Hopewell Exchange System

American Indians had peaceful interaction spheres among a variety of peoples going back as far as perhaps 8000 BC.
In this little post I intend to say  a bit  about  trade spheres centered on the Mississippi River and relative to peoples called Mound Builders.
The earliest European visitors and explorers of what is now the US found the ones extent when they arrived, notable. By that time the Indian trade systems were far below their peak. Still, before the end if the 1500s the Spanish had begun to write of them. Before the end of the 1600s the French were participating in them. Even though by then many of the Indians' mounds and earthworks were already grown-over. By the 1700s, the English were finding the Indians a bit degenerate, but  still worthy of manipulation. By the time Americans got to the upper Mississippi in the early 1800s a great many of them thought the Indians were worthless, incapable of mound or earthwork building. Few Americans, even intelligent and imaginative ones, saw any Indians as capable of managing long range interaction spheres.
Still, it was those same Americans who began looking into what some now call the Hopewell Culture.

I intend to write more of these things a later date. I look forward to your comments.