Big Mound St. Louis Missouri, Mound Pavilion, Destruction and Museum Fire #historicaltidbits

Starting in the 1850s and continuing until 1869, Big Mound was systematically destroyed to provide material to build railroads, make bricks and lay backfill in the St. Louis area. Big Mound was the largest of many dozens of other mounds in St. Louis that were mostly all destroyed by the early 1900s. Early on, St Louis was known as Mound City because of these indigenous mounds, but the name has slowly faded from memory, along with the rich history of the mounds and the culture that built them. Big Mound was a 34 foot tall platform mound, roughly 319 feet long and 154 feet wide. Some report that two burial chambers were discovered as they dismantled the mound, in one of them, the vault is claimed to have had plastered walls and 24 bodies. The bodies were covered in decorative bones, beads and seashell ornaments. Other artifacts were discovered, but all were lost in a fire. Only one of the dozens of mounds in St. Louis survived and is now called Sugarloaf Mound and is currently being preserved. The site where Big Mound once stood is now an industrial area, and is marked by a near forgotten tiny boulder, with a stolen plaque.

Big Mound originally had a terrace extending off its east side before citizens of St. Louis Missouri began dismantling the mound over a period of 30 years. The east side terrace is similar to another of the mounds in the St Louis Mounds Group, the other being the three terraced Falling Gardens Mound. The single terrace on Big Mound is visible in rare sketches of the site. Beginning in the early 40s, citizens of 'Mound City' had already started cutting into the mound to build homes and roads. And in 1844, Field & Vandeventer Lumber Company removed the top two feet of Big Mound to create a platform for a wooden pavilion they constructed named Big Mound Pavilion, a pleasure resort. From this resort, which extended something around 80 feet above the streets below at its peak, residents had a view of the city and Mississippi river, including the notorious Bloody Island where people would stage duels.

But it seems that the Big Mound Pavilion failed to attract enough tourists and in 1848, for reasons not entirely clear, despite the fact that the mound was located adjacent to a fire station, the wooden pavilion burned to the ground. A successful structure placed atop Big Mound, may have oddly led to its preservation. But this fire may mark the final nail in the coffin that eventually led to the full dismantling of the historic indigenous site built by the Mississippian culture.

Big mound was destroyed over a 30 year period, ending in 1869 when the final remnants were removed. Native Americans, especially the Osage Nation, were unable to save the mounds in St Louis from destruction, exacerbated by the inhumane 1838 law that limited interactions between the Missouri settlers and native tribes (was not repealed until 1909). During this period, despite native tribes being unable to rescue the mounds, there were attempts by some conservationists, historians, academics and early archaeologists to preserve what they could from the mound. Looting was rampant, but many human remains and artifacts from the burial vaults were preserved in the St Louis Academy of Science. Unfortunately, in the same year that Big Mound met its end, museum suffered a fire which destroyed the portion of the building where the artifacts and remains from Big Mound were stored.

One of the most interesting artifacts were a pair of copper earrings resembling the long faced god, commonly found at Mississippian archaeological sites. While these earrings never made it to the museum, unfortunately, they were misplaced.
Suffice to say, Big Mound and the St Louis Mound Group in general, suffered a series of tragedies that nearly resulted in the complete extermination of the area's indigenous history. All that remains now are these photographs and writings of what was once an area as rich in history as the nearby Cahokia mounds. Only one indigenous mound (Sugarloaf Mound) of the 27 mounds that once existed in St Louis Missouri, survives today.

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