[MSN] Law provides few protections for Indian mounds

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Law provides few protections for Indian mounds
By Quintin Ellison
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When it comes right down to it, the good will of private landowners is 
often what stands between saving Indian mounds and losing these pieces 
of ancient history.

“There are no legal obligations regarding mounds on private property, as 
long as the owners don’t disturb any burials that might be there,” said 
Linda Hall, a state archaeologist based in Asheville.

In the case of Cowee Mound, preservation efforts by the Hall family 
ensured its survival. The family owned the mound for 175 years until the 
death of Katherine Hall Porter in 2002. The mound then passed to her 
husband, James Porter. He and his heirs worked with the Land Trust for 
the Little Tennessee and the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians to 
make sure that it would be protected.

Though there are other examples in Western North Carolina of private 
owners protecting mound sites, many have been lost. Hall said she’s 
aware of 15 mound sites west of Asheville. Of those, at least two have 
been excavated or graded to obliteration.

“Probably most mounds are on private property,” Hall said. “(Cowee 
Mound) is just so commendable, how the different organizations worked 
together. It is a great resource for the future.”

The law

North Carolina’s Unmarked Human Burial and Human Skeletal Remains 
Protection Act requires that anybody “knowing or having reasonable 
grounds to believe” human skeletal remains are being disturbed notify 
the county’s medical examiner. If the remains are discovered because of 
construction or plowing, those activities must cease immediately. Work 
can’t resume without the state’s go-ahead.

If the remains are archaeologically significant — not a modern skeleton, 
in other words — the state archaeologist’s office is in charge. State 
archaeologists have 48 hours to make arrangements with the landowner to 
either protect or remove the remains. At the end of the 48-hour period, 
the law states the chief archaeologist “shall have no authority over the 
remains” and can’t stop the resumption of work on the property.

In this area, the Eastern Band gets notified if state archaeologists 
determine skeletal remains are Native American. The tribe and state 
reach an agreement on skeletal analysis and disposition.

That’s about all that governs private landowners. Otherwise, state law 
leaves it to an individual’s conscience, urging people “to refrain from 
the excavation or destruction thereof and to forbid such conduct by 
others.”

Lost history

No one knows how many Indian mounds exist, or how many have been lost, 
noted Russell Townsend, tribal historic preservation officer for the 
Eastern Band.

Cyrus Thomas of the Bureau of American Ethnology attempted in the 1890s 
to catalogue mounds, but Townsend said many were never discovered and 
listed.

“I don’t know that an accurate count of mounds has ever been found,” he 
said.

Townsend said the tribe is currently protecting four mounds, plus 
working to help save more, including Spikebuck Town Mound and Village 
Site in Hayesville. Like Nikwasi Mound in Franklin, Spikebuck is 
publicly owned. And the Eastern Band owns and protects Kituwah Mound 
near Bryson City.

Both Kituwah Mound and Peachtree Mound in Cherokee County were 
significantly reduced in size from years of plowing.

What were they?

Mounds aren’t fully understood, but what is agreed is their service as 
focal points for towns and communities.

“They had religious as well as civil significance,” Townsend said. “You 
can see these purposes varying from region to region, culture to 
culture, and they evolved over time.”

Mounds weren’t necessarily used for burials, though they could be. And 
to further confuse things, platform mounds — with straight sides and a 
structure on top — were sometimes built on top of the more humped burial 
mounds, Townsend said.

The tribal preservation officer pinpointed the primary mound-building 
period as taking place during the Mississippian culture from about 900 
A.D. to 1650 A.D. They stopped being built shortly after contact with 
Europeans occurred.

Cowee Mound was the center of a large Mississippian community that 
evolved into a large Cherokee town, he said. Cowee served as the 
business capital of the Cherokee world.

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