Symbols of religion among the effigy mound building Native Americans

According to most definitions of religion, including the one we are using for our class, symbols play a key role in identifying a following as a religion. A religious symbol is something usually nonverbal within a particular culture, which comes to stand for something other than exactly what it is. For example, a cross in Christianity stands not only for an actual cross but one on which they believe their savior died for them.

Can the earthen effigies built by early Native Americans of what appear to be animals, men, and mixes of the two be considered symbols of a religion? Though we do not know everything about the effigy mounds and certainly don’t know exactly why they were created, much has been learned through excavation and study of these mounds with regard to what they could mean.

There are two major factors that point towards the religious meaning of the many mounds: the majority of them contain human remains, and they appear to be created in the shapes of beings. Do these two factors make them symbols of a religion? Regarding the remains that are interred, many rituals seem to have been done during the duration of the construction of the mound; red ochre was put in, bones were arranged with shells or with items of importance. Most likely the building of these mounds – since it took a while – was quite an event of some sort. This seems to indicate that the mounds are tombstones of a sort, and, the mounds were created in a shape that was seen as a guardian or a religious symbol – much as today graves are marked with angels or stars of David. This indicates that the animals or men of the mounds shape are indeed symbols for a religion; they are not merely animals but symbols of gods or guardians.

The location of these mounds is also poignant. Each shape appears to be located on the landscape in accordance with their form (water beings closer to water, sky beings higher up etc.) This, and the evidence that they are also positioned with the astronomical in mind, perhaps likens these mounds to churches or places of worship. Churches are often built on hills, to be closer to the divine and above the towns; they also have many aspects that also reflect an awareness of the stars or sun (stained glass windows, windows that at certain times of night show certain constellations). Similarly, the mounds are built such that their effigies are closest to their place of life, signifying that these were not just mounds but an attempt to interpret and gain a connection with the gods. This attempt at connection, along with the different shapes as burial places seems to bring them to the level of religious symbols, and therefore, promotes them as signs of religion in the early Native Americans.