The Mound Builders were the people of three early Native American cultures, the Adena, Hopewell, and Mississippian, that grew up in what is now the central United States from between 500 B.C. and A.D. 1500.
They are called Mound Builders because of the most spectacular feature of their villages, enormous structures made by piling earth into huge mounds. Some mounds looked like high hills or pyramids. Others were carefully formed into geometric shapes, such as squares and circles.
Still another type, called effigy mounds, were made in the shape of animals. The objects buried in these mounds provide us with much of the information we know about these early people.
One of the first great works of the Mound Builders is the enormous bird-shaped mound at Poverty Point in present-day Louisiana. Built in about 1500 B.C., this mound measures 640 by 710 feet.