Indian Mounds of Wisconsin

Throughout the first assigned reading in the Indian Mounds of Wisconsin, I was actually interested in how they were going to go about excavating the different mounds simply to discover the reasoning and the people (tribes) behind it.

To build onto what we discussed in class about the Native Americans living in villages around the mounds, if they weren't civilized and where just savages, something tells me that they wouldn't have just ignored the structures that were on the land prior to their villages. I honestly believe that if the Native Americans were so uncivilized as we've read about then the mounds wouldn't still be standing. Also, we can doubt the abilities of the Native Americans being able to construct the mounds, however, how often do we hear about someone questioning the ability of the Egyptians creating the pyramids. Like stated in class, we tend to tell stories to explain the things that we don't have a solid concrete answer for, but, does that give anyone the right to question what another group of individuals are capable of?

One thing that struck me as odd was the fact that the difference in the conclusions in who actually built the mounds and the different ways they came about those conclusions. Lapham saw connections between the mounds and the modern day Native Americans in the area and pottery and pipes that had been recovered. While,William Pidgeon claims to have heard the histories of the mounds and traditions of the mounds told by the builders themselves. Pidgeon also wrote about how he heard many stories from De-coo-dah and how he had informed Pidgeon about their builders and their secrets. However, Silverberg states that the instance from Pidgeon is just a myth and never had any objective existence. Why couldn't the people build off each other? Isn't that what research is about? Taking someone else's findings and studying them and finding a way to prove them wrong? Not just hearing something that you don't agree with and immediately saying its false.