History With RCS: Great Piles of Dirt
By 1776 most mounds looked like great piles of dirt. Even so, they drew the attention of Washington, Jefferson, and others. In much earlier days when Spanish explorers first saw them they drew stronger attention and wonder. In those days a considerable number of of mounds were used and maintained by the people of the land. Later, when French traders and trappers saw those mounds of the Mississippi river drainage area more mounds were neglected and grown over with grass. By the time Dutch, English, and other settlers were arriving, the culture of the native people and been greatly disrupted and damaged. Nearly all mounds were grown over with brush and trees. most of the mounds and other earth works had been abandoned.
Abandoned, but not forgotten. Native peoples had memories and stories of them and some the new comers had curiosity about them. A few, but perhaps to many, of those new-comers mined the mounds for saleable material and items. The interest in the remains of those earthworks and mounds has grown in recent decades. Historians and archaeologists have taken an interest. Tourists and others visit those remains. They are mentioned in a few text books. Modern archaeologists continue to develop our knowledge of the earthen mounds on our land with their research.
Historians are still learning from the writings of Spanish explorers, conquerors, and colonists. We still have more to learn from observers traveling with people like Hernando de Soto on his 1540 through 1542 traverse of what is now the U.S. Southeast. And also from the many other Spanish explorers, colonists, and others observing North America in the 1500s.
We have more to learn from the journals of French voyageurs and priests. Artists can be a source of information. One French painter was observing Indian activity in northeast Florida before 1590. A caption on one of his paintings reads in translation, "Sometimes the deceased king of the province is buried with great solemnity, and the cup from which he was accustomed to drink is placed on a tumulus with many arrows set about it." His interpretation of what he probably saw may be somewhat ironic and with less than perfect understanding of the situation, but his words and painting may still inform us.
One may suspect that there is still information to be found about this period in North America, in European Archives. In those archives productive information about the native population of the area from the very early days of European exploration and occupation may be found.
From such early writings, we find that priests and others visiting the Mississippi river area by about 1679 were grown over with brush and large trees. Even so, they found some of them still impressive. Notable among them were those found at the present site of Saint Louis city, Missouri. The ones at Natchez city were still occupied by native people and the French found it necessary to drive them out by force.
As I continue to learn more from the work of archaeologists in the area, I have come to learn of peoples named by them such as: Adena, Hopewell, Kame transitional, Red Ocher, Old Copper, Fort Ancient, Poverty Point, and Watson break. I learned that culture, trade and interactions in general of some of them extended from Labrador to the tip of Florida and beyond. Those interactions from the beginning of the Mississippi near the Great Lakes to its delta at on the Gulf of Mexico, from the western extremes of the Missouri river to the eastern extremes of the Ohio river. from the Great Lakes to the mouth of the Saint Laurence river.
These forerunners of what have been called the civilized tribes, were found in the areas noted above and also thrived along the Gulf coast to perhaps as far as the present boarder with Mexico and east to the west coast of Florida and then up east coast of the present state. Some had sea going vessels to take them to Cuba and farther south into the Caribbean. We are learning a lot and have much more to learn of these and perhaps to their descendants of today. It might be profitable to begin with their use of wetland and their agricultural practices.
I found that these mound builder culture people had lived and learned in North America for 5,000 years and perhaps twice that long.
Many tribes of North American Indians are closely related to the people I am writing about here. American Indians have culture memories of them preserved in chants and stories. Among these Americans are preserved details and attitudes of a culture which had diminished greatly by 400 BC. There is still that of value which we can all learn from and about the experience of the people of that culture.
We seem to be looking at a wide spread, long lasting cultural tradition. That culture seems to have lasted for thousands of years and adapting successfully to climate and other major changes on Earth. They lived and thrived before and through time of mega-fauna. I remember being a "stomp dance" in the U.S. at which I heard a chant which feature the atlatl and its use. Later I spoke with a person who knew about that song/chant. He said it was about hunting a large animal which seems to have been a giant ground sloth. I understand that this giant sloth was one of the giant animals to become extinct. I like the evidence that a tribal people, not long out of their oral tradition, kept their history in song and still sang it while I was a young man.
The Kame people may be of a tradition different from the one on which I have intended to focus, but they did become mound builders. A kame is a sort of long slender berm of earth left by a retreating glacier. A people used them as a place to bury their dead. As time went on the people came to remain in the same area for longer periods of time. In time they ran out of natural kame and so began to create their own. As time went on their kame came to look more mound-like.
I mentioned a Red Ocher people earlier. They came from a different tradition and we have much yet to learn about them. They were early in the New World. They were a sea going people of some sophistication. Evidence of their culture is found along the western shores of Europe! It it is also found on the eastern shores of North America and down the the Saint Laurence river to the Great Lakes. Their markers are advanced fishing gear and for the hunting of sea mammals. Another marker is their abundant use of red ocher, most noted in their burial sites. Could they have been the source of reskins, the original red Indians?
More than once I heard an old aunt of mine say that an excellent place to start is at the beginning and that a good place to stop is when it is over. However, for me this story is not over it continues today. I have looked far back into the past and have little hope of finding a beginning. Still I will continue to look as far as I can into the far reaches of time.
So, for now, in will start at about 4,000 BC with the "Mound Builders" of North America and from there work back toward the present and forward into the past. Here I will end at the beginning, with the Watson Break people.
We often think of the past as a sort of line extending back into the past in a year by year, decade by decade, century by century, millennium by millennium order. People of other cultures seem to remember it as like a lake of happenings, doings, lessons and learnings of the past quite well. I do try to use chronological order, but have some "primitive" tendencies. Check my timeline blogs for a better chronology.
Watson Break site in Louisiana is my archaeological starting point. This look into this Middle Archaic Mound site of North America is arbitrary, but is a fairly solid place to begin. The Mounds at this large site are more securely dated them most similar mounds thanks to the work by Sanders and others. It has also been less seriously disturbed than many others. So, from this period in North America I can move toward toward the moving target of the future and into the past with no end in sight.
The Watson Break site is in the U.S. state of Louisiana, located at the edge of a Holocene floodplain of the Ouachita river. It's in northeast Louisiana and about 20 miles south of Monroe, Louisiana. In southern Louisiana is where the Mississippi river enters the Gulf of Mexico. so, from Watson Break one could explore mound sites up the Mississippi and up both Ohio river and Missouri river and then further up the Mississippi to very near the Great Lakes and even through the Lakes to the St. Lawrence river to the Atlantic ocean. And, in that process visit Kame and Red Ocher sites. The rivers were roads for many and for some the Ocean a highway.
We could then explore down the Mississippi from near Watson Break to the Gulf of Mexico and out and west along the Gulf coast. We could also choose to travel east from the delta and around the Florida peninsula and up the Atlantic coast a ways. Up and down the river and along the coast we can find Mound Builder sites or sites of their relatives.
In 1997 the archaeologist Joe Sanders and an interdisciplinary team of scientists published important findings about Watson Break in Science. They presented solid evidence that Middle Archaic "hunter-gathers constructed monumental earthworks at WB and lived there on a seasonal basis. This Middle Archaic period is often measure from about 8,000 BC to about 1,000 BC.
These Watson Break mounds are among the oldest of their kind and the more elaborate. Copper items were around there which very likely have their origin in the Great Lakes area and probably arrived before 2,000 BC. An item found their which I find strikingly noble and well proportioned human hand fashioned from mica. Mica is delicate and subject to damage. It is also fireproof and translucent.
Other sites identified as closely related to WB tradition have been found mostly in in Louisiana, but others have been found elsewhere, notably in the adjacent state of Mississippi. One such mound was located in downtown Pascagoula in Lincoln county, Mississippi. It has been dated to between 3,600 BC and 3,300 BC by radiocarbon dating. There is another site in Lowndes county, Miss. It has been dated to between 4,600 and 3,800 BC.
Enough of Watson Break for now. But from here at WB we might be able to take up a thread that that we can follow back to a time of "Noah's Flood." Archaeologist are clarifying our history more and more. This ramble could lead to exploring to before "the flood." and forward to our future.
We have lightly touched a time nearly 10,000 BC an and forward and up to about. There is a lot to fill in, but we've made a start. You can add to the story in the "comments" section just below. Click on "comments."
I have begun building prehistory timeline blogs which you can access from this blog. Check out the dates from this piece there or on other online sites.
More to come.
Thank you for reading!
RCS
