Our Forgotten Indian Mound and the Bones of Giants

Mark Turner Images

There use to be an Indian Mound Elementary school when I was a kid in the town of Marion Ohio.  The school no longer stands and has been replaced by a playground.  I did not attend the school and always wondered if there was an Indian Mound anywhere in the area.  So we drove out one day to search for any mounds.  Its a sprawling residential part of town, and unless you have any reason for being there, you've never seen it.  So we were amazed when we found an area that is never talked about in any local tourism guides, and no one really speaks about in town; a well kept Indian mound and an enclosure.  There are no signs to designate the area and in fact people were riding their ATV's up it a little while before we got there.  

The mound that stands within walking distance of the now demolished Indian Mound elementary school.

I suppose if I asked the historical society they might have some information.  Is this Adena?  Is this Hopewell?  I do not know.  Further inspection shows what looks like some kind of archeological dig that took place some time ago.  The back half of the mound is gone and the enclosure nearby is small compared to those in Newark.

On top of the mound.

The concrete patch.

  

The 'L' shaped enclosure has been preserved.

 A few streets over is a street called Mound Street.  Though I have driven it a few times, I have never seen any mounds there.  If there were any, and I'm sure there must have been, they are long gone.  I use to wonder if the Lincoln Park hill was a mound, but have been told, and heard it growing-up, that it is left over dirt from construction in the area.  Always a danger for amateur mound hunters!

And speaking of Marion, when it comes to legends of the past, none is more strange than the little known following story that I only learned of in recent years.  

Evidence for the occupation of this region before the appearance of the red man and the white race is to be found in almost every part of the county, as well as through the northwest generally. In removing the gravel bluffs, which are numerous and deep, for the construction and repair of roads, and in excavating cellars, hundreds of human skeletons, some of them of giant form, have been found. A citizen of Marion County estimates that there were about as many human skeletons in the knolls of Marion County as there are white inhabitants at present!

The History of Marion County, Ohio 1883

I first read this from websites quoting Mary Sutherland's Giants of Ohio and the Mound Builders.  I highly recommend it as a string point for giants in the past.  I have no idea, and doubt that anyone will ever know where those giant human bones were found.  Maybe the above mound is very old?  These legends of giants in Indian lore date back to very distant times.  Giants aside, the fact that Mounds and the ancient Indian past of North America is never really taught to us in school, except that 'Columbus came here one day and that's that', is pretty sad, and does everyone living in a former sacred site a disservice.  "A citizen of Marion County estimates that there were about as many human skeletons in the knolls of Marion County as there are white inhabitants at present!"  We are all living in a haunted land.            



    
More Ancient American mysteries . . . 

Stonehenge Beneath Lake Michigan

Mound Park in Portsmouth Ohio

Indian Mound, Southern Marion Ohio, Late 1800's