Mound Builders, the name given to a vanished race of North America, by whose labour the remarkable earth mounds found in the United States were raised. These mounds exist in extraordinary numbers over all the country between the Alleghany and Rocky Mountains, but chiefly in Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and Missonri; they are abundant in all the Gulf States, and even farther south, and they extend at least as far north as the Great Lakes. Their usual height is from 6 to 30 feet, with a diameter of 40 to 100 feet. The majority are simply conical burial mounds, mostly rising from 15 to 25 feet, though one in West Virginia is 70 feet high and over 300 feet in diameter at the base. But very many others of these mounds are defensive, and others again have a religious origin. The fortifications, usually earthworks raised on heights near some water-course, embrace walls, trenches, watch-towers, and are too skilfully constructed to have been temporary defences: many archaeologists believe that there was a connected line of defensive works from New York to Ohio. In the Mississippi Valley, where the largest mounds are, these forts disappear; and it is supposed that the principal enemies of the Mound Builders had their home in the east—perhaps in the Alleghanies. Some of the Ohio fortresses enclose over 100 acres, the walls of earth, winding in and out, in each case being several miles long. In the alluvial valleys other enclosures have been found, regular—circular, square, &c.—in shape; these have been called 'sacred enclosures,' but on very problematical grounds; and the same criticism applies to the identification of the smaller low mounds, from a few inches square to 50 by 15 feet, which have been called 'altars.' Of the 'temple' mounds, however, there are numerous examples, some very large: one in
Illinois reaches a height of 90 feet, and measures 700 by 500 feet at the base; and another in Mississippi is 600 by 400 feet, and its topmost mound is 80 feet above the base. To these must be added the curious mounds constructed in the shape of animals, and sometimes extending to a length of 400 feet. They are most numerous in Wisconsin, but one of the most interesting is the serpent mound near Bush Creek, Ohio (figured and described in The Century, April 1890).
As to the identity of the Mound Builders opinions, of course, differ. The general tendency is to recognise their descendants in the Natchez and other kindred tribes whom the Spaniards found on the Mississippi, partly because their chief was both king and deity—he was regarded as the child of the sun—and so we find evidences of the religious feeling and the despotic power necessary to secure the accomplishment of such enormous works. The race may perhaps also have survived in the more highly civilised tribes whom De Soto and his followers met with in Florida and the other southern states. But a comparison of the Mound Builders' civilisation with that which prevailed in Mexico when Cortes landed, supplies very strong arguments for connecting these northern Indians, driven south by their nomadic enemies, with the tribes who came from the north and in turn expelled successively the Toltecs and one another, blending their more savage customs with the higher civilisation which they found there (see MEXICO). The contents of the mounds support this view. It is evident that the Mound Builders, like the later Mexican tribes, were in the transition stage between the stone and metal age; copper they had obtained in the same primitive manner as it was obtained in Mexico, but the weapons and tools were stone implements, and knives of obsidian especially—the well-known sacrificial knives of the Aztecs—were common. Their art and manufactures were both of a low standard; but it is well known that the invaders of the Mexican tableland partly absorbed the civilisation they found there, partly degraded it. Finally, it may be mentioned that the sepulchral mounds yield many evidences of the cruel rites of their builders; and the pyramidal form of the 'temple' mounds is reproduced in the tecalli of Mexico. See Sqnier and Davis, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley (1848); Conant's Footprints of Vanished Races in the Mississippi Valley; Thronston, Antiquities of Tennessee (1890); Shepherd, Antiquities of Ohio (1890); and Moorehead, Fort Ancient, Ohio (1890).