While the American continent was being settled by Europeans, the new settlers began to notice thousands of earthworks, clearly man made, all over the North American continent. Because the new Euro-American settlers could not, or did not want to, believe that the mounds had been built by the Native American peoples they were displacing as fast as they could, some of them—including scholars—believed in a "lost race of moundbuilders", supposedly an extinct race of superior beings who were killed off by later people.
By the late 1870s, scholarly research (led by Cyrus Thomas and Henry Schoolcraft) discovered there was no physical difference between the people buried in the mounds and modern Native Americans. Sadly, once the myth was dispelled, many of the mounds were destroyed as settlers simply plowed away the evidence.
Sources
Blakeslee, D.J. 1987 John Rowzee Peyton and the Myth of the Mound Builders. American Antiquity 52(4):784-792.
Mallam. R.C. 1976 The Mound Builders: An American myth. Journal of the Iowa Archeological Society 23:145-175.
McGuire, R.H. 1992 Archeology and the first Americans. American Anthropologist 94(4):816-836.
Nickerson, W.B. 1911 The Mound-Builders: a plea for the conservation of the antiquities of the central and southern states. Records of the Past 10:336-339.
Peet, S.D. 1895 Comparison of the Effigy Builders with the modern Indians. American Antiquarian and Oriental Journal 17:19-43.
Putnam, C. 1885. Elephant Pipes and Inscribed Tablets of the Academy of Sciences. Davenport, Iowa.
Stoltman, J.B. 1986 The Appearance of the Mississippian Cultural Tradition in the Upper Mississippi Valley. In Prehistoric Mound Builders of the Mississippi Valley. James B. Stoltman, ed. Pp. 26-34. Davenport, Iowa: Putnam Museum.
This glossary entry is part of the Dictionary of Archaeology.
