Hallmarks of the Hopewells

Follow the Scioto River out of Columbus, and quickly it turns wilder, leaving behind the series of reservoirs that supply the metropolis with drinking water. The Scioto supplies irrigation water for the vast farms that follow, with U.S. Route 23 sticking close to its course all the way to its mouth at Portsmouth.

I wouldn’t travel that far on this trip, just south to where the verdant hills of Appalachian Ohio sprout from the farmland of the Scioto Valley. The Hopewell Indians wisely chose the broad valley for many of their significant mounds, the riverbends hiding treasures from millennia ago.

Many are protected in state and federal sites, with the Hopewell Culture National Historic Park hosting five site and dozens of mounds around Chillicothe. The Mound City Group, which was originally protected in the 1920s, contains the mounds that have yielded some of the most significant finds. At this park unit, I skipped my normal wanderings to join a ranger-guided tour. About a dozen people stuck for the entire hour trip through the Mound City Group.

Mountains step in

The mounds were reconstruction of the originals, with only the largest mound still somewhat original. The restorations became necessary after the originals were several damaged or destroyed during the construction of Camp Sherman during World War 1. More than 120,000 men came through camp between 1917 and 1921, and it was hastily constructed. Only quick thinking of local preservationists saved the largest of the Mound City mounds from destruction, leading to a national monument designation in 1923.

Mounds are hardly unique to the valley - mounds still rise along the Mississippi, and the Shiloh battlefield site includes a large mound on bluffs overlooking the Tennessee River. Ohio alone once had more than 10,000, but many have been removed for development and agriculture. In downtown Columbus, an imposing mound 40 feet high stood at the modern intersection of High and Mound streets. Several their other Southern Ohio mound complexes are operated by the Ohio Historical Society, included the famous Serpent Mound.

The national historic park protects six complexes of Hopewell sites, including mounds and other sites where they have found artifacts. Mound City is the biggest and several are still being excavated or not open to the public. As burial mounds, the Mound City cluster bears religious importance.

What makes the mounds special is their high concentration throughout Southern Ohio. You can see why the Hopewell chose the Scioto Valley. At Chillicothe, the edges of the Appalachian Range arise with Sugarloaf Mountain and lumpy ridges on either side of the river. The change is stark after the miles of farmland fanning out in the river valley from the south end of Columbus past Circleville. Hopewell culture thrived between 200 B.C. and 500 A.D. While knowledge of the Hopewell is limited, the park service works with the Shawnee, whose historic territory included southern Ohio before their removal during the 19th century.

Archaeologists have recovered many surprising artifacts from the mounds. Many artifacts from 1840s excavations ended up in the British Museum, but the museum houses several key items.

Some immediately raised eyebrows – a set of grizzly bear teeth, shark and conch shells all have little connection to Ohio. The obsidian arrow point in their collection came from cliffs in Yellowstone National Park. Much of the copper for the Hopewell treasures came from the Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and even remote Isle Royale, the largest island in Lake Superior. Isle Royale still bears pits where the Native copper mining operations occurred. That copper was rowed across multiple Great Lakes before it could travel overland or downriver to the Hopewell mounds.

The Hopewell got around - their emissaries traded far and wide. For all our highways and railroad tracks cutting up the continent, it’s easy to forget pre-industrial highways. The Scioto Valley was as much a crossroads 2,000 years ago it is today. Present-day Chillicothe sits at the junction of the Scioto and Paint Creek, which would have been the Hopewell culture’s gateway to the rest of the continent.

Native American cultures traveled and traded with tribes thousands of miles away. Their highways were watersheds and the Great Lakes. Portages connected tribes. Ohio River tribes could have gone up the Missouri or the Mississippi, adding ties to tribes up in Canada. The ranger noted one excavated mound contained hundreds of effigy pipes that had been ritually smashed before internment. The pipestone was mined downriver from Portsmouth.

No one lived at the Mound City Group; these were burial mounds reserved for the highest positions in Hopewell society, mainly shamans since they did not have chiefs. In some cases, the remains interred here were bones brought from great distances. Remains were cremated then mounded over. Covered in thin layers of grass, the historic mounds would have been topped with crust of gravel. The originals were well-engineered to store cremated remains, with layers of sand and gravel to allow water to pass through. Otherwise the mounds could have collapsed.

Brown and with a swift current, the Scioto flowed briskly. Along with game, the Hopewell would have relied heavily upon fish and freshwater mollusks, including the relatively large mussels still found on the riverbed. Shells of the harvested mussels became tools for the local tribes. Visitors to the mounds would have arrived by boat, entering the earthen walls from the opposite side of the complex from the modern entrance.

Even then, there’s much about the culture we cannot know. Textiles deteriorate rapidly so the clothing not well known. Their diet can be determined by an agriculture heavy with squash, sunflowers, hickory nuts a cousin of quinoa. The Hopewell did not farm corn, as their teeth don’t show the same decay that would be more common if they did.

I like the mystery of the Hopewell – as the ranger noted, they don’t resemble the Native American cultures that preceded or followed them. For a culture we can only know around the edges, the Hopewell are remarkably resilient. With their sacred sites mostly preserved, the Hopewell still hold court in Southern Ohio.