Sarah Gimbel, age 15, of Dayton, Ohio, for her question:

WHY ARE THEY CALLED 'MOUND BUILDERS'?

Mound Builders was a name given to a number of different groups of prehistoric Indians who lived in North America long before Europeans colonized the land. They received the name because they built various kinds of mounds of earth and stone.

Archaeologists tell us there are two types of mounds: burial mounds and pyramidal, or temple mounds.

Mounds can be found in the region between the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Lakes and between the Great Plains and the Atlantic Ocean. The Mississippi Valley is where most of them are located. One of the most famous, called the Great Serpent Mound, is found in Adams County, Ohio.

Burial mounds were the first type to be built by the Indians of eastern North America. With bodies of the dead were buried tools, weapons and various ornaments. The mounds were cone shaped and ranged from a few feet in height to the gigantic Miamisburg Mound in Ohio, which is 250 feet in diameter and 68 feet high.

In Wisconsin you'll find many effigy mounds which were built in the shape of such animals as serpents, buffaloes, bears, deer and birds. Ohio's Great Serpent Mound fails into this class. Looking like a snake, it zigzags at a height of about four feet for more than 1,300 feet. At the snake's head is an oval mound which may represent either an egg or frog about to be swallowed.

At first historians thought the mounds were built by a highly civilized nation that had been destroyed by invading Indians from the north. They now know that the Mound Builders were actually the ancestors of modern Indians. The term Mound Builder is no longer used to refer to an entirely different civilization of Indians.

The practice of building mounds stopped soon after Europeans arrived in North America because Indian cultures started to disintegrate at this time.              

So called Middle Mississippi Indians built some of the most outstanding temple mounds between the years 1300 and 1700. They were farmers who lived in palisaded villages. They had tools, weapons and utensils made of wood, bone, stone, shell and copper. Shells and stones also were used in their ornaments.

We know that the mounds represent the labor of large numbers of people. This tells us that these Indians must have been able to plan and build such large earthworks because they had an advanced way of life and also a good type of government.

The most spectacular burial mounds were the work of the Hopewell and Aden& Indians, who were responsible for the Great Serpent Mound. From items found buried in their mounds we know that they carried on trade with Indians as far west as the Rocky Mountains, as far south as the Gulf of Mexico and as far east as the Atlantic Ocean.

They made their living by fishing, hunting, farming and gathering wild foods. They were also the finest sculptors in eastern North America.