History of The Midwestern United States - Prehistory

Prehistory

American Indians first came to North America through the Beringia land bridge between Asia and North America anywhere from 12,000 to 40,000 years ago. Genetic and archeological evidence suggests that these peoples are most closely related to peoples now inhabiting Siberia.

Prior to European colonization in North America, Native Americans had developed a large population in this vast land, estimated as between 1 million to 18 million, scattered across all of North America. There were many different tribes which belong to several main cultures and societies. In Midwestern America, the American Indians had experienced three main periods before the arrival of Europeans in the 17th century.

Paleoindian cultures was the earliest one, occupied North America, with some restricted to the Great Plains and Great Lakes of the modern United States and Canada, as well as adjacent areas to the west and southwest from about 12,000 BC to around 8,000 BC. These people moved into North America when the continental glaciers of the last great ice age, the Wisconsin glaciation, began to melt.

Following the Paleo-Indian period is the Archaic period (8,000 BC to 1,000 BC), the Woodland Tradition (1,000 BC to 100 AD), and the Mississippian Period (900 to 1500 AD). Archaeological evidence indicates that Mississippian culture traits probably began in the St. Louis, Missouri area and spread northwest along the Mississippi and Illinois rivers and entered the state along the Kankakee River system. It also spread northward into Indiana along the Wabash, Tippecanoe, and White Rivers. The Mississippians suffered a tremendous population decline about 1400, coinciding with the global climate change of the Little Ice Age.

The Mississippi period was characterized by a mound-building culture. The namesake cultural trait of the mound builders was their construction of large, truncated earthwork pyramid mounds, or platform mounds, and other earthworks. These burial and ceremonial structures were typically flat-topped pyramids or platform mounds, flat-topped or rounded cones, elongated ridges, and sometimes a variety of other forms. Domestic houses, temples, burial buildings were usually constructed on the tops of such mounds. Prehistoric mounds are common from the plains of the Midwest to the Atlantic seaboard, but only in this general area was there a culture that regularly constructed mounds in the shape of mammals, birds, or reptiles.

Among the most well known are found at Effigy Mounds National Monument in northeastern Iowa, the largest known collection of mounds in the United States. The monument contains 2,526 acres (10.22 km2) with 206 mounds of which 31 are effigies. The others are conical, linear and compound. Woodland period peoples built mounds from about 500 BC until the early European contact period. When the American prairies were plowed under by European settlers for agriculture, many mound sites were lost.

They were built as part of complex villages that attracted more dense populations, with a specialization of skills and knowledge. The best-known, flat-topped pyramidal structure, which at over 100 feet (30 m) in height is the largest pre-Columbian earthwork north of Mexico, is Monks Mound at Cahokia near Collinsville, Illinois.

The mound building cultures included many different tribal groups and chiefdoms, involving an array of beliefs and unique cultures over thousands of years. The general term covered their shared architectural practice of earthwork mound construction. This practice, believed to be associated with a cosmology that had a cross-cultural appeal, may indicate common cultural antecedents.

Mississippian peoples in the Midwest were mostly farmers who followed the rich, flat floodplains of Midwestern rivers. They brought with them a well-developed agricultural complex based on three major crops – maize, beans, and squash. Maize, or corn, was the primary crop of Mississippian farmers. They gathered a wide variety of seeds, nuts, and berries, and fished and hunted for fowl to supplement their diets. With such an intensive form of agriculture, these culture supported large populations.