ca. 500 B.C. - 100 B.C.

• The practice of mound building was adopted by many Eastern Woodlands cultures. Mounds* were constructed in an area of land that stretched from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and from the Mississippi River to the Appalachian Mountains. The great concentration of mounds can be found in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys. Although mounds were used chiefly as burial places, they varied in size, shapes and purposes just as the locality and tribal customs that evolved in this region. Some mounds were conical in shape, elongated or wall-like. Others were pyramidal and still others were effigy mounds constructed in the shape of birds, animals or serpents. The largest mound, found in Illinois, is the Cahokia Mound which measures 1,000 feet from north to south, 700 feet from east to west and 100 feet high. The Great Serpent Mound, is located in Ohio. Monumental burial mounds can be seen in the Midwest Ohio valley area down to the Mississippi Valley.
  

The Great Serpent Mound

• 
  The most mystifying of all the mounds is the religious effigy serpent mound constructed over two hundred generations ago near Chillicothe, Ohio. The outline of the mound, made out of small stones and clay, is nearly a quarter of a mile long.

 

• The Adena , also known as the Mound Builders, settled in the Ohio Valley in what is now Ohio. West Virginia, and Kentucky. They lived in large towns. They used pottery, cloth and copper tools and supported themselves through intensive hunting and gathering. The Adena culture centered around a religion with complex rituals that focused on the afterlife. Between 300 and 500 BC each kin group started with a small earth work which covered the grave of an individual. As more and more burials were added to the site, it grew in size. Soon these simple graves grew into burial chambers that not only contained the deceased but also his earthly treasures such as bracelets, mica, marine shells, wooden masks, and finely craved pipes. This custom began a 1700 year practice of mound building.

200 B.C.-500 A.D.

• The people of the Eastern Woodlands continued the tradition of building impressive earthworks and . their dead in conical mortuary mounds. Neither a particular nor a political power, Hopewell evolved as the first North American pan-Indian religion. From Mississippi to Minnesota, from Missouri to West Virginia, the people of these regions were drawn together by a set of beliefs and symbols. From a very modest beginning, the Hopewellian people's, through the development of extraordinary religions and agricultural systems, influence spread across half of the North American continent and culminated into an extensive trade network.

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The Great Serpent Mound

The Cherokee call the great serpent Uktena: "a great snake, as large as a tree trunk, with horns on its head, and a bright, blazing crest like a diamond upon its forehead. Its scales glittering like sparks of fire..."

(From The Native American)

Mound found in the
Sicoto River Valley, Ohio

The tradition of the Mound Builders dates back to 1000 B.C. The average funeral mound was approximately 3 stories tall. The construction of represented over 200,000 man hours of labor.