Most people do not know that for 5000 years, until as recently as the 18th century, the Ohio and Mississippi valleys were home to well organized, highly advanced civilizations. American Indians built huge geometrical structures to precisely related dimensions across distances of hundreds of miles. They lived in cities such as Balbansha, near present-day New Orleans, that were filled with carefully planned buildings, plazas, and streets. And they walked on highways like the Great Hope Road, a causeway for religious pilgrims that was begun in the 13th century. In describing their discovery by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and other Founding Fathers, this book holds a mirror to distant and recent ancestors, as well as to deeply ingrained misconceptions about the past of the American continent.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Library Journal
Kennedy, an architectural historian and director of the National Park Service, examines how certain of the Founding Fathers-particularly Washington, Jefferson, and Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin-set out to create a nation free from the prejudices and superstitions of Europe and how they became aware that they missed a great opportunity in the West. He uses their reactions to the mound architecture of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys as the filter for their views on the status of Native Americans and blacks. He also reviews the rationales others used in explaining away the mounds and considers why the mounds were built in the first place. Solidly grounded in archaeological and historical sources, this book requires some effort on the part of the reader to follow Kennedy's argument; it will be most useful to those already well versed in early American history and archaeology. Recom-mended for specialists.
Stephen H. Peters, Northern Michigan Univ. Lib., Marquette
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Stephen H. Peters, Northern Michigan Univ. Lib., Marquette
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Kennedy, director of the National Park Service, does better in exposing the prejudices of whites who came across the monuments of prehistoric America than in elucidating the mysteries embodied in these New World Stonehenges. An estimated 30 million Native Americans died of European or African diseases during the century following the conquistadors' appearance in the Western Hemisphere. They left behind significant traces of sophisticated cities, roads, and burial grounds in Memphis, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and elsewhere in the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys. Later explorers and soldiers beheld these relics--which included bits of antiquities, earthen mounds and various geometrical shapes carved into the landscape--with wonder, confusion, and obtuseness. Kennedy (Rediscovering America, 1990, etc.) perceptively analyzes how attempts to preserve and interpret Native American arts and architecture often foundered on the ingrained prejudices of even supposedly enlightened whites. (Thomas Jefferson, for example, was slow to shed his belief that Indians were incapable of architectural achievement.) Jeffersonians and Jacksonians found it easier to deprive Native Americans of land if they could deny that the Indians had a culture worth saving. They failed to follow the lead of such respectful figures as Jefferson's Treasury secretary, Albert Gallatin, described by Kennedy as "the first American statesman to employ the evidence of ancient American architecture to justify exertions to redeem the Republic from racial prejudice." The American mania for development, combined with dismissive scholarship that credited Indian achievements to fair-skinned "Welshmen" who supposedly discovered North America in the Middle Ages, led to a cavalier attitude toward Native American artifacts. By 1948, 90% of the earthen Indian architecture noted in a Smithsonian report 100 years earlier had been lost. Best read as an exploration of colliding cultures rather than an examination of the riddles left behind by Native American builders. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Misleading title that reveals much more than hidden cities...,
By
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This review is from: Hidden Cities: The Discovery and Loss of Ancient North American Civilizations (Hardcover)
There was a thriving and highly sophisticated civilization in North America long before europeans arrived. Astonishingly, this fact has slowly become mainstream only very recently. Evidence of this civilization presents itself everywhere in the form of earthen architecture, or mounds, scattered throughout North America. Some of these mounds were tufts of earth that easily fell to the plow. Others rose to awe-inspiring monumental heights. And these mounds weren't mere transitory stations for nomads. They provided the centers of massive metropolises that supported thousands of people. So these mounds represent more than piles of dirt (as some may want to blithely excuse them); they represent the earliest known North American Cities. Most mainstream North American history has ignored these structures and the societies that inhabited them. And many of the mounds have fallen prey to urban development projects and "progress". Nearly 90% of the structures recorded by early european settlers have completely disappeared.
Roger Kennedy takes on this hefty subject in this book written in 1994. The title is "Hidden Cities: The Discovery and Loss of Ancient North American Civilization" but the book contains far more information than that. The title actually misleads quite a bit. And the book's argument doesn't present itself in a straightforward linear manner, either. It takes considerable effort, and a large vocabulary, to glean the book's main purpose and salient points. Regardless, this book still presents a good overview for the subject of ancient america because that history gets interwoven with early european-american history. Following an introductory chapter that discusses some of the greatest monuments of pre-european North American civilization (such as the 5000 year old Watson's Brake, the 3000 year old Poverty Point, the relatively recent metropolis of Cahokia, and the massive society that existed in the fertile Ohio and Mississippi river valleys), the book moves directly into the views of eminent europeans such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson on the overwhelming structural evidence of the civilization that preceded them in North America. Those interested in mounds and "hidden cities" might lose interest here. From this point on earthen architure only appears here and there interspersed by numerous digressions on the various people who witnessed the mounds from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. Those interested in general history will find much to savor here, but the book remains difficult to follow nonetheless. In the end, the book examines more of european prejudice against the people (collectively referred to as "Hopewell" and "Adena") who supposedly made the mounds than the mounds and cities themselves. One of the main faults of the book is that it takes on too much in a mere three-hundred pages. Not only does it discuss the lost cities of North America, but it attempts to examine all of the following: the lives of various people (mostly early european settlers) in relation to earthen architecture; the attitudes of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Albert Gallatin, and others on the subject of slavery; the views of the same people towards Native Americans contemporaneous to their time; the followers of each "school" of thought: the Gallatins and the Jeffersonians; the history and purpose of George Washington's hereditary society called "The Cincinatti"; the dichotomy in Thomas Jefferson's writings and actions concerning slavery (Kennedy wrote an entire book on this subject called "Mr. Jefferson's Lost Cause"); brief biographies of the early archeologists that assisted Jefferson in the compilation of "the first Indian museum" at Monticello; Jefferson's construction of Monticello and the mound-based design of his Poplar Forest estate; a history of seventeenth to nineteenth century european prejudice (that includes the Mexican War); the attempts of europeans to "explain away" the mounds as mere trifles of "the savage mind"; and an exploratory analysis of the purpose begind the mounds. All of that (and more) in three-hundred pages. Of course it all relates, but the text meanders to such a degree that the connections easily get lost and the associations between transitions from episode to episode blur somewhat after three or four chapters. Regardless of its difficulties, the book offers up a treasure trove of information for those willing to undertake the effort. The most poignant point it makes concerns the fragility of civilizations. There exists evidence of a massive North American die off sometime in the sixteenth century. Approximately eighty percent of the population succumbed to some disaster (disease, resource depletion, social upheaval, climate change - no one knows for sure). Much of the preceding civilzation disappeared before europeans arrived en masse. They subsequently abandoned the grand monuments built by their ancestors. And these same people (says the evidence) had a sophisticated grasp of astronomy, mathematics (geometry), and argriculture. They lived off the land the best way they knew how, but their civilization still collapsed. Kennedy suggests that there is a lesson in this for all civilizations, and that we ignore the ancient and medieval history of North America at our peril. So take up this book with caution. It contains loads of useful and fascinating information. But that information only comes with work. Readers will learn not only about "hidden cities" but about some of the foundations of the settlement that ultimately became the United States of America.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An incredible eye-opener,
By A Customer
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Hidden Cities: The Discovery and Loss of Ancient North American Civilization (Mass Market Paperback)
You will read this book and you will ask "Why don't I know this? Why don't I know that there were sophisticated civilizations comparable to the Aztecs or Mayans in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys before the coming of Columbus? Why don't I know that many large Midwestern cities were built on the ruins of Indian cities? Why are the monuments of these civilizations to this day being torn down to make room for parking lots and golf courses?" The book tries to answer these questions, and points to an amazing act of collective amnesia that was necessary to justify the taking of the American continent from the descendants of these civilizations. In the course of tracing this willed ignorance, Kennedy provides great insight into the thinking and characters of some of America's first leaders--this book greatly changed the way I think about Jefferson, and actually improved my estimation of Washington. This book is an exciting read. It uncovers a lost civilization, as fascinating as Atlantis--only it's real, and it's in our own backyard.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Should be essential reading,
By
This review is from: Hidden Cities: The Discovery and Loss of Ancient North American Civilizations (Hardcover)
In reference to the review below (honestly, just an ignorant rant), the full title of this book is HIDDEN CITIES : THE DISCOVERY AND LOSS OF ANCIENT NORTH AMERICAN CIVILIZATIONS and the book makes no promise, starting right there on the cover, to be an archeology book on the Mound-builder civilizations. In fact, go try to find a good archeology book on these lost civilizations. I dare you. The operative word here is "good" (I've reviewed one entry that was written at a 12-year-old level, was full of juvenile speculation, and truly deserved one star).
This is a phenomenal, well-written, meticulously researched book that details the history of a non-history--ignorance that is present till this day. While I'm steeped in acquaintances who allege they know every little dribble about "Native Americans," few have any knowledge whatsoever of the civilizations of North America that existed right up to the earliest European discoveries. Dawning awareness of these recently vanished civilizations influenced early government policies, got a lot of significant people thinking about who these "savages" they were encountering truly were, and forced others to ask hard questions about history. This book covers this epiphany brilliantly. This is important--essential even--material for any understanding of the relationship of Native Americans and European settlers. And it's out of print! Honestly, I don't think any of this suits the current white intellectual romanticized notions of tribal peoples in North America very well and that's why so little interest has been shown in the Mound-builders. These guys worked metal, lived in cities, had complex governments, and possibly were the prime shakers and movers on this continent which makes the tribal people we love so well something of remnants, or even a side-show. Their soldiers even wore metal body armor--hardly the happy image we want and need of natives living in harmony with nature. It perhaps even explains the dignity and sophistication of many of the Eastern Native Americans (rhetorical skills alone were alleged to be phenomenal). It makes sense out of a Tecumseh who's Big Picture view never seemed to be that of a hunter/gatherer. I've tried to research the Mound-builders and the best info I've come across was in 100-year-old editions of Scientific American. This was big news among archaeologists in 1890 and Sci-Am published mountains of illustrations of sophisticated Mound-builder artifacts. One sees these and immediately senses distant linkages to Aztec culture. Amazing that one has to dig through musty old magazines to see these! Native American studies has become so completely politicized and romanticized in the last decades that truth and knowledge aren't even issues any more. Awareness of the existence of the Mound-builders assists no modern agenda; it's inconvenient stuff in fact, much as awareness of the complex dynamics of African culture(s)during the slave-trading years muddies the much-loved victim/oppressor duality. Politically correct thinking, which has always had a strongly adolescent cast, requires its "victims" to utterly helpless, kind-hearted, and blameless angels and its "oppressors" to be evil, brutal, uncaring, demons. Sadly, a lot of older, and truly excellent, work on the native people of this continent is lost (like this book now) or derided. Most young people today can even imagine that someone 50 or 75 years ago could have written anything about other cultures that wasn't horrid. Heck, I know a graduate of one of the best women's schools in the country who recently was stunned to learn that a white male nearly 100 years ago (Woodrow Wilson)was actually pushing for the creation of an international organization to promote world peace! I assume she thinks that Eleanor Roosevelt started the UN. We're going to pay hard someday for all this institutionalized ignorance.
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