The Real Mound Builders of North America contrasts the evolutionary view that emphasizes abrupt discontinuities with the Hopewellian ceremonial assemblage and mounds. Byers argues that these communities persisted unchanged in terms of their essential structures and traditions, varying only in ceremonial practices that manifested these structures.

Rising above the northern Michigan landscape, prehistoric burial mounds and impressive circular earthen enclosures bear witness to the deep history of the region’s ancient indigenous peoples. These mounds and earthworks have long been treated as isolated finds and have never been connected to the social dynamics of the time in which they were constructed, a period called Late Prehistory. In Mound Builders and Monument Makers of the Northern Great Lakes, 1200–1600, Meghan C. L. Howey uses archaeology to make this connection. She shows how indigenous communities of the northern Great Lakes used earthen structures as gathering places for ritual and social interaction, which maintained connected egalitarian societies in the process. Examining “every available ceramic sherd from every northern earthwork,” Howey combines regional archaeological investigations with ethnohistory, analysis of spatial relationships, and collaboration with tribal communities to explore changes in the area’s social setting from 1200 to 1600. During this time, cultural shifts, such as the adoption of maize horticulture, led to the creation of the earthen constructions. Burial mounds were erected, marking claims to resources and defining areas for local ritual gatherings, while massive circular enclosures were constructed as intersocietal ceremonial centers. Together, Howey shows, these structures made up part of an interconnected, purposefully designed cultural landscape. When societies incorporated the earthworks into their egalitarian social and ritual behaviors, the structures became something more: ceremonial monuments. The first systematic examination of earthen constructions in what is today Michigan, Mound Builders and Monument Makers of the Northern Great Lakes, 1200–1600 reveals complicated indigenous histories that played out in the area before European contact. Howey’s richly illustrated investigation increases our understanding of the diverse cultures and dynamic histories of the pre-Columbian ancestors of today’s Great Lake tribes.

A classic resource on early knowledge of prehistoric mounds and the peoples who constructed them in the eastern United States

In Illinois, the one-hundred-foot Cahokia Mound spreads impressively across sixteen acres, and as many as ten thousand more mounds dot the Ohio River Valley alone. The Mound Builders traces the speculation surrounding these monuments and the scientific excavations which uncovered the history and culture of the ancient Americans who built them. The mounds were constructed for religious and secular purposes some time between 1000 B.C. and 1000 A.D., and they have prompted curiosity and speculation from very early times. European settlers found them evidence of some ancient and glorious people. Even as eminent an American as Thomas Jefferson joined the controversy, though his conclusions—that the mounds were actually cemeteries of ancient Indians—remained unpopular for nearly a century. Only in the late 19th century, as Smithsonian Institution investigators developed careful methodologies and reliable records, did the period of scientific investigation of the mounds and their builders begin. Silverberg follows these excavations and then recounts the story they revealed of the origins, development, and demise of the mound builder culture.

This brief informative guide to American, and Latin- American, Indians will save one much time and trouble when researching for reports or essays. I have covered as much as possible, with the intent of keeping it as brief as I possibly could. This brief guide covers much more than the American and Latin-American Indian tribes. you will learn; how they lived, the coming of the white man, Indian wars, language groups, brief biographies of Indian Chiefs and Army Commanders, Military Forts, the Pilgrims and Rangers, the Revolutionary War, the Westward Movement, and much more. After completing this book I have found it to be very informative, and much less time consuming, to say the least. Example: If you want to know how the Indians lived, simply turn to that page and you will begin learn about their food, transportation, housing, clothing, communication, family life, religion and ceremony, and government. There are also additional articles, such as: the Bison, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Indian Territory, History of the Stagecoach, Totem Pole, and Writings. I can only hope that you find this book as useful as I and several of my friends and family members have.

Say you found that a few dozen people, operating at the highest levels of society, conspired to create a false ancient history of the American continent to promote a religious, white-supremacist agenda in the service of supposedly patriotic ideals. Would you call it fake news? In nineteenth-century America, this was in fact a powerful truth that shaped Manifest Destiny. The Mound Builder Myth is the first book to chronicle the attempt to recast the Native American burial mounds as the work of a lost white race of “true” native Americans. Thomas Jefferson’s pioneering archaeology concluded that the earthen mounds were the work of Native Americans. In the 1894 report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Cyrus Thomas concurred, drawing on two decades of research. But in the century in between, the lie took hold, with Presidents Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, and Abraham Lincoln adding their approval and the Mormon Church among those benefiting. Jason Colavito traces this monumental deception from the farthest reaches of the frontier to the halls of Congress, mapping a century-long conspiracy to fabricate and promote a false ancient history—and enumerating its devastating consequences for contemporary Native people. Built upon primary sources and first-person accounts, the story that The Mound Builder Myth tells is a forgotten chapter of American history—but one that reads like the Da Vinci Code as it plays out at the upper reaches of government, religion, and science. And as far-fetched as it now might seem that a lost white race once ruled prehistoric America, the damage done by this “ancient” myth has clear echoes in today’s arguments over white nationalism, multiculturalism, “alternative facts,” and the role of science and the control of knowledge in public life.

This book provides a detailed and richly illustrated overview of the lives of the first Americans from their earliest migrations over the Bering land bridge to their initial encounters with European explorers. It traces the settlement of these early nomadic peoples across North America—the evolution of tools, the establishment of agriculture, and the rise of elaborate regional cultures. Styles of shelter, modes of travel and transport, and the prevalence of art and ornamentation suggest remarkable creativity and human ingenuity. Tribal beliefs, habits, practices, and unique structures of various tribal societies are discussed. The last third of the book documents European "discovery" of the New World, the often brutal rivalries among European colonizers, and the savage treatment of native peoples. Challenging review questions encourage meaningful reflection and historical analysis. Maps, tests, answer key, extensive bibliography, and bonus timeline are included.