ANGEL MOUNDS
Site of palisaded Middle Mississippi Indian village occupied circa 1500 A.D. This 450 acre site includes eleven man~made mounds, town plaza and village area for a population of about 1,000. Excavated by the Indiana Historical Society, 1939~1965.
Erected by Indiana Sesquicentennial Commission. 1966
The Angel Mounds Story
For over a thousand years, Southwestern Indiana was home to many Native Americans. Today, Angel Mounds State Historic Site is nationally recognized as one of the best preserved prehistoric Native American sites in the United States. From 1100 to 1450 A. D., a town on this site was home to people of the Middle Mississippian culture, who engaged in hunting and farming on the rich bottom lands of the Ohio River. Several thousand people lived in this town protected by a stockade made of wattle and daub. Because Angel Mounds was a chiefdom (the home of the chief) it was the regional center of a large community that grew outward from it for many miles.
This settlement was the largest known town of its time in Indiana, but the Mississippian people eventually deserted it. No one today knows why. Fortunately, preservation and archaeological efforts at Angel Mounds State Historic Site offer a glimpse into this highly developed culture of the distant past. For 60 years, this living museum has told the story of one pre-contact Native American culture on the Ohio River.
Characteristic of their culture, the Mississippian people at Angel built mounds in their town. In chiefdoms like Angel, the high-status families lived and were sometimes buried on top of some of the mounds. Priests and chiefs carried out ceremonies and rituals on the large temple mounds that dominated the town. Some of the mounds at Angel have been excavated by archaeologists, and they contain evidence of being many things: site of the chief's residence, religious and burial locations, garbage dumps, even natural elevations.
The term "Mississippian" refers to an American Indian culture that began around 800 A. D. It eventually covered the Southeastern United States from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic. People of this culture occupied the site at Angel from as early as 1100 A. D.
As aforementioned, there remain many working theories as to why the Native Americans left the Angel site. They began leaving around 1400 A. D., and within 50 years, the town was vacant. It is possible that supporting thousands of people over the decades reduced many essential elements, such as firewood and building materials, neccessary for living. The soil may have become depleted by centuries of corn growing, despite the annual silt-depositing floods. The people may have refused to follow their leaders, or other groups might have moved into the valley and competed for hunting territory and farmland. Natural disasters, like earthquakes, might have caused the people to move. There is no evidence of great violence, such as a war, and maybe peaceful alliances meant that a large, fortified town like Angel was no longer necessary.
Roving bands of Shawnee, Miami, and other groups moved into this area about 1650 A. D., long after the Mississippians abandoned the town at Angel. Later, white settlers farmed the land. Much like the Native Americans, they were lured by the rich soil and temperate growing season. One of the families to settle in Southwestern Indiana was headed by Mathias Angel. He had a farmstead on the site of Angel Mounds from 1852 until his death in 1899. His brothers owned adjacent farms, and the land remained in the Angel family until 1938. Angel Mounds State Historic Site is named after this family.
In 1938, the Indiana Historical Society purchased 480 acres of the Angel family property to protect the historically valuable site. Eli Lilly donated the money for the purchase. In 1946, the Historical Society gave the property to the State of Indiana, and in 1965 gave excavation rights to Indiana University. The original purchase was augmented by Elda Clayton Herts' donation of 20 acres containing an early Woodland mound.
WPA workers under the direction of Glenn A. Black began scientific excavations in the 1930s, and Indiana University has continued archaeological research there since 1945. The Interpretive Center was constructed in 1972.
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