The Indian Past: Mounds of Natchez Trace
By: Joe Volz Source: AARP.org Date Posted: 2005-10-26 16:19:09
Native American mounds shaped like ovals, ellipses and even snakes and birds, exist in 17 states, from Florida to Minnesota. From the tops of the man-made mounds, Native Americans performed religious ceremonies. Inside their mounds they buried the dead.
Mounds give visitors a glimpse into the beliefs and customs that thrived years before the colonists came. Some of the oldest and best preserved mounds are in Mississippi along the Natchez Trace Parkway, a scenic highway that runs north and south across the state.
Winterville Mounds
The fifth tallest Indian mound in the U.S. is two miles east of the Mississippi River near Greenville, Miss. The 55-foot "temple mound" was built by a highly organized group of Native Americans, according to John Sullivan, an archeologist for the state Department of Archives and History which maintains the 42-acre National Historic Landmark, museum and gift shop at Winterville Mounds. The Indians hauled millions of cubic feet of earth from, inexplicably, 16 miles away to make the mounds, Mr. Sullivan said. The mounds form an ellipse.
"I've gotten on top of some of them," Mr. Sullivan said. "They're centered where light comes in at a special place to see celestial alignments."
Exploring history
Archeologists don't know who built Winterville Mounds. The tribe appears to have flourished from A.D. 1000 to 1450, Mr. Sullivan said. Most of the original 23 mounds were constructed during the Mississippian period, from 1200 A.D. to 1250 A.D. The mounds' structures reflect contact between local Indians of the Coles Creek culture and the Cahokia site in Illinois, the largest center in the U.S.
The Winterville people are compared to the Natchez Indians, a Mississippi tribe documented by French explorers and settlers in the early 1700s. Both tribes divided their society into upper and lower ranks that made mound building by a civilian labor force possible. The Winterville people and the Natchez Indians worshiped the sun, Mr. Sullivan said. The paramount chief of the Natchez was called, "The Great Sun." His house was on a mound. Archeologists who excavated the Winterville site in 1968 found skeletons, a temple and artifacts that make it obvious the mounds were used for ceremonies and that a few high priests lived on them, Mr. Sullivan said.
"Most Indians didn't live here," he said. "They lived in scattered settlements on the Mississippi River Delta basin and about 50 miles east, along the Yazoo River."
The Winterville Mounds Museum
The museum contains several exhibits. In one is a 9,000-year-old drill used to make holes in stones for jewelry, a status symbol in the Native American culture. In another exhibit, are stone fishing weights and circular objects with holes in the center used to train young hunters. Youths would try to spear the objects in mid-air. Archeologists speculate the stones were used to balance spears. A hunter would put a stone on a spear to increase its speed.
Winterville Mounds, open every day, dawn to dusk, is on State Hwy. 1, six miles north of Greenville, Mississippi. The museum is open Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sunday from 1:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, call 662-334-4684, or e-mail staff at wmounds@mdah.state.ms.us.
Other Mississippi sites to visit:
The Grand Village of the Natchez Indians mounds are a half-day's drive south of Winterville Mounds in Natchez. French colonists who witnessed the use of the mounds at Grand Village recorded their observations. The rituals included the sacrifice of relatives and servants of the deceased. Two of the burials may have been those of the Great Sun and his brother, Tattooed Serpent, whose 1725 funeral the French recorded in detail.
Emerald, one of the largest mounds in North America, is 10 miles northeast of Natchez.
For more information:
- Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Winterville Mounds
- National Park Service Indian Mounds of Mississippi
- The Away Network, Historic Traveler
Find these books online at Borders.com
Winterville: Late Prehistoric Culture Contact in the Lower Mississippi Valley
By Jeffrey P. Brain, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, 1989.
Ancient Cahokia and the Mississippians
By Timothy R. Pauketat and Rita P. Wright, Cambridge University Press, June, 2004.
Share
preview