The Eminija Mounds

The Eminija Mounds, the largest and most numerous burial mound group in South Dakota, were built by Native Americans of the Late Woodland Period and may date from 500 to 1000 A.D. The original group consisted of at least 38 dome-shaped burial mounds. They were scattered irregularly for nearly a mile along the edge of the Big Sioux River flood plain northwest of this spot. It is supposed the builders carried thousands of baskets of dirt to form each mound. The original height of the mounds is unknown. They are now three to four feet above ground level and the largest of the mounds are from 60 to 110 feet in diameter., Today, only 15 mounds remain substantially intact. Some have been totally destroyed by artifact hunters, while others have been leveled by agricultural cultivation and natural erosion. In years past there have been numerous digging assaults on the mounds by amateurs. Sometimes they used destructive methods including horse-drawn scrapers and dynamite while searching for artifacts., These sharply defined, highly visible mounds were first visited, mapped and named in 1860 by A.J. Hill, a St. Paul geographer. Nine of the mounds have been excavated, the first in 1869 by Dr. J.F. Boughter, a Fort Dakota surgeon. In 1883 A.H. Stites, who later became mayor of Sioux Falls, excavated the largest mound which, at that time, was ten feet high. He reported boulder outlines of a turtle and two large fish on opposite sides of the mound. These effigies have since disappeared., Professional survey groups found skeletal remains of at least 78 humans. All original burials were below ground level, generally in the center of the mounds. Searchers found a few artifacts in association with the burials, including objects of bone, red ochre, varied ornamental beads, disks made of local and marine shells and a few ceramic pot shards in Woodland patterns. W.E. Myers of the Bureau of American Ethnology excavated several mounds in 1921 and believed there may also have been intrusive burials by both Ponca and Omaha Indians. All excavation studies of these mounds have been partial and exploratory. Much remains to be learned about the people who built them, their methods of construction, their burial practices and the artifacts that accompanied the burials., In 1986 through the vision and generosity of landowners Wendell and Eva Shafer and Easement for Historic Preservation in perpetuity was filed to protect the remaining 15 mounds. The easement requires that the surface area must remain completely undisturbed as a cultural and historic resource for the people of this region.