Mound Builders Village

Mound Builders Village. . , Side 1 , Pioneer archeologist Dr. W.H. Over recorded that the prehistoric builders of the nearby Sherman Park burial mounds lived in a 10-acre village on a lower terrace south of this location. The village extended west from 26th Street and Kiwanis Avenue to the Big Sioux River. , These builders were of the Late Woodland culture (300 to 1000 A.D.), and the village was a permanent year-round settlement with a farming economy. People of this period were the first in the area to use the bow and arrow and to grow maize (corn). They continued ritualistic customs of earlier period, including use of mounds for interment. Burial mounds , Side 2 , represented an elaborate form of ceremonial conduct. , In 1922 Stringham Brothers contracted to grade the Minnehaha Country Club property at this site. Their plows turned up many old fireplaces and refuse heaps. Debris found included pottery fragments of the Woodland style, flint arrow points, knives, scrapers, stone implements of several types, and crushed buffalo bones. These ancients had secured food by primitive farming and hunting and by the gathering of edible plants berries, acorns, and other nuts. , After inspecting the site, Dr. Over observed "...it is evident that the village had been occupied for a long time."