Georgia Indian Mounds

One of the major differences Americans seems to talk about after visiting Europe is how old everything is compared to America. While I won’t argue with that, as Stonehenge has been dated to as early as 3,100 BC, there were people in North America before Columbus “discovered” it.

The difference?

Instead of building with brick and stone, these people build mostly with dirt and wood – thus making their structures less obvious to the naked eye.

For me, there’s the added aspect that the Native American tribes in the mid-west were predominately nomadic. They didn’t bother to build long-term structures because they weren’t worth the effort! Since most of my travel experience in the United States (up until recently) has been centered around Minnesota, I haven’t gotten the chance to experience the history of ancient peoples from other parts of the country.

Because of all of this, I was excited to discover not one, but two Mounds to visit in Georgia. Interestingly, one was a state historic site and the other a national one.

First up was the Etowah Indian Mounds, located north of Atlanta. This state historic site consists of three mounds of various sizes and dates back to 900 AD. The archeological evidence they’ve found at this site really impressed me. The people who lived there, known today as the Mississippians (the ancestors of today’s Creek people), have lost the oral stories on which much cultural studies are based today. All we know about these people is what they left behind in and around their mounds. (note: the structure pictured below is a reconstruction based on archeological evidence and tradition).

The tallest mound at Etowah is equal to a 6-story building! To think that they built it one bucket full of dirt at a time is pretty crazy! Today the mounds are all covered in grass, but archeologists have found stairs leading up to the top and many assume that they probably looked much like the Mayan and Aztec step pyramids of Central and South America (just dirt, not stone).

While the Etowah site wasn’t large, I feel it gave me a solid launching point to start to learn more about the people and cultures that were present before the Spanish arrived. This framework gave me the opportunity to understand how impressive the Ocmulgee Mounds, the National Historic Park located to the southeast of Atlanta, truly was.

Archeologist believe that the area around Ocmulgee has had continuous human inhabitants since 15,000 BC with the Paleo-Indians! What was cool about this site was how so many layers of history were found on top of each other. Important events from the Mississippians (believed to be the ancestors of the modern day Muscogee Creek people) to the Civil War occurred on the same land. In many ways it remind me of the tels I’ve visited in the Middle East (go look up what a tel is if you don't know, they’re pretty cool, but it could just be me). The Funeral Mound especially evidenced this as even the dirt itself changed colors to show different eras of construction. The archeologists found this progression so dramatic that, because there was only black and white photography at the time of excavation, they hired an artist to depict the layers in a painting that you can now see in the museum (I was so engrossed in the experience I forgot to take a picture!).

The site was almost destroyed when the railway came through in the 1870s. Though parts were lost, there was an outcry by the people of the area, insisting that the history be preserved.

Considering the era, this astonished me, but maybe it shouldn’t have, as this was the same time period that people were starting to explore other ancient civilizations, such at the Greeks and the Egyptians.

I really wasn’t aware how important of a site the Ocmulgee Mounds was until I visited it. So much is known about the Mississippian people because of it. During the 1930s (before it even because a National Historic Park) it was the site of the largest American archeological dig in history! Then, in the 1940s the good ol’ CCC (I just keep running into these guys!) constructed the park as it can be seen today, including the park building, roads, and the structure that protects the ancient earthen floor of the Earth Lodge.

My experiences at both Etowah & Ocmulgee provided me new insight into the people who first lived in southeastern America. The fact that so little is known about them makes their culture and history fascinating. While not as awe-inspiring in their present states as the Egyptian pyramids or the Roman coliseums, the mounds of the Mississippian people still drawn the eyes, and the imaginations, of those who visit them.