Mound Builders of Indiana

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.”                  

Large burial mound in southwestern Indiana

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.   

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.

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.

Diorama of Angel Mounds people

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.

Check out her website at www.ramonakcecil.com  

http://www.christianbook.com/hearts-heritage-ramona-cecil/9781634097123/pd/4097123?product_redirect=1&Ntt=4097123&item_code=&Ntk=keywords&event=ESRCP

Deep in the Depths of New Mexico

New Mexico Cliff Dwellings

New Mexico was one of my late husband’s favorite vacation spots. Every time he visited he found surprising new worlds to explore for personal enjoyment and research. Such a rich depth of varied cultures can be discovered embedded in this southwestern state, America’s 47th.

Prehistoric Indians date from as early as 25,000 B.C. when the Sandia people left the earliest evidence of human existence. The phenomenal Anasazi basket makers and weavers existed circa 1 A.D. to 1300. The Pueblo

New Mexico Taos Pueblo Indians

Indian villages dotted the Rio Grande region during the 1200s to 1500s. Then there are the nomadic Indians, the Spanish and Mexicans. The traders and cowboys. The prospectors and frontier military. 

The railroad era started full-scale trade and migration from east to mid-west in 1878. Prospectors plied their luck and enticed big mining interests. Homesteaders and their stories vied with infamous outlaws. Farmers at one time were the mainstay and much later alongside came the atomic energy and computer chip industries. The world’s first atomic bomb detonated in 1945 in southern New Mexico after development at Los Alamos.

New Mexico Native American Pottery

After WWII trickles and then swarms of artists brought art from around the globe for the benefit of locals and the growing, huge tourist trade.

In some places, there are only a few blocks separating the culture segments providing rich specimens of artifacts and a wide scope of archaeology. Another spot in the world that possesses similar layers of different cultures stacked one upon the other is in Rome, Italy.

The capital city, Albuquerque, was founded in 1706 with eighteen families but not incorporated until 1891. The economic base has been in constant flux. From agriculture to transportation, From healthcare to technology.

Before the railroad in 1880, sheepherders ruled. When mining made it a boom

New Mexico Nuclear Waste

town with its saloons as well as a horse-drawn streetcar system, immigrants of all descents landed in droves. The main groups included Pueblo Indians, Hispanics, Europeans, African Americans and Chinese. The climate especially drew them. Albuquerque provided a dry, sun-filled refuge touted by many as healing. At one time many of its citizens included those suffering with tuberculosis and other respiratory problems and their caregivers. A dozen sanitariums were established.

In the 1920s, Albuquerque was a transcontinental air route stop. Route 66 brought transcontinental motorists through the city. A rural and urban mix congregate here in a cacophony of languages, races, and proud family histories.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~

Janet Chester Bly

Janet Chester Bly authored 31 nonfiction and fiction books, 19 she co-authored with Christy Award winning western author Stephen Bly. Titles include The Hidden West Series, The Carson City Chronicles, Hope Lives Here, and The Heart of a Runaway. She resides at 4200 ft. elev. on the Idaho Nez Perce Indian Reservation in north-central Idaho. Find at more at website: www.BlyBooks.com

Stephen Bly’s Cowboy For A Rainy Afternoon took place in Albuquerque in 1954. The whole story spans one afternoon. On that day, a ten-year-old boy goes with his grandfather to an old hotel to visit five old cowboy friends. They play cribbage in the lobby and talk about the old days. The eldest of the crew was born during the Civil War. All of them rode the range from the late 1880s until the 1940s. They tell first-hand stories of what the West was truly like. Meanwhile, a drama unfolds that propels the old men and the lad to make one last cowboy stand.

Find it here eBook or Hardback: http://www.blybooks.com/books/western-cowboy-novel/

“For me," Stephen Bly once write, "history is not the story of grand ideas, or

Cowboy For A Rainy Afternoon

broad sweeps describing movements, events or social progress. History is the story of individual people. Not all are famous, but all do help define who we are today, and why we think and act the way we do.”