Angel Mounds

If you’ve been following our blog recently, you may have noticed that we keep visiting locations that were home to Native Americans in prehistory, meaning before Europeans arrived on the North American continent and started recording their observations of the people already living and working here. Thus this morning, after a great breakfast with friends at Nellie’s in Newburgh, we made our way to Angel Mounds State Historic Site in Evansville, Indiana to explore one of the great Middle Mississippian Mound Builders communities. We hiked around the grounds, investigated the palisade construction and a typical home footprint, imagined farming on this piece of land on the banks of the Ohio River, and climbed to the top of Mound A, the highest of the twelve mounds here, and contemplated what it took to carry basketful after basketful of soil to create each of these mounds by hand. Back in the interpretive center, besides enjoying the air conditioning, we learned more about the people who lived here. This was a community based on agriculture and although their diet was augmented by hunting and gathering it was the corn, beans, and squash they grew that allowed them to live in one location year round, develop an elaborate social system, and have time for intricate crafts before vacating the spot about 1450 AD. Their culture was much like that of Cahokia in Illinois and of Moundville in Alabama. Almost certainly some of the tribes inhabiting this area when Europeans began to arrive would be descended from the people who lived, worked, worshipped, and partied on this very land. It’s been good to spend a part of today in Evansville where Karen once celebrated her second birthday but then to go back to New Harmony and celebrate this birthday with a delectable dinner at the Red Geranium.