What Are Indian Mounds? And Why Are They Important To Preserve?

1. What Are Indian Mounds? And Why Are They Important To Preserve? By Christina Parrish

2. The mounds vary • Some are dirt, some shell, some ashes • Some only slight incline of land, others large hills • Some in neighborhoods, others in National Parks

3. Important Purposes • “Their dead were prepared for burial in a charnel house and then their bones were buried in a shell mound”. • The mounds were built for lavish gravesites because, for example, the Mississippians took their status symbols to the grave.

4. continued • These items were mostly comprised of prized possessions like bracelets, beads, rings, ear spools, embossed effigies of falcons and other birds of prey, shells, tools, food, and utensils. • Placed with the dead to accompany the spirits into the afterlife in hopes of the dead person being content and comfortable.”

5. Construction a Mystery- We only have theories... • “Crews of workers labored over generations, sometimes a century of more, before an earthwork reached its final dimensions.Maybe a mound began as a slight rise with an important building on it. After a time, perhaps its grass roof caught on fire or the people burned it down as part of a cleansing ceremony.

6. continued • Whatever the cause, the builders brought basketful after basketful of dirt to start a new foundation. When it was ready, another building went up. Many Mississippians, each hauling 60-pound baskets of soil, worked to complete each stage.”

7. Placement of People • “Because the whole country is very flat, and an elevated site is seldom found…they make it by their own labor. Amassing a very large quantity of earth, they pack it down by treading on it, raising it up in the form of a hill two or three pike-lengths in height.

8. Continued • On top they make a level space large enough for ten, twelve, fifteen, or twenty houses for the dwellings of the lord and his family and the people in his service…Then the rest of the common people build theirs, endeavoring not to be too far from the hill where the lord’s house is; they try rather to surround his with their own.”

9. Most sites now... • “This area once was home to many shell middens, as well as temple and burial mounds. Many of the mounds have been excavated and flattened for homes, but some houses were built right on top of them.”

10. Legacy of the Moundbuilders... • “Today the legacy of the Moundbuilders is at risk. Most earthworks, lacking Emeralds visibility, are worn down to unassuming shapes in the overgrowth along remote fields and tributaries. . Many have been looted or damaged by farming and building construction; of almost 1,100 known sites on Arkansas, for example, only 2 remain relatively untouched”

11. Unfortunate because... • Children growing up today need to experience things for themselves and not rely so heavily on some authors biased interpretations of his own experience. • Textbooks and movies are not enough!!

12. James Baldwin (1872) • “An ancient and unknown people left remains of settled life, and of a certain degree of civilization, in the valleys of the Mississippi and its tributaries. We have no authentic name for them either as a nation or a race; therefore they are called “Moundbuilders,” this name having been suggested by an important class of their works.”

13. Conclusion • Do we want our children to think of these great people as “an ancient and unknown people?”