by Ramona K. Cecil
If you’ve read any of my
past posts on this blog, you’ll know that I’m a proud Hoosier with a passion
for the history of my state of Indiana.
The first known people to inhabit my state—whom I like to think of as the first
Hoosiers—were paleo Indians we now call “mound builders.”
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| Large burial mound in southwestern Indiana |
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| Mound Builders |
Evidence of mound builders
can be found in several Midwestern and southern U.S. states with a sizeable number scattered
over Indiana. The two main locations of prehistoric mounds in Indiana
are preserved at Mounds State Park in Grant
County in the east-central part of the
state and Angel Mound State Historic site that spans modern-day Vanderburg and
Warrick counties in the southwest corner of the state near Evansville, Indiana.
The mounds found at Mounds
State Park in the east-central region of the state are thought to have been
constructed by the prehistoric Adena people and used centuries later used by
the Hopewell Indians. Archeologists believe the mounds were used by the
Adena/Hopewell cultures between 250 B.C. and A.D. 200 for religious and burial
purposes. Over three hundred of these earthworks have been recorded in central Indiana alone. The park
contains several impressive mounds including the Great Mound and Circular
Earthworks and the Circle Mound and Rectangular Earthworks. Like structures
found from the Mayan culture, the Indiana
mounds seem aligned to mark the summer and winter solstice.
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| Mounds State Park, Anderson, Indiana |
Angel Mounds located at
the southern tip of the state near Evansville,
Indiana is the work of the
Mississippian people, who inhabited the site from 1000 to 1450 AD. The site,
which encompasses over 100 acres is named for the Angel family who owned the
land from the mid-19th century until 1938. The farm was purchased for the state by the pharmaceutical baron, Eli Lilly. Angel Mounds is considered one of
the best pre-historic Native American sites in the United States.
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| View of Central Mound at Angel Mounds Historic Site |
The first white settlers
of southern Indiana
were both surprised and flummoxed by these mounds that could reach as high as
seventy feet, or so low as to be indistinguishable from the natural rolling
landscape. When the white settlers inquired of the local Native Americans about
the mounds, the local tribes shared stories passed down to them by their elders
about an ancient people who’d built the mounds and how their own people had
made war on the ancients and wiped them out. That, however, may have been
bravado on the part of the more modern tribes as archeologists have determined
that the Mississippians were long gone when tribes like the Shawnee
and Miami moved
into the area around 1650 A.D.
So who were these ancient
people? Both the Adena/Hopewell and Mississippians were agrarian people who
must have found the rich soil of the Ohio
Valley perfect for
growing their maize. The Mississippians built their town on the third terrace
of the mound above the area flooded by the waters of the Ohio
river by carrying 67,785 cubic yards of dirt in their baskets.
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| Diorama of Angel Mounds people |
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| Mound builders at work making mounds |
So, if the Shawnee and Miami
didn’t do the Mississippians in, what happened to them? Scholars speculate that
droughts and overhunting may have lead to the collapse of the chiefdom which,
in turn, lead to the demise of the Mississippians.
As for this modern-day
Hoosier, I’m just glad our first Hoosiers left such impressive monuments to
their cultures for us to enjoy.
Have you visited any sites
left around the U.S.
by the mound builders? If so, I’d love to hear about it.
Ramona K. Cecil is a poet and award-winning author of historical
fiction for the Christian market. A proud
Hoosier, she often sets her stories in her home state of Indiana.
