Case file · Folklore / legend

Nanih Waiya, the Choctaw mother mound

Choctaw tradition holds that the people emerged from the earth at, or migrated to, Nanih Waiya, a platform mound in Winston County, Mississippi, called the 'Mother Mound'.

1899 CE · 32.93, -89.08 · status: legend

The account

Emergence accounts were recorded by Henry Halbert, who published Choctaw traditions about the mound in 1899, and by John Swanton. The Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians took back the site in 2008.

The sceptical view

Archaeologists date the mound to the Middle Woodland period, around 1–300 CE.

Connections in the atlas

Sources

  1. Wikipedia: Nanih Waiya
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