Mound Culture in North America - Edmonton, Alberta too ?

Mound Culture in North America - Edmonton, Alberta too?

Government officials worked to eradicate evidence of  pre-contact North American peoples in the late 1800s but they could not erase all their structures, in particular the thousands of man-made mounds that still be seen today.

According to one source, John Wesley Powell, the leader of the first trip down the Grand Canyon - and one-armed to boot - and the Director of the Bureau of Ethnology (U.S.) to 1894, directed archeologists,etc. across the U.S. to send him any evidence they had of pre-Contact peoples. More than 100,000 figurines, sketches of rock drawings, etc. were sent to him and promptly destroyed because as he said there was no culture in the U.S. before Contact with Europe so the evidence could not be true. (This accusation is supported in Henriette Mertz's book The Mystic Symbol, Mark of the Michigan Mound Builders, p. 203.)

But many of the more than 30,000 mounds left behind by these peoples in the Mississippi valley, southern Canada and the west coast survived their efforts. One of the largest mound complexes left by this culture were at Marietta, Ohio, where I happen to have spent some of my youth. My paper route was across the street from the town cemetery that had been built around a 10-metre-high mound on a bluff in town. Nearby was the Via Sacria Street, named thusly because it is built on a paved road found by the first White pioneers. it is hypothesized that the road had no material purpose, as the Natives did not have wheeled transport, so must have been for a ceremonial procession, and one local amateur archaeologist/ anthropologist has worked out a scheme whereby the procession ascended to the mound on the bluff then returned to the (Muskingum) river, crossing and after convulations through various mound constructions ascended the hills across the river from Marietta.
 No mounds have yet been found in Alberta although they have been found as nearby as Saskatchewan where Moose Mountain has one of the best known Prairie ones. Pilot Mound, Manitoba is named after one in that area. A Quebecois-born interpreter, Jean L'Heureux, who lived in central Alberta in the 1860s and 1870s, observed that the mound civilization of the Mississippian river valley could have extended as far as Alberta (see "Jean L'Heureux: A Life of Adventure", Alberta History, Autumn, 2012).

The recent discovery of what some think is a pyramid in the Balkans, hidden inside what had been assumed to be a mountain, leads me at least to wonder if perhaps Edmonton's Mount Pleasant or Rabbit Hill could be man-made features - mounds.

Below are some rough notes on this Mound culture.
(The newspaper citations refer to local newspapers, as found by a newspaper search in the Peel's Prairie Provinces website in 2013.)

From The Mound Builders by George Bryce

Mounds were often bifurgated

conical or flat-topped (platform)

Bryce says some mounds built by deposit of midden and multiple burials

used for sepulture and observation, for ritual and ceremonies, and to hold temples and housing

often located near oxbows due to increased surface area between water and land for increased fishing opportunities (Rabbit Hill in Edmonton also near a bend in the river and near Blackmud Creek. Could it be a mound?)

Bryce postulates that when one mound got too big for ease of use, they began on another, perhaps the origin of “Two Hills” in southside Edmonton, the two "hills" of Mount Pleasant (106 Street and 65 Avenue) and Huntington Hills (west of Calgary Trail south of 51 Avenue).

definite mounds have been found and recorded as close to Edmonton, Alberta as Manitoba and Moose Mountain, Sask. and on west coast near New Westminster, Michigan and Illinois and north along the Bering shores.
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Brandon Mail June 16, 1887 says pottery and other atifacts exposed by flood in New York State pottery is of type found in western mounds so disproving the assumed separation between Indians and the moundbuilders

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B.C.

Mounds at Hatzig in the New Westminster area. Similar mounds can be found in various other parts of the western province (B.C.)

A member of the Historical and Scientific Society of Vancouver dug and found an old skull of distinctive shape that did not correlate with the skulls of the present-day Indians in the area. Also found a copper ring.
(Moose Jaw Herald, Nov. 2, 1894)

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author Russell Harper found remains of sophisticated Indian townsites on Rice Lake in the Peterborough area  estimated to have been inhabited 2000 years ago.
goods found that originated in Florida or Georgia coasts

Elaborate mounds also found. They are similar to those found in Ohio while pottery discovered, the earliest painted pottery to be found in Canada, is similar to that found in Massachusetts so the Ontario tribe was perhaps a intermingling of the two groups

Biggest townsite is on the present Hiawatha reserve of the Mississauga Indians and directly south of the present village of Keene, near the mouth of the Indian River.
Another site is on a farm owned by D. Humphrey.
Chronicle, September 11, 1952

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Canada has a Serpent Mound

Serpent Mounds National Historic Site of Canada, Otonabee -South Monaghan, Ontario, Canada

Aug. 14, 1906 Red Deer News talks of a call to protect a mound in Ontario, the only serpent mound in Canada in Otonabee Township, Peterboro county. Local historian says he does not accept the theory that the mounds of North America were the work of an extinct race.“All evidence goes to show that these mounds were built by the ancestors of our Indians and mounds have been constructed by the Indians within historical times.”

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Serpent Mounds in Ontario, the only known effigy mound in Canada.

Serpent Mounds, situated on a bluff overlooking Rice Lake near Peterborough, Ont, south of village of Keene, is the only known effigy mound in Canada. It is a sinuous earthen structure composed of six separate burial locations and measuring about 60 m long, 8 m wide and 1.5-1.8 m high. Excavation indicated that the mounds forming the effigy were gradually built up between 50 BCE and 300 CE. This would suggest that Serpent Mounds was a sacred place, visited periodically for religious ceremonies.

Although pieces of grave furniture were not plentiful, their distribution shows they were restricted largely to individuals of higher status within the community. Those individuals were buried either at the base of the mounds or in shallow, submound pits. The commoners were randomly scattered throughout the mounds' fill. From Canadian Encyclopedia

On Saturday, September 9, 1961, a provincial historical plaque commemorating the prehistoric Serpent Mounds will be unveiled in Serpent Mounds Park, County Road 34, Rice Lake, south of the village of Keene in Peterborough County.

This is one in a series of plaques being erected throughout the province by the Department of Travel and Publicity, on the advice of the Archaeological and Historic Sites Board of Ontario.

The unveiling ceremony was arranged and sponsored by the Peterborough Historical Society; Dr. Ralph Honey, president, was the program chairman. Speakers included: Professor J.M.S. Careless of the University of Toronto, a member of the province's Historic Sites Board; Mr. Keith Brown, M.P.P. (Peterborough); Mr. K.E. Kidd, Curator of Ethnology at the Royal Ontario Museum; Mr. T.E. McKay, president of the Serpent Mounds Foundation; and Mr. J.J. Slattery, Reeve of Otonabee Township. The plaque was unveiled by Mr. Ralph Loukes, Chief of the Rice Lake Indian Band.

The plaque reads:
THE SERPENT MOUNDS

The principal mound of this group is the only known example in Canada of a mound of serpentine shape. The earliest archaeological excavation on the site was carried out by David Boyle in 1896. Artifacts and skeletal remains were discovered, but the first comprehensive investigation was not started until 1955. The mounds, somewhat similar to those of the Ohio Valley, appear to have been built while the region was occupied by Indians of the Point Peninsula culture, and are thought to have been religious or ceremonial in nature. Numerous burials have been found in the mounds, which are estimated to have been constructed about the second century A.D.

Historical background

The prehistoric man-made mounds near the north shore of Rice Lake known as the Serpent Mounds are the only ones of their type known to exist in Canada, although there are also similar mounds in Adams County, Ohio. The main ridge of the Rice Lake mound is almost 200 feet in length and serpentine in shape; adjacent to it are several small circular mounds, commonly referred to as the "serpent's eggs."

The Rice Lake formations have been known to archaeologists since at least 1896 when Dr. David Boyle partially excavated them and published a report on his work. (Boyle was the first curator of the Provincial Archaeological Museum, which later became the Royal Ontario Museum.) Systematic investigation of the site began in 1955 when the Royal Ontario Museum, with aid from the Serpent Mounds Foundation and the Ontario government, initiated an extensive program in an effort to discover the nature and origin of the mounds.

Work was carried out during the summer months of the next few years and by 1958 a considerable number of prehistoric Indian burials had been discovered in the immediate vicinity, some twenty-one of these in the mounds themselves. While most of the graves contained little in the way of burial goods, two proved to be quite prolific. One of these included a cluster of forty-one disc beads as well as a turtle carapace and flint chips. Another contained the complete skeleton of a young man, a small animal effigy and shell disc beads.

There were numerous shell deposits in the vicinity and some decorated pottery shards recovered from the site seemed to indicate affinities with the Middle Point Peninsula culture. A charcoal sample collected in association with one of the burials was submitted to a Carbon-14 dating test, resulting in a tentative dating of 128 A.D.

While no definite conclusions have been drawn regarding the purpose of these ancient mounds, it is believed they were originally constructed about the second century A.D., and they were of religious or ceremonial significance to the people who built them.

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1906 A diamond, pottery and skeletons found in mounds in the Rainy River district and on the Seine River

40 miles up from where the Big Fork River empties into the Rainy River there are many mounds. A couple miles farther upstream, at a place called Big Falls is an ancient pottery works.
Ed. Bull., Aug. 17, 1906

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1908 Mounds in Manitoba investigated including Pilot Mound. no relationship between the moundbuilders and whites or the present-day Indians although there might be a distant relationship with the Indians.
Ed. Bull., Oct. 30, 1908

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1911 Near Sheep Creek gold mining camp 25 miles south of Nelson, miners found a prehistoric subterranean chamber carved out of the solid rock perhaps 10,000 years old,.smooth plumb walls 35 feet square A McGill University scientist says it was a mine, and he is aware of such remains of a prehistoric civilization all along the west Coast.  
Ed. Capital May 19, 1911, p. 3

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1916 Prehistoric barrows found at Rock Lake, Manitoba Bow Island Review, April 28, 1916

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Gateway Nov. 14, 1930 article entitled “Secret of the Gods” (by Mugwump) bemoans fact that students study ancient civilizations in the Old World but ignore the “twin continents” of the New World. He/she says perhaps South America was joined to Australia by a Pacific continent and to Africa by an Atlantic continent. And that it is likely that Chinese and Japanese individuals had knowledge of the Twin continents.

And says strange mounds have been discovered on the eastern edge of the Bering Sea

the totem poles and copper sun discs of BC appear to have connection with South American relics.

The magic swastika is found in both old and new worlds.

Mayans were of Indo-Chinese origin

similarity of statues in old Mayan city to those in Cambodia

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Mrs. Perren Baker wrote Prairie Place Names. It talks of cairns and two old rectangles composed of large rocks in the Old Man area of Alberta that gave its name to the nearby river. The Old Man was a mythical character who dug a channel for the river and lingered for a long time in this playground before venturing down to the open plains. Oyen News, Oct. 30, 1929

(Other pre-historic/historic cultural evidences in Alberta include
the diagrams at eponymous Picture Butte, Alberta (now destroyed) and
Writing-on-Stone Historic Site.

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1930s
the Spiro Mound in Oklahoma was opened, and the remains of a tall man dressed in armour with a treasure of pearls lying beside him is said to have been found. Said to be clear evidence that the Mound civilization had equivalent technology to Europe and Asia of the time, and support for the theory that there was one world civilization, with technology and cultural practises being diffused throughout the world, instead of the long-held beleif that the Americas were isoloated from the "Old World."
(My note: The recent arrival of Japanese Tsunami flotsam on the BC coast, unpowered and undirected, gives credence to the idea that through the ageless past groups and individuals made their way back and forth across the Pacific Ocean, some using the proximity of Russia Far East and Alaska to make relatively-easy shore-hugging voyages between the two continents.
That there were conections between the eastern and Western hemispheres is supported in a theory of an early-1400s-AD Chinese gold mine in Cape Breton (on the east coast of Canada!) extolled in Paul Chiasson's book The Island of Seven Cities, and in accounts of the far-ranging voyages of Chinese travellers 600  years ago, such as Gavin Menzies 2002 book 1421. Strangely, Menzie's book overlooks the evidence in pursuit of the same case presented in a book by Henriette Mertz (who is mentioned above) entitled Pale Ink, Two Ancient Records of Chinese Exploration in America, self-published in 1953. (Although overlapping in subject matter, and having identical letters their last names start with, which put the books side by side in alphabetical arrangement on the shelf in the bookstore, every one so far has preferred Menzie's book to Mertz's, a too-common spurning of sources of old knowledge in favour of new shiny presentations. Mertz's book is available at Alhambra Books and through ABEBOOKS.com for those interested in this overlooked gem.)
Neither Chiasson's book and Mertz's books nor their theories are mentioned in the Wikipedia entry for "Pre-Columbian Oceanic Contact." Maybe they are considered too far out there!)

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1950 Prehistoric Adena house discovered in the U.S.
June 8, 1950 Chronicle

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1950 Prehistoric hairpins and necklaces made from Florida shells and alligator teeth found in mounds in Ohio.
Gleichen Call, September 6, 1950

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1952 Mound and remains of a village discovered seven miles west of Brandon.
Crossfield Chronicle, Nov. 14, 1952

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Whiteshell Forest Reserve in SE Manitoba has boulder mosaics or “stone pictures.”
Farm and Ranch Review, Sept. 1, 1959

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Indians grave house was used in old days as a grave marker contained the things the Indian would need in the after life. 
Farm and Ranch Review, Dec. 1, 1952
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aside from mention of mounds in Ohio being used as hazards in gold courses, there is no other mention of “Indians AND mounds” from 1900 to 2000 in Alberta newspapers as of Jan. 2013 in Peel's Prairie Provinces website newspaper search

Much interesting information on "Sask. Archaeology" in the Saskatchewan Encyclopedia (on-line)