The age of mound building was not over, however. Starting in about A. D. 700, around the time of the demise of the Hopewell culture, a new culture evolved throughout much of eastern North America. It was centered along the Mississippi River and is therefore referred to as the Mississippian culture. Mississippian sites can be found from Florida to Oklahoma and as far north as Wisconsin. Mississippian Indians constructed mounds for a new purpose. They situated their places of worship on top of them. As a result, Mississippian Indians are also known as Temple Mound Builders.
One of the most intriguing aspects in the study of prehistory is the question of contacts and influences between different cultures. Without hard evidence, such as an object from one culture found at the archaeological site of another, scholars have to guess about cultural connections, based on similarities in arts and crafts and other customs. A connection between the great Meso-american civilizations—OLMEC, MAYA, TOLTEC, and AZTEC—with early Indian cultures north of Mexico has long been theorized. For example, the Mississippian practice of placing temples on top of mounds is similar to the Mesoamerican practice of placing temples on top of stone pyramids. At various times in prehistory, Indians very likely crossed the
Gulf of Mexico in boats, perhaps even venturing up the Mississippi River to trade or to resettle, which would explain cultural similarities.
A typical Mississippian mound had sloping sides and a flat top where the temple stood. Log steps ran up one side to a pole-and-thatch structure. Some of the mounds had terraced sides where other, smaller structures stood. These were homes of priests and nobles. The higher the rank of an individual, the higher he lived on the mound. The chieftain or king of a particular village often lived on top of his own mound. Other villagers—merchants, craftsmen, soldiers, hunters, farmers, and laborers—lived in pole-and-thatch huts surrounding the mounds. Some Mississippian dwellings were pithouses, with vertical logs extending from rectangular pits. Villagers conducted their business in the village’s central open plaza.
The temple mounds could be enormous. For example, Monk’s Mound at the Cahokia site near present-day East St. Louis, Illinois, covered 16 acres and stood 100 feet high. Archaeologists have guessed that it was built in 14 different stages, from about A. D. 900 to about 1150. Cahokia, once a great village—more properly called a city because it housed more than 30,000 Indians—contained 85 mounds in all, both temple and burial mounds. In one burial mound, archaeologists have found remains of 110 young women, probably a sacrifice to the gods. The Native American city, covering about 4,000 acres near the Mississippi River where the Illinois River flows into it, had a central urban area and five suburbs.
Cahokia was the largest Mississippian population center. Other large villages are known as Moundville in
Mississippian cedar mask with shell eyes and mouth
Alabama; Etowah and Ocmulgee in Georgia; Hiwassee Island in Tennessee; Spiro in Oklahoma; Belcher in Louisiana; Aztalan in Wisconsin; and Mount Royal in Florida. (Many Temple Mound sites are state parks that welcome visitors. At some of them, there are ongoing archaeological excavations.)
In order to support such large, centralized populations, Mississippian Indians had to practice farming on a large scale. They grew corn, beans, squash, pumpkins, and tobacco in the rich silt of riverbeds.
In addition to being master farmers, the Temple Mound Builders were skilled craftsmen, working in a
Mississippian temple mound (hypothetical)
Variety of materials—clay, shells, marble, mica, a mineral called chert, copper, and feathers. They made highly refined tools, pottery, masks, gorgets, pipes, headdresses, and carvings.
Many of the ceremonial objects found at the Missis-sippian sites reveal symbols of death and human sacrifice—skulls, bones, buzzards, and weeping eyes. It is thought that the Temple Mound religion, called the Death Cult (or Buzzard Cult or Southern Cult), and its powerful priests served to unify the various villages. Trade between villages also helped to keep the peace.
For some reason—warfare, overpopulation, drought, famine—the great Mississippian villages were abandoned.
Cahokia ceased to be a thriving center about 1250. One theory has it that before European explorers reached the Temple Mound Indians, their diseases did. Coastal Indians might have unknowingly spread the European diseases inland through trade, starting deadly epidemics.
In any case, by about 1550, the period of mound building had ended. Many eastern Indians, especially the SOUTHEAST INDIANS, continued to use the ancient mounds. Some of them, such as the CHOCTAW and CREEK, might have been direct descendants of the Temple Mound Builders. Some tribes continued to practice many of the ancient customs of the Mound Builders, in particular the NATCHEZ.
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