I recently learned that there are tens of thousands of prehistoric Native American burial, effigy, and ceremonial mounds in the United States’ Northeast, Southeast, and Midwest states. At least 70 are in my home state of Ohio, and they date back as far as 3000 years ago—built by communities of Native Americans which have been named the Adena, Hopewell, and Fort Ancient cultures.
Notable among these is the Serpent Mound, located in south central Ohio about 75 miles east of Cincinnati and the suburban village of Glendale where I grew up.
Serpent Mound, located in southern Ohio, USA, 75 miles East of Cincinnati.
The Serpent Mound is said to be the largest effigy mound in the United States, effigy meaning a representation of a living being.
It’s a quarter-mile-long curving and coiling snake-like mound of earth, with, apparently, an egg in its mouth. It’s been an Ohio State Park since 1919 and a National Historic Landmark since 1964. Yet I knew little beyond the term, likely learned in grade school, Mound Builders.
Who were the people who built the Serpent Mound, and what did it mean to them? I’m grateful that because of the class Anthropology Is about You and Everyone, taught by Dr. Arnold Perey, I am finding out more about them, and it makes for large respect.
I believe that these early people, living here long before the continent was discovered by Europeans, wanted to make sense of the world they were in, and that their greatest desire was to like the world through knowing it, just as ours is today. I believe they were trying to make sense of the contradictions in themselves and the world, and their mound building and cultural legends show that this principle of Aesthetic Realism stated by Eli Siegel is true:
“The world, art, and self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites.”
Who Built the Serpent Mound?
There is disagreement about how old the Serpent Mound is, and what culture built it—whether it is the Adena people of 3000 to 2000 years ago, or the more recent Fort Ancient culture of about 1000 years ago. Numerous excavations have not found artifacts in the Serpent Mound, but Adena artifacts have been found in burial mounds nearby.
Maps of Investigations of the Serpent Mound
An Adena tablet found in downtown Cincinnati shows similarities to the Serpent Mound in its curved shapes.
What is called the Adena Pipe Man was found about 46 miles northeast of the Serpent Mound in Chillicothe, Ohio. He’s said to be 2000 years old, and honored as the Official Ohio State Artifact.
Adena Pipe Man, Official Ohio Artifact
Carved from stone, I think this figure is beautiful in the way it puts together strength and grace, is both firmly fixed and energetic. This is very much achieved through the world’s opposites of straight line and curve. The rotund curves of his muscular body are somewhat like the curves on the tablet and the Serpent Mound. His upright, rectangular shape is fairly rigid, but defined by his gracefully curving and square shoulders, his straight and rotund arms, and his equally well-shaped legs. His legs are bent at the knees, which give the figure motion. There are the corners of a strong square made by his two large ear loops and the circular forms of his shoulders below. I love, too, the way his headdress drapes down the back of his head, and his feather bustle, lovingly shaped, a decoration that remains to today in Native American dance costumes!
From his headdress to his well-defined toes, and in the expression in his cheeks, eyes, eyebrows, nose, and mouth, there’s a graceful tension between the straight line and curve, the square and circle, that gives this man energy, movement, life! (please click on image to enlarge)
A Sacred Object Honors Self and World
This figure is the bowl of a pipe which once was fitted with a long stem. I learned from Dr. Perey that the pipe is a sacred object. When a pipe is smoked traditionally among a group of people, they hand it off to one another. This occurs before a ceremonial or a meeting. Each person takes in the smoke six times and puffs it out in the six directions: to the four winds—North, South, East, and West—and up and down, to the Sky and Earth. In each of these directions dwell the Spirits that provide what the people need to live. The smoke as it disappears into the air sends a message to these spirits. The smokers are pledging to speak truthfully to each other, which consciously encourages the very best in them.
We Are Individual & Related: No Borders
We can see similarities between the Adena Pipe Man and Mayan artifacts, three shown here; they were contemporaries for perhaps more than a thousand years.
On the topographic image of North America below we see an estimation of the various thriving populations of Central and North America in the 1st century BC—the Eastern Woodland People are the Adena. In Southern Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize, are the Mayas.
North American Forest Peoples, 1st Century BC
There were no borders—Ohio and Mexico are one continuous land filled with the rich sameness and difference of humanity. We can be sure there was movement, trading, intermixing, influence across the millenia. It doesn’t mean they always got along: like people today, they wanted and needed to know about the fight in them between contempt and respect for the world described by Aesthetic Realism.
This giant earthworks represents a big feeling its builders had about a living being’s relation to the entire world. It has been described as a calendar, because the Serpent’s head aligns perfectly with the Summer Solstice sunset, and its three central curves align exactly with the Winter Solstice at sunset and sunrise, and the Equinox at sunset.
Serpent Mound’s alignment to sunset, sunrise, and equinox
These men and women hunted and gathered food and also, I’ve read, planted squash, pumpkins, gourds, sunflowers, and maize, and these alignments show an exact knowledge of the Earth’s seasonal changes that meant life itself to them.
Life and Death, Day and Night, Earth and Sky
Quite a number of archaeological and anthropological researchers have tried to understand the meaning of the Serpent Mound. They tell us that the Great Serpent is part of many Native American legends known today. This is a photo of Shawnee Historic Marker at the Serpent Mound that tells one story.
And there is this explanation, written by archaeologists William F. Romain and F. Kent Reilly:
The Great Serpent of Native American legend is associated with the journey of the deceased person’s soul, the star constellation Scorpius, and the Lower World…. As explained by Reilly: The Beneath World Spirit [Great Serpent] was able to function in both the Beneath Realm and the Celestial Realm because, for many groups of American Indians, the night sky was both seen and understood to be the Beneath World, which rotated up from the east to become the night sky at the setting of the sun in the west.
In this description, the opposites of life and death, day and night, earth and sky become one as the Beneath Realm of The Great Serpent rotates up to become the Celestial Realm, and the brilliant light of day becomes the dark black star-lit night sky.
A snake seems nearly one with Earth as its whole body is touching the very ground. The curves of its body and its closeness to earth were clearly honored by these early persons.
We Need to See This: Respect for the Land
Native Americans across the continent, hundreds of years ago and today, have been and are shocked at the idea anyone thought they could own any part of the land personally, because the Earth is sacred, the mother of all living things.
Another account titled “Ohio’s Serpent Mound—An American Indian Story Written in the Earth” by Ben Barnes, Chief of the Shawnee Tribe and Dr. Brad Lepper, Archaeology Curator at Ohio History Connection, begins:
In April of [2021], former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum told the Young America’s Foundation that before Europeans arrived in America there was ‘nothing here.’ This astonishing claim echoes the response given by former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau to First Nations’ leaders who said that the land belonged to Native people. Trudeau replied, ‘I don’t see it written anywhere that the land is yours.’ Upon hearing this claim, Deborah Sparrow, a member of the Musqueam First Nation in Canada, thought to herself, “It is written in the earth. The evidence is everywhere that we have lived in the land. Anywhere that we open the earth, so are unveiled the messages from the past.”
A magnificent Earthwork has come to us as a message from the past, which depicts how a snake, a being so different from ourselves, was honored, seen in relation to the whole world—the Sun and Sky and Seasons. I end with the words of Chief of the Shawnee Ben Barnes, who writes:
When you visit Serpent Mound…recognize that American Indians consider it to be a sacred site and we ask you to treat this remarkable place as you would any cathedral, synagogue, or mosque.
From his headdress to his well-defined toes, and in the expression in his cheeks, eyes, eyebrows, nose, and mouth, there’s a graceful tension between the straight line and curve, the square and circle, that gives this man energy, movement, life! (please click on image to enlarge) 
