St. Paul's Indian Burial Mounds Paul Nelson Macalester College, [email protected]
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Macalester College DigitalCommons@Macalester College Staff ubP lications Institute for Global Citizenship 5-20-2008 St. Paul's Indian Burial Mounds Paul Nelson Macalester College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/igcstaffpub Part of the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Nelson, Paul, "St. Paul's Indian Burial Mounds" (2008). Staff Publications. Paper 1. http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/igcstaffpub/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Institute for Global Citizenship at DigitalCommons@Macalester College. It has been accepted for inclusion in Staff ubP lications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Macalester College. For more information, please contact [email protected]. St. Paul’s Indian Burial Mounds -- Paul D. Nelson Six ancient burial mounds crown the park land, protected by law. They are mounds (those still standing), they were crest of St. Paul’s Dayton’s Bluff. Their fenced and guarded, sealed and mute. probably built in the era 200 BC -- 400 setting is spectacular, above the gorge What can they tell us? AD. Even this spacious estimate rests where the Mississippi feints north be- upon a foundation of guesswork. No ra- fore turning decisively south. These are How many were there originally? diocarbon dating of anything from the the tallest and most prominent burial Theodore H. Lewis found thirty- mounds has been done. The dates are mounds on the northern 600 miles of nine in the late 1870s, in two separate based on similarities between these the river. and perhaps unrelated groups. They mounds and their contents and similar The mounds of Indian Mounds stretched in an irregular line along structures and artifacts found and stud- Park are St. Paul’s only visible and tan- Dayton’s Bluff, roughly from the cur- ied elsewhere – to be more specific, gible reminders of a prehistoric human rent Carver’s Cave scenic lookout on that these are from the Middle Wood- past. They have been excavated, but the north to the Indian Mounds Park land period of eastern North America, not for more than a century. They have lookout point on the south. All of the which scholars (though hardly unani- not been systematically studied; mod- twenty-one mounds from Carver’s mously) date between 200 BC and 400 ern methods and scholarship have never Cave up (the land slopes upward) to AD or so. been applied to them. the light beacon in the park were small, The mounds were probably built This article will not bring today’s rarely even two feet tall, and were de- one by one, with perhaps decades or archaeological and anthropological tools stroyed in the mid- and late nineteenth even generations separating them. Con- to Dayton’s Bluff; the author lacks the century by farming, quarrying, devel- struction of the smaller tumuli, those that skill and training. Its aims are more mod- opment, and roads. The southern group trailed down the bluff slope toward est — to gather together all that has of eighteen, built on the promontory 200 Carver’s Cave, likely took place after been written about the St. Paul mounds feet above the Mississippi River, was 1000 AD, and may have continued al- along with the relevant related scholar- reduced to six in the building of Indian most to historical times.2 ship of the last several decades. We Mounds Park, which began in 1892, and hope to answer here, to the extent that in later renovations. The surviving six current knowledge permits, most of the were the tallest and probably the oldest The photo above shows the park and questions that an interested visitor to the of them all.1 Mounds 2, 3, 7, and 9, left to right, mounds might ask. around 1898. Minnesota Historical Six burial mounds stand atop When Were They Built? Society (MHS) photo. Dayton’s Bluff. They are set aside in Speaking now just of the oldest of southern Minnesota burial mounds were built hundreds of years later than A late 19th century map showing the those still extant at Mounds Park. Da- 18 blufftop mounds. This is all Indian kota connection is more likely for later Mounds Park today. From Aborigines mounds than earlier ones.3 of Minnesota. Do descendants of the ancient St. Paulites live today? Probably so. To conclude otherwise is to imagine that the people – or possibly peoples – who built the mounds went extinct. But where they may live, and what name they call themselves will likely never be known. Where and how did the mound builders live? The mound builders did not live on Dayton’s Bluff. No evidence of ancient habitation has been found there, and for good reason – it was too far from wa- ter. This was ceremonial space. The mound builders must have lived Who Built Them? their ancestors) should be considered nearby, but no one knows exactly American Indians built the burial possible authors of the ancient mounds. where. The man who excavated most mounds. This may be the only asser- “The mound concentrations next to his- of the mounds, Theodore H. Lewis, tion on the subject that can be made torically known Santee villages in east- wrote in 1896 that there had been at with confidence. To connect the St. central and southeastern Minnesota least ten Indian village sites within St. Paul mound builders with any known also argue for a Dakota association with Paul, one at Pig’s Eye Lake, two on tribe or nation exceeds the reach of intensive mound building and a strong, the West Side, “two being located on current knowledge. early Dakota presence in southern Min- Phalen’s creek and the others along the Of the two dominant nations nesota unless, of course, the Dakota river.” He did not provide more detail, known to live near St. Paul in historical simply reoccupied locations of the prin- and none of these sites has been found times, the Ojibwe and the Dakota, one cipal mound-building groups.” This is and excavated. Nor, after more 150 can be eliminated: The Ojibwe moved evidence primarily by association; no years of development of the land and into Minnesota from the east over a ethnographic or physical evidence filling of the river channel, are any likely thousand years after the surviving places Dakota forebears at Mounds to be unearthed.4 mounds were built, and in any event Park. What is more, the huge majority The area around what is now never lived so far south. The Dakota cannot be eliminated as mound builders, but neither is there any strong evidence to connect them with mounds built in the period two thousand years ago. Little is known about their ancient origins. The conven- tional view is that the Dakota home- land lay in northern Minnesota around Lake Mille Lacs, and that they moved into this area only, or at least mainly, as a result of friction with the Ojibwe in the late 17th century. Scott Anfinson, recently appointed The northernmost line of mounds, around 1880. North is to the left; Hoffman Minnesota State Archaeologist, wrote Avenue is now Mounds Boulevard, here between Educlid on the left and Urban over 20 years ago that the Dakota (or on the right. These mounds are all gone. Map from Aborigines of Minnesota. downtown St. Paul was probably a many of them were there? Estimating good place to live two millennia ago (at populations for such a far-off time is so least, like today, for the hardy of body perilous an enterprise that few try; no and spirit.) The Midwesterners of that estimate for this area has been done. distant era favored flood plains and David Braun, one of the leading schol- river terraces close to woodlands and ars of the Middle Woodland period (200 open ground; a variety of habitats within BC – 400 AD), has commented that a small area could provide food through- even in the most populous regions of out the year. The Dayton’s Bluff vicin- the ancient Midwest, western Illinois ity had everything. The Mississippi then and southern Ohio, densities were “on offered a bounty we can only imagine the order of only 40 people per 100 sq. today; unpolluted and undammed, it km, with the larger villages containing brimmed with wildlife, and its yearly no more than 50-100 people.” Other flooding and ebbing created seasonal scholars come in higher, at 100 to 200 mini-environments, each with its own per 100 square kilometers. Let us use, plants and animals. Just beneath the for the sake of illustration, Benn’s fig- Trout Brook and Phalen Creek join the bluff Phalen Creek and Trout Brook, ures (though densities in chilly south- Mississippi near the mounds. both good-sized streams, joined and ern Minnesota were almost certainly flowed into the Mississippi from the lower than Illinois and Ohio.) The area the builders made. This was by far the north, beneath today’s Seventh and of Ramsey County is 441 km. sq.; add commonest shape for mounds of this Third Street bridges; to the south lay to that, again for illustration, the area of Middle Woodland era, but not earlier or the shallow wetlands of the backwater adjoining Dakota County, and we have later eras. The symbolism seems clear: Pig’s Eye Lake. Across the river lay a hypothetical hinterland of 1960 km. the sun, the moon, and the horizon all the West Side floodplain, which had its sq. This would yield, by Benn’s esti- form circles, and so the mounds begin own creeks and wetlands. And above, mate, a population of 784 people living with an eternal, life-giving shape.