Steps Into the Sky:
A Return to the Mounds That Never Left My Imagination

Revisiting Georgia’s Etowah Indian Mounds—and the Ancient World That Built Them

I recently stopped by the Etowah Indian Mounds on a whim. I was travelling home on the back roads of Northwest Georgia when I saw the sign pointing towards one of Georgia’s registered historic sites. My afternoon was free, so I flipped on my blinker and turned toward a flood of fond childhood memories of running up these mounds and visiting their museum.

I was eleven years old when I first visited these mounds. As Boy Scouts, we had camped here on a couple of occasions. Besides camping at the group primitive site with scouting friends, fishing and splashing about in the Etowah River, and playing flashlight tag long into the warm Georgia nights, I vividly remember this place having a strange draw for me—all my life. 

As a kid, I had lots of questions about who had piled all this dirt into a tall mound. I wanted to know how and why they did it. A visit to the museum didn’t quench my curiosity. It was small, and the artifacts displayed were sparse. My friends, who quickly lost interest, ran outside. With them gone, a reverent quiet fell upon the few exhibit cases. As I read each placard and examined each artifact, I could not find answers to all my questions about why these mounds were here and who built them. When a ranger approached me, I asked him my questions. His answers didn’t really connect. I think he sensed that and recommended that I return next summer. Pointing across the open field to a building under construction, he said, “We are building a new museum. I know the new exhibits will provide a fuller picture of the Indians who built these mounds.”

Now, on my impromptu visit fifty years later, I was excited to see the new exhibits. Maybe I could get the answers that had eluded me as a kid. I paid my entrance fee and walked towards the room housing the exhibits. I was shocked to find the museum’s display cases empty—no artifacts at all. All that remained behind glass were colored boards filled with mangled wires that used to hold ancient relics. Some wires were adjacent to areas that had sun-faded borders. Others had info that referred to something long gone. I returned to the guest counter. After a long conversation with the senior park ranger, I learned that the artifacts had been removed and were being returned to the Creek Indians. That discussion of repatriation deeply moved me. 

Recently, I learned about the concept of Sense of Place. Jennifer E. Cross, a professor emerita at Colorado State University, describes it as a set of meanings that explores the relationship between persons, peoples, and places. Since I moved around the U.S. dozens of times as a child, I wanted to explore the placelessness that resulted from my “nomadic” lifestyle. As I thought about my two previous experiences with the Etowah Indian Mounds, it inspired me to more fully explore the Indians who built these mounds to better understand the tragic story of this tribe’s Sense of Space and how it interacts with my own.