Oklahoma: A Story Through Her People

Left: The heavily tattooed man clad in feathers and beads was depicted on a shard of pottery found at the site.
Above: Spiro Mounds, located in LeFlore County on the southern bank of the Arkansas River, is considered to be Oklahoma’s, most
important prehistoric Native American site. The site grew from a small farming village to one of the most important centers in what later
became the United States. Between 850 AD and 1450 twelve mounds, ceremonial areas, and a support city were created for the Caddoanspeaking
leadership who participated in the Mississippian Culture (also known as the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex, the Southern
Death Cult, and the Buzzard Cult). This culture was a loosely organized trading, religious, and political system that included the
leadership from many language groups and several million people with trade connections stretching from the Rocky Mountains to the
Virginia coast and from the Gulf Coast of Florida to the Great Lakes. Each group was more or less independent although tied to the four
regional mound centers. These regional mound centers included Cahokia, where East St. Louis is now, Moundville in Alabama, Etowah
in Georgia, and Spiro in eastern Oklahoma. The twelve Spiro Mounds were built in layers from basket loads of dirt. There are three kinds
of mounds at the Spiro site: one burial mound, two temple mounds, and nine house mounds. Most of the mounds were for buildings to be
placed upon or to cover old houses, but the burial mound attracted the most attention. The site is world renowned for the amazing amount
of art and artifacts dug from the burial mound, known as the Craig Mound. Even though Choctaw and Chickasaw freedmen farmed the
land within the complex from about the 1870s, the mounds themselves remained undisturbed until 1917. At that time, Joseph Thoburn,
who had taken photographs of the site in 1914, tested Ward Mound One, a buried house mound. However, the landowners allowed nothing
further until 1933 when a group of commercial diggers called the Pocola Mining Company secured a lease for the Craig Mound. From 1933 until 1935 Pocola employees dug haphazardly into
the burial mound, destroying about one-third of the mound. They sold thousands of artifacts, stone, copper, shell, basketry, and fabric, to collectors throughout the world. The site, called “King
Tut of the Arkansas Valley” by the Kansas City Star in 1935, was yielding elaborately decorated artifacts in greater numbers and in better states of preservation than any other Mississippian
site and the Oklahoma Legislature was finally prevailed upon to pass a licensing requirement for the protection of the site. This resulted in the shutting down of Pocola Mining and halted further
destruction of the site. In 1936 the University of Oklahoma (OU) took over scientific excavation of what remained of the burial mound. Until October 1941 OU archaeologists oversaw Works
Progress Administration (WPA) workers in investigating the site. From the burial mound more than six hundred complete or partial burials were recovered along with thousands of artifacts.
They also worked on the other eight mounds known at the time. The excavations ended in 1941 because of World War II and the end of the WPA. In the mid-1960s there was an aborted effort
by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to purchase most of the mound center to create a national archaeological park. Finally, in May 1978, the Spiro Mounds Archaeological State Park, with
the help of the Oklahoma Archaeological Survey, opened an Interpretive Center as the first and only Oklahoma prehistoric American Indian archaeological site open to the public under the
direction of the Oklahoma Tourism and Recreation Department. In 1979 the Oklahoma Archaeological Survey conducted additional research and three more mounds were found. Spiro Mound
Group was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1969 (NR 69000153). In 1991 administration transferred to the Oklahoma Historical Society with an expanded Interpretive
Center and an interpretive trail system allowing visitors to learn about this unique and powerful part of Oklahoma’s past. Based on information from the Oklahoma Historical Society.
O K L A H O M A : A S t o r y T h r o u g h H e r P e o p l e
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