OCTOBER 25:

October 25, 1949: By Presidential Proclamation #2860 today, the Effigy Mounds in Iowa are designated a National Monument.

October 25, 1853:  Captain John Gunnison and eight others in the Pacific Railroad survey along the 38th parallel were killed during a fight with Paiute Indians in the Sevier River valley of Utah. The Paiute hunting party of twenty was led by Moshoquop, whose father had been killed by other whites only days before.  The Mormons and the Paiutes had been fighting for some time.  Some sources put this fight on October 26th.
 
 

BACKGROUND:
 

For a full listing of  The Proclamation of National Monuments Under the Antiquities Act, 1906-1970 please see http://www.cr.nps.gov/aad/pubs/ANT8.HTM
 

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From http://scsc.essortment.com/moundbuilders_rdcx.htm
 

The mound builders of America

As European cultures spread west across the Alleghenies into the Ohio River Valley, discoveries of massive man-made mounds began to be described in their journals and diaries. For the most part, these seemed to be burial grounds, some containing human bones, others the ashes of human bones. Some did not. As well, many contained artifacts completely foreign to their location and out of keeping with the native American life the settlers observed around them.

Most cultures throughout recorded history have attached great importance to the ritualizing of death and dying. Much of what we know of some cultures has been found only in ancient tombs. The Adena, Hopewell, and Mississippian cultures of America, the so-called Mound Builders of America, are three such.

Over the years, since the discovery of the first mounds, many theories were advanced as to their origins. Variously, the mounds were attributed to the survivors of Noah's flood; survivors of Atlantis; one of the ten exiled tribes of Hebrews, most often Gad's; to Greeks and/or Egyptians; and to Mayans. None of these theories has stood the test of serious contemporary research.

Moreover, many have been discounted because, at the time the theories were advanced, they simply served politico-religious self-interests of their propounders, not least being to justify displacement of native Americans from their traditional land.

The earliest discovered mounds date back to approximately 1000 B.C; however, one anthropologist believes mounds may have been extant as early as 3000 B.C. These are considered evidence of the Adena culture, located primarily in Ohio, but possibly spreading cultural and religious influences as far east as the Chesapeake Bay.

Researchers have suggested that mound building was simultaneous with agricultural development and its stationary life style. Agricultural development may have been a significant accelerant for later mound builders but almost no evidence has been found to suggest that the people of the Adena culture were other than hunters and gatherers. For these, more likely, returning to the same locales of abundant food year after year resulted in the degree of permanence required to construct their mounds.

The Hopewell culture rose as the Adena seemed to fade. The former spread southward as far as Florida. Rather than being a cohesive nationalistic identity, the organization appeared more informal, as a network of trading relationships. Trade goods were exchanged; architectural ideas, religious concepts, and other socio-political concepts shared or borrowed. There is evidence some of the groups in the Hopewell culture were practising formal agriculture. This culture lasted about 700 years, to be followed by the much more advanced Mississippian culture.

The latter is famous for Monk's Mound, located in Collinsville, Illinois. Monk's Mound covers fourteen acres and rises to a height of one hundred feet. It is part of a Cahokia site that is considered to have supported a population of up to 20 thousand people in a very sophisticated social structure ruled by a chief and a strong shamanistic religious body.

The Cahokia site is also well known for its sun calendars, named Woodhenges because they were built of logs. Excavations also indicate the site was surrounded by two miles of wood stockade, an indication, perhaps, that defence remained a need, despite the size of the settlement.

The Mississipian culture reached fruition in the lower Mississippi Valley, the area between St. Louis and New Orleans. Trade certainly continued as a means of cultural transmission. By 600 A.D. this culture developed a religious elite, in ritual and in art. Mexican influences became evident, human sacrifice among them. Some religious images, symbols and designs also derived from points far south.

Members of De Soto's expedition, beginning in Florida in 1538 saw the Mississipian culture firsthand. So, too, did later French traders who lived with the Natchez Indians for a time. By then, however, the culture was in serious decline, ravaged by the communicable diseases introduced by the Europeans. The culture's infrastructure was disintegrated as its elites were blamed for the diseases and then exterminated.

Mound building extended from New York State to Florida and other Gulf States and westward as far as Nebraska and Arkansas. That it helped support a major culture is evidenced by one lasting 'federation' to the 18th and early 19th centuries. The Cherokee, as an example, numbered some 60 thousand people in 100 settlements.

Doubtless, as with other cultures worldwide, mound building began for burial purposes with ritualistic significances developing around the sites. Other mounds known as effigy mounds, notably the one quarter mile long Adena Serpent Mound in Ohio, were symbolic. Platform mounds, perhaps the oldest mound form in Meso-America, thought to originate with the Olmecs, did not make their appearance in the north until the Mississipian period. Most of the history of the mound builders has been lost, many of their artifacts destroyed, their oral history distorted by time and re-telling. The evidence remaining suggests the social organization and cultural strength of a sophisticated civilization in the western hemisphere far predating the arrival of Europeans.
 

Written by Arthur Montague