The Great Serpent Mound, located in Southern Ohio, is one of the most recognizable effigy mounds in American archaeology. Experts have not yet determined its origins, but many archaeologists believe that it was constructed about 1,000 years ago, significantly later than the Hopewell culture. Although it is not part of the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks, additional efforts are underway to have it added to the UNESCO World Heritage list.

The descendants of American Indian Nations removed from their Ohio homelands reflect on the sacredness of ancient earthworks – and say they have much to teach us even today.

By Aaron Rovan

Stacey Halfmoon felt the crisp air whisk across her face as she made her way beneath the canopy of barren tree branches. She was in Highbanks, one of the Columbus Metro Parks. Originally from Oklahoma, Halfmoon had grown to love these trails, where she often came to feel grounded and meditate. The lyrics of Bob Marley, one of her mother’s favorite artists, came to mind.

Don’t worry ‘bout a thing,
‘cause every little thing gonna be all right.

Halfmoon’s mom had a particular fondness for classic rock. The Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, Chuck Mangione, Neil Young: These artists seemed to play on a loop in their Oklahoma home.

Now, as Halfmoon treaded a trail strewn with colorful leaves, she sang Bob Marley in her head and felt the warmth of her mother.

It was just the comfort she needed.

Her mother had passed away weeks earlier in Oklahoma. Halfmoon, a citizen of the Caddo Nation, had returned to be with family and her tribal community as they buried her. Now, she was back in Ohio, where she had moved to serve as the first Director of American Indian Relations at the Ohio History Connection. She knew that in this role, she could help the organization steer a course toward more meaningful and richer relationships with Tribal Nations affiliated with Ohio.

So on that particular day, instead of feeling isolated at her home half a country away from where she was raised, she drove to Highbanks to visit her ancestors.

They had been exactly here, in this spot that overlooks the Olentangy River from a high bank, thousands of years ago. They loved this area so much that they built a crescent-shaped earthwork – a long, low ridge that stretches nearly a quarter mile. It is almost invisible unless you know to look for it.

And there, on that hallowed ground, she found solace both spiritual and physical. There, she sensed the presence of ancestors, a feeling she had encountered at other ancient sites scattered across the nation.

It is why she visited Highbanks – to feel a connection to something beyond herself. And she did.

Halfmoon’s experience resonates with many other Native Americans who have visited the sites of Ohio’s earthworks. From hidden mounds, like the one in Highbanks, to more visible and celebrated ones like the Great Circle and Octagon in Newark, these ancient structures bring hope to many Native Americans.

Dr. John Low, Director of The Ohio State University’s Newark Earthworks Center and a citizen of the Potawatomi Nation, recognizes the power of these ridges of earth.

“They inspire a sense of awe and pride in Indigenous people,” he said.

In his work stewarding the Newark earthworks site, Low encounters the earthworks daily – driving to work, going to dinner. Yet they never disappear as background scenery to him.

“I’m inspired every time I see them. It never fails,” he said. “I often just stare at them, because they are so cool.”

But many non-Native Ohioans fail to see the earthworks for what they are: a remnant of a magnificent, intelligent culture that populated the American continent over 2,000 years ago. These structures are geometrically precise. They reflect the complex movements of the sun and moon. And they have the potential to connect humans across location and time.

For centuries, these earthworks have been viewed by white settlers as little more than piles of dirt. Certainly, these monumental ceremonial centers can appear deceivingly simple or, as in the case of some sites, even hidden. But as Brad Lepper, senior archaeologist for the Ohio History Connection’s World Heritage Program, observes, they are majestic.

“The Hopewell earthworks are piles of earth in the same way that the Parthenon is a pile of rocks,” Lepper said. “We’re blinded by our expectations of what ancient monuments should look like. We think they should be made of stone, and they should go up into the sky.”

Unlike the Greek Parthenon or the Roman Colosseum – monuments that are strikingly tall and stand out against their surrounding environment – the Hopewell earthworks are splayed massively across the landscape. The Newark site, for example, originally covered 4.5 square miles, most of that being open space enclosed by earthworks ridges. The Great Circle, perhaps the most iconic of the earthworks, is 1200 feet in diameter, which is the equivalent of four football fields.

The materials they are constructed from also factor into their seeming invisibility. They are made of earth – not stone, marble or metal. The Hopewell people, a precursor civilization to today’s diverse Native American Nations, used earth because it is an element that was sacred to them. Low is careful to say that the Hopewell did not build with “dirt” but rather with “earth.”

“Earth is a relative, a grandparent,” Low said. “It’s a deep relationship.”

He uses a phrase: We walk on the bones of our ancestors.

“We say that with pride, because we’ve been here since the beginning,” Low said. “We can’t step anywhere without stepping where our ancestors stepped.”

The late summer march to Cincinnati had been brutal.

It was 1843, and the Wyandot were the last Tribe to be removed from the state. They followed others like the Miami, the Shawnee, the Seneca, the Ottawa and others in being forced to relocate to the Indian Country of Oklahoma or other plains states.

Reverend James Wheeler, a Methodist, had volunteered to accompany the Wyandot Tribe on their trek from the northwest corner of Ohio to Cincinnati. He recorded the experiences in a journal.

White settlers, he noted, gathered to gawk at the Native people and then steal from them as they slept. Tribal members swooned in the July heat. An elderly Native woman fell ill a few days before reaching Cincinnati.

Ten days after departing from northwest Ohio, the group had finally arrived on the banks of the Ohio River.

As the boat’s whistle sounded and the crew prepared to steer a course south, the elderly woman who had fallen ill may have looked wistfully out across the water. Perhaps she couldn’t bear to leave the place she had called home. Within moments of boarding the boat, she took her last breath.

The Wyandot had built homes on this land. They had cultivated crops, and they had harvested fauna from the forests. And they had also built thriving economic centers before white settlers forced their removal.

Native Tribes weren’t primitive, says Rebecca S. Wingo, Associate Professor of History and Director of Public History at University of Cincinnati.

“They had built up economic infrastructure,” Wingo said, “until white settlers wanted it.”

UNESCO Earthworks

In late 2023 – after a decades-long effort led in part by Chief Glenna J. Wallace of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe – eight earthworks sites in central and southern Ohio received the prestigious designation of inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage list.

The UNESCO committee recognized the outstanding universal value of these sites, calling them highly complex masterpieces of landscape architecture. Said UNESCO: “They are exceptional amongst ancient earthworks worldwide not only in their enormous scale and wide geographic distribution, but also in their geometric precision.”

These eight Ohio earthworks are now UNESCO World Heritage sites:
• Octagon Earthworks, Newark
• Great Circle Earthworks, Newark
• Hopeton Earthworks, Chillicothe
• Mound City, Chillicothe
• High Bank Works, Chillicothe
• Hopewell Mound Group, Chillicothe
• Seip Earthworks, Bainbridge
• Fort Ancient, Oregonia

European settlers recognized the economic opportunity on the land that the Wyandot – and other Tribes – inhabited. Through political negotiations and violence, all Native people were systematically removed from Ohio. Not all Ohio Tribes were removed as orderly as the Wyandot. Some, like the Miami of Indiana, were corralled at gunpoint, Wingo said – and couldn’t take anything with them.

Stories of forced removal are often left out in conversations about Native Americans in Ohio, replaced instead with the history of the earthworks. Through an exhaustive study of Ohio’s educational curriculums, Wingo found that schools prioritize the ancient stories of the earthworks rather than the more recent horrors of forced removal.

“The (earthworks) narrative,” Wingo said, “is comfortable. It reinforces the idea that Ohio was vacant land, ripe for settlement.”

Along with the loss of land, Native Tribes also lost many of their oral traditions about the earthworks. That is likely because the vast majority of Indigenous people died within a year of contact with Europeans, according to Low.

“How well would any community survive,” Low asked, “when 95% die within a year?”

Archaeologists like Lepper have worked for decades to fill that knowledge gap by excavating the earth and proposing theories about the uses of the structures. Lepper surmises – as many Natives know for certain – that the earthworks were sacred sites.

“I think these places are pilgrimage centers,” Lepper said. “This was an almost continent-spanning religious movement.”

Contemporary Native communities recognize this tradition and treat the earthworks as hallowed land. To many, the sites represent hope, community, cooperation and resilience.

Most descendants of Native groups who were forcefully removed have not returned to Ohio, but many Indigenous people do live in the state. Although most are not members of one of Ohio’s federally recognized removed Tribes, these individuals see the value of the earthworks for the broader Native community.

In Cincinnati, Urban Native Collective (UNC) is a community group dedicated to supporting local Native individuals. Briana Mazzolini-Blanchard, the organization’s Executive Director and a member of the Tugong Clan of CHamoru people who are native to Guam, has dedicated her work to education, advocacy and support for Natives in the Cincinnati area.

“Ohio’s earthworks are reminders of Indigenous resilience over the past 2,000 years,” she said. “They are important to all Native nations.”

Her colleagues at UNC explain the importance of the earthworks to their own identities as Native Americans. Homer Shadowheart, an Anishinaabe/Susquehanna descendent who grew up in Kentucky and is UNC’s Office Manager, believes that the earthworks point to a larger spirit of connection.

“You realize how much a part of something bigger you are,” Shadowheart said, “and how infinite that connection is.”

Cate Donahue, UNC’s Community Outreach Manager and an enrolled member of the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa, grew up in Cincinnati but recognizes the importance of the earthworks for Natives who live far outside Ohio.

“Sacred sites echo each other,” she said. “They bring about an appreciation for the natural world, and they make you feel connected to the landscape of Ohio. It makes me think of how I’m connected to my ancestors in that way.”

Chief Glenna J. Wallace, Chief of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe in Oklahoma, surveyed the Ohio crowd in front of her.

Hundreds of people stood shoulder-to-shoulder to celebrate the opening of Great Council State Park in Xenia, near Dayton. The new park is situated on the site of Old Chillicothe, a Shawnee village that survived multiple attacks by white settlers until the early 19th century when the Shawnee were removed.

“Ohio is our homeland,” she said, her voice projecting over the crowd. “And we appreciate all the work being done here to educate people about us.”

“But remember,” she paused for emphasis: “Nothing about us, without us.”

That sentiment echoes across time, space and tribal affiliation. The spirit of cooperation is at the heart of the story of the earthworks.

“One of my favorite aspects of the earthworks is how egalitarian the Hopewell were,” said Low. “The earthworks were all built by consensus.”

Low is referring to the belief, as evidenced by the kinds of houses the Hopewell built and the kinds of food they ate, that ceremonial leaders lived the same kind of life as every other community member.

While some individuals may have directed the work of building the earthworks, the Hopewell did not have kings or rulers who lived separate from the community. Instead, those leaders resumed their regular life with the other community members when they left the earthworks.

“The earthworks were probably built on a single person’s or a small group’s vision,” Low explained. “They had to be able to communicate that vision to other people. They had to have charisma to get other people excited about it. That was maybe a level of cooperation we don’t see anymore.”

The earthworks stand as a testament to the spirit of cooperation among the people that built them, and they offer inspiration for a more cooperative future that includes American Indian Tribes in decisions about how to proceed in honoring and sharing their past and present.

Halfmoon, Low and Mazzolini-Blanchard envision a future where Indigenous people are invited into decision-making processes – one in which they are acknowledged for their deep understanding of the land and the environment.

“The earthworks have so much to teach us,” Mazzolini-Blanchard said. “The future is Indigenous. And it should be that way because Indigenous people are keepers of the world’s biodiversity.”

Halfmoon – who is now back in Oklahoma and just earned her master of laws in Indigenous Peoples Law from Oklahoma University – said the earthworks stand as pillars of what can be produced through cooperative labor.

“We carry the past with us into the future,” Halfmoon said.

“That is why the places of our ancestors are respected and revered. What is possible when everyone, including Tribes, work together?”

The Ohio Country Podcast

In the years just before Ohio became a state in 1803, there was cooperation between new settlers and the Indigenous people of Ohio – an exchange of ideas and technology.

But over time, the new settlers wanted more land. Conflict and death followed. Ohio Tribes were pushed onto reservations further and further north in the state. Then, the U.S. government imposed forced removals.

While those Indigenous people have died, their stories have not.

The Ohio Country, a podcast series from WYSO funded by Ohio Humanities, shares the perspectives of Native men and women whose ancestors were forced from their Ohio homeland. In the series, journalists Neenah Ellis and Chris Welter also interview teachers, artists, scholars, historians and others about the lands above the Ohio River known as The Ohio Country.

Listen at WYSO.org or your favorite place for podcasts.