Who Where the Mound builders?
As far back as 2500 BC and up to 1500 AD there existed a culture that extended throughout much of eastern North America, including the Midwest, the Southeast, the Northeast and the Eastern Great Plains. These were the Mound Builders. This time period included what is called the Woodland Tradition and later was replaced by other cultures such as the Mississippian in the Southeast and the Plains Village Tradition on the Great Plains. Much of the lifestyle of these precontact societies will remain a secret, mostly due to the fact that there is no written history and the first direct European contact found the mound societies had been on the decline for at least a century and a half. Diseases also hit the societies hard. A smallpox epidemic may have reached the inland populations within a generation after Columbus landed in San Salvador. These depleted Mississippian people found themselves facing alien invaders and slavers. Mounds are greatly scattered, found as far north as Aztalan (WI),
