Mound Builders

Moundbuilders is a collective term, obsolete in scholarly circles, for some ancient Native American peoples of North America who constructed man-made mounds - mounds in English - that were used by various early Native American cultures for burial, habitation, and ritual purposes.

Mounds

The Mounds were built by different peoples. They had different cultures and were not connected by common traditions and lore. Therefore, any summary is inaccurate.

Apparently, monumental building forms go back very far, perhaps as far as the Middle Archaic (c. 4500-4000 BC, Middle Archaic Period). The Woodland period (1000 BC - c. 1000 AD) shows a stronger find density.

One assumes the following history of origin:

• Archaic Cultures:
• The oldest known complex mounds originated in Louisiana as at Watson Brake around 3500-3000 BC.
• Poverty Point culture on the Gulf and lower Mississippi (1800-1000 BC).
• Adena Culture in the Middle Ohio Valley (1000 B.C. - A.D. 200).
• Hopewell culture, Mississippi, Ohio to Great Lakes (300 B.C. - A.D. 500).

• Fort Ancient on the Ohio, known for its effigy mound.

A new phase is forming in the south. These complexes already resemble the Central American pyramid complexes:

• Coles Creek on the lower Mississippi (from 700 B.C.), then Plaquemine.
• Mississippi Culture

Late Hill Builders:

• Mounds in Eastern Arkansas: Arkansas or Quagu
• Mounds in Missouri: Chickasaw
• Mounds in Alabama and Georgia: various tribes of the Muskogee people.
• Mounds in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee: Cherokee still in historic times.
• Mounds in northern Ohio and adjoining parts of New York State: branch of the Iroquois
• the stone cists found from southern Illinois to northeastern Georgia: Lenni Lenape and Shawnee