Barrow Builders

The term "mound builders" also refers to the fictional race, which was believed to have constructed these mounds, since the Americans were from the 16th – 19th centuries. were convinced that the Indians could not build them.

The name of the culture comes from the tradition of the construction of barrows and other works of earthen architecture. Usually these were funeral or ceremonial structures in the form of pyramids with a cut top or barrows with a platform, sometimes with rounded cones, elongated ribs, sometimes of a different shape. The most famous flat-top pyramid mound, and at the same time the largest pre-Columbian earthen structure north of Mexico with a height of over 30 meters, is Monk's Mound in Illinois , Cahocia .

Some mounds - the so-called figured mounds - were made in the form of animals or other images. A typical example is the Snake Barrow in southern Ohio, 1.5 m high, 6 m wide and about 400 m long, in the form of a serpent bending in waves.

The structure of the Mound Builders included various tribes and associations, probably of different faiths and cultures, and they were united only by the tradition of building cult mounds. The largest number of mounds in the United States was found in Wisconsin .

The first most complete description of earthworks was published in 1848 by the Smithsonian Institution in the work “ Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley ”, sponsored by Efraim Squire and Edwin H. Davis. Since many of the structures described by the authors were later destroyed or damaged as a result of agricultural activities and land development, the descriptions compiled by these researchers, as well as their drawings and maps, are still used by modern archaeologists.

Hernando de Soto , the conquistador , who passed with his soldiers the southeast of the modern USA in 1540-1542, met many nationalities, possibly belonging to the Mississippian culture . At this time, the tradition of building mounds still existed in the southeastern United States, and continued to exist until the middle of the 17th century. De Soto met with the Muskogee Indians who lived in fortified villages with magnificent mounds and squares, and noted that many of the mounds served as the grounds for temples with priests. Not far from the modern city of Augusta in the state of Georgia, de Soto met with a group of "mound builders" led by a queen, who told him that the mounds on its territory served to bury Indian nobles.

Artist Jacques Le Mouin , who accompanied French settlers in northeast Florida in the 1560s, similarly noted that many groups of Indians used the existing mounds and built new ones. He created a series of watercolors depicting scenes from the life of the Indians. Although most of these watercolors have been lost, in 1591, the Flemish company created and published prints based on its originals. Among these engravings, there is an image of the burial of a Florida tribal leader, in honor of which a funeral ceremony was held. The engraving caption reads:

Sometimes the deceased ruler of this province was buried with great honors, and his large goblet, from which he usually drank, was placed on a hill, with many arrows stuck around.

Mathurin Le Petit , Jesuit priest (1619), and Le Paige du Pratz (1758), a French explorer, was observed by the Natchez tribe, who lived in the modern state of Mississippi. Their population totaled about 4 thousand people. Natchez worshiped the sun, lived in no less than 9 villages, and their leader was the leader, known as the Great Sun, who had absolute power. Both of them noted the high temple mounds built by the natches so that the Great Sun could communicate with the sun god. His large house was built on top of the largest of the barrows, from where “every morning he greeted the rising sun, expressed gratitude and blew tobacco smoke in the direction of the four cardinal directions”. ^{[1] [2] [3]}

Later, researchers of the same lands, only a few decades after the first reports of the settlements of the builders of the mounds, noted that the regions were depopulated, that the settlements were abandoned, and the mounds were not used. Since there were no major conflicts with Europeans at that time, the most probable explanation is that European diseases, such as smallpox and flu , destroyed most of the representatives of the civilization of the “mound builders” civilization. ^{[4] [5] [6] [7]}

The culture of the mound builders can be roughly divided into three stages:

Archaic Era

Turn Point on the territory of modern Louisiana is an outstanding example of an early archaic barrow structure (about 2500 BC - 1000 BC). Although earlier burial mounds are also known, for example at Watson Break, Power Point is one of the best early examples.

Woodland (Forest) Period

The archaic period was followed by the forest (Woodland) period (about 1000 BC). Some notable examples are the Aden culture in Ohio and the later Houpwell culture, which existed from Illinois to Ohio and is known for its earthen structures of regular geometric shape. Along with the cultures of Aden and Hopewell at that time, other barrow cultures existed.

Mississippi culture

Around 900-1450 BC e. Mississippian culture spread throughout the east of the future US, mainly along river valleys. The first and most famous monument of this culture is the ancient city of Kahokiya .

Almost until the end of the 19th century, most Americans did not want to admit that the mounds in the eastern United States were created by the Indians.

The key work that helped to recognize this fact was a comprehensive report compiled in 1894 by Cyrus Thomas of the Bureau of American Ethnology. Only a few well-known researchers independently came to such a conclusion: for example, Thomas Jefferson excavated the mound and found a similarity between the burial practice of the mound builders and the burial practice of the Indians known to him.

At the same time, during the 19th century, alternative theories of the origin of barrows were proposed:

Vikings

Benjamin Smith Barton suggested that the mounds were built by the Vikings , who arrived in America in the prehistoric period and then disappeared.

Migrants from Ancient Eurasia

Other peoples that various scholars and popular writers proposed to identify with the builders of the mounds were the ancient Greeks , Africans , Chinese, or various European peoples. Supporters of a literal interpretation of the Bible believed that they could be the ten lost tribes of Israel.

Peoples of the Book of Mormon

Throughout the nineteenth century, it was widely believed among Americans that the Jews - in particular, the ten lost tribes - were the ancestors of the Indians and builders of the mounds. The Book of Mormon (first published in 1830) contains a widespread tale of two waves of migrants from Mesopotamia : the Jarites (about 3000 - 2000 BC) and the Israelites (about 590 BC), called the "Nephites", "Lamanites" and "Mulekians". According to the Book of Mormon, they created great civilizations in America that died as a result of the great war around 385 A.D. e. Supporters of the authenticity of the text of the Book of Mormon often identify these civilizations with the builders of the mounds, but modern academic science does not confirm such hypotheses.

African civilizations

Proponents of the hypothesis that the mounds were created by an unknown civilization of African descent also emphasized that the Indians were "not civilized enough" to create such impressive structures.

Divine Creation

Priest Landon West claimed that God himself built the Serpent Mound in Ohio and that the Garden of Eden was originally located in Ohio.

Mythical cultures

Sometimes the creation of mounds was attributed to mythical cultures; e.g. Harn, Lafcadio assumed that they were created by the culture of Atlantis .

Despite the fact that some of the above “alternative hypotheses” sound absurd from the perspective of the 21st century, many of them were the result of a genuine fallacy of the first Americans who had no idea about the history of the continent before the arrival of Europeans. The poet William Cullen Bryant in his poem "Prairies" (1832) mentions the legendary race of the creators of the mounds ^[8] .

Justification of Forced Indigenous Migration

One of the political arguments for the forced relocation of the Indians in the 1830s. from the region in the southeastern United States, where the majority of the mounds, known as the Road of Tears , was that they supposedly destroyed the culture of the mound builders. According to one theory, the builders of the mounds could be ancient natives of Europe, and the eviction of “wild” Indians was just a return of the lands lost by Europeans. According to modern ideas, the Indians of the southeast, belonging to the Muskogee tribes , did destroy the previous Mississippian culture , which, however, was not European in origin, but consisted of other Indian peoples ( timukua , mayayimi , etc.).

Denial of participation of "primitive" Indians

According to the belief prevailing in the 19th century, the American Indians were quite primitive and could not build such magnificent structures. Stone, metal, and ceramic artifacts seemed too complex for their culture. On the other hand, in the eastern United States there were various Native American cultures that led a sedentary lifestyle and engaged in agriculture. Around many Indian towns and cities stood defensive walls. If they could create such structures, then the construction of mounds was not a big problem for them.

Another argument against the Indian origin of the mounds was the nomadic way of life of the Indians, which supposedly did not allow them to engage in structures requiring long time expenditures. This argument is refuted by the fact that, firstly, history knows examples of nomadic tribes who built majestic mounds ( Scythians , Sarmatians , etc.), and secondly, only a part of the Indian tribes ( Apaches , Comanches, and several others) led a nomadic lifestyle.

When the first European settlers arrived in the territory of the future USA in the 16th – 17th centuries, the Indians of today did not build mounds for a long time, and the Indians could not answer anything intelligible to the questions of the white settlers about the creators of the mounds. On the other hand, there are numerous written reports of early European travelers about the construction of the mounds by the Indians. A detailed message was left by Garcilaso de la Vega , who described the construction of mounds and shrines on the tops of mounds. Some French travelers even lived for some time among the builders of the mounds.

Pre-Indian Assumption

In the book Antiquities Discovered in the Western States (1820), Atwater, Caleb claimed that Native American burials were always shallow, almost at the surface of the earth. Since the artifacts associated with the builders of the mounds were found at great depths, Waterwater believed that they probably belonged to a different, earlier group of people. The discovery of metal artifacts was another argument against the Indians, since many Indian tribes did not own the art of metallurgy. These errors were based on the false assumption that all Native American cultures are alike (even in the 19th century this was far from the case). Some of the artifacts had strange characters. Since the Indians did not know the written language, the symbols were also used as an argument against the Indian origin of the mounds.

Several well-known fakes are associated with discussions about the origin of the mound builders.

Sacred Stones from Newark

In 1860, David Wyrick opened the Keystone Tablet in Newark containing a Hebrew inscription. Soon after, he discovered nearby the so-called “Newark Stone”, which also contained Hebrew text. It later turned out that Priest John W. McCarthy forged these items and placed them where Wyrick later discovered them.

Davenport Signs

Another fake related to the mound builders is the Davenport plaques with inscriptions discovered by priest Jacob Grass.

Valam Olum

A fake known as Valam-Olum , had a great influence on the false beliefs associated with the builders of the mounds. In 1836, Constantin Samuel Rafinesk published his “translation” of the text, which was supposedly written in pictographic letters on wooden tablets, and talked about the origin of the Lenape (Delaware) tribe from Asia, their passage through the Bering Strait, their subsequent migration through the North American mainland and battles in North America, which supposedly took place before the arrival of Lenape. For a long time it was believed that these mythical people were the builders of the mounds, that Lenape conquered them and destroyed their culture. David Oestreicher later exposed the Valam Olum as a fake, but even after that the belief that the Indians destroyed the culture of the mound builders continued to exist.

Kinderhuk Signs

Kinderhuk tablets , “Discovered” in 1843, were intended to discredit the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith .

In the fantastic novel by American writer Howard Lovecraft “The Barrow” (The Mound, 1930), co-authored with Zelia Bishop, the protagonist finds a medieval manuscript in Oklahoma in 1928 that tells of the journey in 1545 of the Spanish conquistador Panfilo de Zamacon-and-Nunez into the underworld, where it penetrates through the Indian mound.

• Hopewell National Historic Park
• Serpent sound
• Figured Barrow

• Keram K.V. First American: The Mystery of the Indians of the Pre-Columbian Era. - M.: Progress, 1979. - S. 205-242.
• Builders of funerary hills and inhabitants of caves / Per. from English - M .: TERRA, 1997. - (Encyclopedia "Disappeared Civilizations"). - S. 6—77. - ISBN 5 300 01182 7
• Cyrus T. Report on the mound explorations of the Bureau of Ethnology. pp. 3-730. Twelfth annual report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1890-91, by JW Powell, Director. XLVIII + 742 pp., 42 pls., 344 figs. 1894.
• Kenneth FL Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archeology / 5th ed. - New York: McGraw Hill, 2006.

• Lost race myth
• LostWorlds.org | An Interactive Museum of the American Indian
• LenaweeHistory.com | Mound Builders section, The Western Historical Society 1909, reprint.
• Artist Hideout, Art of the Ancients
• Ancient Monuments Placemarks
• The Mound Builders in the Gutenberg Project .
• With Climate Swing, a Culture Bloomed in Americas ( Peru Mound Builders)