Early Native Americans

Today, we visited another set of mounds built by Mississippian Native Americans. The last time we saw mounds, we were in Illinois. 

The name Etowah means "home".

There are three large original mounds. When Georgia State Parks started administering this area, one of the mounds had a large chunk cut out of it, so they built it back up. Otherwise, these are the mounds that the early Native Americans had their buildings constructed on.

It was thought that the chief of the village would have had his home on this largest mound overlooking what looks like a field today, but would have been where the rest of the inhabitants of the village lived back then.

Their homes are thought to have looked much like this, made of wattle and daub. There was a large moat around the entire village on three sides. On the fourth side was this river.

In the middle of the river, you can see an area where the water looks very flat and on the sides it looks choppy coming to a point toward the right side of the photo. This is because underwater there are 2 stone walls that cause the fish to have to swim basically threw a V shape creating a spot where the native Americans could leave a fish trap and also creating an underwater dam that helped "stock" their fishing hole on this side. 

We enjoyed the video and small museum which helped us better understand these civilizations of the past.