The Native American Hopewell Culture

 The Native America Hopewell Culture and Tradition of  Mound Builders

                People of the the Hopewell tradition were ancestral to many modern Indian Nations. They may also represent an important tradition extending back in what seems a continuous line, to a time of the mega Fauna. They may even have used the atlatl as early as that. They had certainly maintained a recognizable way of living extending hundreds of years into the past.

                The Hopewell people, like many other Native American people, were matrilineal. In such cultures a man and a woman may have joined under the name of the woman's family. The children of such union may have had the responsibilities and privileges of the female line. If I, as a male, were a member of the culture, my "surname" would become that of my wife's mother, grand mother, and great grandmother. My children would bear that name. I might become known for the doings of my wife's family. 

                I am far from sure of the ways matrilineality effected their culture. However even the little we can learn may help us to better consider how Patrilineality may effect a culture. 

                The Hopewell have been called Mound Builders and came from a long line of such builders. They built more than complex mounds; they built a variety of interesting earthworks. They also made tools and artworks of stone, mica, copper, bone, wood, and much else.

                A work of theirs is called the Newark Earthworks and is located near Newark and Heath, Ohio in what is now the U.S.A. Three sections of this work have been identified and called: the Great Circle, the Octagonal, and the Wright Earthworks. As you may guess the complex was built by people we call Hopewell, The work was done between 100 BC and 500 AD. The Hopewell may have begun a decline as early as 400 AD. The Great Circle has called the biggest earthwork circle in the world or in the U.S. It is very big. It is believed to have been used as a place of ceremony, social gatherings, trade, worship, and honoring the dead. 

                Scholars have demonstrated that the Octagonal Earthwork was used as a lunar observatory for tracking the moon's orbit during its 18.6 year cycle.

Trade: 

                Evidence of their work and commerce has been found from south Florida and near the mouth of the Mississippi to the Great Lakes, and from the Rocky mountains to the Appalachian mountains. and some say, to the Atlantic coast of North America. Much of such evidence is concentrated in the drainage areas of the Mississippi, Ohio, and Missouri rivers.

                After 1492 Europeans were becoming aware of the earthworks of the Hopewell and Adena people. First the Spanish and latter the French commented on some of the mounds being abandoned and over grown with grass, brush, and trees. The English and American colonists became curious of mounds at an even latter date, They dug into them. They found goods; goods of many kinds from pottery to gold. Some of their finds were wonders. Including skeletal remains of persons of a bigger of a size than any of the finders.

                Some of the finders were interested in that which could be sold. Others wondered who the builders could be. Certainly not the few sad Indians they saw around them. The Indians they saw around them were the children who's families had been diseased and cruelly exploited  by Europeans for over 300 years. What you see is what you get. They were not seeing the "noble redman." We are still learning about who those builders were. We still have much to learn. Most of the evidence points tot  the Native people living near us today.

                For now, I will say that it has seemed reasonable to believe that the Hopewell people experienced a peak in their culture from about 200 BC to about 400 AD. They were proceeded by an interesting and long lived culture called the Adena. Like the Hopewell they traded from the Gulf of Mexico to a bit beyond the Great Lakes and all along the Mississippi Drainage system, including the Ohio and Missouri rivers. There is much evidence that the Adena were active from about 1,000 BC to about 200 BC.

                I hope to post about the Adena When I believe there is interest among my readers.

                Experienced ones say that we have much of value to learn from the signs left by our Native predecessors, if we would dig carefully.

                This was a popular post at RCS Posts and it seems appropriate to this site where pre-history and archaeology are featured.

                                                                                                    RCS