Mind Body Earth Connection

To this day effigy mounds continue to evoke our curiosity. Questions remain about the basic fact of who built them, and why? While these questions remain somewhat un answered there are a few things about the ancient peoples that we know(or can assume in an educated way). In earlier times, in order to survive the Native Americans  “adapted to resource rich environments by developing new hunting and gathering strategies, as well as a number of technological innovations”. The Gertz definition states “Religion is a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence”. To survive, native peoples had to adapt to their respective environments on objective level by doing necessary things to survive such as hunting and gathering, as well as inventing new appliances to make their daily lives easier. While we do not completely understand the spirituality of the natives, I have come to believe that If adaptation was a factor in one half of their lives(surviving) why wouldn’t it be a big factor in the other half(spirituality)? Going off what we do know, before the time of effigy mounds, the dead were buried then later re-buried in “Feasts of the Dead” . These large spiritual proceedings functioned to re-unite the dead with other dead family members as well as other members of the community, reburying the bones in the same place after certain period of time. This was believed to re-unite the spirits of the dead and ultimately make their time better because they would be amongst one another(buried in the same place). I believe the mounds, serve a quite similar purpose as these earlier burial sites. As expressed in the readings “ the construction of the mounds reflect the elaboration of rituals surrounding death and the desire to create visual and symbolic links among human beings, the land, and the supernatural world”. Moving along further, an R. Clark Mellam quote states that “effigy mound ceremonialism represents the ancient ideology of earth”. I believe that he effigy mounds formulated a conception of the important harmonious co-existence between the real and supernatural world as well as a symbol for the consistent adaptation to both survive and also maintain an appropriate level of respective spirituality.