Documentary Notes HIST 1050 - Jase Dustin.docx

Documentary HIST 1050

  • Tribal Affiliation over Indian since people from India are Indians.
    • Shows dates language (remember)
  • Title: Odyssey: Myths and Mount Builders
  • Mounds showed engineering skills for Native Americans
  • Originally viewed as an engineering feat done by a lost race and not Native Americans
  • Early proof of history before early European settlement
  • Ian Brown from Harvard says it was viewed to be done by Vikings, Welsh, or even supermen.
  • The mounds were filled with the remains of the builders, minerals, tools, and even artifacts.
  • Mound builders and Indians were discovered to be the same by Morton and it was done through volumetric measurements with corn.
  • The mounds would’ve represented immense cultural development and strengthened their stake in the ownership of American land – which is why it was viewed so negatively back in early America
  • Squire and Davis spent most of their time mapping and surveying, while using their own imagination to explain their uses. Viewed that it couldn’t be Indians, and possibly Mexican descendants on their way to Mexico
  • Spanish discovered that the Native Americans built their mounds to bury the dead, and represent religious points or interest or even houses
  • Cyrus Thomas and Gerard Fowlkes found in Tennessee stone slabs in the mounds placed to form a coffin which showed that it was built by ancestors of Native Americans
    • Linked the stone box graves to the Shawnee Tribes, thus changing the views of early America
  • Linear earthworks and mounds that contained burials (Hopewell – 2000 years ago)
  • Curved and outlined and square, supported houses and living people (Mississippian of 1000 years ago)
  • Hopewell was originally viewed as one culture; however, it can be viewed as many cultures across the region
  • Hopewell culture buries the most important/influential individuals in the center and the less important are buried around the mount towards the outside
  • Hopewell people depend on mortar and pestle along with the river for fish for food (they would even dry up allowing for a large harvest of fish for the people)
  • Goosefoot produces black seeds that were used to produce flower
    • Iva (sump weed) also is able to produce palatable seeds if torched
    • The same seeds were planted by the Hopewell’s, however they selectively produced the larger seeds
    • Very cultural and societal (rich natural zone rich in agricultural product)
  • Hopewell people’s heights are normal to todays standards and they also had numerous illnesses like fractures or even brain infection (that could be mended or aided with medicine) – however most were healthy and could live well into their 50’s
  • Corn changed the mound building product of Hopewell’s peoples through the spreading of their people to plant corn (Maize agriculture) and caused also increased populations and a mental health change (can even be that TB was introduced because of the larger populous)
  • Corn brought the end of Hopewell artifacts because of colonization.
  • Monks Mound is the largest mound east of St. louis (900-1100 AD & ~ 200ft tall) – greatest feat of the Mississippian people (controlled around 50,000 people)
  • Earmuffs were used to show status as-well as Monolithic Axes were ceremonial status items, even statues used to project status of the elite
  • The elite kept individuals lower than them in check through labor projects and farming knowledge – Chiefs and elite control the knowledge of the Maize (corn)
    • If bad harvest failed, the elite were held responsible. Which led to civil unrest
    • This is tokened to the beginning of the end of for the Mississippian people
    • Natztechs were last of the mound builders, and were scattered by the early French
  • *Important Pieces*

  1. The myths that the documentary is titled for is made by non-native American people to explain how the mounds couldn’t be built by Native Americans

    1. Led this racist belief for the showing for how Native Americans were showed

  2. Research showed that it was made by Native Americans in the future, and become believed after concrete evidence was brought forward. Currently, the view is that the mounds WERE made by the Mississippian people

  3. Experimental Archaeology is basically reconstructing an example of ancient history, as seen in this story when the students build mounds