The Mound-Builders

Chapter II: Distribution and Classification of the Mounds

CHAPTER II DISTRIBUTION AND CLASSIFICATION OF THE MOUNDS Diffusion of the mound-building trait-The general mound area of the United States-Cultural divisions of the general mound area-Varieties and purposes of mounds: burial, effigy, and domiciliary-Earthworks and enclosures : defensive, ceremonial, and anomalous. T HE accompanying map 1 of the "general mound area" (Figure 8) shows, first of all, that the Mound-builders were by no means confined to a limited territory. The mounds and earthworks, monuments to their spectacular march through the centuries, are distributed quite generally along the Mississippi and the Ohio, with important subareas in the Tennessee-Cumberland district and in the Gulf states, and minor ones in Florida, western New York, and southern Michigan. It will be noted, however, that the coastal states northward from North Carolina are practically devoid of mounds, an indication that the Alleghany Mountains served as a prehistoric boundary line. For this reason the Moundbuilders ' remains did not come to the attention, to any appreciable extent, of the New England and the Virginia colonists, and therefore they play but little part in our Colonial history. DIFFUSION OF THE MOUND-BUILDING TRAIT Ancient mounds, however, are not confined to the comparatively large area corresponding to the eastern United Statesthe so-called "general mound area." In a sense, mounds are 1 This map, based on that published by the Bureau of American Ethnology, Twelfth Annual Report, is only tentative in its presentation of the tumuli; it attempts to indicate the distribution, rather than individual mounds, which on a map of so small scale manifestly would be impossible. The Bureau of American Ethnology map is the only one ever published showing the distribution of the mounds of the entire area, and at the time of its compilation (1890) mound locations, except in a few favored localities, had not been recorded. An idea of the actual number of mounds really in existence, or rather of record, may be had from the fact that the State of Ohio or of Wisconsin contains more mounds than are recorded on the entire area of this early map. 21 28 THE MOUND-BUILDERS almost world-wide in their occurrence and distribution, and wherever primitive peoples have lived, in any age, they may have possessed the trait of building mounds in some form, mostly as monuments to their dead. FIG. 9. A TYPICAL CONICAL MOUND The Kilvert Mound, Ross County, Ohio. Mounds of this type are scattered generally over the Middle Western states; almost invariably they were con· structed for mortuary purposes. The extent of the mound-building trait has been aptly summarized by the noted archreologist Gerard Fowke, as follows: Mounds are among the earliest and most widely distributed memorials of the dead. Savages could pile up earth and stone before they could carve a rock or hew a piece of wood. Barbarians would feel that they were showing greater honor to the memory of a leader whose loss bore upon all alike, by the erection of a monument to which every individual might contribute a share of time and labor. Nothing is more enduring; and when settled into compactness and covered with sod, a heap of earth will remain unchanged through vicissitudes that reduce to ruins any other product of human industry. It is expected, then, that such tumuli would be of world-wide occurrence; and belong not only to primitive ages when men were debarred by limited resources from constructing more elaborate tombs, but continue to be built as tokens of general esteem or affection long after architectural skill had made magnificent structures possible. FIG. 8. DISTRmUTION OP' MOUNDS AND EARTHWORKS IN THE EASTERN UNITED STATES. Red dots indicate relative occurrence and eomparative distribution rather than individual major r~ins. DISTRIBUTION AND CLASSIFICATION 29 If one wishes to trace the custom of mound-building in other parts of the world, he will find, in addition to numerous tumuli in Mexico and South America, that mounds occur in great numbers over Europe from the Atlantic Ocean to the Ural Mountains; almost entirely across the great continent of Asia, particularly on the extensive steppes and plains; and to some extent in northern Africa. In the British Isles, in the Orkneys, and in Denmark they occur by the thousand. In Denmark it is of record that King Gorm and his queen, who died about the...