"The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them. They walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen."
~ H. P. Lovecraft
*****
In early October, Mound City National Historic Park hosted a fun day for kids; archaeology, atlatl throwing instructional and competitional sessions and a fun scavenger hunt. We all spent the day at the site and enjoyed getting to know about the prehistoric Hopewell culture that once lived and worked here, and buried their dead.
Mound City is one of many sites in this area of Ohio that preserve the remnants of the ancient mounds that were built by still-mysterious people. The Hopewell culture overlapped the Adena culture a good deal, so sometimes it is hard to know if a site was constructed by the earlier-appearing Adena or the later Hopewell. To make things even more complicated, mounds built by the earlier cultures were sometimes re-used later on, by the appropriately-named "mound intruder" culture.
At any rate, these large, sometimes domed, sometimes flat-topped earthen mounds were systematically constructed by pre historic Native Americans. There are theories that these builders were actually immigrant peoples from other cultures, including Roman-era Celtic warriors fleeing the oppression of the Emporer, but I see no reason to suppose that these earthworks were constructed by anyone other than the ancestors of todays Native American nations.
Mounds like the ones at Mound City were built for purposes of burial and possibly religious ceremony and observation of celestial movement. It is likely that all three elements were intricately linked in what is known as the Southern Death Cult. According to what we now know, the souls of the dead were set forth on their after-death journey at a specific time of the year when certain constellations appeared in the sky. Religious leaders performed these important death rites using the mounds as not only burial places, but places from which the soul was released into the after-life. Although cremation was the most common way of handling the dead, sometimes important leaders in the community were buried intact, often with beautiful jewelry and ornately carved effigy pipes. Other times, the bones left after cremation were bundled together and buried en masse and covered with earth. Very important tombs were created out of logs or stones, bringing to mind the burial chambers in Egyptian pyramids, and the tombs were covered with earth.
A lot of these mounds were leveled over the years by early settlers who removed the earth and took the stones for their own use, or by overly eager 19th century and early 20th century archaelogists who were more interested in the artifacts and skeletons the mounds contained than preservation of the original structure. We are so very lucky to still have a number of these mounds with us today. Many of these are protected sacred sites and others exist on private property. Some mounds, like most at Mound City, are reconstructed over the sites of the original mounds. Perhaps the most famous effigy earthwork, Serpent Mound, is not far from Mound City and it's scientific and astronomical implications are enormous. Whoever built these earthworks were extremely educated people!
It is pretty amazing to have these histories here with us, in this place. The prehistoric cultures of North America rivaled that of their peers in Europe with their educational, social and religious rivers of thought, their production of textiles, tools and jewelry and their complex trade routes. Unfortunately, the arrival of European conquistadors in the 16th century was the beginning of the end for many of these groups. The ones that survived European intrusion became more disconnected from each other and all that remains of this "golden era" are these mounds and others like them, the mysteries that they hold, and the stories that still exist in the oral traditions of remaining tribal groups.
The energy at these places is intense. I like to spend a lot of time sitting quietly or walking slowly, absorbing, listening, respecting. It was a blessed time to be able to go here with the children and discover that those who came before us are not so distant as we may think.
*****
"Alike are life and death,
When life in death survives,
And the uninterrupted breath
Inspires a thousand lives.
Were a star quenched on high,
For ages would its light,
Still traveling downward from the sky,
Shine on our mortal sight.
So when a great man dies,
For years beyond our ken,
The light he leaves behind him lies
Upon the paths of men."
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
