Hopewell Culture National Historical Park, Chillicothe, Ohio

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.” [1] For many Native Americans, both animate and inanimate things possessed a spirit that enlivened all that surrounded them.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

My Centennial gig rig next to a mound at the parking lot of the Mound City visitor's center

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[1] Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., 500 Nations: An Illustrated History of North American Indians (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994).

Hopewell Culture National Historic Park at Chillicothe, Ohio

In the early light of dawn, the landscape at Hopewell NHP undulates with mounds hidden by mist and hardwood trees. Some of these mounds date back to 2,000 years ago and testify to the sophisticated culture created here, a culture that in ways, equaled the ancient Romans of the same time period. How did humans come to this part of the continent and what kind of civilization did they develop?  These are some of the questions that this and the next three postings of Driven by History will focus on. We will visit NPS sites connected to native peoples and ancient cultures to see how Americans lived before contact with Europeans. We begin with the Hopewell Culture National Historic Park in Ohio, and in future postings, we explore the Ancestral Pueblo peoples of Chaco Canyon, the Algonquin on the Eastern Seaboard, and the Polynesian islanders on Hawai’i.

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 cold tip at Tierra del Fuego on the southern continent, from the steamy jungles in the tropics to dense woodlands and from mountains to beaches to swamps to deserts. Natural barriers like bodies of water or mountains which prevented easy traveling could only be crossed when rivers froze or high passes  thawed. In whatever way humans came to the Americas, once here they migrated over the countryside as their bands grew and like migrants today, they looked for the perfect place to live and thrive.

Throughout all of these periods, humans worked nodules of flint and obsidian to fashion some of the most refined stone tools and weapons in the world. They crafted a way of living that continues to amaze. They hunted large mammals like mammoths and bison with spears and harvested most of the carcasses for food, clothing, tools, and shelter. With sharp stone edges, they trimmed hide into clothing. They wove sandals out of fibrous plants, 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 thousands of years and eventually, hundreds of generations lived in all corners of what would be become the United States.

Isolated from the rest of the world once the Arctic land bridge sank due to global warming, humans in the Western Hemisphere evolved differently than the rest of the world. In his book 500 Nations, Native American historian Alvin Josephy, Jr. explained this differentiation:  as the indigenous peoples of the Americas “adapted to the different environments, cultural and physical variations began to appear among them.”[1] Eventually, these early Americans’ unique responses to where they lived evolved into the 500 distinct tribes that spread across the land.

The people who lived at Hopewell, in the central part of North America, developed a woodland civilization. Southern Ohio served as the cradle of Hopewell culture which expanded along the tributaries of the Mississippi River as far west as today’s Nebraska and Kansas and as far south as the Gulf of Mexico. Archeologists call these people by several names, including Adena, Hopewell, Late Woodland, and Mississippians.

As early as 1500 BCE, people in the area began burying their dead with items that showcased the skills and artistry of their craftspeople, and by 1000 BCE, they started building mounds over these graves. Copper earspools, headdresses, breastplates, and other ceremonial objects and tools along with effigy pipes of birds and other animals found in these burial mounds illustrate the exquisite workmanship and wealth of the Hopewell people. In one mound, archeologists found a delicate profile of a hand while in another, they discovered a bird claw, both made out of fragile mica.

Mica hand found in a mound (NPS photo)

Mica bird claw and other artifacts from mounds

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, Josephy 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 of these peoples, both animate and inanimate things possessed a spirit and even a consciousness that enlivened all that surrounded them.

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 Yellowstone area point to a vast trading network that covered almost two thirds of the country – from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic.

Mounds at Hopewell (NPS photo by Tom Engberg)

The most important item that allowed people to develop their complex civilizations throughout the Americas came to the woodlands region around the beginning of the Current Era. Corn cultivation changed human existence in the Americas. Developed in what is now southern Mexico about 7,000 years ago, corn (maize) is a unique plant. Disagreements exist over how corn evolved, but the main point is that it since a tough husk engulfs the cob, corn can’t sow itself. An outside agent, like people, have to do it.

As Charles Mann notes in 1491 (his book on the Americas before Columbus): “Modern maize was the outcome of a bold act of conscious biological manipulation— ‘arguably man’s first, and perhaps his greatest, feat of genetic engineering’.”   One corn seed produced hundreds of kernels on multiple cobs and allowed a farmer to produce enough food on a small plot to feed a family for a year. This revolutionized agriculture, and as corn spread north and south from Central America, it transformed hunters and gatherers into farmers with improved diets. In addition to corn, the Mound Builders also grew squash, sunflowers, marsh elder, and knotweed while continuing to hunt and forage far and wide for food and material.

Archeologists speculate that this culture developed strict hierarchal 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 2,000 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 archeologists estimate that the Cahokia mound complex east of St. Louis had more people than London in 1250 CE. 

Monks Mound at Cahokia (Photo by David Darling)

Some experts also speculate that the mounds housed astronomical observatories that tracked the seasons. Perhaps the mounds served as landscape calendars and were aligned to mark summer and winter solstices and equinoxes. In an agricultural society without written calendars, having a way to announce the turning of the seasons, of when to plant and when to harvest, prove vital to the success of the community.

Mounds in a variety of sizes and shapes unified this culture. Some mounds rose over thirty feet high and up to two hundred feet in circumference, and 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 assumed intriguing shapes. These “effigy mounds” depicted birds, serpents, panthers, bears, and even humans. Built between 700 and 1300 CE, these intriguing shapes occurred mainly in Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin. This was a vibrant and interconnected society.

Marching Bear Mounds at Effigy Mounds NM (NPS photo)

The Mississippians started to decline even before contact with European explorers in the middle 1500s. Whatever the cause, the Mississippians are considered to be the ancestral peoples for many of the tribes that have lived in the region, even to this day. The tribes of the Apalachee, Caddo, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Houma, Kansa, Missouri, Mobilian, Natchez, Osage Nation, Quapaw, Seminole, Yamasee, Yuchi, and others trace their ancestry to the Mississippian mound builders.

The people who lived and developed their communities in the central part of the United States laid the foundation for a vibrant and varied collection of tribes. Agriculturally based, they positioned their mounds to mark the passing of the seasons, they were connected to a vast network of trade and commerce, and they had a stratified social structure that included priests and rulers supported by craftsmen, farmers, and possibly slaves. As we continue our exploration of pre-contact Native Americans and their NPS parks, we will next traverse 1,200 miles to the desert southwest and to the Chaco Culture National Historic Park.

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 renaming the Mound City Group National Monument and expanding the park to include Hopeton Earthworks, High Bank Works, Hopewell Mound Group, and Seip Earthworks.

Hopewell Culture National Historic Park

16062 State Route 104

Chillicothe, Ohio, 45601

(740) 702-7677

www.nps.gov/hocu

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[1] Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., 500 Nations: An Illustrated History of North American Indians (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), 17.