 The Etowah Indian Mounds and village historical site, can be found
on the north bank of the Etowah River near Cartersville, Georgia.
This is the largest and most important
Indian settlement in the Etowah Valley. The flat-topped earthen knolls were used
between 1000 and 1500 A.D. as a platform for the home of the priest\chief, temples and
mortuary houses.
The name "Etowah" is said to be a corruption of the Indian word
"itawa." In the two instances that the word "Etowah" occurred in
Georgia's Cherokee lands, the whites converted it to "Hightower." The
significance of "itawa" is not known.
The earliest published description of a visit by white people to the Etowah site is found
in a journal kept in the early 19th century by the Rev. Elias Cornelius. in 1817, led by a
group of Cherokees, Cornelius penetrated the underbrush along the Etowah River to stare in
wonder at the imposing earthen mounds. The Indians who guided the minister were also
uncertain about the significance of the mounds. Scientific archeology ultimately revealed
the actual life and culture of the people who lived here long ago.
The Etowah mounds and village site symbolized a society rich in culture and ritual.
Radiocarbon dating indicates that some of the cultural events occurred between 950 and
1450 A.D. The earthworks and palisade probably were constructed between 1250 and 1550 A.D.
Etowah, the center of political and religious life in the valley, was home to the chiefs
who directed the growth, storage and distribution of food. Here the inhabitants of the
area gathered for great religious festivals. At its peak, several thousand Indians may
have lived in the fortified town. The village was surrounded on all sides, except the
river section, by a wood post palisade and a deep ditch. Together, the ditch and palisade
formed a defensive boundary around the 54-acre village area of the Etowah site. Today, the
site is bounded on the east, north and south by a dry moat and two pits.
Within the central village, the town was arranged compactly around the mounds. The people
of Etowah built their houses using a post framework, clay-plastered walls and probably
grass, thatch or cane mat roofs. A clay fireplace was built in the center of the earthen
floor and smoke escapes through a hole in the roof.
Several earthen platforms were grouped
around two public squares in the town. Using baskets full of earth from borrow pits near
the ditch, the Indians constructed the mounds. A ramp stepped with packed clay led to the
tops of the mounds where temples or residences stood. Mound A, the largest, is
approximately 63 feet high, covers three acres at its base and is a half-acre at its top.
The second largest, Mound B, is 23 feet in height, while Mound C, the burial mound,
measures 19 feet in height. Only Mound C has been excavated at Etowah. Mounds D, E and F
were residential mounds for revered village leaders. According to excavations, these
mounds were six to eight feet high with a wattle-and-daub type structure on the
flat-topped mound summit.
Etowah Indians, skilled in many crafts, used copper, shell, cane, flint, wood, clay and
bone to make hundreds of different items. Pottery was one of the most important Etowah
crafts; wood was carved into masks, ornaments and rattles; copper was shaped into
decorative ornaments; and shells were made into bead necklaces. Baskets and mattings were
woven from cane, and cloth was made from plant fiber, hair and feathers. Sewing
implements, weaving tools, hairpins and fishhooks were cut from bone, and stone was used
for axes, arrow points and knives.
The Etowah settlement, considered by archeologists to be a Mississippian site, had contact
with other Indian communities in the Southeast. Marine shells from Florida, flint from
Tennessee, copper from North Georgia and pottery made near the Mississippi River all found
their way to Etowah. Decorations on pottery and religious objects are typical of a wide
area of the Southeast.
Cultivation of crops provided the Indians with one of their most important food sources.
Most of the valley was used for corn production, but the Indians also grew beans and
pumpkins. On wooded hills lining the valley, they gathered wild nuts, fruits and roots.
They did not raise animals for food because hunting and fishing provided their meat.
Excavation of refuse areas indicates that deer and turkey were important game; mussels and
fish were obtained from the river.
The inhabitants of the Etowah village were part of a much larger group known as the
Mississippian culture. The Mississippian period, named because the beginnings of the
culture were found along the Mississippi River, began in approximately 1000 A.D., long
before the Creek or Cherokee tribes populated in the area.
In the 1880's, the Bureau of American
Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution recovered many spectacular artifacts from Mound C
and the village. During the late 1920's, Phillips academy of Andover, Massachusetts, made
three excavations, uncovering exotic and interesting specimens which were distributed to
various U.S. museums. Material from Etowah is on exhibit at the U.S. National Museum and
the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, New York. Archeologists from both
institutions felt that Mound C had been completely explored.
In 1953, the Georgia Historical Commission purchased the Etowah property from the Tumlin
family which had owned it since 1838. Archeologists have completed excavation of Mound C,
and limited excavation has been done in the village area. Mound C was the site of
the mortuary temple and excavations there yielded information about burials as well as
social organization. The village excavations provided information on the Indians who lived
on the site after the mound building period and after contact with European cultures.
In 1965, the Etowah Mounds Archeological Area was designated a National Historic Landmark
by the U.S. Department of the Interior under the Historic Sites Act of 1935. This award is
reserved for sites possessing exceptional value in commemorating and illustrating the
history of the United States of America. The Archeological Area is also listed on the
National Register of Historic Places of the U.S. Department of the Interior.
From July to September 1994, a team of archeologists from West Georgia College was
commissioned by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources to conduct a survey of the
Mound A ramp to measure the impact of a new stairway to be constructed on the mound. The
archeologists unearthed the original clay steps built by the Etowah villagers
approximately 500 years ago. It was previously known that the prominent earthen ramp on
the front of Mound A was used for steps, but over the years the original form was hidden
by accumulated earth and wear.
Archeologists exposed the clay steps with impressions of logs that once lay on the tread
of each stair. The staircase was approximately 17 feet wide. The excavations resulted from
repair work done on the modern-day steps used by visitors to reach the top of Mound A.
Once the necessary information about the original stairway was gathered, recorded and
documented, the steps were again covered and the new stairway was built in a manner that
left the original steps undisturbed.
Bibliography:
Dickens, Roy S. and McKinley, James L. Frontiers in the Soil, 1979. Frontiers Publishing
Company, LaGrange.
Hudson, Dr. Charles, The Southeastern
Indians, 1976. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville.
Jennings, Jesse S. and Norbeck, Edward,
Prehistoric Man in the New World, 1971. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Larson, Lewis H., "Archeological
Implications of Social Stratification at the Etowah Site, Georgia," in Approches to
the Social Dimensions of Mortuary Practices, 1971. Organized and edited by James A. Brown.
Memoirs of the Society for American Archeology No. 25, pp. 58-67.
Morehead, Warren K., Etowah Papers, 1932.
Yale University Press, New Haven. For Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts.
Thomas, Cyrus, Report on the Mound
Explorations of the Bureau of Ethnology, Annual Report, Volume 12, pp. 292-311, 1894.
Bureau of American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
Waring, Antonio J., Jr., The Waring Papers,
1967. Edited by Stephen Williams, Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, and
University of Georgia Press, Athens.
Wauchope, Robert, Archeological Survey of
Northern Georgia, Published as American Antiquity, Vol. 31, No. 5, Part 2, July 1966,
pp.251-262.
White, Max, Georgia's Indian Heritage, 1988.
Wolfe Associates, Roswell.
The Bartow History Center, Cartersville, Georgia
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