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| The mound at Seip earthworks (Photo by Hunner) |
After visiting the Wright Brothers and their inventions in
the 20
th century, I dropped down to southern Ohio to the 2,000-year-old
Hopewell Culture site. Here earthen mounds dot the landscape, enduring evidence
that a civilization existed that was a capitol of the eastern part of our
eastern continent.
Here's a recap from
earlier blogs about the peoples in North
America before contact with Europeans. Once people arrived in the Western
Hemisphere, they spread over the landscape like water through a burst dam. They roamed the countryside, hunting and
gathering their way from the frozen tundra near the Bering Sea to the equally
frigid tip of South America, from the steamy jungles in the tropics to dense
woodlands in the hinterlands, from mountains to beaches to swamps to deserts. Whatever
way humans immigrated to the Americas, once here they moved over the countryside,
and like migrants today, they looked for the perfect place to live and thrive.
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| Obsidian spear point (From exhibit at Mound City visitor's center) |
These humans built complex buildings and communities solely
with stone tools. They hunted large mammals like mammoths and bison with spears
and bows and arrows, and butchered their kills with sharp stone knives. They carved
and painted art on rock walls and made religious and ornamental objects out of
shells, turquoise, bones, and even the landscape itself. These humans also
studied the heavens and developed a complex understanding of the movement of
the sun, the moon, and the planets. They flourished for hundreds of generations
and lived in all corners of what would be become the United States.
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| Painting of shaman performing a ceremony (From exhibit at Mound City Visitors' Center) |
As early as 3,500 years ago, people in southern Ohio began
burying their dead with goods that showcased the skills and artistry of their
craftspeople. Ranger Joe Ratterman pointed to archeological evidence that Mound
City (where the visitors’ center is) was perhaps a crematorium as well as a
burial site. Sometimes, the dead were cremated and then the building was burned
and a mound built over it. At other sites, a cremation fire pit was used multiple
times with the ashes buried elsewhere in the compound. At some point, they
covered the first fire pit with a mound, and then put a new fire pit above the
exact spot of the first fire pit. Since archeologists have different theories
about the Hopewell, he asked me to add qualifiers to my account. Perhaps I
will.
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Above, a collection of artifacts from the mounds. Below, an Great Blue Heron effigy pipe
(From Mound City Visitors' Center) |
The burial mounds hold numerous artifacts. Archeologists have
discovered copper earspools, headdresses, breastplates, lithic chips from
making stone tools, and effigy pipes. A bag in one grave held 200 broken effigy
pipes carved out of stone depicting animals such as a beaver, a great blue
heron, a frog, a peregrine falcon, a turtle, a squirrel, an otter, a rabbit, a
raven, and an owl. Hammered copper also looked like various animals, humans,
and other objects. All of these illustrate the exquisite workmanship and wealth
of the Hopewell people. In one burial, thousands of pearls surrounded six skeletons.
In other mounds, archeologists found a delicate profile of a hand and a bird
claw, both made out of fragile mica. Archeologists have discovered 180,000
artifacts in the mounds.
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| Bird claw made out of mica found in a mound (From exhibit on walking tour at Mound City) |
These funeral objects also hint at a deeper motivation – a
spirituality that pervades the 500 nations in the Americas. From origin beliefs
to migration stories, Native Americans imbued their world with a rich
spirituality. From such stories, Alvin Josephy in
500 Nations, his history of Native Americans, concluded: “The
Creator, the Master of Life, the Great Spirit, Wakan Tanka—whatever terms the
various Native American groups used – breathed life into humans and bound their
spirits to those of all else in their universe.”
For many Native Americans, both animate and inanimate things possessed a spirit
that enlivened all that surrounded them.
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| Hammered copper mountain goat horns (From exhibit at Mound City Visitors' Center) |
The objects found in the burial mounds give us a glimpse of
the Hopewell way of life. Sea shells from the Gulf of Mexico, mica from the
mountains in North Carolina, fossil shark teeth from the Chesapeake Bay, copper
and silver from the Great Lakes region, and obsidian from the Yellowstone area
point to a vast trading network that covered almost two thirds of the country –
from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic. Ranger Kate at the visitors’ center talked
about how these goods came to the Mound Builders. She said that perhaps the
Hopewellians mounted trading expeditions themselves, went to the above places,
and returned with the goods. The evidence is that there is little distribution of
such items between say the Rocky Mountains and Hopewell. That is, traders would
have bartered and left a trail of these goods along the way, and there is no
evidence of that. However these items got to Hopewell from around the continent,
the artists there turned them into exquisite pieces of beauty.
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| Map of materials that the Hopewellians used (From Mound City walking tour exhibit panel) |
The Mound Builders grew squash, sunflowers, marsh elder, and
knotweed while continuing to hunt and forage far and wide for food and
material. Ranger Joe disagreed with me about when corn made an entrance. I
thought it was early enough that it helped create the Hopewell culture since it
came to New Mexico 3,000 years ago and then would have spread across the
continent. He said there is no evidence of corn until towards the end of this
culture.
Archaeologists speculate that maybe this culture developed strict hierarchical lines
with an elite body of priests and managers directing the efforts of many people
to dig the earth, carry basketfuls of the dirt to the mounds, and build the
massive earthen architecture that rose high over the land. Whether this was
free or slave labor is unknown. From the simple early burial sites of 3,000
years ago, the mounds evolved into elaborate platforms for ceremonies and even
served as residences of the elite. Large ceremonial complexes grew around the
mounds so much that archaeologists estimate that the city at Cahokia (1,000
years after Hopewell but still mound builders) had 10,000 to 20,000 people there
– more than London at the time.
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| Monk's Mound at Cahokia east of St. Louis (Photo by Hunner) |
Some experts also speculate that the mounds housed
astronomical observatories that tracked the seasons. Perhaps the mounds served
as landscape calendars like at
Chaco Canyon and were aligned to mark summer and
winter solstices and equinoxes. In an agricultural society without written
calendars, having a way to tell when to plant and when to harvest, proves vital
to the success of the community. Perhaps the city planners situated Mound City where
it was because two peaks on the eastern horizon line up with the north and
south limits of the 18.6-year cycle of where the moon rises.
Another fascinating congruence is that at least three of the
five sites preserved in the Hopewell Culture NHP follow a common pattern. Each have
walls that mark a square, a large circle, and a small circle. Each square is
the same size, twenty-seven acres. And each square fits onto the large circle. This
pattern repeats itself, even at sites that are sixty miles distant from each
other.
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The geometry of the Seip complex where the square fits into the large circle
(From exhibit at Mound City visitors' center) |
Mounds in a variety of sizes and shapes pervaded this region.
Just in the Ohio River Valley alone, ten thousand mounds dotted the landscape.
In addition to the traditional circles, squares, and elliptical shapes of the
mounds, some illustrated intriguing shapes. These “effigy mounds” depicted
birds, serpents, panthers, bears, and even humans. Built between 1,300 and 700 years
ago, these fascinating shapes occurred mainly in Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin.
This was a vibrant and interconnected culture.
The Mound Builders started to decline even before contact
with European explorers in the middle 1500s. Whatever the cause, they might be the
ancestral peoples for many of the tribes that have lived in the region, even to
this day. DNA matching from the human remains in the mounds with today’s tribes
is pending. It is possible that the tribes of the Apalachee, Caddo, Cherokee,
Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Houma, Kansa, Missouri, Mobilian, Natchez, Osage
Nation, Quapaw, Seminole, Yamasee, Yuchi, and others are descendants of the
Mississippian mound builders.
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| Side of the square at Mound City (Photo by Hunner) |
The people who lived in the central part of the United
States 2,000 years ago had a sophisticated understanding of the world.
Agriculturally based, they positioned their mounds to mark the passing of the
seasons, they had a vast network of trade and commerce, and they probably had a
stratified social structure that included priests and rulers supported by
craftsmen, farmers, and possibly slaves.
The Mound City Group National Monument was established by
President Warren G. Harding in 1923 to preserve prehistoric mounds of
"great historic and scientific interest." Hopewell Culture National
Historical Park was established in 1992 by combining the Mound City Group
National Monument with Hopeton Earthworks, High Bank Works, Hopewell Mound
Group, and Seip Earthworks.
Driven by History now turns down the road to the American
Revolution. This week on August 25, the National Park Service turns 100. Please
celebrate it by going to a park, thinking about past park
trips, and letting your family, friends, and elected representatives know what
our parks mean to you. Party with your parks!
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| My Centennial gig rig next to a mound at the parking lot of the Mound City visitor's center |
