Replacing America’s Romanticized Image of the American Indian and the Mound-Builders with the Facts

A research paper by James Hutchison

During the 19th century, as settlers began to establish farms and towns in the Mississippi Valley areas, they discovered groups of low dome-shaped mounds found to contain burials laden with exotic, marketable artifacts. However, when the geometric earthworks of the Ohio valley were discovered, it was obvious that an advanced civilization had once thrived in the area. Evidently the “New Americans” were unaware or unmindful of the records left by the first European explorers that explained the mysterious mound cultures. What became a “mystery race” to the new Americans had built the mounds and the fortifications then, for unknown reasons to these settlers, had just as mysteriously disappeared, probably (they believed) at the hand of the Amerindian. Farmers plowed the mounds or leveled them with scrapers for their rich soil while others dug into them in search of artifacts. The items they found were of exquisite workmanship, greatly appealing to their aesthetic appetites, and thus of monetary value as an exotic art form. The pieces were recovered with little or no regard to their archaeological importance and sold, along with tales of some long-lost white race, as the remains of some great Atlantian civilization (Thomas 20 - 24). However, this was not the first era of such ideas. The idea of a mystery race in the Americas had began in the 16th century when England cited the Madoc legend of the 12th century in an effort to lay legal claim to the Americas and was only resurfacing. This pattern would repeat itself many times and become known by some scholars as American Amnesia. The material that was and is produced by those that wrote about and studied the mounds would become an important factor in the evolution of the American Saga.

It is difficult to excuse the blatant disregard of historical records that gave eye-witness accounts of the Mound Cultures such as Garcilaso de la Vega's History de la Florida, to favor romantic ideas and speculation of some mysterious lost race, but it is that very act played an important role not only in the founding of American archaeology, but in proving who had built the mounds.

There were many people studying Amerindians in the 18th and 19th centuries, but the confines of this paper limit the inclusion of all. Thus, only the more definitive and/or influential scientists and historians of the times will be mentioned. The historical account of American Anthropology should start with the De Soto expedition that landed on May 31, 1538 with some 950 men in what today is Florida.( Georgia) Their purpose was one of conquest and treasure-seeking ( Vega 59 ). The exploits and events of this expedition were compiled and recorded by Garcilaso de la Vega, who collected journals from some of the survivors and an account left by an author who is known to posterity simply as a Knight of Elvas ( Vega xx-xxiii ). These accounts describe in detail the still-thriving communities of Amerindian Mound Cultures as well as their system of government and the extent of their empires. Unfortunately, these records went virtually unnoticed or ignored by the scientific community until Cyrus Thomas cited them in his report to the Bureau of Ethnology in 1894 (Thomas 18, & 603-610 ).

In 1986 Silverberg published The Mound Builders wherein he gives a brief survey on the history of American archaeology. Roger Kennedy, in 1994, looked again at the history of American archaeology, but in a much more detailed scope than attempted by Silverberg. Kennedy also included new research on Thomas Jefferson, dealt with the madoc legend, Mormanism and many other facets lightly touched on or bypassed all together by Silverberg. He demonstrated and explained a phenomonon that he dubbed American amnesia, where the Mound Builders were concerned, in good detail and explained American romanticism in the context of popular and academic views towards American Indians. I will relegate a brief review of Kennedy’s work to appendex A and endeavor to carry the torch, if only for a little distance, from where Kennedy left it.