The Mound Builders were numerous ancestral Native American tribes who built sophisticated mounds across North America for various purposes. They were not a single tribe, but many groups with advanced cultures and civilizations. Europeans wrongly assumed that Native Americans could not have been the mound builders, leading to their expulsion from their lands. Each group of mound builders had its own set of religious practices and cultural standards.
The name “mound builders” refers to numerous ancestral Native American tribes that account for much of the Native American cultural advance in numerous locations in North America. It should be understood that the Mound Builders were not a single tribe. Instead, there were many groups living from the Gulf of Mexico to the Ohio River valley and Mississippi River who built different types of sophisticated mounds and had far more cultural advancements than are often attributed to ancestral Americans.
Mounds, half-round structures that rose out of the earth, could serve a variety of purposes. Effigy mounds were mounds in the shape of a semi-animal. These may have been places of worship or burials. One of the most famous of these still in existence is the 1370-foot-long (417.58 m) Serpent Mound located in Ohio. Other mounds looked like flat-topped pyramids and may have been used for religious ceremonies.
Different types of mounds may date as far back as 2500 BC and there is strong evidence that the advancement of these cultures was significant. For example, some archaeologists argue that many of the mound builders practiced agriculture on a large scale as early as 6000 B.C. Some people are under the mistaken impression that Native Americans were primarily nomadic and always have been. These builder tribes prove that this was definitely not the case, and advanced cultures and civilizations were not uncommon across America. These tribes vanished and it is difficult to tell which tribes might currently claim descent from different areas where mounds still exist or may have existed.
When Europeans first traveled to the Americas, they incorrectly assumed that Native Americans could not have been the mound builders. Indeed, this belief of wise cultures who had developed not only agriculture but also metallurgy, was used as evidence to expel Native Americans from the lands they held. It was argued that the Native Americans destroyed the mound builders and therefore had no claim to the lands they occupied. This erroneous assumption has failed to account for a culture that has moved from something seemingly more advanced to something simpler.
Due to the proliferation of burial mounds across North America, most archaeologists believe that there was a time in the distant past when several large Native American settlements existed. But it’s hard to decide exactly what each group believed. Archaeologists believe that each group of mound builders would have had its own set of religious practices and cultural standards, and that these could have differed significantly from the practices of other groups. The mound builders were not one homogeneous people but many different groups of people with an advanced culture.
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