs derive from Chinese, Egyptian, and Mayan alphabets. Meanwhile, the belief that the Native Americans destroyed the mound builder culture had earned widespread acceptance.
The Kinderhook Plates ("discovered" in 1843) were another hoax planted in Native American mounds.
[edit] See also
- Tumulus, Mounds (or barrows) of Europe and Asia
- Southwestern College (Kansas) School mascot: The "Moundbuilders"
- Grave Creek Mound
- Criel Mound
[edit] Placemarks
- Ancient Monuments Placemarks KMZ file links.
[edit] References
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- ^ http://www.4literature.net/William_Cullen_Bryant/Prairies/ Bryant, William Cullen, “The Praries” (1832)
- 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.
