Hopewell Culture Administrative History

CHAPTER ONE
A Brief History of the Hopewell Culture (continued)

Mythology of the Moundbuilders

Speculation as to the origin of the prehistoric earthworks began with the arrival of the region's first white settlers. They viewed with wonderment walls from five to twelve feet in height shaped in the form of rectangles, squares, octagons, circles, and ellipses. The area which these earthworks covered ranged from one to as many as two hundred acres. In the Ohio Valley alone, more than ten thousand mounds dotted the landscape. Digging into the conical-shaped mounds, settlers found burials and a wide assortment of prehistoric grave goods. From the start, virtually no one concluded that the immense earthworks could have been the result of aboriginals. In the view of whites, American Indians did not possess the skill, intelligence, or work ethic to produce such marvels. Rather, to whites, American Indians represented a savage culture which had to be swept aside for the inevitable advancement of civilization. Another rational solution had to be found concerning who built the wide array of earthworks in the eastern United States.

Squier and Davis contributed to the Moundbuilder speculation as they believed Indians were mere hunters, unable to construct such prehistoric earthworks. In the aftermath of Squier and Davis's work, ongoing public debate raged for decades. The imaginative result, the myth of the Moundbuilders, ranged from the romantic to the nonsensical. Whites looked to their own past and selected previous civilizations which also engaged in earthworks and credited them with somehow performing similar feats in the Americas. Mythmakers selected the Egyptians, Phoenicians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, Hindus, and Vikings as the ancient Moundbuilders. Others thought Adam and Eve inspired the first Moundbuilders, followed by Noah and his offspring. Still others were convinced that the mighty Aztecs strayed into the area to build the mounds. Whatever the origins of this Moundbuilder race, many were convinced that this advanced, sophisticated culture was overrun and exterminated by the savage red American Indians. Indeed, removal to genocide conducted against the red man somehow seemed justified if Indians had done the same to the Moundbuilders. [15] Even after scientists and archeologists solved the mystery, contemporary naysayers continue to search for fantastic explanations, including beyond Earth's orbit to give credit to "ancient astronauts."

Largely to settle the public debate and quell disagreement within the intellectual community, Cyrus Thomas, head of the Bureau of Mound Exploration of the Smithsonian Institution (forerunner of the U.S. Bureau of Ethnology), began recruiting local amateur archeologists. Under his instruction, amateurs used horse-driven farm equipment to open mounds. Demonstrating how far the profession had progressed, they utilized explicit problem orientation and research design in combination with documentation standards far superior to those of Squier and Davis. By 1890, the Smithsonian program had investigated hundreds of mounds in Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Thomas's findings established a solid scientific basis for crediting extinct American Indian peoples with being the true Moundbuilders of antiquity. [16]

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