The Adena/Allegewi culture had flourished for about 800 years before they met their first serious challenge from outside invaders. It is so hard to imagine how long 800 years is. Suffice it to say that that is more than three times as long as the United States has been in existence!

These tall, often fair or red haired people were suddenly confronted with a shorter people; muscular, bearers of a fully grown culture, with gracile skulls. “Gracile” is an anthropological term used to contrast with “robust” bones. These people had less defined cheek bones, not as heavily ridged brows, and their bones were more slender. They were built for graceful movement and speed. The Allegewi would had more robust skeletal features such as those found in Ketls, Vikings, and most early Native American tribes (and many other places worldwide). Think of the difference between someone from Tonga and someone from Sweden — taking all stereotypes for granted, of course. These were definitely not an offshoot of the Adena but, rather, a whole new people.

These people also built earthworks but theirs differed from those of the Adena. While the Adena built fortified enclosures, these people built HUGE ceremonial earthworks with elaborate zoomorphic (animal shapes, often highly stylized) and geometrical designs. They sometimes built several in one area with roads, canals, or causeways linking them. Adding to the mystery of these people, the animal shapes they used were frequently not animals found in North America! Asian elephants, South American llamas, sea lions… They also made earthworks of local animals such as panthers, snakes, lizards, men, bears, and birds. They imported a vast quantity of mica from the Atlantic coast and made jewelry with it. Their jewelry and pipes were usually made in the shapes of animals, perhaps as totems or as a religious attempt to share the spirit of that animal. Who were these people? Where did they come from?

We do not know what they called themselves. We didn’t even know that different racial/cultural groups built the mounds until well after the Civil War. Before then, it was assumed that one group built all of them, even though they differed in shape, size, and burial goods. Then, on the farm of Colonel M. C. Hopewell near Chillicothe, Ohio, they recognized that the people buried here were different from the Adena. Other earthworks were examined (and some destroyed in the process) and it was confirmed. The new people were named for the Colonel — the Hopewell.

There is a healthy argument going on in historical circles about the unity of the Hopewell people. Some say it was not one culture but a confederation of many Native tribes and cultures, all of whom shared some organization, worship, and trade agreements. Others say they were one people who developed slightly different styles of building and burying over time (Wikipedia has the first view as the only correct view. I am not a Wikipedia basher, but their article on the Hopewell is woefully incomplete and assumes way too much).

The Hopewell flourished in the Midwest and in some farther flung areas from around 200 BC to 300 AD. I have crawled all over many of their works. I lived in Lancaster, Ohio for over eight years when I came to America in the late 1980s. Just north of there (30 miles east of Columbus) is the town of Newark. The earthworks there are outstanding. Many of them have been lost to agriculture and grave robbers but what remains is still amazing. A double wall that measures more than six miles has within it a “sacred circle” that encloses more than 200 acres. Inside of that is the Great Circle, a 14 foot tall circle mound with a 20 acre area inside. As early as 1887 this mound confounded the engineers who measured it for it is a true circle. Whoever built this was highly skilled. Connected to the Great Circle is an octagonal enclosure with 50 acres inside of it. That is joined, in turn, to a 170 long mound that is over 20 feet tall. That mound is segmented with mounds set at what seemed to be just slightly off center positions… until someone noticed that one could stand at one position and mark the summer and winter solstices as well as other times and seasons by sighting the sun and stars as they pass along the lines formed by the “off center” mounds and segments. Ancient Newark was a HUGE, accurate, ancient calendar. The calendar was lunar based and remains accurate to this day.

As you can see from the drawing, this site is immensely complex. As you can see from the second, aerial photo, the city of Newark grew over and into the earthworks making more research very difficult. No artifacts have been found within the massive enclosures to indicate that anyone ever lived in them during Hopewell times. This was a ceremonial place, an astronomical computer, not a city. But it is not the largest Hopewell site.

South of Chillicothe is the town of Portsmouth, Ohio. There, straddling the Ohio River, is an earthwork that goes for miles and miles. Sixteen miles of embankments have been found (either in situ or in the records of early explorers) though most of this series of earthworks has been overgrown and lost to building and agriculture in the last sixty years. Much of our knowledge of this massive site would have been lost forever had not ONE copy of an explorer’s notebook not been found in the library of the American Antiquarian Society in Massachusetts. It was dated 1862. The finding excited historians and they commissioned some aerial exploration in the 1930s that revealed walls that marched straight through swamps, fields, and across creeks and the river. Archaeologists went into the area to examine the earthworks more closely but local landowners made that difficult and, sometimes, dangerous (for those who don’t live in the Midwest, a word of explanation: southern and southeastern Ohio is in Appalachia. Some of the same attitudes, culture, and accents you would find in Kentucky and West Virginia are found there. When I lived in Lancaster, it was fascinating to travel  20 miles southeast to Logan, Ohio. Somewhere in that 20 miles, you crossed a line. “Fish” became “feesh” and g’s were dropped from verbs so that “hunting” became “huntin’,” and etc.).

Taking their lead from finds in Newark, the archaeologists sited along the long lines of mounds and found they pointed to Newark and also to a place that was so wonderful it became known thereafter as Mound City. That story, next.