In the Beginning...

Businesses

Churches

Citizens

City Services

Groups & Clubs

Parks & Recreation

Records & Documents

Crimes, Deaths & Disasters

Media & Communications

Schools

Official Networking Sites

Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio History

The Mound Builders

Long before the Indians lived a race we call the Mound Builders. There are varying beliefs on when they where around. Most agree the time fell between 3000 BC to 200 AD. 
The Mound Builders built mounds of earth and stone. In Ohio alone, they built ten thousand mounds of earth and in fifteen hundred different places they built walls of earth and stone around spaces sometimes as large as 300 acres.

Anthropologists believe that the Mound Builders known as "Hopewell" and "Adena" have created the mounds here in the Cuyahoga Valley and surrounding area. 
The Hopewell Culture followed directly after the Adena culture and was a continuation of the Adena culture with some elaboration.

ADENA CULTURE
The Adena culture began near the Ohio River Valley area . They lasted from 1000 B.C. to around 1 A.D. This culture is most famous for its practice of burying its dead in large burial mounds and its people have often been termed the "Mound Builders". Most of what we know about this culture comes from examining what was buried with the dead.
The culture's main identifying features, the burial mounds, most are conical in shape and vary greatly in size. Building the mounds required immense effort and often the mounds were used for several burials over the course of several decades. Only important Adena were buried inside of the mounds, inside of log tombs. The tombs were constructed by placing the logs on the ground for a floor. Then they placed poles in the ground, constructing a platform, and then roofing that with bark. Because of the weight of the earth on top and the rotting of the timbers, most tombs ended up collapsing shortly upon construction. Burials included cremations, decapitations and mutilated people, and mass burial sites. Often the body would be placed in the grave on its back. After some time the body would decompose. At this time the bones would be painted with red dye. Less important Adena were cremated. The body would be burned in a circular clay basin, and its ashes would then be placed within the grave complex. Many items were buried with the dead including copper bracelets, gorgets and celts as well as various shells.
Many tools have also been found within the burial mounds. Stone hoes, flint blades, projectile points, and stone scrapers are among the most common items found. The typical projectile point was long, straight, and did not differ from the Archaic prototype by that much. Shells that were found within the burial complex also served a specific function. They used the shells as spoons and ornamental objects. Bone and antler were used to make combs, beads, and gorgets. A few copper axes have been found, but most copper artifacts were for ornamental purposes. Tobacco pipes have also been found within the grave sites. These pipes are carved from stone and are 20cm in length.
The pottery made by the Adena peoples was not buried with the dead. It was made form the grit of crushed limestone, and somewhat plain looking. Designs found on the pottery were usually made from fabric, although some do have a nestled diamond shape pressed in to them.
The diet consisted of local freshwater fish and clams as well as local flora and fauna such as deer, elk, and rabbit and hickory nuts, walnuts, and gooseberries.


HOPEWELL CULTURE
Rather than a single society or people, the Hopewell might best be thought of as a system of interaction among a number of different cultures in the Eastern Woodlands of North America. This interaction peaked between 200 BC to 500 AD. They were very powerful and influential over their area. 
Hopewell people lived and farmed along rivers and major waterways. "Hopewellian peoples were among the first fully committed agriculturalists. Beginning about AD 1, agriculture became the central focus (not just a supplement to hunting and gathering) of many Hopewellian subsistence economies. These earliest farming systems were based on indigenous seed-bearing annuals: sunflower, squash, chenopodium, knotweed, marsh elder, little barley and maygrass were among the most important plants. Maize, if present at all, was only a minor crop and did not become a staple until about AD 800-1000, when it largely replaced the earlier indigenous crops." - Bret J. Ruby, an archeologist at the Hopewell Culture National Historic Site
From about 200 BC to AD 500, the Valley area was a focal point of the prehistoric Hopewell culture. The term Hopewell describes a broad network of beliefs and practices among different Native American groups over a large portion of eastern North America. In Hopewell burial mounds a circular platform of clay was constructed at the center of the mound. Ashes of the deceased were placed in the concave top of the platform, and included at times were fine pottery and stone tools. All of this was covered in layers of sand and dirt. The Hopewell Mound Builders then capped the mound with stones and pebbles.
Found within these burial mounds are carved animals on utensils and pottery used for feasts and religious rituals. The establishment of trade routes can be seen in the materials they had that came from as far away as the Rocky Mountains, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Gulf of Mexico. They used copper quite frequently, as well as iron and silver. But while they were skilled metal workers, they never mastered the techniques of smelting ores. Their metals were all derived from either native copper or silver nuggets or iron-rich meteors. After 400 AD most of the most noticeable aspects of the Hopewell culture started to fade away.

The smaller Star Mound Botzum mound, with the larger conspicuous and conically shaped Botzum mound beyond. These mounds have not yet been thoroughly examined. In the early 1900's the historian Olin reported seeing faint signs of a star-shaped earthwork, then nearly obliterated by plowing. This could well place this site as an "effigy" type earthwork, very rare in northern Ohio. -Joseph D. Jesensky-