By Trace Hentz, blog editor
As many of you know, written history has problems. Who wrote it is the biggest problem.
I travelled to Ohio to see the mounds years ago, and was truly disappointed to see the Shawnee and other tribes were not consulted in the visitor center for the Hopewell site. The Serpent Mound was not open to the public when I went to see it.
The State of Ohio has more than 70 Indian mounds, burial sites of the Adena and Hopewell tribes--the "mound builders"--who inhabited central and southern Ohio from roughly 3,000 BCE until the 16th century.
Many mounds were destroyed, as we'd expect. Some did survive.
Above: The Hopewell Cultural National Historic Site is actually five separate sites, all located in Ross County, not far from Chillicothe. The sites, which include the Mound City Group and the Seip Mound, include a variety of conical and loaf-shaped burial mounds dating from the Hopewell Civilization (200 to 500 AD). There is a visitors center with information on the Hopewells and artifacts from the mound excavations. (I went through it and was shocked, with dismal theories of who the PEOPLE were, and actually are...)
Please listen to this 12-part podcast to understand the tribes who were removed and the history THEY tell...
"We'll put the experiences of Miami, Shawnee, Wyandotte, and other American Indian people at the center of a refreshed version of the state’s complicated past and undecided future."
https://www.wyso.org/podcast/the-ohio-country
** Episode 2
In this episode, we start in Xenia.
Shawnee history has often been riddled with harmful stereotypes and presented inaccurately in southwest Ohio, from the outdoor "Blue Jacket" and "Tecumseh" dramas to the historical fiction books by famous local author Alan Eckert.
In episode two, we unpack why it is important to question things you may have taken as fact if you grew up in Ohio.
We also look at initiatives like Great Council State Park and Caesar's Ford Theatre, which make it easier to learn Ohio's history from a more accurate perspective that includes Shawnee voices.
Dispelling the Blue Jacket myth
One of the persistent myths around the Shawnee leader Blue Jacket is the belief that he was a white man originally named Marmaduke Van Swearingen. Genetic testing at Wright State University in 2006 proved that Blue Jacket was Indigenous. However, Shawnee people always knew that BlueJacket wasn’t an adopted European settler because his descendants lived in their communities. The BlueJacket last name is still common among the federally recognized Shawnee tribes today.
Where was Tecumseh born?
There is a strong consensus among Shawnee scholars that the Shawnee leader Tecumseh was born near the site of modern-day George Rodgers Clark Park in Clark County, Ohio. According to multiple sources, that's where Tecumseh himself said he was born.
For example, Duncan McArthur, a military officer and Federalist and National Republican politician from Ohio, shares in his account of traveling with Tecumseh, Blue Jacket, and Roundhead (Wyandotte) from Greenville to Chillicothe in 1807 that when passing the remnants of the Shawnee Village Pe'qa, along the Mad River, "the Tecumseh" noted that he had been born there, northwest of the Mad River.
Local legend has led to the myth that Tecumseh was born at Oldtown, near where the newly constructed Great Council State Park sits today. Some Kentuckians also believe that Tecumseh was born somewhere in what is now their state. Other non-Native historians have posited that Tecumseh was born near modern-day Chillicothe, Ohio.
Land of the Devil Wind
According to The Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma and The Shawnee Tribe, the legend that the Shawnee call, or ever called, the area around modern-day Xenia, Ohio, the "land of the devil wind" is false.
Additionally, the idea of, and a word for, the judeo-Christian "devil" does not exist in the Shawnee language or traditional religion.
When Ohio became a state in 1803, there were seven Indigenous tribes living within its borders. They were the Shawnee, Wyandot, Miami, Ottawa, Lenape or Delaware, Seneca, and Cayuga. But less than 50 years later, they were all gone. They'd been systematically removed.
MORE ON OHIO MOUNDS:
https://www.tripsavvy.com/ohios-fascinating-indian-mounds-753018
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please: Share your reaction, your thoughts, and your opinions. Be passionate, be unapologetic. Offensive remarks will not be published. We are getting more and more spam. Comments will be monitored.
Use the comment form at the bottom of this website which is private and sent direct to Trace.