"Hopewell" People Continued

 The American Indian participants in the great exchange system which extended the length of the Mississippi and well beyond were not only long distance traders and of deep religious convictions, but were also experienced managers and husbandmen of wide resources. 


They were hunters of wild game. Their most respected weapon was of a type used by their ancient ancestors. Those ancestors had hunted game that was, indeed, large.  They had hunted the mega-fauna of song and legend and paleontology. The weapons they used was the spear thrower, the atlatl, and its spear like dart.  I  have heard the very word, atlatl, used in chants to the great drum and to smaller ones too. Our long distance traders of the waterways also obtain game using sophisticate trapping techniques, bow and arrow, spear and more


Yes, I am writing of "Mound Builders."


Their religion was strong and important and their mounds are evidence of 'religious' centers. Oral histories can tell us much of their religion. Old physical remains have also informed us. Their most beautifully crafted objects seemed to have had little or no economic or practical use. Was it 'art for art's sake?' Why were very many of the best of these objects carefully buried in the mounds with their dead.


These people were not us. Like us in important ways? Yes. But we benefit from realizing that they saw the world from a viewpoint very much their own. We benefit by knowing that not everyone categorizes the objects and doings of reality as we do.


For example, the famous 'mounds' to which w have tended to give religious cognizance, or to consider cemeteries, may well have been focal points of trade, commerce, and social gatherings. They may have been teaching and scientific centers. There is much we do not know.