Government officials worked to eradicate evidence of pre-contact North American peoples in the late 1800s but they could not erase all their structures, in particular the thousands of man-made mounds that can still be seen today. According to one source, John Wesley Powell, the leader of the first trip down the Grand Canyon - and one-armed to boot - and the Director of the Bureau of Ethnology (U.S.) to 1894, directed archeologists, etc. across the U.S. to send him any evidence they had of pre-Contact peoples. More than 100,000 figurines, sketches of rock drawings, etc. were sent to him and promptly destroyed because as he said there was no culture in the U.S. before Contact with Europe so the evidence could not be true. (This accusation is supported in Henriette Mertz's book The Mystic Symbol, Mark of the Michigan Mound Builders, p. 203.) But many of the more than 30,000 mounds left behind by these peoples in the Mississippi valley, southern Canada and the west coast survived these efforts.
An interesting, although now mostly-erased, mound complex left by this culture was at Marietta, Ohio, where I happen to have spent some of my youth. My paper route was across the street from the town cemetery that had been built around a 10-metre-high mound on a bluff in town. Nearby was the Sacra Via Street ([Sacred Way] Street), named thusly because it is built on a paved road alredy bjuilt before the arrival of the first White pioneers.
it is hypothesized that the road had no material purpose, as Natives in the Americas did not have wheeled transport (prior to Contact), so such an established road must have been constructed for a ceremonial procession.
One local amateur archaeologist/ anthropologist has worked out a scheme whereby the procession ascended to the mound on the bluff then returned to the (Muskingum) river, crossing and after convulations through various mound constructions ascended the hills across the river from Marietta (in present-day West Virginia).
No mounds have yet been found in Alberta although they have been found as nearby as Saskatchewan where Moose Mountain has one of the best-known Prairie ones.
Pilot Mound, Manitoba is named after one in that area.
A Quebecois-born interpreter, Jean L'Heureux, who lived in central Alberta in the 1860s and 1870s, observed that the mound civilization of the Mississippian river valley could have extended as far as Alberta (see "Jean L'Heureux: A Life of Adventure", Alberta History, Autumn, 2012).
The book Canada's Stonehenge by Gordon R. Freeman discusses possibility of a version of Stonehenge in central Alberta.
The recent discovery of what some think is a pyramid in the Balkans, hidden inside what had been assumed to be a mountain, leads me at least to wonder if perhaps Edmonton's Mount Pleasant or Rabbit Hill or Huntington Hills (south of 51 Avenue west of 104th Street) could be man-made features - mounds. Below are some rough notes on the Mound culture (The newspaper citations refer to local newspapers, as found by a newspaper search in the Peel's Prairie Provinces website in 2013.) ---------------------------------------- From The Mound Builders by George Bryce: Mounds were often bifurcated (made in two parts) conical or flat-topped (platform) Bryce says some mounds built by deposit of midden and multiple burials used for sepulture and observation, for ritual and ceremonies, and to hold temples and housing often located near oxbows due to increased surface area between water and land for increased fishing opportunities (Rabbit Hill in Edmonton is also near a bend in the river and near Blackmud Creek. Could it be a mound?) Bryce postulates that when one mound got too big for ease of use, they began on another, perhaps the origin of “Two Hills” in southside Edmonton, the two "hills" of Mount Pleasant (106 Street and 65 Avenue) and Huntington Hills (west of Calgary Trail south of 51 Avenue). Definite mounds have been found and recorded as close to Edmonton, Alberta as Manitoba and Moose Mountain, Sask. and on the west coast near New Westminster, Michigan and Illinois and north along the Bering shores.
As well we have this prehistoric remains:
Earthlodge Village near present-day Gleichen and Cluny
built perhaps around 1740.
formally recognized in 1972 as one of Canada's Historic Places.
Earthworks -- defensive fortifications, unique in Canada, constructed by an unidentified people
From Register of Canada's Historic Places:
Despite its location in the heart of Blackfoot territory, Earthlodge Village was built ca. 1740 by an unidentified people, possibly coming from the middle Missouri River region in North and South Dakota.
The name “Earthlodge Village” refers to the Blackfoot name for the builders of the site rather than the site’s features. The eleven depressions within the site are different in nature from the residential earthlodge dwellings found in the middle Missouri River region, built by Siouan speakers who lived in established villages often surrounded by ditches and palisades, and whose houses were large timber frame structures covered with sod or earth.
In comparison, the features at Earthlodge Village are far smaller in size than the residential structures, and the wooden palisade instead ran inside the ring of depressions. Given the placement of the palisade, it is believed that the pits were not residential, but rather defensive in nature.
As a fortified village, the site is the only one of its kind in Canada, and is one of only two in the North American Plains. [However Feb 1964 Plains Anthropologist magazine has article on fortified villages of northern Plains (by Warren W. Caldwell) so likely that there are more than just two!]
Key elements relating to the heritage value of the site include:
- its location on a long-time meeting place within the limits of the Blackfoot Crossing National Historic Site of Canada, near Cluny, Alberta;
- its setting on a grassy flat on the northern bank of the Bow River;
- the relation between the outer ditch and the inner depressions;
- the integrity of any surviving or as yet unidentified archaeological remains which may be found within the site in their original placement and extent, including hearths, pottery, small baked clay discs; trade goods such as copper, glass and brass; stone tools including knives, drills, grinding slabs, mauls, hammer stones, scrapers; bone tools, beads, ornaments, punches, awls, knives, knife handles; red and yellow ochre; and faunal remains;
- viewscapes from the site across Bow River to Blackfoot Crossing National Historic Site of Canada.
Adjacent to thsi site is Blackfoot Crossing, hisltoric site built around a long-used ford over the Bow River.
The social and cultural values of the Blackfoot Crossing site
for the Siksika Nation are enhanced by the rich variety of the archaeological resources that reflect the long history of Blackfoot Crossing. The remains included medicine circles, boulder effigies, cairns, buffalo and antelope jumps, Sundance sites, and tobacco planting fields.
Nearby are the earthworks of the Earthlodge Village built circa 1740 by an as yet unidentified Aboriginal people, which bears witness to the interaction of different native cultures at the Crossing.
In more recent history, the grave of Crowfoot and his last campsite and the monument to the Cree Chief Poundmaker are of especial importance to the Siksika Nation.
In addition, the sites of the first Oblate mission, a whisky trading post, and an Indian Agency post, are evidence of more recent interaction of native and white cultures.
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Alberta -- Old Man River, etc.
Mrs. Perren Baker wrote Prairie Place Names. It talks of cairns and two old rectangles composed of large rocks in the Old Man area of Alberta that gave its name to the nearby river. The Old Man was a mythical character who dug a channel for the river and lingered for a long time in this playground before venturing down to the open plains. Oyen News, Oct. 30, 1929
These three ancient monuments are also described in Place-Names in Alberta (1928) in Peel's Prairie Provinces website (#5240), under the "Oldman river" entry (page 96).
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Old Man's Knoll, east of Edmonton
Another physical feature in Alberta also bore the name of Old Man (the Creator).
Old Man's Knoll was a landmark east of Edmonton, mentioned in old copies of the Edmonton Bulletin. Its location is not apparently known by the County of Strathcona Archives and Museum staff.
But the name of Oldman Creek on the east edge of Edmonton (see Naming Edmonton) and in the County of Strathcona is due to the presence of the Old Man's Knoll nearby.
This leads me to believe Old Man Knoll was the locally-prominent butte that once stood on the west side of Highway 21 north of Township 534 (north of the railway crossing and highway overpass and north of the two-pond mansion as well). It was bulldozed out, and its rocks and gravel trucked away around 2019.
The Old Man's Knoll is mentioned in J.P. Berry's monograph Clover Bar in the Making 1881 1931. That small book says a southern branch of the Carlton Trail crossed the prairies south of the river (the main route being on the north side of the river, running through Victoria Settlement). Berry wrote that the south route ran through the present site of Bruderheim and over Old Man's Knoll as it came toward Edmonton from the east. (p. 2)
(If the butte that was destroyed circa 2019 was indeed the Old Man's Knoll, an historic sacred site, its destruction could be counted as a marker of the approaching end times. Certainly we cannot continue to live as we are - the world is getting used up.)
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Other pre-historic/historic cultural evidences in Alberta include the ancient drawings and diagrams at eponymous Picture Butte, Alberta (now destroyed) and on the rocks at Writing-on-Stone Historic Site (preserved in protected park).
William A Griesbach mentioned in his autobiography I Remember that there were remnants of 'chimneys' of old Indian habitations located in the present enclave of the city of Edmonton.
He also made some mention of mounds in Alberta.
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Saskatchewan
Much interesting information on "Saskatchewan Archaeology" in the Saskatchewan Encyclopedia (on-line)
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An interesting hill about one kilometre east and south of Cabri, Saskatchewan may be an ancient mound but it has not been investigated,
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Manitoba
1908 Mounds in Manitoba investigated including Pilot Mound. no relationship between the mound builders and whites or the present-day Indians although there might be a distant relationship with the Indians.Edmonton Bulletin, Oct. 30, 1908
1916 Prehistoric barrows found at Rock Lake, Manitoba
Bow Island Review, April 28, 1916
1952 Mound and remains of a village discovered seven miles west of Brandon.Crossfield Chronicle, Nov. 14, 1952
Whiteshell Forest Reserve in SE Manitoba has boulder mosaics or “stone pictures.”Farm and Ranch Review, Sept. 1, 1959
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British Columbia
1911 Near Sheep Creek gold mining camp 25 miles south of Nelson, miners found a prehistoric subterranean chamber carved out of the solid rock perhaps 10,000 years old. smooth plumb walls 35 feet square. A McGill University scientist says it was a mine, He said he is aware of such remains of a prehistoric civilization all along the West Coast. Edmonton Capital May 19, 1911, p. 3
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Gateway Nov. 14, 1930 article entitled “Secret of the Gods” (by Mugwump) bemoans fact that students study ancient civilizations in the Old World but ignore the “twin continents” of the New World. He/she says perhaps South America was joined to Australia by a Pacific continent and to Africa by an Atlantic continent. And that it is likely that Chinese and Japanese individuals had knowledge of the Twin continents.And says strange mounds have been discovered on the eastern edge of the Bering Sea.The totem poles and copper sun discs of BC appear to have connection with South American relics.The magic swastika is found in both old and new worlds.Mayans were of Indo-Chinese originsimilarity of statues in old Mayan city to those in Cambodia
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Mounds at Hatzig in the New Westminster area. Similar mounds can be found in various other parts of B.C. A member of the Historical and Scientific Society of Vancouver dug and found an old skull of distinctive shape that did not correlate with the skulls of the present-day Indians in the area. Also found a copper ring. (Moose Jaw Herald, Nov. 2, 1894) ***************
Ontario Author Russell Harper found remains of sophisticated Indian townsites on Rice Lake in the Peterborough area, which were estimated to have been inhabited 2000 years ago. goods found that originated in Florida or Georgia coasts Elaborate mounds also found. They are similar to those found in Ohio. As well. pottery that was discovered, the earliest painted pottery to be found in Canada, is similar to that found in Massachusetts so the Ontario tribe was perhaps a intermingling of the two groups Biggest townsite is on the present Hiawatha reserve of the Mississauga Indians and directly south of the present village of Keene, near the mouth of the Indian River. Another site is on a farm owned by D. Humphrey. Chronicle, September 11, 1952 ******************** Canada has a Serpent Mound Serpent Mounds National Historic Site of Canada, Otonabee -South Monaghan, Ontario, Canada Aug. 14, 1906 Red Deer News talks of a call to protect a mound in Ontario, the only serpent mound in Canada in Otonabee Township, Peterboro county. Local historian says he does not accept the theory that the mounds of North America were the work of an extinct race. “All evidence goes to show that these mounds were built by the ancestors of our Indians and mounds have been constructed by the Indians within historical times.” *** Serpent Mounds in Ontario, the only known effigy mound in Canada
Serpent Mounds, situated on a bluff overlooking Rice Lake near Peterborough, Ont, south of village of Keene, is the only known effigy mound in Canada. It is a sinuous earthen structure composed of six separate burial locations and measuring about 60 m long, 8 m wide and 1.5-1.8 m high. Excavation indicated that the mounds forming the effigy were gradually built up between 50 BCE and 300 CE. This would suggest that Serpent Mounds was a sacred place, visited periodically for religious ceremonies. Although pieces of grave furniture were not plentiful, their distribution shows they were restricted largely to individuals of higher status within the community. Those individuals were buried either at the base of the mounds or in shallow, submound pits. The commoners were randomly scattered throughout the mounds' fill. From Canadian Encyclopedia On Saturday, September 9, 1961, a provincial historical plaque commemorating the prehistoric Serpent Mounds will be unveiled in Serpent Mounds Park, County Road 34, Rice Lake, south of the village of Keene in Peterborough County. This is one in a series of plaques being erected throughout the province by the Department of Travel and Publicity, on the advice of the Archaeological and Historic Sites Board of Ontario. The unveiling ceremony was arranged and sponsored by the Peterborough Historical Society; Dr. Ralph Honey, president, was the program chairman. Speakers included: Professor J.M.S. Careless of the University of Toronto, a member of the province's Historic Sites Board; Mr. Keith Brown, M.P.P. (Peterborough); Mr. K.E. Kidd, Curator of Ethnology at the Royal Ontario Museum; Mr. T.E. McKay, president of the Serpent Mounds Foundation; and Mr. J.J. Slattery, Reeve of Otonabee Township. The plaque was unveiled by Mr. Ralph Loukes, Chief of the Rice Lake Indian Band. The plaque reads: THE SERPENT MOUNDS The principal mound of this group is the only known example in Canada of a mound of serpentine shape. The earliest archaeological excavation on the site was carried out by David Boyle in 1896. Artifacts and skeletal remains were discovered, but the first comprehensive investigation was not started until 1955. The mounds, somewhat similar to those of the Ohio Valley, appear to have been built while the region was occupied by Indians of the Point Peninsula culture, and are thought to have been religious or ceremonial in nature. Numerous burials have been found in the mounds, which are estimated to have been constructed about the second century A.D. Historical background The prehistoric man-made mounds near the north shore of Rice Lake known as the Serpent Mounds are the only ones of their type known to exist in Canada, although there are also similar mounds in Adams County, Ohio. The main ridge of the Rice Lake mound is almost 200 feet in length and serpentine in shape; adjacent to it are several small circular mounds, commonly referred to as the "serpent's eggs." The Rice Lake formations have been known to archaeologists since at least 1896 when Dr. David Boyle partially excavated them and published a report on his work. (Boyle was the first curator of the Provincial Archaeological Museum, which later became the Royal Ontario Museum.) Systematic investigation of the site began in 1955 when the Royal Ontario Museum, with aid from the Serpent Mounds Foundation and the Ontario government, initiated an extensive program in an effort to discover the nature and origin of the mounds. Work was carried out during the summer months of the next few years and by 1958 a considerable number of prehistoric Indian burials had been discovered in the immediate vicinity, some twenty-one of these in the mounds themselves. While most of the graves contained little in the way of burial goods, two proved to be quite prolific. One of these included a cluster of forty-one disc beads as well as a turtle carapace and flint chips. Another contained the complete skeleton of a young man, a small animal effigy and shell disc beads. There were numerous shell deposits in the vicinity and some decorated pottery shards recovered from the site seemed to indicate affinities with the Middle Point Peninsula culture. A charcoal sample collected in association with one of the burials was submitted to a Carbon-14 dating test, resulting in a tentative dating of 128 A.D. While no definite conclusions have been drawn regarding the purpose of these ancient mounds, it is believed they were originally constructed about the second century A.D., and they were of religious or ceremonial significance to the people who built them. ************************ 1906 A diamond, pottery and skeletons found in mounds in the Rainy River district and on the Seine River. 40 miles up from where the Big Fork River empties into the Rainy River there are many mounds. A couple miles farther upstream, at a place called Big Falls is an ancient pottery works. Edmonton Bulletin, Aug. 17, 1906 =======================================
Hints of Historic Connections to the Far East
1930s the Spiro Mound in Oklahoma was opened, and the remains of a tall man dressed in armour with a treasure of pearls lying beside him is said to have been found. Said to be clear evidence that the Mound civilization had equivalent technology to Europe and Asia of the time, and support for the theory that there was one world civilization, with technology and cultural practises being diffused throughout the world, instead of the long-held belief that the Americas were isolated from the "Old World." (My note: The recent arrival of Japanese Tsunami flotsam on the BC coast, unpowered and un-directed, gives credence to the idea that through the ageless past, groups and individuals made their way back and forth across the Pacific Ocean, some using the proximity of Russia Far East and Alaska to make not-so-distant mostly-shore-hugging voyages between the two continents.)
That there were connections between the eastern and Western hemispheres is supported in a theory of an early-1400s-AD Chinese gold mine in Cape Breton (on the east coast of Canada!) extolled in Paul Chiasson's book The Island of Seven Cities, and in accounts of the far-ranging voyages of Chinese travellers 600 years ago, such as Gavin Menzies 2002 book 1421.
Strangely, Menzie's book written in pursuit of the same idea espressed in Mertz's book, overlooks the evidence presented in the book by Henriette Mertz (who is mentioned above). Mertz's is entitled Pale Ink, Two Ancient Records of Chinese Exploration in America, self-published in 1953. Although overlapping in subject matter, and their last names having identical initial letters, which puts the books side by side in alphabetical arrangement on the shelf in a bookstore, everyone so far has preferred Menzie's book to Mertz's, a too-common spurning of sources of old knowledge in favour of new shiny presentations. Mertz's book is available at Alhambra Books and through ABEBOOKS.com for those interested in this overlooked gem.)
(Neither Chiasson's book and Mertz's books nor their theories are mentioned in the Wikipedia entry for "Pre-Columbian Oceanic Contact." Maybe they are considered too far out there!) =============
MiscellaneousBrandon Mail June 16, 1887 reported pottery and other artifacts exposed by flood in New York State. Although no mounds in area, pottery is of type found in western mounds so disproving the assumed separation between Indians and the moundbuilders.
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Prehistoric Adena house discovered in the U.S. (1950) June 8, 1950 Chronicle
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Prehistoric hairpins and necklaces made from Florida shells and alligator teeth found in mounds in Ohio, in 1950 Gleichen Call, September 6, 1950
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Indians grave house was used in old days as a grave marker contained the things the Indian would need in the after life. Farm and Ranch Review, Dec. 1, 1952
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aside from mention of mounds in Ohio being used as hazards in gold courses, there is no other mention of “Indians AND mounds” from 1900 to 2000 in Alberta newspapers as of Jan. 2013 (according to Peel's Prairie Provinces website newspaper search)
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Edgar Cayce in one of his books says Atlanteans moved to mainland North America, eventually building the mounds in Ohio, before moving on.
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Puma Punku in Bolivia
one of the wierdest-looking prehistoric sites in the world
Wiki: "At its peak, Pumapunku is thought to have been "unimaginably wondrous, adorned with polished metal plaques, brightly colored ceramic and fabric ornamentation, and visited by costumed citizens, elaborately dressed priests, and elites decked in exotic jewelry."
Check out the photos of the site!
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(part of above is a reprint of one of my "Old Alberta" blogs from 2014)
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