A farmer in Kansas showed me something last week that changed how I look at Native American burial mounds.

I was out near Salina helping a guy clear some land for a new barn. He pointed at this grassy hill and said 'that's a burial mound from the Hopewell culture, about 2,000 years old.' I almost laughed it off but then he showed me arrowheads and pottery shards he'd found nearby. Turns out these mounds get plowed over all the time because nobody reports them. Has anyone else run into locals who know way more than the official records show?

2 comments

2 Comments

rosejackson5d ago

I counted maybe six mounds on that farm alone, all low and grassed over like the one he showed me, and the farmer knew every single one by name from his granddad's old stories. The problem is the state doesn't keep good records on private land, so these guys just plow around them and move on without telling anyone. It makes you wonder how many hundreds of sites are just sitting there under cornfields, known only to the old-timers who grew up working that dirt.

viola_cooper625d ago

Used to think the whole burial mound thing was overblown until I saw it myself too. @rosejackson is right about the old-timers keeping track better than the state does. The farmer I talked to pointed out faint outlines of three mounds I would've just called bumps in the field, and he had a whole mental map passed down from his granddad. Made me feel pretty foolish for ever doubting how much history gets quietly preserved.