An Odd Pastime

[Ninurta]

Not likely as the Adena and later Hopewell were in this area at that time. The later mound builders was the Fort Ancient Culture which built Fort Ancient and Serpent Mound (maybe?). The Mississippian Mound Builders predate them all but supposedly none of these were descended from one another despite all of them liking to build mounds.

I've read that some folks think the Shawnee descended from the Fort Ancient culture, but I don't believe that. Fort Ancient was in southern Ohio, Eastern Kentucky, and western West Virginia, localized to that area with some bleed-out into adjacent areas like where I live. In contrast, the Shawnee were always wanderers, and spent a good deal of their formative time in the southeastern US. I don't think they arrived in the Ohio Valley until the late 1600's or early 1700's. Black Hoof claimed to have been born on the Gulf Coast of Florida before his band started wandering back north to land in Ohio.

The Fort Ancient culture spread out along the Tug and Levisa forks of Big Sandy, which is how some of their artifacts got into this area. I live in Virginia, on Levisa Fork of Big Sandy. It happens that some of the Fort Ancient territory coincides with later Shawnee turf, but I don't believe that represents descent - more likely it represents replacement.

I think it likely that the Cherokee descended from one of the Mound Builder cultures. Some of their mounds can be found to the south of here, and de Soto mentions Mound Builders in what is now Cherokee turf in 1541, recent enough to the historical Cherokee to make that link for me at least.

The Juan Pardo expedition into the Carolinas around 1567 also mentions town mounds, particularly one at Joara (de Soto's "Xuala") which has been found at Morgaton NC.

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