The Mound Builders

Rating:
Summary: Brings light to a mysterious subject
Review: I am fascinated by historical structures and some of the most interesting to me are those made primarily of heaped up soil. Though the building material is basic, the great work involved makes one wonder about the motivation required and the purpose of the builders. In my travels across the midwestern states, I've stopped at many "Indian mounds", most recently at the impressive site of large geometric structures at Newark, Ohio.
At the museum there I discovered Silverberg's book and immediately bought it with the hope of learning about the mounds. I am happy to report that this book is not only highly readable, engaging and revealing but also that it covers the topic more thoroughly than I expected. The author takes us through time both ancient and modern giving an account of the speculations and research that in many cases led people on wild flights of fancy but have ultimately given us a good idea of why the mounds were built, who built them and when. I found out about the different traditions, periods and cultures of the Indians involved with the mounds, such as the Adena and Hopewell people. I learned of the different kinds of mounds and what they did or did not contain, of frauds that distracted investigators and greed that led to pillaging. Thomas Jefferson, Joseph Smith and John Wesley Powell are just a few of the people who were captivated by the mounds and you'll find out why. After the cultural depredations of de Soto through the careless physical destruction of the past 150 years, I'm grateful that anything remains to be seen today. Maps present sites that can be visited. When I finished the book I felt great appreciation for Silverberg's work that so fully satisfied my curiosity while providing such a pleasant read. He not only answered my questions but provided many answers to others I had not even considered.

Rating:
Summary: The Mound Builders
Review: I grew up in Newark, Ohio, almost "next door" to the great circle mound in what has become Moundbuilders Park. My cousins lived near the Octagon mound, and we played there often even though, due to its status as a private country club golf course, it was located on PRIVATE PROPERTY. Moundbuilders park was the scene of countless family picnics, and a walk around the big mound was always the high point of the day for a little kid. So the mounds were very much a part of my every day life. Yet I knew very little about them, or about the people who created them.

Last week I ran across a battered paperback edition of Silverberg's book at a local used bookstore. He has woven together a great story, dealing not only with the people who created the mounds, but also with the ways in which European civilization has attempted to understand and interpret them. I was especially interested in his account of the inherent tension between the fascination and mythology surrounding the mounds in 19th century America and the genocidal policies which were being simultaneously pursued against the American Indian. Silverberg lets the facts speak for themselves without falling into the
swamp of political correctness.

In describing the efforts of various 19th century American archeologists and anthropologists to explore and explain the mounds, Silverberg also depicts an intellectual style which is as extinct as the Moundbuilders themselves. Dedicated "amateur" scientists, including politicans such as Jefferson and WH Harrison, made meaningful contributions to the effort to explore and understand the mounds and the culture which produced them.
What contemporary political figure has the intellectual spirit or temperment to make a similar contribution? (The only thing that comes close, I guess, is Al Gore's invention of the Internet.) Sadly, the advancement of learning has been relegated to the professionals and academics. The Renaissance person is no more -- and we are all diminished.

It's beutiful in Ohio in October, and with the "new eyes" provided by Silverberg I'm taking a car trip to explore several of the sites which do remain.

Rating:
Summary: The Mound Builders
Review: I grew up in Newark, Ohio, almost "next door" to the great circle mound in what has become Moundbuilders Park. My cousins lived near the Octagon mound, and we played there often even though, due to its status as a private country club golf course, it was located on PRIVATE PROPERTY. Moundbuilders park was the scene of countless family picnics, and a walk around the big mound was always the high point of the day for a little kid. So the mounds were very much a part of my every day life. Yet I knew very little about them, or about the people who created them.

Last week I ran across a battered paperback edition of Silverberg's book at a local used bookstore. He has woven together a great story, dealing not only with the people who created the mounds, but also with the ways in which European civilization has attempted to understand and interpret them. I was especially interested in his account of the inherent tension between the fascination and mythology surrounding the mounds in 19th century America and the genocidal policies which were being simultaneously pursued against the American Indian. Silverberg lets the facts speak for themselves without falling into the
swamp of political correctness.

In describing the efforts of various 19th century American archeologists and anthropologists to explore and explain the mounds, Silverberg also depicts an intellectual style which is as extinct as the Moundbuilders themselves. Dedicated "amateur" scientists, including politicans such as Jefferson and WH Harrison, made meaningful contributions to the effort to explore and understand the mounds and the culture which produced them.
What contemporary political figure has the intellectual spirit or temperment to make a similar contribution? (The only thing that comes close, I guess, is Al Gore's invention of the Internet.) Sadly, the advancement of learning has been relegated to the professionals and academics. The Renaissance person is no more -- and we are all diminished.

It's beutiful in Ohio in October, and with the "new eyes" provided by Silverberg I'm taking a car trip to explore several of the sites which do remain.

Rating:
Summary: A mound of bias
Review: In what is advertised as a balanced exposition of the mound controversy that has raged for two centuries, Silverberg comes off with obvious bias, offering some of the most amazing sentences I have ever read. Seeking to demonstrate that the natives were constructing mounds at the time of European discovery, Silverberg describes a painting by a Spanish artist, Jacques Le Moyne, showing Indians mourning at a chief's burial ground.The grave is shown as a mound about three feet high. Here is what Silverberg says in an attempt to turn this into evidence that the Indians built the mounds: "Though the mound shown by Le Moyne was small, it may have been only the core of what was intended as a full-sized mound. If this is so, Le Moyne's painting is the first depiction of an Indian burial mound - made while the mound was still in the early stages of construction."

But that isn't the choicest piece of legerdemain. William Powell caused Congress to place responsibility for the mounds in a new Bureau of Ethnology under Powell's control at the Smithsonian. Powell proceeded to use that position to impose his peculiar notion, that the finding of European artifacts in the mounds, a common occurrence, was evidence that the mounds had been constructed after European settlement and thus proof of native origin. One of his original attacks on the "mound myth" as Silverberg calls any notion of non-native origin, involved having a bird specialist, Henry Henshaw, debunk any notion that the figurine pipes found in the mounds represented anything but native wildlife. When Henshaw was subsequently found to be wrong, Silverberg saves the day with the following sentence: "But Henshaw's blast had the value of correcting falsely interpreted evidence - even if the false interpretation had accidentally provided a correct answer!"

I can't resist just one more. Powell's chief minion, Cyrus Thomas, set out to discredit prior authority, Squier and Davis, who, strangely enough, had worked for the Smithsonian several decades earlier, that the mounds were laid out with a geometric precision that required instruments at least as accurate as those existing at the end of the 18th Century. Claiming that Squire and Davis exercised "an inexcusable degree of carelessness," in measuring the mounds, Thomas sent out surveyors to correct their carelessness. The surveyors found not only that Squire and Davis had been accurate, but concluded that only modern surveying instruments could have accomplished the feat. Pointing out that Thomas can offer no real answer - except to say that the Indians who built them must have had some very clever methods of designing huge enclosures, Silverberg drops the subject.

The Mound Builders is a prime example of 20th Century science, where preconceived conclusions are made, evidence created to support those conclusions is manufactured and any and all evidence that contradicts the conclusion is destroyed, as Powell destroyed the history of the North American continent by shipping the contents of the mounds back to Washington where they were never seen again.

If you really want to find out about the mounds and the actual history of the North American continent, click on Magazines and search out the Ancient American. You will find everything you want in that publication.