where did the mound builders lived in north america
Anachronisms in the Book of Mormon


the Jaredite record in the Book of Mormon begins. The main point of contention is how late these animals were present in the Americas before becoming extinct. Various Mormon authors have cited evidence that North American mound-builder cultures were familiar with the elephant. The oldest mound-builder societies date to around 2000 BC. The mound builder/elephant controversy did not originate with the Book of Mormon. In "The Mound Builders, Their Works and Relics", author Stephen Dennison Peet cites instances of exhumed mastodon remains and arguments given
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Effigy mound


effigy mound construction over time. Given the expected rates of decay regarding burial evidence (some conical mounds being as old as 2700 years) it is reasonable to project that all mounds in the conical-to-effigy mound spectrum, are burial or funerary earthworks. The builders of the effigy mounds are usually referred to as the Mound Builders. Native American societies in Wisconsin built more effigy mounds than did those in any other region of North America—between 15,000 and 20,000 mounds, at least 4,000 of which remain today. Many
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Mound Builders


The various cultures collectively termed "Mound Builders" were inhabitants of North America who, during a circa 5,000-year period, constructed various styles of earthen mounds for religious, ceremonial, burial, and elite residential purposes. These included the pre-Columbian cultures of the Archaic period, Woodland period (Calusa culture Adena and Hopewell cultures), and Mississippian period; dating from roughly 3500 BCE (the construction of Watson Brake) to the 16th century CE, and living in regions of the Great Lakes, the Ohio River Valley, and
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Earthworks (archaeology)


size, and layout of lost settlements. Often these earthworks can point to the purpose of such a settlement, as well the context in which it existed. Earthworks in North America include mounds built by Native Americans known as the Mound Builders. Ancient people who lived in the American Midwest commonly built effigy mounds, which are mounds shaped like animals (real or imaginary) or people. Possibly the most famous of these effigy mounds is Serpent Mound. Located in the Ohio, this 411-meterlong earthen work is thought to memorialize alignments of
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Mound Builders


fraudulent claims of pre-Native American moundbuilders. Writers and scholars have proposed many alternative origins for the Mound Builders: In 1787, Benjamin Smith Barton proposed the theory that the Mound Builders were Vikings who came to North America and eventually disappeared. Other people believed that Greeks, Africans, Chinese, or assorted Europeans built the mounds. Some Euro-Americans thought the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel had built the mounds. During the 19th century, a common belief was that the Jews, particularly the Lost Ten Tribes, were the
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Mound Builders


3500 BCE during the Middle Archaic period, is the oldest dated mound complex in North America. It is one of 11 mound complexes from this period found in the Lower Mississippi Valley. These mound builders were organized; hundreds or even thousands of workers had to dig up tons of earth with the hand tools available, the soil had to be moved long distances, and finally, workers had to create the shape the builder had planned. The most complete reference for these earthworks is "Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley",
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Mound Builders


, Florida, now a gated community next to Marco Island, when excavated by Michael Russo in 1980 found an Archaic Indian village site. Mound A was a burial mound that dated to 3400 BCE, making it the oldest known burial mound in North America. The oldest mound associated with the Woodland period was the mortuary mound and pond complex at the Fort Center site in Glade County, Florida. 2012 excavations and dating by Thompson and Pluckhahn show that work began around 2600 BCE, seven centuries before the mound-builders in Ohio
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Delavan, Wisconsin


broke off, pushing southwest into the area of Walworth County. The first humans known to inhabit the Delavan area were Native Americans around 1000 BCE. Later, between 500-1000 CE, Mound Builders lived in what is now the Delavan Lake area. Mound Builders were of the Woodland culture. The effigy mounds they erected along the shores of Delavan Lake numbered well over 200, according to an archeological survey done in the late 19th century by Beloit College. Many were along the north shore of the lake where Lake Lawn Resort
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Mound


Columbian Eastern and Central North America. Mounds are given different names depending on which culture they strive from. They can be located all across the world in spots such as Asia, Europe and the Americas. "Mound builders" have more commonly been associated with the mounds in the Americas. They all have different meanings and sometimes are constructed as animals and can be clearly seen from aerial views. Kankali Tila is a famous mound located at Mathura in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. A Jain stupa was excavated here in 1890
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Mound-building termites


Mound-building termites are a group of termite species that live in mounds. These termites live in Africa, Australia and South America. The mounds sometimes have a diameter of . Most of the mounds are in well-drained areas. Termite mounds usually outlive the colonies themselves. If the inner tunnels of the nest are exposed it is usually dead. Sometimes other colonies, of the same or different species, occupy a mound after the original builders' deaths. The structure of the mounds can be very complicated. Inside the
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Mound Builders


the Mississippi River valley and its tributary waters. Since the 19th century, the prevailing scholarly consensus has been that the mounds were constructed by indigenous peoples of the Americas. Sixteenth-century Spanish explorers met natives living in a number of later Mississippian cities, described their cultures, and left artifacts. Research and study of these cultures and peoples has been based mostly on archaeology and anthropology. The namesake cultural trait of the Mound Builders was the building of mounds and other earthworks. These burial and ceremonial structures were typically flat-topped
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Olmec alternative origin speculations


scripture by churches and members of the Latter Day Saint movement, the Jaredites are described as a people who left the Old World in ancient times and founded a civilization in the Americas. Mainstream American History and Literature specialists place the literary setting for the Book of Mormon among the “Mound-builders” of North America. The work is therefore classified in the American “Mound-builder” genre of the 19th century. LDS scholars and authors seek to demonstrate that events described in the Book of Mormon have a literal foundation.
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Effigy mound


by settlers was common and this also contributed to the destruction and defacement of many. According to the National Park Service, the area in which effigy mounds are found "extends from Dubuque, Iowa, north into southeast Minnesota, across southern Wisconsin from the Mississippi to Lake Michigan, and along the Wisconsin–Illinois boundary." The Effigy Mound Builders buried one, two, or three people in a single mound. These burials were most often done singly one atop the other in successive years. The effigy mound builders did not
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Oak Mounds


The Oak Mounds is a large prehistoric earthwork mound, and a smaller mound to the west. They are located outside Clarksburg, in Harrison County, West Virginia. These mounds have never been totally excavated but they were probably built between 1 and 1000 CE by the Hopewell culture mound builders, prehistoric indigenous peoples of eastern North America. The larger mound is about 12 feet high and 60 feet in diameter. A number of burials of important persons of the culture probably occurred in these mounds. An incorrectly worded historical marker sign is
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Man Mound


The Man Mound is a prehistoric humanoid earthwork located in Greenfield, Sauk County, Wisconsin, east of the city of Baraboo. Constructed during the Late Woodland period, the mound is the only surviving anthropomorphic effigy mound in North America. The mound depicts a horned humanoid figure and may have held religious or ceremonial significance to its builders. The mound was preserved as a county park in 1908, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 and designated a National Historic Landmark in 2016. The mound is a large humanoid figure
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Mound Builders


determined to be fake. The Walam Olum hoax had considerable influence on perceptions of the Mound Builders. In 1836, Constantine Samuel Rafinesque published his translation of a text he claimed had been written in pictographs on wooden tablets. This text explained that the Lenape Indians originated in Asia, told of their passage over the Bering Strait, and narrated their subsequent migration across the North American continent. This "Walam Olum" tells of battles with native peoples already in America before the Lenape arrived. People hearing of the account believed that the
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Culture of North America


The culture of North America refers to the arts and other manifestations of human activities and achievements from the continent of North America. The specifics are unknown, but between 40,000 and 16,500 years ago, the melting of the ice sheets formed in the Last Glacial Maximum allowed Paleo-Indian peoples to migrate into the North American continent, eventually diversifying and giving rise to such civilizations as the Aztec Empire or the Mound Builders, among others. However, due to the colonization of the Americas by Europe, and along with mass immigration from
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Anachronisms in the Book of Mormon


Hordeum pusillum", also known as "little barley", a species of grass native to the Americas. The seeds are edible, and this plant was part of the pre-Columbian Eastern Agricultural Complex of cultivated plants used by Native Americans. "Hordeum pusillum" was unknown in Mesoamerica, where there is no evidence of pre-Columbian barley cultivation. Evidence exists that this plant was domesticated in North America in the Woodland periods contemporary with mound-builder societies (early centuries AD) and has been carbon-dated to
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Limited geography model


Book of Mormon in the vicinity of Mexico and Central America surrounding the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Others recognize a setting among the mound builders as the book's original setting. This North American setting has gained support from some notable members of the LDS community, including LDS filmmaker Keith Merrill. The mound builder setting parallels traditional settings of the Book of Mormon accepted during the 19th century, but is still a minority view in LDS academia. These models have not changed the academic consensus outside the Latter Day Saint movement that the Book of
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Missouri River


the Bering land bridge between the Americas and Eurasia. Over centuries, the Missouri River formed one of these main migration paths. Most migratory groups that passed through the area eventually settled in the Ohio Valley and the lower Mississippi River Valley, but many, including the Mound builders, stayed along the Missouri, becoming the ancestors of the later Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains. Indigenous peoples of North America who have lived along the Missouri have historically had access to ample food, water, and shelter. Many migratory animals naturally inhabit
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Mound Builders


From 1886, another "New York Times" article described water receding from a mound in Cartersville, Georgia, which uncovered acres of skulls and bones, some of which were said to be gigantic. Two thigh bones were measured with the height of their owners estimated at 14 ft. President Lincoln made reference to the giants whose bones fill the mounds of America. The antiquarian author William Pidgeon created fraudulent surveys of mound groups that did not exist, possibly tainting this opinion, which was replaced by others. A major factor in
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Brownsville, Pennsylvania


dock and outfit numerous flatboats, keelboats, and other river craft. Its builders made thousands of pole boats that moved the emigrants who settled the vast Northwest Territory. Later Brownsville industry built the first steamboats on the inland rivers, and many hundreds afterwards. Colonists used the term "Old Forts" for the mounds and earthworks created by the prehistoric Mound Builders cultures. Archeologists and anthropologists have since determined that many prehistoric Native American cultures in North America along the Mississippi River and its tributaries built massive earthworks for ceremonial, burial and religious
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Kay-Nah-Chi-Wah-Nung


approximately 5,000 BP, provides evidence that the first residents of the area were nomadic hunters, fishers and gatherers known as Archaic people. They inhabited many parts of North America and traded extensively over large areas. First Nations consider these traditional lands to have been theirs for time immemorial. Kay-Nah-Chi-Wah-Nung has the largest concentration of earthwork burial mounds in Canada. The mounds were built on river terraces along the north side of the Long Sault Rapids on Rainy River. The first mound-builders at the
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Portsmouth Earthworks


The Portsmouth Earthworks are a large prehistoric mound complex constructed by the Ohio Hopewell culture mound builder indigenous peoples of eastern North America (100 BCE to 500 CE). The site was one of the largest earthwork ceremonial centers constructed by the Hopewell and is located at the confluence of the Scioto and Ohio Rivers, in present-day Ohio. The majority of the mound complex site is now covered by the city of Portsmouth in Scioto County, Ohio. Several individual sections of the complex have been included on the National Register of Historic
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Mound Builders


. Since the artifacts associated with the Mound Builders were found fairly deep in the ground, Atwater argued that they must be from a different group of people. The discovery of metal artifacts further convinced people that the Mound Builders were not Native Americans. The Indians encountered by the Europeans and Americans were not thought to engage in metallurgy. Some artifacts that were found in relation to the mounds were inscribed with symbols. As the Europeans did not know of any Indian cultures that had a writing system, they assumed a different group had
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Ohiopyle State Park


. The first known group of people to inhabit the Ohiopyle area were the Monongahela, a clan of the mound builders. These Native Americans disappeared from the scene just as European colonists began to arrive in North America. As the east coast was being settled, Native Americans who had lived closer to the Atlantic Ocean were exterminated or forced to flee to the west. Various tribes, including the Shawnee, Lenni Lenape, and Seneca people, inhabited the Ohiopyle area during the 18th century, but were ultimately removed after the French and
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Ohiopyle, Pennsylvania


Uniontown Area School District. The first known group of people to inhabit the Ohiopyle area were the Monongahela, a clan of the Mound Builders. These Native Americans disappeared from the scene just as European colonists were beginning to arrive in North America. As the east coast was settled, the Native Americans who lived closer to the Atlantic Ocean were exterminated or forced to flee to the west. Various tribes inhabited the Ohiopyle area at this time, preceding their ultimate removal following the French and Indian War. One of the few remnants of
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Poverty Point culture


Watson Brake is one of the earliest mound complexes in the Americas. Next oldest is the Poverty Point Culture, which thrived from 1730 - 1350 BC, during the late Archaic period in North America. Evidence of this mound builder culture has been found at more than 100 sites, including the Jaketown Site near Belzoni, Mississippi. The largest and best-known site is at Poverty Point, located on the Macon Ridge near present-day Epps, Louisiana. The Poverty Point culture may have hit its peak around 1500 BC.
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John Denison Baldwin


or Mexico. He rejected the then-common notion that they had been a lost European, Semitic, or Asiatic people who had been wiped out by the North American Indians, asserting on the contrary that the Mounds were "wholly original, wholly American" and "did not come from the Old World". He did, however, still subscribe to the idea that these "Mound Builders" were not the same as the American Indian inhabitants of the region at that time, who he believed were a separate race originating
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American Bottom


Mound is the largest Pre-Columbian earthwork in the Americas, and the complex is the largest earthwork north of Mexico. The engineering of the mounds showed that their builders had an expert knowledge of the varying soils and their capacities. Cahokia was a complex, planned, and designed urban center with a residential population, farming, and artisan production of refined crafts and goods. With its location at the confluence of three major rivers, it was the center of a regional trading network reaching to the Great Lakes and the Gulf Coast
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Henry Jackson Lewis


, and Louisiana. Palmer hired Lewis as an assistant. Lewis went on expeditions with Palmer to Avondale Mounds, near Greenville, Mississippi, where he sketched a large body of mound surveys. Lewis's drawings were published in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, and helped to disproved the theory that the mounds were built by a "lost race" of non-Indian "Mound Builders, " though he did not receive formal acknowledgment for his work until nearly 100 years after he completed it. Around 1885, due to sparse available
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Edwin Hamilton Davis


the Mound City Group in Chillicothe, Ohio, which has been restored using their data and became part of Hopewell Culture National Historical Park. In 1848, the results of Davis and Squier's explorations were embodied in the book "Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley", which formed the first volume of the Smithsonian contributions to knowledge series. The work was a landmark in American scientific research, the study of the prehistoric Mound Builders of North America, and the early development of archaeology as a scientific discipline. It was characterized by
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Indian Mounds Park (Saint Paul, Minnesota)


to mound builders of the Hopewell Tradition, but later cultures also added to the mounds. No evidence of habitation has been found among the mounds, so the builders lived elsewhere nearby, probably in a village below the bluff. The Dakota village of Kaposia was established at the foot of the bluff before 1600 CE. English explorer Jonathan Carver described the site in 1766 and visited the recent burial of a Dakota leader among the mounds. Burial mounds were first excavated by Edward Duffield Neill in 1856, followed by a dig sponsored by
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Julilly House Kohler


Julilly House Kohler (October 18, 1908 – December 24, 1976) was a member of the Kohler family of Wisconsin and was a children's author who lived in Kohler, Wisconsin. She was active in social work and community projects, and was well known for advocacy for the preservation of burial mounds constructed by the North American Mound Builders at Sheboygan Indian Mound Park. Julilly House was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on October 18, 1908, the only child of William Henry House and Mary Lilly Waller. The family moved
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Cyrus Thomas


he reported, but did little if any field work. He had permanent and temporary field assistants and one clerical assistant. They provided him with their notes, which he organized, formed into a report, and published. When Thomas began his investigations into the origins of the mound builders, he was under the impression that the mounds were made by a more advanced race that no longer existed. He argued that once America had been settled the people tended to stay in one place, which meant that the archaeological record had been
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Cumorah


for the Book of Mormon among the mythic mound builders of North America. Recent archaeological discoveries in North America, together with new historical information in the Joseph Smith Papers project, have led to a resurgence of interest in the traditional New York setting. Currently, the site near Palmyra, New York, hosts the annual "Hill Cumorah Pageant". This large, outdoor Latter-day Saint pageant typically occurs in early July and is free to the public. The pageant can trace its history back to 1935. The current title
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Portage, Indiana


Portage is a city in Portage Township, Porter County, in the U.S. state of Indiana. The population was 36,828 as of the 2010 census. It is the largest city in Porter County, and third largest in Northwest Indiana. Prior to European settlement, Native Americans lived in Northwest Indiana. Mound Builders left a mound in the area now known as McCool, though the mound was destroyed in the early 1900s. Following the Mound Builders, the Wea tribe inhabited the area. The Wea were forced south by the Potawatomi.
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Dauphin Island, Alabama


encountered by many birds as they migrate north from South America, and as a consequence many species can be found resting there before continuing their journey. In May 2012, the central public beach began charging for access. This marked the second beach on the island to charge the public following the creation of the privately owned West End Beach. Serpentine shell middens, perhaps 1500 years old, attest to at least seasonal occupation by the Native American Mound Builder culture. Shell Mound Park, along the Island's northern shore, is administered
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History of Louisiana


were immediate and long-lasting. The disfranchisement of African Americans did not end until the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. The Dalton Tradition is a Late Paleo-Indian and Early Archaic projectile point tradition, appearing in much of Southeast North America around 8500–7900 BC. During the Archaic period, Louisiana was home to the earliest mound complex in North America and one of the earliest dated complex constructions in the Americas. The Watson Brake site is an arrangement of human-made mounds located in the floodplain of the Ouachita River near
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Polygenism


, instead William Pidgeon wrote a book called "Traditions of Dee-Coo-Dah and Antiquarian Researches" in 1858. In the book Pidgeon attempts to prove that a vanished race, culturally superior to and existing earlier than the American Indians, occupied America first and that The Mound Builders were not Native Americans. Pidgeon's book was revealed mostly to be a hoax. The famed archaeologist Theodore H. Lewis later revealed that Pidgeon had fabricated most of his research, and distorted much of the rest of it, mapping mounds where none
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Mound Builders


was built by a hunter-gatherer society, the people of which occupied the area on only a seasonal basis, but where successive generations organized to build the complex mounds over a 500-year period. Their food consisted mostly of fish and deer, as well as available plants. Poverty Point, built about 1500 BCE in what is now Louisiana, is a prominent example of Late Archaic mound-builder construction (around 2500 BCE – 1000 BCE). It is a striking complex of more than one square mile, where six earthwork
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History of South Dakota


to hunt large prehistoric mammals in the area such as mammoths, sloths, and camels. The Paleolithic culture of these people disappeared around 5000 BC, after the extinction of most of their prey species. Between AD 500 and 800, much of eastern South Dakota was inhabited by a people known as the 'Mound Builders'. The Mound Builders were hunters who lived in temporary villages and were named for the low earthen burial mounds they constructed, many of which still exist. Their settlement seems to have been concentrated around the watershed
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Fortner Mounds


The Fortner Mounds are a pair of Native American mounds in the central part of the U.S. state of Ohio. Located northeast of the city of Pickerington in Fairfield County, they are two of several mounds in the Pickerington vicinity, but the only pair of mounds in the area. As such, they are of special interest to archaeologists: some of the mound-building peoples of prehistoric North America lived in groups of two or three houses, which were often covered with piles of earth when the families would move to other places
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Beattie Park Mound Group


west, the park is bounded by Main Street and to its east lies the Rock River. Mounds are the most visible evidence of cultures that lived for hundreds of years in the mix of biomes in northern Illinois. Mound groups in eastern North America are primarily located along waterways, as is the case with the Beattie Park Mounds. Effigy (animal-shaped) mounds are found in Wisconsin and adjoining parts of neighboring states south of the conifer hardwood forests and stretch from eastern Iowa to Lake Michigan The mounds and mound remnants in
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Forsyth County, Georgia


county and is regulated by the Army Corps of Engineers as a federal project. For thousands of years, varying indigenous cultures lived in this area along the Etowah River. Starting near the end of the first millennium, Mound Builders of the Mississippian culture settled in this area; they built earthwork mound structures at nearby Etowah in present-day Bartow County, and large communities along the Etowah River in neighboring Cherokee County. They disappeared about 1500CE. Members of the Iroquoian-speaking Cherokee Nation migrated into the area from the North,
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Mound Builders


ancestors of Native Americans and the Mound Builders. The "Book of Mormon" (published first in 1830) provides a related belief, as its narrative describes two major immigrations to the Americas from Mesopotamia: the Jaredites (3000–2000 BCE) and an Israelite group in 590 BCE (termed Nephites, Lamanites, and Mulekites). While the Nephites, Lamanites, and Mulekites were all of Jewish origin coming from Israel around 590 BCE, the Jaradites were a non-Abrahamic people separate in all aspects, except in a belief in
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Pea Ridge, Arkansas


tell which native peoples were here first. They also note that for each period of time there was a vast improvement in their relics. During this time several families lived together because the caves or shelters under bluffs were larger. These shelters were always near to a clear spring of bubbling water. Next came another group of Indians known as Mound Builders. The Mound Builders were more prevalent in the area, although many of the mounds were destroyed by early white settlement, by either not knowing their significance, or by cultivating the
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The Plains, Ohio


The Plains is a census-designated place (CDP) in Athens County, Ohio, United States. The population was 3,080 at the 2010 census. "The Plains" originally referred to the local region where the Mound Builders lived and built their signature Indian mounds. A post office called The Plains has been in operation since 1908. The Plains is located at (39.370281, -82.132299). According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has a total area of , of which , or 0.28%, is water
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Bois Brule Township, Perry County, Missouri


Bois Brûlé is one of the eight townships located in Perry County, Missouri, in the United States of America. Bois Brûlé comes from the French word Bois-Brûlés (Burnt Woods) which was named for the Mississippi River bottom land by the same name. The name for the area was given by French colonial habitants, and was frequently applied by the French to a burnt tract of forest. The early Native American inhabitants of the area were the Mississippian Mound Builders. The Mississippian Mound Builders were part of the Mississippian culture
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North America's Forgotten Past


book, following the naming convention set forth by previous books in the series. The book is set in the North American continent during the Iron Age (c. 100 CE) and follows the plight of a group of natives trying to save their clan from a great evil and avoid a rival clan. Clan fighting over a powerful totemic mask has brought the Mound Builder people of the Great Lakes region to the edge of destruction. It is up to Star Shell, daughter of a Hopewell chief, to rid her people of this
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History of North Carolina


a Mississippian culture settlement and also indicate Spanish settlement at Fort San Juan in 1567–1568. Joara was the largest mound builder settlement in the region. Records of Hernando de Soto's expedition attested to his meeting with them in 1540. The earliest English attempt at colonization in North America was Roanoke Colony of 1585–1587, the famed "Lost Colony" of Sir Walter Raleigh. The colony was established at Roanoke Island in the Croatan Sound on the leeward side of the Outer Banks. The first attempt at a settlement consisted of 100 or so
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Fort Ransom State Park


Fort Ransom State Park is a public recreation area located in the Sheyenne River valley two miles north of the town of Fort Ransom in Ransom County, North Dakota. The state park preserves two homesteader farms: the Bjone House and the Andrew Sunne farm. The park sits along the Sheyenne Valley National Scenic Byway, the first route in North Dakota to be given this designation. The park features a visitors center with displays that interpret the lives of the area's 19th-century sodbusters and the Mound Builders who lived here from 5000
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Jackson Mound


The Jackson Mound is a Native American mound in the south-central portion of the U.S. state of Ohio. Located north of Pancoastburg in Fayette County, it measures approximately in diameter and in height. The mound has never been excavated, making the certain identification of its builders impossible; however, its location on a high terrace above a relatively small stream suggests that it was built by the Adena culture, which favored such sites for its many mounds. If true, it was originally more conical in shape (the mound's
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History of Native Americans in the United States


one among numerous mound sites of complex indigenous cultures throughout the Mississippi and Ohio valleys. They were one of several succeeding cultures often referred to as mound builders. The Oshara Tradition people lived from 5500 BCE to 600 CE. They were part of the Southwestern Archaic Tradition centered in north-central New Mexico, the San Juan Basin, the Rio Grande Valley, southern Colorado, and southeastern Utah. The Post-Archaic stage includes the Formative, Classic and Post-Classic stages in Willey and Phillipp's scheme. The Formative stage
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Lizard Mound County Park


or laid them on carefully prepared surfaces. The mounds were then built over them like grave markers. The custom of building effigy burial mounds died out about 1000 years ago; it was a custom unique to the general area. Little else is known about the Mound Builders. Even Indians who lived in Wisconsin when the first white men arrived didn't know why, or by whom, the mounds had been built. The earliest data concerning the mounds in the area of Lizard Mound County Park was in the form of a sketch
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Edward Palmer (botanist)


excavated many of the mounds at Kolomoki, he is said to have discovered nothing worth cataloguing. He did, however, examine many "house sites" and found a number of ash deposits and fragments of pottery. In 1894, the Mound Exploration Division final report, written by its director Cyrus Thomas, was published and dispelled the racist theories that the mounds of the southeastern United States had been built by a "lost race of Mound-Builders." The report cited ample evidence that the mounds were built by the ancestors
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Heartland Model


The Heartland Model (or "Heartland Theory") of Book of Mormon geography postulates that the events described in the Book of Mormon took place, primarily, in the heartland of North America. Among its proposals are that Mound Builders, including the Hopewell and the Adena, were among those peoples described in accounts of events in Book of Mormon books such as Alma and Helaman. The Mississippi River is identified as the River Sidon, and Big Spring (in Carter County, Missouri) as the Waters of Mormon. The Niagara
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Mound Builders


the mounds and placed temples on top of them. A few French expeditions reported staying with Indian societies who built mounds. People also claimed that the Indians were not the Mound Builders because the mounds and related artifacts were older than Indian cultures. Caleb Atwater's misunderstanding of stratigraphy caused him to believe that the Mound Builders were a much older civilization than the Indians. In his book, "Antiquities Discovered in the Western States" (1820), Atwater claimed that Indian remains were always found right beneath the surface of the earth
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Effigy mound


include with their dead the wealth of material the Ohio Hopewellians did. This almost complete lack of artifacts accompanying the dead clearly indicates a culture distinct from the Hopewellian, even though mounds with Hopewell-type grave goods have been excavated in the same area, and apparently were constructed at roughly the same time as the effigy mounds. Some have speculated that due to the lack of burial goods, that the effigy mound builders were egalitarian peoples. Close to around 15,000 effigy mounds have been lost due to plowing, farming, and grading
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E. G. Squier


of the "New York State Mechanic" at Albany 1841-1842. In 1843-1848, he engaged in journalism in Hartford, Connecticut and then edited the Chillicothe, Ohio, weekly newspaper the "Scioto Gazette". During this period, Squier collaborated with physician Edwin H. Davis on the book, "Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley", which was issued in 1848. The work was a landmark in American scientific research, the study of the prehistoric Mound Builders of North America, and the early development of archaeology
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John Denison Baldwin


." In 1865 he was elected a corporate member of the American Oriental Society. Baldwin's anthropological writing posited the origins of human civilization as arising among an Arabian or Northeast African people, the Cushites, in pre-historic times. In "Ancient America, In Notes on American Archaeology" he also speculated on the origins of the "Mound Builder" people then believed to have constructed the famous mounds around the Mississippi and Ohio River Valleys, suggesting that they had been an aboriginal people who had migrated northwards from Central America
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Mound Builders


peoples, perhaps descendants of the great Mississippian culture. The mound-building tradition still existed in the southeast during the mid-16th century. De Soto observed people living in fortified towns with lofty mounds and plazas, and surmised that many of the mounds served as foundations for priestly temples. Near present-day Augusta, Georgia, de Soto encountered a mound-building group ruled by a queen, Cofitachequi. She told him that the mounds within her territory served as the burial places for nobles. The artist Jacques le Moyne, who
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Mima mounds


Thomomys talpoides") of the endemic North American family "Geomyidae". Researchers in the 1940s found that Mima mounds tend to form in areas with poorly draining soils, so the "Fossorial Rodent Hypothesis" proposed that gophers build mounds as an evolutionary response to low water tables. It could be argued that gophers live in the mounds opportunistically but did not build them. Metal tracers implanted in a Mima mound field in San Diego demonstrated that gophers unexpectedly pushed soil upwards towards the center of the mounds instead of pushing the soil downward
3418609
Solomon Spalding


Solomon Spalding (February 20, 1761 – October 20, 1816) was the author of two related texts: an unfinished manuscript entitled "Manuscript Story – Conneaut Creek", and an unpublished historical romance about the lost civilization of the mound builders of North America called "Manuscript, Found". Whether these texts are distinct is disputed. After Spalding's death, a number of individuals suggested that Spalding's work was used as a source for the Book of Mormon, a scripture in the Latter Day Saint movement. Spalding was
16793260
View of the Hebrews


and southeastern North America. Smith attempted to rescue Indians from the contemporary myth of mound builders being a separate race by making the indigenous people "potential converts worthy of salvation." "If our natives be indeed from the tribes of Israel," Smith wrote, "American Christians may well feel, that one great object of their inheritance here, is, that they may have a primary agency in restoring those 'lost sheep of the house of Israel.'" The Book of Mormon shares some thematic elements with "View
21010975
American bison


Henry Mountains bison herd is found on the plains around the Henry Mountains, Utah, as well as in mountain valleys of the Henry Mountains to an altitude of 10,000 feet. The first thoroughfares of North America, except for the time-obliterated paths of mastodon or muskox and the routes of the mound builders, were the traces made by bison and deer in seasonal migration and between feeding grounds and salt licks. Many of these routes, hammered by countless hoofs instinctively following watersheds and the crests of ridges in avoidance of lower places
4990376
Mound Builders


Mormon" was published. During the 20th century, certain sects affiliated with the Black nationalist Moorish Science philosophy theorized an association with the Mound Builders. They argue that the Mound Builders were an ancient advanced Black civilization that developed the legendary continents of Atlantis and Mu, as well as ancient Egypt and Mesoamerica. These Black groups claim that the American Indians were too primitive to have developed the sophisticated societies and the technology believed necessary to build the mounds. The Reverend Landon West claimed that Serpent Mound in Ohio was built by God,
17469238
Mound Builders


not all agree. Watson Brake is located in the floodplain of the Ouachita River near Monroe in northern Louisiana. Securely dated to about 5,400 years ago (around 3500 BCE), in the Middle Archaic period, it consists of a formation of 11 mounds from 3 to 25 ft (1–8 m) tall, connected by ridges to form an oval nearly 900 ft (270 m) across. In the Americas, building of complex earthwork mounds started at an early date, well before the pyramids of Egypt were constructed. Watson
17469220
John Wells Foster


In 1858 he settled in Chicago where he remained for the rest of his life. For a time he worked in the land department of the Illinois Central Railroad but then joined the faculty at the Old University of Chicago where he served as a professor of natural history. Foster had been interested in archaeology since his work on the Ohio geological survey and spent many years studying the remnants of the Indian mound builders culture. Just prior to his death in 1873, he published "Prehistoric races of the United States of America" which
5586208
Mound Builders


in this manner. They thought the Native American nomadic cultures would not organize to build such monuments, for failure to devote the time and effort to construct such time-consuming projects. When most British colonists first arrived in America, they never witnessed the American Indians building mounds, and they found that few Indians knew of their history when asked. Yet earlier Europeans, especially the Spanish, had written numerous non-English-language accounts about the Indians' construction of mounds. Garcilaso de la Vega reported how the Indians built
17469241
Glenn Albert Black


Black's suggestion that there were similarities between the historic Delaware tribe and prehistoric mound builders of the Ohio, Griffin respected the evidence that Black presented to show the connections between the groups. The team's investigations of the "Walum Olum" were rejected by other professionals at the time. Historians now consider the "Walum Olum" to be a hoax and believe that Constantine Samuel Rafinesque created the materials to support his assertion that North America's natives had European origins. Because of the controversies and criticisms surrounding the research team's conclusions
21728581
Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley


Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley (full title Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley: Comprising the Results of Extensive Original Surveys and Explorations) (1848) by the Americans Ephraim George Squier and Edwin Hamilton Davis is a landmark in American scientific research, the study of the prehistoric indigenous mound builders of North America, and the early development of archaeology as a scientific discipline. Published in 1848, it was the Smithsonian Institution's first publication and the first volume in its "Contributions to Knowledge" series. The book had 306 pages
3636554
Samuel Haven


he was appointed librarian of the American Antiquarian Society, located in Worcester, Massachusetts. He began his duties as librarian in April 1838, and in October of that same year, he was elected a member of the society. Haven became one of the society's longest serving librarians from 1838 to 1881, and also served on its board of councilors from 1855 to 1881. Haven was particularly interested in research of the indigenous people of North America, including those referred to as the Mound Builders. The Smithsonian Institution commissioned Haven to
7497523
Etowah Indian Mounds


built by the historic Cherokee, who occupied the region at the time. But researchers now know that the Iroquoian-speaking tribe did not reach this part of Georgia until the late 18th century and could not have built the mounds. Late 20th-century studies showed the mounds were built and occupied by prehistoric indigenous peoples of the South Appalachian Mississippian culture (a regional variation of the Mississippian culture) of eastern North America. They were ancestors of the historic Muskogean language-speaking Muscogee (Creek) people who later emerged in the
15307449
History of Kentucky


the Mound Builders by 19th-century observers. The increasing use of agriculture during the development of the Eastern Agricultural Complex meant that Kentucky natives' shifted from nomadic culture to living in permanently occupied villages. They then lived in bigger houses and larger communities, although intensive agriculture did not begin until the Mississippian era. Around 900 CE maize became highly productive and the Eastern Agricultural Complex was replaced by the maize-based agriculture of the Mississippian culture era. The Mississippian era natives' village life revolved around planting, growing, and harvesting
13416919
Mound Builders


"original people" were the Mound Builders, and that the Lenape overthrew them and destroyed their culture. David Oestreicher later asserted that Rafinesque's account was a hoax. He argued that the Walam Olum glyphs derived from Chinese, Egyptian, and Mayan alphabets. Meanwhile, the belief that the Native Americans destroyed the mound-builder culture had gained widespread acceptance. Another hoax, the "Kinderhook plates" "discovered" in 1843, involved material planted by a contemporary in Native American mounds. This hoax aimed to discredit the account
17469246
Platform mound


A platform mound is any earthwork or mound intended to support a structure or activity. The indigenous peoples of North America built substructure mounds for well over a thousand years starting in the Archaic period and continuing through the Woodland period. Many different archaeological cultures (Poverty Point culture, Troyville culture, Coles Creek culture, Plaquemine culture and Mississippian culture) of North Americas Eastern Woodlands are specifically well known for using platform mounds as a central aspect of their overarching religious practices and beliefs. These platform mounds are usually four-sided truncated pyramids
20653770
Grave Creek Mound


small sandstone tablet, the Grave Creek Stone, which modern scholars believe to be a hoax. Grave Creek mound was created during the Woodland time period (late Adena Period around 1000 BC to about 1 AD). The people who lived in West Virginia during this time are among those groups classified as Mound Builders. This particular tumulus or burial mound was built in successive stages over a period of a hundred years. The Grave Creek Mound was believed first seen by a European American in 1770, when Joseph Tomlinson and his brother
15872402
Ratcliffe Mound


Ratcliffe Mound's builders is unknown. Two cultures from the Woodland period, the Adena and Hopewell, built large numbers of mounds in southeastern Ohio, and the Adena are known to have built a group of six mounds in the Vinton County village of Zaleski, but the Ratcliffe Mound lacks features that enable archaeologists to identify its builders. Neither of these two cultures typically built mounds in locations such as that of the Ratcliffe, and no identifiable artifacts have been found in the vicinity of the mound, so no identification can be made
3019702
Theodore B. Schaer Mound


the diggings of groundhogs. Although the mound was surely constructed during the Woodland period, the cultural affiliation of its builders is unknown. Both the Hopewell and the Adena cultures built burial mounds like the Schaer Mound in central Ohio, but their works are typically distinguishable with the eye: the Hopewell preferred the valleys of the major rivers for their subconical mounds, while the Adena favored high ground near small watercourses for their conical mounds. Because it shares some characteristics of each culture's typical architecture, the Schaer Mound's builders cannot
6462692
History of Ohio


Great Lakes region; decorative objects cut from sheets of mica from the southern Appalachians; conch shells from the Atlantic seaboard; and ornaments made from shark and alligator teeth and shells from the Gulf of Mexico - that the Mound Builders participated in a vast trading network that linked together hundreds of Native Americans across the continent. When modern Europeans began to arrive in North America, they traded with numerous Native American (also known as American Indian) tribes for furs in exchange for goods. When the Iroquois Confederacy depleted the beaver and other
13354142
Anachronisms in the Book of Mormon


references, artwork, tools, or any other evidence suggesting that swine were ever present in the pre-Columbian New World. Apologists note that peccaries (also known as javelinas), which bear a superficial resemblance to pigs, have been present in South America since prehistoric times. Mormon authors advocating the original mound-builder setting for the Book of Mormon have similarly suggested North American peccaries (also called "wild pigs") as the "swine" of the Jaredites. B. H. Roberts noted, however, that peccaries have
3882136
Edward King, Viscount Kingsborough


theories about non-indigenous origins for Native American civilisations that are also represented in the Book of Mormon (1830) and myths about mound builders of Old World ancestry in North America. Lord Kingsborough was imprisoned for debts, which he had taken responsibility on behalf of his father, and died in the Sheriff's Prison at Dublin of typhus on 27 February 1837, aged 41, two years before he would have succeeded to his father's title. The last two volumes of "Antiquities of Mexico" were published posthumously. The
706801
Them Bones (novel)


site, it is in a world where Arabs explored America, the Roman Empire never existed, and the Aztec empire extended to the Mississippi. The only member of his team to arrive at this destination, he soon establishes contact with a group of mound-builders who gradually befriend him. The final narrative is based on the diary entries of Warrant Officer Smith, another member of the Special Group. She arrives with the rest of the team of military and CIA personnel in what apparently is their timeline, only hundreds of years
5321085
Greater St. Louis


as ranked by Forbes. The area received the All-America City Award in 2008. The history of St. Louis, Missouri began with the settlement of the St. Louis area by Native American mound builders who lived as part of the Mississippian culture from the 9th century to the 15th century, followed by other migrating tribal groups. Starting in the late 17th century, French explorers arrived. Spain took over in 1763 and a trading company established the settlement of St. Louis in February 1764. The city became part of the U.S. through
18806257
Mound Builders


, Illinois. At its maximum about CE 1150, Cahokia was an urban settlement with 20,000–30,000 people; this population was not exceeded by North American European settlements until after 1800. Some effigy mounds were constructed in the shapes or outlines of culturally significant animals. The most famous effigy mound, Serpent Mound in southern Ohio, ranges from 1 to just over 3 ft tall (30–100 cm)., 20 ft (6 m) wide, more than 1,330 ft (405 m) long, and shaped as an undulating serpent.
17469211
Lizard Mound County Park


lived in Wisconsin and bordering states between A.D. 500 and A.D. 1000. They survived by hunting, fishing, and gathering wild plants. They moved from place to place often. In the summer they could be found closer to rivers and lakes, while in the winter they moved into sheltered upland valleys. They built burial and effigy mounds shaped like mammals, reptiles, birds and other creatures, both real and mythical. They also constructed conical, oval and linear mounds. The effigy mound builders usually buried their dead in small pits
18743751
Detroit


people inhabited areas near Detroit as early as 11,000 years ago including the culture referred to as the Mound-builders. In the 17th century, the region was inhabited by Huron, Odawa, Potawatomi and Iroquois peoples. The first Europeans did not penetrate into the region and reach the straits of Detroit until French missionaries and traders worked their way around the League of the Iroquois, with whom they were at war, and other Iroquoian tribes in the 1630s. The north side of Lake Erie was held by the Huron and Neutral peoples
8776026
History of Native Americans in the United States


, and south to the Great Plains and the American Southwest. They were the earliest ancestors of the Athabascan- speaking peoples, including the present-day and historical Navajo and Apache. They constructed large multi-family dwellings in their villages, which were used seasonally. People did not live there year-round, but for the summer to hunt and fish, and to gather food supplies for the winter. The Archaic period lasted until about 1000 BCE. A major culture of the Archaic stage was the Mound builders, who stretched
18197586
Cyrus Thomas


produced by the same people of that area through history. Although he did not do field work he mapped out a plan of action for the mound excavations, and presented ten years of work in the 12th Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology for 1890–91. By the end of his research into the origin of the mound builders Thomas dismissed each argument advanced in favor of the vanished race theory. The Bat Creek Inscription was one artifact that Thomas used to support his hypothesis that "the Cherokee constructed many earthen mounds"; the
8115196
Mississippian culture


became the United States. By the time more documentary accounts were being written, the Mississippian way of life had changed irrevocably. Some groups maintained an oral tradition link to their mound-building past, such as the late 19th-century Cherokee. Other Native American groups, having migrated many hundreds of miles and lost their elders to diseases, did not know their ancestors had built the mounds dotting the landscape. This contributed to the myth of the Mound Builders as a people distinct from Native Americans, which was rigorously debunked by
8819211
Mound Builders


Bryant. One belief was that American Indians were too unsophisticated to have constructed such complex earthworks and artifacts. The associated stone, metal, and clay artifacts were thought to be too complex for the Indians to have made. In the American Southeast and Midwest, numerous Indian cultures were sedentary and used agriculture. Numerous Indian towns had built surrounding stockades for defense. Capable of this type of construction, their ancestors and they could have built mounds, but people who believed that the Indians did not build the earthworks did not analyze it
17469240
Caleb Atwater


had built the elaborate, complex earthworks and what had happened to them. Contemporary Indians in the area did not have direct knowledge of the mounds’ origins. Americans tended to consider the Indian societies as primitive and did not believe the builders of the mounds could have been part of the same culture. Atwater had learned that John D. Clifford, a Lexington, Kentucky merchant, and his naturalist friend C.S. Rafinesque, a polymath and professor at Transylvania University, were also working on these topics. Clifford found documentation in the university library
3563216
History of Winnipeg


further north, agriculture. The rivers provided transportation far and wide and linked many peoples-such as the Assiniboine, Ojibway, Anishinaabe, Mandan, Sioux, Cree, Lakota, and others—for trade and knowledge sharing. Ancient mounds were once made near the waterways, similar to that of the mound builders of the south. Lake Winnipeg was considered to be an inland sea, with important river links to the mountains out west, the Great Lakes to the east, and the Arctic Ocean in the north. The Red
18775352
Laurel Complex


Hopewell of the Ohio River valley. It is unknown if the contact was direct or indirect. The first mound-builders in what is now the Kay-Nah-Chi-Wah-Nung National Historic Site of Canada, Laurel culture (c.2300 BP - 900 BP) who lived "in villages and built large round burial mounds along the edge of the river, as monuments to their dead." These mounds remain visible today. Kay-Nah-Chi-Wah-Nung is considered to be one of the "
18394452
LSU Campus Mounds


The LSU Campus Mounds or LSU Indian Mounds are two Native American mounds, of the Archaic Period, on the campus of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. They are part of a larger, statewide system of mounds. They were probably used for "ceremonial and marking point purposes," rather than for burial purposes. The tall mounds are thought to be more than 5,000 years old. That date would make them part of the oldest mound system in North America, Mesoamerica or South America and also means they predate
3315256
Mound Builders


or by man inspired by him. He believed that God built the mound and placed it as a symbol of the story of the Garden of Eden. Some people attributed the mounds to mythical cultures: Lafcadio Hearn suggested that the mounds were built by people from the lost continent of Atlantis. The mound-builder explanations were often honest misinterpretations of real data from valid sources. Both scholars and laymen accepted some of these explanations. Reference to an alleged race appears in the poem "The Prairies" (1832) by William Cullen
17469239
Mound Builders


Many different tribal groups and chiefdoms, involving an array of beliefs and unique cultures over thousands of years, built mounds as expressions of their cultures. The general term, "mound builder", covered their shared architectural practice of earthwork mound construction. This practice, believed to be associated with a cosmology that had a cross-cultural appeal, may indicate common cultural antecedents. The first mound building was an early marker of political and social complexity among the cultures in the Eastern United States. Watson Brake in Louisiana, constructed about
17469212
Pymatuning State Park (Pennsylvania)


as one of "25 Must-See Pennsylvania State Parks". Pymatuning State Park is on land that was once a very large swamp. The first known inhabitants were the Mound Builders. Two of their mounds were flooded over by the creation of Pymatuning Lake. The Lenape were living in the area when European settlers first came to the area. The lake is named for the chief, who lived in the area at the time, Pihmtomink. The Lenape were pushed out of the area by the Seneca tribe a member of
2090799
Mound Builders


pyramids or platform mounds, flat-topped or rounded cones, elongated ridges, and sometimes a variety of other forms. They were generally built as part of complex villages. The early earthworks built in Louisiana around 3500 BCE are the only ones known to have been built by a hunter-gatherer culture. The best-known flat-topped pyramidal structure, which at more than 100 ft (30 m) tall is the largest pre-Columbian earthwork north of Mexico, is Monks Mound at Cahokia in present-day Collinsville
17469210