Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky and Tennessee Shell Mounds Were Early Dakota Sioux Hopewell
Pre-Hopewell are called the Shell Mound Tradition. Shell mounds
are found most extensively in southern Ohio and Indiana and in
northern Kentucky. In Louis F. Burns book “The History of the
Osage” he writes, “Recent archaeological findings seem to
indicate that both the Dhegiha Sioux and Chewere Sioux were the
Indian-Knoll and Shell Mound culture of Kentucky and Tennessee.”
Skeletal remains found in these shell mounds are identical to the
later Hopewell showing that they had inhabited the Ohio and Wabash
Valleys for hundreds of years. The shell mounds in the interior
reveal Laurentian type artifacts, however, they were different skull
types than the shell mounds in the coastal regions, the Dakota Sioux
having long heads and the Laurentian/Adena round.
According to
Native Americans, the only people that have claimed heredity to the
Hopewell mounds and earthworks are the Dakota Sioux Nations. The
descendants of the Hopewell are the Dakotan or Siouan family
comprised of these known Nations. The Winnebago, Omaha, Osage,
Issati, Mandan, Missouri, Dakota, Iowa, Ottoe, Hidatsa (Crow),
Blackfeet, Ogala, Ponka, Assinboin, Akansea, Kansa and others. There
is also evidence that the Cherokee and the Iroquois may have a common
origin with the Dakota. No records and only one tradition exist of
war between the Iroquois and the Sioux, west of the Alleghenies, but
both of these people maintained bitter and hereditary war against the
Algonquin. The prehistoric Siouan people were neighbors in the Carolinas
of the prehistoric Iroquois, and the two people more or less allied
in language and having similar customs.
