Thursday, March 11, 2010

Dickson Mounds

Dickson Mounds is dig site about 2 hours away from Nauvoo. There is another bigger site very close to St. Louis. It's always interesting to learn little pieces of history, both ancient and modern. 8 of us missionaries went there on our p-day and had a great day. Hope you enjoy this little travel through the barriers of time. Religion played a huge part in these early dwellings. They built temples (much like the pyramids of Mexico) and they had a high priest shown above. They also worshipped the fiery serpant, much like those in early Mexico. We found it most interesting how they also had a place of three earths. They described the one as being the sun, the moon and the stars. Our guide was not LDS, so he didn't understand why we found that so interesting. Even though many of the plain and precious truths were distorted, they none-the-less showed that they once had been taught the doctrines of truth.
At the dig, they found a preserved dwelling. I was amazed when I saw this replica that they could live in a straw house in the middle of the winter here, but our guide assured us that the homes were quite cozy. They had found fire pits in the middle of the home and it indicated they cooked and kept warm by those fires. They also found many that were burned out, which indicated that they weren't that safe.

This is a model, one of many at the museum. They actually have a canoe that was dug up from the early inhabitants, but I didn't get a picture of it, but this does give you some what of an idea of the method of travel. It wasn't the Mississippi River boats.


One of the men who was with the group made the comment, you notice that they added the idea of conflict when white men were introduced into the picture. They have a lot of pictures of what they think the society must have looked like based on what they have dug up.



I was hoping to get the explanation, but I didn't, as you look to the top of the photograph, you see a kind of hill. This is an Indian burial ground from the Mississippi Indians. This is a dig site where they are learning about the cultures that lived here in earlier days. We were hoping it had some evidences of the Book of Mormon, but it was dated about 800-1300AD. The higher the mound, the more important to the tribe the individual.




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