Mississippi Mounds
Peoples of the Mississippi basin, across a dozen millennia, have constructed thousands of mounds from the flood loam of the Mississippi River and her tributaries. These earthworks likely served several purposes, used variously as temple, effigy, fortress, and observatory. They contain burials, funerary objects and iconographic artifacts.
The mounds consist of rich humus in agricultural lowlands.
Many descendants of the Mississippian culture view the mounds as sacred, and some tribes perform ceremonies at the ancient mounds to this day. Since the founding of the United States, settlers have been destroying them in the name of "development" (often farmland or highway), while collectors + archaeologists loot their "specimens".
Five of the largest mounds—the Great Circle Earthworks, Octagon Earthworks, Serpent Mound, Alligator Mound and Cahokia Mounds—had to weather centuries of abuse to have the modicum of protection and respect they receive today.
Octagon
The Ohio Historical Society (OHS), which receives 70% of its operational funds from the State of Ohio, is the deed holder of the Octagon Mound. The OHS leases the land to Moundbuilder's Country Club for $7,000 a year. The country club advertises their colonial hold on the land on their website, "The golf course at Moundbuilders is unlike any other in the world. It is designed around famous Prehistoric Native American Earthworks that come into play on eleven of the holes" (http:/www.moundbuilderscc.com) [2]
Serpent
Cahokia
- ↑ Sacred Land Film Project, "Mississippi Mounds" by Amy Corbin (updated: 21 April 2021) https://sacredland.org/mississippi-mounds-united-states/
- ↑ BALLENGEE-MORRIS, C. (2010). They Came, They Claimed, They Named, and We Blame: Art Education in Negotiation and Conflict. 'Studies in Art Education', 51(3), 275–287. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40650514