The native American cultures that produced the Mound Builders ranged from the Northern Plains to what are now the states of North and South Carolina and the Mississippi Delta area. The ancestors of contemporary native North American tribes are thought by many archaeologists to have constructed the mounds between 3,000 BC and 1200AD. But reports from early explorers seems to indicate that in the southern part of the continent mounds were still being constructed as late as the 16th century.

But between 1540 and 1542 the Spanish conquistador, Herman de Soto, travelled through what eventually became the southeastern United States. He told of fortified communites that contained large raised mounds and earthen structures he referred to as plazas. In the 1560's French explorers in the area that is now northeastern Flordia noted that leaders were buried in large mounds with great ceremony.

Most of the information that we have about mound building cultures has come from modern day excavations. Archaeologists and anthropologists have carefully unearthed some of the sites and have learned that at least in some circumstances the Mound Builders fabricated the earthen structures for burial or ceremonial purposes. They also conjecture that the mound builders were influenced by architecture from as far away as the countries of Mexico and Central America.

John D. Baldwin in his 1871 book Ancient America noted that "In one of the mounds opened in the Ohio Valley, two chambers were found with remains of the timber of which the walls were made, and with arched ceilings precisely like those in Central America, even to the overlapping stones."

The tribes of the Central and South Americas had trade routes far into the North American continent and it was via those that the culture and trade items traveled from the south to the far northern areas. The evidence of the mounds themselves is a potent argument for the link between these peoples. Certainly the precursors of the present day tribes that lived below the Great Lakes were part of the extensive trading culture that extended from the northern areas of the Great Lake area to the Gulf of Mexico.

The evidence of worked copper which was available on the northern shores of the Great Lakes and seashells from the lower regions of the Gulf of Mexico and similar styles of building supports the theory that if there was a trade in physical goods it opened the possibility of the trading of ideas as well.

The mounds were not always simple hills of dirt. Many took the shape of animals and it's thought that if those were built as burial chambers they were constructed in the shape of clan animals or totems that the deceased belonged to.

But not all mounds were burial chambers. Pyramid shaped mounds with flat tops and ramp access were built by prehistoric peoples known as the Coles Creek culture. They often built two or three mounds surrounding a central plaza and it's thought they were used for ceremonial purposes.