The Etowah Indian Mounds and village site, rising on the north bank of the Etowah River near Cartersville, is the largest and most important Indian settlement in the Etowah Vallut. The flat-topped earthen knolls were used between 1000 and 1500 A.D. as a platform for the home of the priest\chief, temples and mortuary houses. The earliest published description of a visit by white people to the Etowah site is found in a journal kept in the early 19th century by the Rev. Elias Cornelius. In 1817, led by a group of Cherokees, Cornelius penetrated the underbrush along the Etowah Tiver to stare in wonder about the imposing earthen mounds. The Indians who guided the minister were also uncertain about the significane of the mounds. Scientific archeology ultimately revealed the actua life and culture of the people who lived here long ago.
Etowah, the center of political and religious life in the valley, was home to the chiefs who directed the growth, storage and distribution of food. Here the inhabitants of the area gathered for great religious festivals. At its peak, several thousand Indians may have lived in the fortified town. The village was surrounded on all sides, except the river section, by a wood post palisade and a deep ditch. Together, the ditch and palisade formed a defensive boundary around the 54-acre village area of the Etowah site. Today, the site is bounded on the east, north and south by a dry moat and two pits.
Within the central village, the town was arranged compactly around the mounds. The people of Etowah built their houses using a post framework, clay-plastered walls and probably grass, thatch or cane mat roofs. A clay fireplace was built in the center of the earthen floor and smoke escapes through a hole in the roof.
Several earthen platforms were grouped around two public squares in the town. Using baskets full of earth from borrow pits near the ditch, the Indians constructed the mounds. A ramp stepped with packed clay led to the tops of the mounds where temples or residences stood. Mound A, the largest, is approximately 63 feet high, covers three acres at its base and is a half-acre at its top. The second largest, Mound B, is 23 feet in height, while Mound C, the burial mound, measures 19 feet in height. Only Mound C has been excavated at Etowah. Mounds D, E and F were residential mounds for revered village leaders. According to excavations, these mounds were six to eight feet high with a wattle-and-daub type structure on the flat-topped mound summit.
Etowah Indians, skilled in many crafts, used copper, shell, cane, flint, wood, clay and bone to make hundreds of different items. Pottery was one of the most important Etowah crafts; wood was carved into masks, ornaments and rattles; copper was shaped into decorative ornaments; and shells were made into bead necklaces. Baskets and mattings were woven from cane, and cloth was made from plant fiber, hair and feathers. Sewing implements, weaving tools, hairpins and fishhooks were cut from bone, and stone was used for axes, arrow points and knives.
The Etowah settlement, considered by archeologists to be a Mississippian site, had contact with other Indian communities in the Southeast. Marine shells from Florida, flint from Tennessee, copper from North Georgia and pottery made near the Mississippi River all found their way to Etowah. Decorations on pottery and religious objects are typical of a wide area of the Southeast.
Cultivation of crops provided the Indians with one of their most important food sources. Most of the valley was used for corn production, but the Indians also grew beans and pumpkins. On wooded hills lining the valley, they gathered wild nuts, fruits and roots. They did not raise animals for food because hunting and fishing provided their meat. Excavation of refuse areas indicates that deer and turkey were important game; mussels and fish were obtained from the river.
In the 1880's, the Bureau of American Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution recovered many spectacular artifacts from Mound C and the village. During the late 1920's, Phillips academy of Andover, Massachusetts, made three excavations, uncovering exotic and interesting specimens which were distributed to various U.S. museums. Material from Etowah is on exhibit at the U.S. National Museum and the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, New York. Archeologists from both institutions felt that Mound C had been completely explored.
In 1953, the Georgia Historical Commission purchased the Etowah property from the Tumlin family which had owned it since 1838. Archeologists have completed excavation of Mound C, and limited excavation has been done in the village area. Mound C was the site of the mortuary temple and excavations there yielded information about burials as well as social organization. The village excavations provided information on the Indians who lived on the site after the mound building period and after contact with European cultures.
In 1965, the Etowah Mounds Archeological Area was designated a National Historic Landmark by the U.S. Department of the Interior under the Historic Sites Act of 1935. This award is reserved for sites possessing exceptional value in commemorating and illustrating the history of the United States of America. The Archeological Area is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places of the U.S. Department of the Interior.
From July to September 1994, a team of archeologists from West Georgia College was commissioned by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources to conduct a survey of the Mound A ramp to measure the impact of a new stairway to be constructed on the mound. The archeologists unearthed the original clay steps built by the Etowah villagers approximately 500 years ago. It was previously known that the prominent earthen ramp on the front of Mound A was used for steps, but over the years the original form was hidden by accumulated earth and wear.
Archeologists exposed the clay steps with impressions of logs that once lay on the tread of each stair. The staircase was approximately 17 feet wide. The excavations resulted from repair work done on the modern-day steps used by visitors to reach the top of Mound A. Once the necessary information about the original stairway was gathered, recorded and documented, the steps were again covered and the new stairway was built in a manner that left the original steps undisturbed.
