Mounds and mound builders
Mounds and mound builders refer to the earthen structures created by various Native American groups across the eastern United States, particularly from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes, with significant concentrations in the Midwest. These mounds served diverse purposes, including burial sites, foundations for temples, and residences for leaders. Notable mound sites include Cahokia, which thrived from 1050 to 1250 CE, Moundville, active from 1250 to 1500 CE, and locations associated with the Hopewell culture, dating from around 200 BCE to 400 CE.
The origins of these mounds sparked considerable debate among early European settlers, many of whom struggled to accept that Native Americans were responsible for their construction. This skepticism stemmed from a combination of limited understanding of Native cultures and prevailing racist beliefs. It wasn't until the late 19th century, through the work of Cyrus Thomas and the Smithsonian Institution, that definitive evidence emerged confirming the mounds' Native American origins. The acceptance of these findings marked a significant shift in understanding the cultural contributions of Indigenous peoples in North America.
Mounds and mound builders
Tribes affected: Northeast and Southeast tribes (prehistoric and historic)
Significance: Various groups of American Indians built earthen mounds at different time periods in different locations, which served different cultural functions; the American Indian construction of these mounds was not fully accepted until 1894
Earthen mounds are located in the eastern United States from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes, with concentrations in the Midwest along the Ohio and Mississippi River drainages. These mounds were constructed by a number of different Native American groups during several different time periods, and they were used for a range of functions. In some cases, Indians built conical mounds to inter their dead, while in other locations or time periods, they constructed flat-topped pyramidal mounds to serve as the foundations for important buildings such as temples or chiefly residences. Some of the better-known mound sites are Cahokia, near St. Louis, Missouri (with a florescence between 1050-1250 c.e.), Moundville, Alabama (a dominant center from 1250 to 1500 c.e.), and those associated with the Hopewell culture (circa 200 b.c.e.-400 c.e.), centered in the Ohio Valley.
When these mounds were first noted by Europeans in the late eighteenth century, they stimulated acrimonious debate concerning their origins, namely whether Indians, their ancestors, or others had constructed them. These arguments continued unabated until Cyrus Thomas’ Report on the Mound Explorations of the Bureau of Ethnology (1894), which demonstrated that Native Americans had built the mounds.
There are several underlying factors that explain why it took scholars so many years to accept the aboriginal origins of the moundbuilders. First, the dispute originated during the early colonial period, when settlers’ understanding of Native American culture was based on their interactions with socially disrupted Indian groups no longer continuing all of their pre-Columbian activities. Second, based on these data, and on racist beliefs concerning Native Americans, it seemed unlikely to them that the Indian ancestors of these groups would have possessed the technological skills to construct the mounds. In addition, in some instances, Native American land rights could be denied if it could be demonstrated that earlier, more “civilized” people had once inhabited the area. European Americans also may have desired to construct a heroic past for members of their own cultures, which may explain the proliferation of hypotheses proposing that various early European groups built the earthen monuments. For example, in 1787, it was suggested that the Ohio mound builders were Danes, while an 1812 work opted for the Welsh. An article by Caleb Atwater, “Description of the Antiquities Discovered in the State of Ohio and Other Western States” (1820), went so far as to propose Hindu builders. Others, such as E. G. Squier and E. H. Davis, in their Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley (1848), favored construction by the Mayans or Aztecs, believing them to be of a different, more evolved “race” from the local Indians.
Granted, there were a few dissenters from the prevailing views of the time, but these dissenting voices did not affect general public opinion. By the 1880’s, the United States Congress became involved in the controversy, and it provided funds to the Smithsonian Bureau of Ethnology, directed by Major John Wesley Powell, to investigate the mounds. Powell appointed Cyrus Thomas to lead the Division of Mound Exploration. With the publication of Thomas’ 1894 report, the “mound builders controversy” was effectively quelled, and a Native American origin for these constructions was accepted.