"The mound long antedates the present tribes” : the moundbuilder myth in Canada, 1855–1963 ...

• Main Author: Hart, Lily Isabelle
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2022
• Subjects: First Nations
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0417522; https://doi.library.ubc.ca/10.14288/1.0417522

This thesis examines nineteenth and twentieth-century research on mounds and associated burial sites in Canada, specifically Manitoba, Ontario, and British Columbia and the role of the moundbuilder myth generated by non-Indigenous anthropologists in the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. What I term the “moundbuilder myth” was a theory held by settlers that claimed Indigenous people had not constructed burial mounds in Canada. Instead, settlers claimed a distinct, separate race—one skilled in agricultural, industry, and other traits settlers saw as positive—had constructed them. Settlers also claimed First Nations had driven out this moundbuilder race. Through examining journals such as the Canadian Naturalist, the transactions of societies such as the Royal Society of Canada and the Manitoba Historical Society, writings of settler anthropologists such as Charles Hill-Tout, George Bryce, and James Coyne, newspaper articles, and physical items such as site markers and plaques, I pose that the ...