Etowah Indian Mounds

Today Anna and I visited the Etowah Indian Mounds "digsite" which next to the Etowah river. The sight was inhabited by some of the ancestors of the Creek and Cherokee nations from around 900a.d. to 1550a.d. In 1540 the conquistador De Soto visited this place with 1000 of his soldiers while he was looking for the lost city of gold Cibola. After that the village was almost wiped out by diseases from the Europeans who carried them. Way to go De Soto. The people that fled the village during this time joined with other tribes like the Creek and Cherokee. The re-construction of the home you see in the photo on the left was the typical dwelling within the village(called a wattle, or daub hut) of the native towns-person/family. It was believed to have a wood or rock frame then covered in packed red clay. These homes would have sat crowded on the perimeter of the courtyard/plaza which was below the mounds.

Here is a scale model to illustrate how the village was set up around the mounds. You can see the three main mounds. The tallest mound in the top right hand corner, which is equal to the height of a six story building, was where the temple was also housed the high priest and his family. The mound in the middle would have housed a lesser chief and possibly the council house was located there too. In the top left mound was the burial mound with about 350 graves, some excavated and some found with remote sensing equipment. Mostly all the graves now are found with remote sensing because the descendants hold the grave sites sacred and would be very displeased if they were disturbed. There is now a congressional act to protect that right too.

You can climb up to the top.

me in front of the mound at a distance.

Just to give you a sense of scale of how big the main mound is here are a few pictures above that try to demonstrate it's size.


Now if you're thinking that the village kind of looks like a Mayan one would than you're not the only one. There is a popular theory that some Mayans migrated from Mexico and settled in this area as well as along the Mississippi river valley where other mounds have been found. and if you compare the photos I have given with photos of a Mayan city than you could see a lot of resemblance. One example this theory may be correct is the fact that corn came from Mexico where it had been farmed for thousands of years. Also the inhabitants dug a large defensive ditch all the way around the village until it meet the river with palisades built on it to pick off enemies. Another theory though which still maintains settlers from Mexico, but an intermingling with other Indian Nations and that theory says hey, North American Indians were just as smart as the Mayans, as evidence with some of the art found at this site. Unfortunately I don't have any photos of the artwork, but it's awesome! I tend to think the latter theory maybe the correct one just because of all of the evidence collected, you have Mayan style villages yet have examples of other cultures evident in the art work excavated from the graves. It's hard to tell for sure though because there is still a lot to find at this site and hopefully down the road they will better be able to tell who built the city.