When the people that became known as the Mound Builders first arrived in Ohio, they already had their religious beliefs firmly entrenched in their daily lives. Where they came from is not completely certain. We do know that archeological evidence indicates they migrated up the Mississippi River and then spread out through it's tributaries.
In the early 19th Century a singular conical mound was excavated. This mound happened to be located on the farm of Thomas Worthington, one of Ohio's early governors. It is located just west of Chillicothe. Although his estate was originally named Mount Prospect Hill, he changed the name in 1811 to Adena after he came across that name while reading an ancient history book. That excavated mound became known as the Adena Mound. Over time more burial mounds were studied and it became apparent that those who built the burial mound on Thomas Worthington's property also built many 1000 more mounds across the state and that these mounds were the first mounds built in Ohio.
The Adena Culture was widespread throughout the state. Many of these singular burial mounds can still be seen. Some tools and recovered pottery remnants suggest they had developed some farming skills to supplement hunting skills. It is believed that the late Adena Culture was most likely responsible for constructing the Great Serpent Mound in southern Ohio.
Read more about the Adena Culture
The first mounds studied were found on land owned by W.C. Clark in the 1820s and was known as Clark's Works. However, towards the end of the 19th Century Ohio Historians and Archeologists wanted to make a definitive presentation at the 1892 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago. To illustrate this exhibit, it was decided an extensive study be made of one of Ohio's major earthworks. Clark's Works was selected. However, at the time of this study, the land had changed hands and was then owned by Mordecai Cloud Hopewell. Hence, the name Hopewell was given to this cultural group.
The Hopewell Culture was more robust in their mound building than the older Adena Culture. They continued in part building burial mounds, but they also began expanding their constructions by building massive earthwork complexes. There seems to have been some common design elements used in these earthworks which was primarily a very large circular structure attached to an even larger rectangular embankment. These massive embankments were not used for burial purposes although there were often burial mounds inside the enclosures as well as outside the walls.
Within the burial mounds there was increasingly more and more artifacts placed alongside the honored leader. These artifacts included pottery, carvings that displayed increasingly complex forms and craftsmanship. The Hopewell Culture also expanded the farming practices the Adena Culture had begun to develop. This allowed for larger communities not dependent solely on hunting. A type of maize was also beginning to be found in some sites, but it was not widespread. Sunflower and natural grasses were being cultivated.
The remains of multiple large earthworks were common in some areas separated by just a mile or so. There was also evidence to suggest that the Hopewell Culture carried on extensive trading with other people across North America.
Read more about the Hopewell Culture
Sometime around 1000 AD we begin to see another dramatic shift in the Mound Builders. They stop building their typical circular / square enclosures and start constructing what appears to be irregular walled perimeters on high plateaus overlooking navigable waterways. Mortuary practices have mostly disappeared compared to the Hopewell, but there were some small burial mounds found inside the perimeter walls. Those sites where exhumations have been conducted indicate that the elaborate burial rituals were mostly gone as were the inclusion of artifacts that were once included with honored dead.
This period lasted a few hundred years or so and became known as the Fort Ancient Culture. The Fort Ancient Culture was primarily located in southern Ohio. The first of these structures was identified as Fort Ancient. Since then a number of these irregular structures have been discovered. This was the last of the Mound Building Cultures.
The Native Americans of Pre-Colonial North America built thousands of mounds across the continent which served various purposes and sometimes reached heights over 100 feet. Many of the mound sites were thriving urban centers – such as Cahokia in Illinois – while others seem to have served strictly religious/ritualistic purposes, as in the case of Pinson Mounds in Tennessee.
European settlers, not knowing what the mounds were and periodically mistaking them for naturally formed hills, destroyed many out of ignorance while others were purposefully eliminated to make room for town and city expansions and still more were looted for treasures to be sold on the antiquities market and severely damaged or demolished in that way. Even when it was understood that these mounds were significant paragons of ancient native architecture, landowners still destroyed them to prevent the state or other agencies from trying to take their land in the interests of preservation.
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Mound B, Etowah
Kåre Thor Olsen (CC BY-SA)
In the present, there are still many mound sites extant throughout the United States, some protected as archaeological parks, others on private lands, and every one of them offers a different insight into the cultures of the different Native American Nations that built them. A little-known site such as Man Mound in Wisconsin is just as important as one better known such as Serpent Mound in Ohio. The following list necessarily leaves out many important sites but those selected have been chosen for the type they represent and their contribution to a better understanding of Native American cultures.
It is now understood that different Native American cultures created the mounds at different times, using similar methods.
Time Periods & Locations
The mounds were built from c. 5000 BCE up through the period of European colonization which is usually given, in this case, as c. 1540 CE when the Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto (l. c. 1500-1542) traveled with his army through the regions of present-day Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi – all of which had mound sites - searching for gold and the De Soto expedition records natives living on or near these large mounds. De Soto killed a number of natives when they would not hand over the gold he insisted they were hiding but did more damage in spreading European diseases the natives had no immunity to. When later European explorers reached the region, the natives there had no idea who had built the mounds because their elders, who kept the history of the nation alive through oral tradition, had long ago died. The ten sites presented below which exemplify this tradition are:
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- Watson Brake (Louisiana, c. 3500 BCE)
- Poverty Point (Louisiana, c. 1700-1100 BCE)
- Serpent Mound (Ohio, built either c. 320 BCE or c. 1000-1750 CE)
- Effigy Mounds (Iowa, c. 500 BCE-1000 CE)
- Pinson Mounds (Tennessee, c. 1-200 CE)
- Observatory Hill Mounds (Wisconsin, c. 500-1200 CE)
- Cahokia (Illinois, c. 600-c. 1350 CE)
- Etowah (Georgia, c. 1000-1550 CE)
- Moundville (Alabama, c. 1100-c. 1450 CE)
- Spiro Mounds (Oklahoma, c. 900-1450 CE)
It was not until the 19th century that the descendants of the early European immigrants took an interest in the mounds and, at that time, they refused to believe they were built by Native Americans who were considered “too simple” to have managed such an enormous undertaking. Even though scholars and intellectuals of the 18th and 19th centuries recognized the mounds as “native in origin”, that claim was not widely accepted until the mid-20th century.
Artist's Conception of Watson Brake Mounds, Louisiana
Herb Roe (CC BY-SA)
It is now understood that different Native American cultures created the mounds at different times, using similar methods, beginning in the Archaic Period (c. 8000-7900 BCE), continuing through the Woodland Period (c. 500 BCE-1100 CE), and on into the period of the Mississippian Culture (c. 1100-1540 CE). The mounds are all characterized, no matter what their original purpose, by a high degree of technical skill in engineering, evidence of a large labor force, and some sort of central authority directing logistics, supply, and construction.
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Greater recognition of the importance of the mounds began only in the early part of the 20th century after amateur archaeologists – such as C.B. Moore (l. 1852-1936) – began excavating sites, removing artifacts, and publishing their discoveries. Laws were then instituted to protect the mounds from looting but, as many were on private lands, there was nothing authorities could do. Private citizens then sometimes purchased the mound sites to preserve them, later turning them over to their respective state’s government, and these have increasingly become archaeological parks dedicated to the preservation and deeper understanding of the great mound cities and ceremonial centers of the First Nations of North America.