Mound Builders

V

Hopewell Culture

The Hopewell tradition, which flourished from about 200 bc to 400 ad, possessed many of the same cultural traits as the Adena culture, but on a grander scale. Compared to the Adena culture, Hopewell peoples had more abundant and larger earthworks. Burial mounds were up to 12 m (40 ft) high, and Hopewell peoples built large earthen walls to outline geometric shapes, including circles, squares, octagons, and parallel lines. Hopewell culture had richer burials, increased ceremonialism, greater refinement of art, more highly developed agriculture, larger villages, and a more organized society than the Adena tradition. Hopewell villages were distributed over a wider geographical area as well, along river valleys throughout the Midwest and East. The types of raw materials found at Hopewell sites indicate a wide-ranging trade network in regions where no Hopewell sites have been located, such as the eastern seaboard and the Rocky Mountains.

VI

Mississippian Culture

The Mississippian culture, which flourished from about ad 800 until the mid-1500s, was initially centered in the Mississippi River Valley; it gradually radiated outward into many present-day states of the Southeast and Midwest. Mississippian peoples, perhaps influenced by contacts with Mesoamerican Indians across the Gulf of Mexico, built platform mounds, some of them enormous, in addition to the burial mounds and effigy mounds typical of Adena and Hopewell traditions. Platform mounds held temples, public buildings, and homes of political and religious leaders, and they were typically spaced around plazas forming the central portions of communities.

Mississippian peoples, also referred to as Temple Mound Builders, were master farmers, with extensive fields of corn, beans, squash, pumpkins, and tobacco. They lived in large population centers, with inhabitants organized in a rigid caste system. They crafted an extensive array of artifacts and traded over a wide region. Cahokia, near present-day East Saint Louis, Missouri, is thought to have had more than 20,000 inhabitants at its peak. The largest of its 85 mounds, Monks Mound, covered about 6.5 hectares (16 acres) and stood 30 m (100 ft) high.

VII

What Happened to the Mound Builders?

The reasons for the decline of the various mound-building cultures are unknown; warfare, overpopulation, and drought or famine all could have played a role. Some scholars suggest that the Mound Builders were the ancestors of later Native Americans. For example, some of the Adena Indians were perhaps ancestral to Hopewell peoples. Hopewell Indians were possibly ancestors of the Algonquians who settled much of northeastern North America. Mississippian Indians are thought to be ancestral to later Southeast tribes, such as the Creek and Choctaw.

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Mounds were still being built by various indigenous groups at the time of European contact with eastern North America. Early French settlers witnessed the use of mounds as platforms holding public buildings and as burial places by the Natchez. Mound building ceased shortly after European contact, as Native Americans suffered the impact of epidemics and cultural change.

See also Native Americans of North America: Early Peoples; Native American Architecture.

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