Just about. Everything is packed away except the DISH and the internet antenna. It won’t take me long to hit the road in the morning for Tennessee. It’s also much quieter in the campground tonight as all of the weekend folks have taken leave. I think the deer are relieved as well. They’ve been walking up and down the roads, and in and out of the campsites like crazy this evening. Much to Emma’s consternation I might add.
After I was finished visiting Pickett’s Mill Battlegrounds yesterday morning, I headed a few miles away to the Etowah Mounds State Historic Site. Sorry to say, I lost the information booklet that I got there so now I’ll have to rely on my memory (a tricky thing at times) for tonight’s post.
I always thought Indian mounds were only burial places. Wrong again, Grasshopper! While one of the mounds in this ancient community was a burial place, the others were used by the top crust of their society to build their houses upon.
In this model you can see that there were several mounds. The tallest and biggest was for the chieftain. Archeologists found that there are four separate layers to that mound. The common folk lived in the mud huts around the village.
What remains today is a replica home, and three of the mounds. The largest is in the top left. The other two were smaller, and the one in the bottom right is the burial mound.
While the ancient ones lived here, their weaponry developed from mere poking sticks to blow guns to spears with wooden points to spears with stone points, and the bow and arrow.
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My mission for the afternoon was to pretend I was that chieftain, and climb the 130 steps to the top of the largest mound without looking too much like an invalid with the hitch-in-my-get-along. I made it, and the view was wonderful. That’s where I got the pictures of the other two mounds. There was a nice breeze on top, and the only thing I wondered about was how they got a mower up here to keep the grass so nicely cut. Of course, after enjoying the view, I had to descend those same 130 steps with that miserable hitch.
Once I got down, I saw this staff member on a mower so I flagged him down and asked how they kept the mounds so neatly trimmed. He had an interesting answer for me. It seems there is a well hidden path on one side of the mound that he uses to drive the mower up to the top. But what about the neatness of the sides of the steep mounds? It turns out they use 12 inmates from a local prison, each with a weed whacker to take care of the sides. It takes those inmates three days to whack the mounds on foot. I guess if you are incarcerated it’s a privilege to get outside even if it is hard work. The grounds of this historic site were immaculate, and I took advantage of the very nice picnic grounds.
Well, I had time traveled through 1000 A.D. to 1864 to 2012 by the time I got home yesterday afternoon. It was quite the ‘historic’ day me.
However, when I got home, I found some things never change!
Thanks for stopping by… talk to you later, Judy
