Hopewell Culture National Historical Park

Chillicothe Ohio Indian Mounds

Mounds and earthworks along the Scioto River in south central Ohio, doubtless the work of many human hands, make us wonder. Who made them? How long have they stood? What role did they play in the lives of their builders? What was their culture like?

Beginning in the late 1700s, settlers from the eastern states migrating to the Ohio Valley found hundreds of mounds and earthworks. The Shawnee and other American Indian peoples of the region apparently knew nothing of the builders. Many tried to solve the mystery of the mounds. Some thought that the moundbuilders must be a "lost race" who vanished before the Indians of historic times arrived.

In the 1840s Ephraim G. Squier, a Chillicothe newspaper editor, and Edwin H. Davis, a Chillicothe physician, systematically mapped the mounds and documented what was found inside them. The Smithsonian Institution published Squier and Davis’s findings in the 1848 Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley. Through later scientific studies, the "lost race" notion was laid to rest. The Hopewell peoples – American Indians who lived between 2,200 and 1,500 years ago – were recognized as the architects and builders of the mounds.

The Hopewell were named for Capt. Mordecai Hopewell, who owned the farm where part of an extensive earthwork site was excavated in 1891. The Hopewell settled along riverbanks in present-day Ohio and in other regions between the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico. Excavations of dwelling sites show that they made their living by hunting, gathering, farming, and trading.

Indian Burial Grounds

No one lived at the earthworks; artifacts found inside reveal that the mounds were built primarily to cover burials. A mound was typically built in stages: A wooden structure containing a clay platform was probably the scene of funeral ceremonies and other gatherings. The dead were either cremated or buried onsite. Objects of copper, stone, shell, and bone were placed near the remains. After many such ceremonies the structure was burned or dismantled, and the entire site was covered with a large mound of earth. Wall-like earthworks sometimes surrounded groups of mounds. Squier and Davis named one site Mound City because of its unusual concentration of mounds, at least 23, encircled by a low earthen wall. During World War I, Mound City was covered by part of an Army training facility, Camp Sherman, and many of the mounds were destroyed. The Ohio Historical and Archeological Society conducted excavation and restoration work in 1920-21. In 1923 the Mound City Group was declared a national monument.

The National Park Service conducted additional excavations in the 1960s and ‘70s. In 1992, Mound City Group became Hopewell Culture National Historical Park, which also includes four other sites in the region: High Bank Works, Hopeton Earthworks, Hopewell Mound Group, and Seip Earthworks. As you walk the grounds of Mound City, remember that although we know of the Hopewell peoples primarily through the way they memorialized their dead, their world was very much alive.

The Hopewell World

Imagine Mound City 2,000 years ago: On a midsummer day, young men spear fish, while women and children scoop mussels from the riverbank and pick berries. A toolmaker sharpens new flint bladelets. Nearby a potter mixes grit into clay in order to strengthen it for forming into a bowl. An elderly man secures a deerskin cover over a bent-pole structure that serves as a dwelling. Nettle fibers are drying in the sun; they will be twisted into fiber for fabric. Artisans, using copper and mica newly obtained in trade, fashion ornaments for use in a ceremony at the earthworks under construction on the bluffs overhead.

Archeological excavations at Hopewell habitation sites provide a wealth of information about daily life long ago. Middens and trash sites indicate that Hopewell peoples hunted, fished, and gathered wild foods, supplementing their diet with cultivated crops. Patterns of small holes outline the sites of dwellings constructed of bent poles and covered with skins, mats, or bark. Food processing areas marked by large, deep storage pits, earth ovens, and shallow basins are often found outside these structures. Many habitation sites were probably occupied year-round for several years before being vacated when firewood and other local resources ran out.

Scattered groups probably gathered at the major earthwork center seasonally and for important occasions: feasting, trading, presenting gifts, marriages, competitions, mourning ceremonies, and of course, mound construction. Tools and ornaments used in and worn for these occasions were often made of materials obtained in trade: copper and silver from near the Great Lakes, obsidian (volcanic glass) from a site in present-day Yellowstone National Park, sharks’ teeth and seashells from the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, and mica from the southern Appalachian Mountains. Artisans fashioned these raw materials into fine objects that have been found under the mounds.

By about 1,500 years ago the Hopewell way of life had ended. Within a few hundred years new societies emerged along the Mississippi River and its tributaries. These groups were more fully architectural and politically more structured. Only the great mounds and earthworks remained as monuments to the once-flourishing Hopewell world.