Ocmulgee Indian Mounds: Part II

Great Temple Mound and Lesser Temple Mound

as seen from the Earthwork Lodge grounds

Funeral Mound

Village leaders were buried in this mound.  More than 100 burials have been uncovered, many with shell and copper ornaments.  Like the temple mounds, this mound was built in successive stages.  This structure that stood on top at each stage may have been used in preparing the dead for burial.  The present height corresponds to the third stage.  Much of the mound was destroyed by a railroad cut in the 1870’s.

The funeral mound once stood almost 25 feet high with deep pits extending more than eight feet below ground level.  The mound was built in at least seven stages.  About seven feet of material was removed from the top including portions of stages 4, 5, 6, and 7.

Lesser Temple Mound and Great Temple Mound 

as seen from the Funeral Mound which shows the road that destroyed part of the Lesser Mound

Great Temple Mound

view as you climb the walkway to the top

above the tree tops

view of the city of Macon, GA from the top of the mound

Funeral Mound in the distance

Earth Lodge in the distance with part of the trading post to the left of the path

outline of the trading post

English traders from Charleston, S.C., eager to do business with the Creek Indians, built the first trading post on this site about 1690.  They traded firearms, cloth and trinkets for deerskins and furs.  Excavations have turned up many good, including, axes, clay pipes, beads, knives, swords, flints, pistols and muskets.

Lesser Temple Mound

Archeologist estimate about three-fourths of this mound was removed by railroad construction.  It is a truncated (flat-topped) pyramid originally about 120 feet in diameter at it widest point and almost 12 feet high.  A soil profile taken on the northern face suggest the mound was constructed in four distinct phases.

Photos by Jan Riser.