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Jason Colavito

The Mound Builder Myth: Fake History and the Hunt for a "Lost White Race" Paperback – Illustrated, February 20, 2020

by Jason Colavito (Author)

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Say you found that a few dozen people, operating at the highest levels of society, conspired to create a false ancient history of the American continent to promote a religious, white-supremacist agenda in the service of supposedly patriotic ideals. Would you call it fake news? In nineteenth-century America, this was in fact a powerful truth that shaped Manifest Destiny. The Mound Builder Myth is the first book to chronicle the attempt to recast the Native American burial mounds as the work of a lost white race of “true” native Americans.

Thomas Jefferson’s pioneering archaeology concluded that the earthen mounds were the work of Native Americans. In the 1894 report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Cyrus Thomas concurred, drawing on two decades of research. But in the century in between, the lie took hold, with Presidents Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, and Abraham Lincoln adding their approval and the Mormon Church among those benefiting. Jason Colavito traces this monumental deception from the farthest reaches of the frontier to the halls of Congress, mapping a century-long conspiracy to fabricate and promote a false ancient history—and enumerating its devastating consequences for contemporary Native people.

Built upon primary sources and first-person accounts, the story that The Mound Builder Myth tells is a forgotten chapter of American history—but one that reads like the Da Vinci Code as it plays out at the upper reaches of government, religion, and science. And as far-fetched as it now might seem that a lost white race once ruled prehistoric America, the damage done by this “ancient” myth has clear echoes in today’s arguments over white nationalism, multiculturalism, “alternative facts,” and the role of science and the control of knowledge in public life.

Print length

402 pages
Language

English
Publisher

University of Oklahoma Press
Publication date

February 20, 2020
Dimensions

6 x 0.89 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

0806164611
ISBN-13

978-0806164618
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Editorial Reviews

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“Jason Colavito explains how the myth of a 'lost white race' as the builders of North America’s earthen mounds has survived for so long and still resonates with those Americans willing to believe in conspiracy theories or racial superiority. The Mound Builder Myth shows that the battle between science and superstition never ends.”—David La Vere, author of Looting Spiro Mounds: An American King Tut’s Tomb

“Colavito’s book offers an accessible, responsibly researched introduction to the chief features of a myth that shaped US settler policies throughout the nineteenth century.”— American Literary History

About the Author

Author and editor Jason Colavito researches and writes on the connections between science, pseudoscience, religion, and speculative fiction. He is the author of Jason and the Argonauts through the Ages and The Cult of Alien Gods: H. P. Lovecraft and Extraterrestrial Pop Culture. In his blog at jasoncolavito.com, he continues his exploration of the way human beings create and employ the supernatural to alter and understand our reality and our world.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of Oklahoma Press; First edition (February 20, 2020)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 402 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0806164611
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0806164618
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.29 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.89 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #204,853 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #637 in Native American History (Books)
- #5,266 in United States History (Books)

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Native Activist

Why is HP Lovecraft so Important?

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 22, 2020

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This is a very disappointing book in my opinion comprised largely of material previously published on the author's blog, all of which is recycled and expanded with some added fictional accounts and complete speculations mixed in to fit the agenda and preferences of the author. It ignores a mountain of accounts taken directly from Native American sources about the events it tries to twist into a preconceived notion—a notion that appears to cast everyone who disagrees with any of the author's speculations as a racist. To me, it is essentially nothing more than disguised pseudoarchaeology and pseudoscience. The material cited as his evidence and the author's opinions discussed in the book are based on very old reports he references--all of which the author has himself always cited as questionable, unreliable, often simply made-up sensationalism, and biased. But when it fits his purpose, he cites all these antiquated, Victorian sources as accurate. Yes, people in the 1500s, 1600s, 1700s, 1800s, and 1900s were biased and prejudiced. Still are... That's the one point he makes in the book that is correct.

The author has basically written on his blog that Native Americans looked at the sky, figured out the seasons, and could pile dirt up into mounds. And the book does nothing that seems to change that opinion. This apparently demeaning attitude toward the natives is displayed in the book by ignoring what the ancient Native Americans actually achieved and by just focusing on how racist the first Whites were. He is apparently saying that the Native Americans really didn't do anything all that special and the Whites were stupid to think that the mounds and earthworks were so big that only white people could make them. It is always about white people. A "lost race of white people." Huh? But the mounds were made by Native Americans. Very, very few people doubt that today. Why not focus on their constructions? The mounds are amazing. Instead of focusing on the mistaken idea whites built them why not just acknowledge that when they were first encountered few natives were around and the whites were impressed. Then say that we know the ancestors of the natives built them and tell us about the mounds and the culture. But no, it's all about white people. So the book then needs to talk more about white people who have nothing to do with mounds. And it seems the author has to end the book by revealing his agenda.

Almost everything the author writes always seems to come back to the writer HP Lovecraft and it's true here. He is obsessed with Lovecraft. Lovecraft was obscure and virtually ignored and unknown in his time, yet this book makes Lovecraft an integral and important character in the mound builder speculation culture. To the author Lovecraft is so important that a small story of Lovecraft's that was published in 1940 outweighs everything else and influenced archaeology and speculations on the mounds forever. In this book, the author writes (Location 4844 on the Kindle), "Although Lovecraft's novella was not published during his life, first appearing in the pulp fiction magazine Weird Tales three years after his 1937 death, the racial panic and nostalgia for an imagined period of American greatness that his story reflected became a toxic swamp..." (The words "toxic swamp" appears to be the author's way of referring to the present political arena which is a common theme on his blog.) In the very next sentence--Lovecraft's 1940 story is tied into Cyrus Thomas' 1800's statement about the ancestors of the Native Americans building the mounds. It's as if Lovecraft was really important in America's mound builder culture speculations. Lovecraft matters a lot to the author, but is completely irrelevant to mound builders. The complete ignoring of the culture of the Native American mound builders in this book seems both unbelieveable and just plain biased--and very demeaning to Native Americans. And then, to cap it all off, the author concludes by recycling more of his blog material. He takes pages to bash Hancock, Childress, Wolter, and every TV show that the author dislikes, then watches and reviews--it appears to be a way to try to get more people to read his blog and buy all of his self-published books on Ancient Aliens and Lovecraft. To this writer, the Univ. of Oklahoma Press is now officially a publishing dumpster fire.

45 people found this helpful

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twseid58

Well-researched historical study

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 5, 2020

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If anything, the author goes to the opposite extreme of the conspiracy theory he is debunking. It is a meticulous rehearsal of American history. I like history, so I didn't mind some of the minutiae which made the book a slow read. If one just depends on online videos, you would be led to think there is an alternate theory of pre-Columbian history of North America. And that a race of white people and/or giants lived in the land. There are loads of newspaper articles which seem to say people have been finding skulls and skeletons of giants and they've disappeared because the Smithsonian has hidden them or destroyed them. People want giants so it supports the Bible and want the Smithsonian to be nefarious trying to protect the theory of evolution against the Bible. Fascinating topic!

3 people found this helpful

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Horace Smith

Who Made the Mounds

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 13, 2020

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Though I think few prospective purchasers of this book would be unaware
of this, it is nonetheless worth noting that this book is not a tour guide to
America's native American mounds. It is a study of changing interpretations of
the mounds and their builders, and therefore of the societies making those
interpretations. I learned that even those who might have been considered
intellectually enlightened in the 19th century could hold views that seem far
from enlightened today. The author's own views as to what is right necessarily
shine through at numerous points. The interplay between the gradual growth
of American archaeology and the simultaneous development of American pseudoscience
and racism forms an interesting background to the story.

8 people found this helpful

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Jon Seymour

This book has the ability to be a life changer.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 13, 2021

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If you have not thought of how institutionalized prejudice and hatred affect history, politics and lives, this book is a documented study in how it happens. It is scary to see that we have not progressed much in 200 years in our ability to twist reality to our own self-promoting concepts of ourselves.

One person found this helpful

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leah

Not enough quotation marks

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 20, 2021

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Writing theory instead of "theory" really gives these people too much credit.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 16, 2020

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Jason Colavito presents a well researched history and discussion of the mound builders. It is a skeptical look at how human bias can twist history. This book is an easy and absorbing read.

4 people found this helpful

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Joanna Hannigan

Powerfully crafted

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 18, 2020

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Compelling and to the point, well substantiated, easy to read, makes you think

4 people found this helpful

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Denise Spear

True history

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 24, 2020

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I highly recommend this book for anyone, but especially for people new to American history and archaeology.

5 people found this helpful

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Thorwald Franke

Comprehensive work about the Mound Builder myth -- Persons, hypotheses, historical context

Reviewed in Germany 🇩🇪 on May 24, 2020

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The Mound Builder myth is the wrong idea that the Indian mounds in Northern America had been built by some other people than the local Indians resp. their ancestors. There often was a racist motivation behind this belief: If a "lost white race" had built the mounds which later had been expelled or eradicated by the allegedly newly arrived Indians, then the European colonization and expansion could be perceived as a re-conquest, and the Indians could be perceived as non-native foreigners to their own land. Candidates for the identity of the "lost white race" were e.g. the Lost Tribes of Israel, Scyths, Celts, Scots, Norsemen, and finally even Atlantis. But also non-white candidates were often driven by racist intentions to delegitimize the Indians. Some thought of Indians from India, and many thought of the Aztecs or Toltecs who allegedly settled in North America first before they allegedly were expelled to Southern America by the newly arrived Indians.

Jason Colavito's "The Mound Builder Myth" describes the creation, development, demise, and afterlife of the Mound Builder myth in all detail. The number of authors, hypotheses, and forgeries gathered in this book is amazing. All information is well-documented by 434 notes and eleven pages of bibliography in the appendix. There are thirteen pictures of mounds, authors, or forged stones.

Each development of the Mound Builder myth is paralleled with the respective developments in society and politics. It is well demonstrated that the Mound Builder myth always reflected the current zeitgeist: From the war with Britain, via the war with Mexico, expelling the Indians to the West, the Reconstruction era after the civil war, the mass immigration of Italians, the popularity of eugenics, until postmodernism in the 2nd half of the 20th century. It is amazing to see how the decline of the Mound Builder myth coincided with the decline of the Indian question, and how the myth is revived in later days under completely different perspectives.

Even the foundation myth of the Mormons is based on the Mound Builder myth, and the giants of the Bible were also allegedly found in the mounds.

The core message of Jason Colavito's book is conveyed with overwhelming evidence: It is obvious that the motivation behind the Mound Builder myth often had been racist and driven by the zeitgeist. This book is a valuable lesson about the direct or indirect interference of politics and public opinion with science or what the public considers science, and how important and effective the resistance of individual dissenters sometimes is, in the long run.

Formal criticism:

Right at the beginning of the book a short but comprehensive introduction into the real history of the mounds would have been helpful, especially in order to understand why the connection of the mounds to the contemporary Indians of the 19th century got lost (or to which extent some kind of connection still existed).

The various authors and their hypotheses are presented in a novel-like style. By this approach, order and overview get often lost. The storyline repeatedly goes back and forth in time, and the same authors repeatedly appear in varying roles. The book is divided in only few chapters, and often the content belonging to one chapter, according to its headline, occurs in an other chapter (e.g. important content concerning the giants myth is in the chapter following the giants chapter).

It would have been preferable to have more order and overview in such a complex theme. More speaking headlines, and also subheadlines would have been helpful. At least a table in the appendix listing all authors and their hypotheses, and by whom they where influenced, and whom they influenced in turn. Also a list of the forged stones (what, who, where and when) would provide overview. Also interesting would have been an overview of all persons who continuously held the correct belief that the Mounds were built by the Indians. These were not few, including Martin van Buren, US president 1837-1841.

Last but not least, a map is missing, where all the sites of mounds are marked. Also a map of Ohio or the state of New York could be useful, where the locations of the authors of hypotheses are marked who, as it seems, often lived close to each other and thus easily influenced each other.

The present-day situation is discussed only in the Conclusion, but it really had deserved a chapter on its own.

In the bibliography the book "Hidden Cities" by Robert G. Kennedy is missing.

It would have been interesting to include some paragraphs about the current official opinion of the various Mormon churches on the origin of the Mormon belief. As I have read, there are not only fundamentalist believers but also more liberal views. How do they live with the truth?

Criticism of contents:

While the core message of Jason Colavito's book is simply true and deserves ardent support, especially when considering the strange revival of the Mound Builder myth in modern TV shows and weird religious fundamentalist or racist circles, there are several problems which may have their origin in a too narrow perspective of the author.

The book does not take seriously enough the legitimacy of 19th century doubts about who built the mounds. As the book itself says, the Mound Builder era ended some 500 years before the Europeans arrived, and the Indian civilization declined (pp. 48 f.). Or the reason for the decline were infectuous deseases contracted by the very first contacts with Europeans, so that except the very first Europeans the Europeans did get to know the Indian civilization only in a declined state (pp. 7, 180). (The book is not clear about which of the two reasons was more important.) In effect, Indians did not build mounds any more and did not use the mounds as they once had been used. Therefore, it is absolutely understandable that doubts arose when comparing the remainders of the mound building civilization and the state of the civilization of contemporary local Indians. The book repeatedly reports of such doubts (e.g. on pp. 44, 180, 261 f.), but does not take them seriously, although even the famous Frederic Ward Putnam of Harvard thought of the Celts as the Mound Builders (p. 304). Therefore, these doubts should have been examined more carefully. It is not legitimate to talk about the Mound Builder myth as if every proponent of an incorrect explanation had been driven by racism, though often this was the case.

There are several passages in this book where the interpretation of the sources is going beyond what is really contained in the sources in order to make the wanted case.

One example is president Andrew Jackson's speech of 1830 (p. 116). Andrew Jackson equals the alleged replacement of the Mound Builders by the Indians with the replacement of the Indians by the Europeans. But other than Jason Colavito thinks, the Mound Builder myth does not serve as a racist justification for the replacement of the Indians. Because under a racist perspective, the replacement of the "higher" race of the Mound Builders by the "lower" race of the Indians is not justified. The justification expressed by Andrew Jackson is another one. It is simply Social Darwinism: The stronger replaces the weaker. And the case of the Mound Builders serves only as an example, not as a special justification.

Another example is the opinion of the famous German natural researcher Alexander von Humboldt, as expressed in the "Report of the Librarian" in the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society No. 53 of 1869 on p. 42. According to Jason Colavito, Humboldt was "arguing that some Native Americans most closely related to the Mound Builders had been 'born white' before the sun burned them a ruddy copper color." (p. 251) -- But this is not the case. First, according to the source it is a certain Monsieur de Volney who claims this, and Humboldt is against this claim. Humboldt adds that Mexicans and Peruvians (who were considered related to the Mound Builders by many) are brown by birth. Only the Eskimos and a tribe at the northwest coast are allegedly born white. And then Humboldt calls for verifying the claim of de Volney by just going out and looking at real Indians! This is the spirit of the true scientist and not at all a racist attitude. Especially not in case of Alexander von Humboldt who was an ardent proponent of the idea of human rights.

Another example is Jason Colavito's reliance (p. 328) on the book "The American West and the Nazi East" by Carroll P. Kakel, 2011. The book compares the genocidal conquest of eastern Europe by the Nazis with the spread of European settlers in the American West and connected genocidal events -- which is grotesque! The Nazis planned their genocidal acts intentionally right from the beginning and conquered Eastern Europe by military force in short time, whereas in the American West, settlers spread slowly over many decades, were confronted with a completely incompatible civilization, and genocidal events unfolded mostly unplanned and unintentionally. Even well-minded intentions towards the Indians played out badly, as Jason Colavito rightly says (e.g. pp. 263-267). -- Citations drawn from the book turn out to be taken out of context and their meaning turned upside down. Where Hitler said that America had gunned down the millions of redskins to a few hundred thousands, the context is the following: According to Hitler, the land belonged to the Indians, and the white men have stolen it from them, and the gunning down is depicted by Hitler as a crime. -- It is also not true that Hitler was a "massive fan of Westerns". Hitler watched Westerns, too, but he was not a "massive fan" of them. Hitler was a massive fan of Disney's animated cartoon films, especially "Snow White", as we know today. This book by Kakel is really problematic! You find there many modern myths about the Nazis but not the real history. E.g. Kakel describes the ideologies of Hitler, Himmler and Rosenberg as being on the same line -- nothing could be more wrong. Himmler and Rosenberg had severe differences, and Hitler kept clear distance of those two and their ideas. Furthermore, Rosenberg is depicted as "party ideologue" -- which he wished to be but wasn't. There was only one person defining the Nazi creed and this one person was Hitler, and Hitler, Goebbels and Goering are known to have mocked Himmler and Rosenberg for their fancy ideas.

Criticism concerning the Indian question:

The drama of the Indian question is also misrepresented in Jason Colavito's book. Obviously, Jason Colavito follows a rather romantic perspective of Indians and Europeans living peacefully together on the same land, each of them according to their unchanged traditional culture. This unrealistic multiculturalist idealism becomes clear e.g. by his criticism of Ralph Waldo Emerson's opinion that the Indians have to modernize (p. 190), or the criticism of the basic intentions of Helen Hunt Jackson and Henry L. Daws (pp. 263 ff.), who wanted to civilize the Indians rather than to expell or kill them. Even Thomas Jefferson wanted to modernize the Indians (pp. 64 f.).

Jason Colavito's criticism reveals an unrealistic, romantic dream. The European civilization was much more developed than the Indian civilization, so that it was clear right from the very beginning of their contact that the Indian civilization could not survive unchanged. Therefore, the only morally acceptable idea was indeed to develop the Indians to modernity. And here we are right in the middle of the drama: Because, how to repeat the development of European civilization in time lapse? How to modernize the Indians without (!) taking away their Indian identity? And how to civilize a people who partially or totally resisted to be civilized?

It is absolutely understandable that many believed such a civilizing process not possible, and that patience with the Indians ran out, though physically or culturally genocidal acts are also not acceptable, of course. It is really a drama, a problem with no easy solution, a real tragedy, and who knows the outcome if more patient politicians than Andrew Jackson had governed the US in this time. It is not a forgone conclusion that things had played out better, then.

Jason Colavito's biased orientation in these questions becomes even more clear when he depicts the achievements of human rights as bad for the Indians. He e.g. connects the removal of "all incompatibilities with indiviudalism, and personal liberty" with the word "destroy", or he depicts the "redefining of gender roles" in Indian families as "devastating". (pp. 265, 267) But human rights are there for all human beings, and finally good for all human beings. The continuation of the patriarchy of the Indian culture, i.e. the systematic suppression of women (and all other family members!) by "old red men", under the rule of the United States is inconceivable, and is only one aspect of Indian culture which had no chance to survive, and this although the Europeans themselves had still some obvious remainders of patriarchy in their civilization in the 19th century.

Criticism concerning Atlantis:

Concerning Atlantis, the book creates the impression that the Atlantis story had "long considered to be fictional", until the 19th century, and then had been revived by fraudulent Europeans such as Fortia d'Urban (pp. 273 f.). But this is wrong. Atlantis had been long considered real, and what started in the 19th century was not a revival of the idea of a real Atlantis, but quite the opposite: It was the start of the idea that Atlantis had been fictional becoming the prevailing idea.

It is also wrong that "the Spanish" considered Mexico Atlantis (pp. 273). Only "some" Spanish thought of Mexico as Atlantis, not "the" Spanish. The official Spanish position was to reject this idea (e.g. Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas 1601).

Missing is Francis Bacon's "New Atlantis". Here, the Indian civilizations of Southern America are Atlantis, and Plato's cyclically repeating catastrophes are the reason why the Indians fell down from a higher level of civilization. This would have been an example of Atlantis belief fitting better to reality than usually expected, and it would be interesting to see whether and how Francis Bacon's view influenced the views of the 18th/19th century.

Ignatius Donnelly is misrepresented as a racist (chapter 11). Of course, Donnelly's views are partially racist under a modern perspective, but under the perspective of his time, the opposite holds true. Donnelly was a progressive politician, fighting for the abolition of slavery. He even wrote a novel about a white man living like a black and suffering discrimination ("Doctor Huguet", 1891). Furthermore, Donnelly's Atlanteans were not only white, but also yellow and red, and even excluded some white peoples. According to Donnelly, Europeans were not purely white but a mixture of white and yellow. And in American prehistory, all races of all kinds had met and lived together, as he wrote. Donnelly's core motivation was clearly not racist although he expressed various racist stereotypes prevailing in his time. The abuse of Donnelly's work, e.g. by omitting that Donnelly's Atlanteans are not only white, is much more harmful than the original work itself.

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