Mound Builders and Woodland Culture
Some six hundred to eight hundred years ago Mound Builders inhabited parts of our region. These Mound builders are believed to be the first people to leave their mark with evidence of their activities in the James River Valley. We know of these early inhabitants because of the visible burial mounds and the village sites they left behind.
Where the sites haven't been layered by the wind, depositing soil or covered by later villages, the surface shows circular or oblong depressions and also show variations in the natural vegetation. When the ground has been cultivated pieces of pottery, chipped stone, bone, storage pits, dumps, and other pieces showing human activity are found.
Mound Builders were a pottery making people. Their pottery was mainly plain with simple decorations. The pieces of pottery suggest that small bands or family groups lived here in simple, impermanent lodges.
The Mound Builders built a long rectangular structure for a house. Inside was a walled-pit that was from two and a half to five feet deep. The house could be from 30 to 65 feet long. These lodges were built so they were north to south with the entrance on the south end.
From the artifacts we learn that these people got their food by hunting in their valley bottom area. They also gathered fruits and wild vegetables but probably had no maize until later.
Eleventh century settlements show signs of being more stable, because of indications of the cultivation of maize and other domestic plants. Mound Builders carried dirt in baskets and buffalo skin aprons to the east side of the James River. The ground was flat and therefore great for gardens of corn and squash.
Near the Diversion Dam on the James River, are burial grounds. There are mounds located about 6 miles north of Huron where the Shue Creek enters the James River and southwest of Lake Byron. Three woodland burial mounds are found about 16 miles north of Huron.