Page 14 - DesMoinesRiver

THE MYTH OF THE MOUND BUILDERS

by Joe Artz

(originally published in Anderson, Raymond R., and Richard J. Langel (editors), 2004, The Natural History of Lacey-
Keosauqua State Park, Van Buren County, Iowa. Guidebook 76. Geological Society of Iowa, Iowa City, pp.47–49)

Native Americans have always understood that mounds contain the graves of their an-
cestors and are to be treated with reverence. In contrast, Euroamerican beliefs and prac-
tices have changed a great deal over the years. Many 19th century Americans believed
that the burial mounds and other earthworks were the monuments of an extinct people
that lived in North America prior to the Native Americans. This notion gave rise to the
romanticized, and unfortunately racist, myth of “the Mound Builders” and led, equally
unfortunately, to the widespread opening and looting of mounds (Silverberg 1968).
By the end of the century, however, the Smithsonian Institution’s Bureau of American
Ethnology had begun a systematic, scientific survey of the prehistoric earthworks of the
Upper Midwest (Thomas 1894). This survey administered a lethal dose of reality to the
Mound Builder myth, proving that the mounds were built by the ancestors of modern
Native Americans and not by lost tribes or vanished races (Willey and Sabloff 1993:47-
49). Subsequently, interest in mounds among Euroamericans turned to the anthropologi-
cal study of Native American mortuary customs, and to the demographic and physiologi-
cal analysis of the human remains they contained.

Beginning in the mid-to-late 1970s American Indians grew increasingly affronted by the
exhumation of their ancestors in the name of science. Archaeologists and Anthropolo-
gists came to accept this view (e.g., Anderson et al., 1978) and state and federal legisla-
tion was enacted to protect and preserve Native American burial sites from disturbance,
including archaeological excavation. Iowa was the first state to enact such legislation, in
1976, making it an aggravated misdemeanor to knowingly disturb any human burial with-
out lawful authority, regardless of the burial’s age, and whether or not it is on private or
public land (Iowa Code Chapter 716.5). Professional ethics among archaeologists today
strongly discourage and usually prohibit the excavation of prehistoric mounds except un-
der exceptional circumstances, and then only under extensive coordination with Native
American spiritual leaders. Unfortunately, Native American beliefs about, and apprecia-
tion for, the mounds were not recognized by Euroamerican culture until hundreds of
thousands of the features had been destroyed, often with little or no documentation.

Picture of Sandy Point Mound Group
at Harpers Ferry, in northeast Iowa.

14 A River of Unrivaled Advantages—Life Along the Lower Des Moines River