Earth Lodge - Use By The Mississippian Culture

Use By The Mississippian Culture

A number of major Mississippian mound centers have identified earth lodges, either beneath (i.e. preceding) mound construction or as a mound-top building. Sequential constructions, collapses, and rebuilding of earth lodges seems to be part of the mechanism of construction for certain mounds (including the mound at Town Creek Indian Mound and some of the mounds at the Ocmulgee National Monument). In Kanabec County, Minnesota the Groundhouse River flows. According to Newton H. Winchell in The Aborigines of Minnesota, the river was named for the earth lodges of the Hidatsa, who lived in the area before being driven westward to the Missouri River by the Sioux. The Hidatsa lived in wooden huts, covered with earth.