The American Indian Cultural Center & Museum is honored to partner with The Oklahoman in presenting the Native American Heritage Educational Supplement that will be distributed to schools around the state this month. We have selected Moundbuilders as the theme. What can we learn from the moundbuilders?
Oklahoma has a rich legacy of moundbuilding beginning many centuries ago with indigenous people dating to around 500 A.D. Many American Indian tribes today are descendants of these progressive and complex cultures. Regulators of early trade, these innovative people flourished as an extension of the Mississippian moundbuilders east of the Mississippi River. For more than 3,000 years, the civilizations associated with the mounds were part of a highly sophisticated culture, one that can be compared to the great civilizations of Rome, Greece and Asia.
The name "moundbuilder” comes from the unique earthen mounds they built throughout their territory. It is from these mounds that we have learned most of the moundbuilder cultural information we know today. In fact, the Spiro Mounds in eastern Oklahoma are considered one of the most important archaeological discoveries in North America and were considered a major center for trade and intertribal movement from across the continent.
41° 