Contested Indigenous Landscapes: Indian Mounds and the Political Creation of the Mythical “Mound Builder” Race

Abstract

Between 1790 and 1840, a constructed belief system arose arguing that the numerous Indian mounds were constructed by a separate, more “civilized” “Mound Builder” race. The multiple Mound Builder myths corresponded with a rising nationalism and romanticism in the United States that posited an ancient connection to the Old World. These myths reflected contemporary racial perceptions of American Indians, thus denying American Indian’s ownership of the land and their rightful place in history. Furthermore, the histories of the mounds serve as a modern-day warning against nationalism and pseudo-history for political purposes.

Geophysical Detection and Assessment of Leveled Mounds: An Example from the Upper Mississippi Valley

“…The practice of mound building was widespread throughout eastern North America, with upward of 100,000 mounds documented. Early observers of these readily visible physical remnants of ancient cultures designated the continent's original inhabitants as the Mound Builders (Barnhart 2015; Mallam 1976; Silverberg 1968; Timmerman 2020). Mound building so epitomized Native societies in the archaeological imagination that scholars referred to the most recent cultural stages or periods of eastern North America as Burial Mound I and II and Temple Mound I and II (Ford and Willey 1941; Willey 1966).…”