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Mound builders

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Image:Miamisburg jqj.jpg
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 Nephites, Lamanites, Jaredites, some of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, and others, due in part to the historical claims made in a book entitled the Book of Mormon.

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[edit] Misinterpretation of Valid Data

The mound builder myth was not just a simple hoax, but a misinterpretation of real data from valid sources. The myth was based on a number of reasons. One was that the American Indians were simple beings that could have not 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 there were numerous Indian cultures that were sedentary and participated in agriculture. Some Indian towns even had walls surrounding it for defense. If they were capable of this type of construction, building mounds should be no more difficult for them. The 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. Therefore, they could have not devoted the time and effort to construct the 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 Indian’s 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 cultures 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.

The misunderstanding of stratigraphy used by Caleb Atwater in 1820 lead him to believe that the mound builders were a much older civilization than the Indians. In his book, Antiquities Discovered in the Western States, 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 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 this idea, leading people to believe in the myth even more. In 1860, David Wyrick discovered a tablet, the Keystone, containing Hebrew inscriptions written on it in Newark, Ohio. Soon after another tablet containing Hebrew writing was found by him not too far away from Newark, called the Decalogue. It was discovered that a reverend by the name of 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.

Several explanations arose from varying people about the origins of the mound builders. Benjamin Smith Barton proposed the theory that the mound builders were Vikings who came over to America and eventually disappeared. Other people believed that they were Greeks, Africans, Chinese, Europeans, or Israelites. The list is endless, with everyone suggesting their own theory. Some people went as far as to attribute the mounds to individuals who can not even be proven to have ever existed. Lafcadio Hearn suggested that the mounds were built by Atlanteans from the Lost Continent of Atlantis. 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.

However, out of all of these theories the Walam Olum hoax had the most significance in the mound builder myth. Constantine Samuel Rafinesque declared that in 1826 he discovered a text written on wooden tablets that explained the origins of the mound builders. In the text, called the Walam Olum, it discussed that the mound builders were in America before the Indians. The text he found discusses that the Indians overthrew the mound builders and destroyed their culture. Later on David Oestreicher debunked this story and proved that the Walam Olum was a combination of different symbols from Chinese, Egyptian, and Mayan language. Although the hoax was uncovered, the theory that the Native Americans destroyed the mound builder culture resonated throughout the public and the government.

The removal of the Indians in 1830, by means of the Trail of Tears, was justified in relation of the theory that the Indians destroyed the mound builders. Because people thought that the mound builders were ancient Europeans, the removal of the Indians was justified in order to reclaim their land.Cyrus Thomas of the Bureau of American Ethnology in his lengthy report (727 pages, published in 1894) concluded 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.

[edit] The Mounds and Their Structure

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.

Image:Emerald Mound.jpg
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, Edwin H. Davis and Samuel Morton. It was 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.

[edit] See also

[edit] Placemarks

[edit] External links

[edit] 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.
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