Description
The prehistoric Native Americans of the Hopewell culture lived in east-central North America between about 200 bce and 500 ce. They lived mainly in what is now southern Ohio. The Hopewell Indians are best known for the earth mounds they built. The Hopewell tradition, also called the Hopewell culture and Hopewellian exchange, describes a network of precontact Native American cultures that flourished in settlements along rivers in the northeastern and midwestern Eastern Woodlands from 100 BCE to 500 CE, in the Middle Woodland period. The Hopewell tradition was not a single culture or society but a widely dispersed set of populations connected by a common network of trade routes.
Language
Hopewell Culture because the mound builders left no written language or recorded histories and no extant tribes were the clear descendants of these people who lived so long ago.
Culture
Like the Indians of the Adena culture who came before them, they built large mounds in which they buried the bodies of important people. They also created earthworks in geometric shapes such as circles, rectangles, and octagons. Some objects placed with the burials were made from materials found outside Wisconsin. Some of these items were traded from great distances. A black shiny glass-like stone called obsidian, used to make projectile points, was traded from Wyoming. Marine shells, used for decorations, came from the Gulf Coast. Some of the items made from exotic materials that were used for rituals or placed in burials included large knives, pipes and copper axes, beads and earspools.