The culture of this area cannot be said to be confined strictly to the region designated, for in certain of its typical aspects it extends to the Georgia coast, blending with that of the Florida area, and to the coast of other Gulf states. The culture likewise has much in common with that of the Upper Mississippi and Great Lakes area, and grades somewhat abruptly into that of the adjacent region of the west. Al though presenting more or less homoge neity throughout, the Lower Mississippi area is not a simple culture unit, for there are a number of localized centres of de velopment and differentiation, no one of which can yet be selected as the type for the entire area. Aside from the more typi cal forms of culture, there are limited areas in which very primitive conditions seemed to have prevailed down to the advent of Europeans ; and there are some indications, in various parts of this area, of culture relations with Mexico.
Of the character of the domiciles and temples of the mound building Indians little is known, for, unlike the earthworks, being of a more or less temporary character, practically nothing of them has survived. It is known however from early descriptions that buildings of the Natchez of Mississippi and of other tribes were of wattlework faced with clay, and with roofs of bark and thatch—materials that soon decayed. Of similar materials prob ably were the buildings associated with the great earthworks Cahokia in Illinois, Etowah in Georgia and Marietta, Newark, and Fort Ancient in Ohio. Remains of stockades that supple mented the embankments in defensive works and served to pro tect the villages from attack have been found. Modes of burial within the mound area were extremely varied, and vast numbers of artifacts were deposited as of ferings with the dead in ordinary cemeteries, in stone graves, and in mounds of earth and stone.
Art in stone was well devel oped, although sculpture of the human form had made but slight advance, except in the case of the smoking pipes, where excep tional skill is shown both in this respect and in the production of animal effigies. Stone was em ployed in a limited way in the building of walls and fortifica tions and in the construction of graves, and desirable varieties were quarried on a large scale for the manufacture of implements, utensils, and ornaments, and also objects pertaining to religion and ceremony. Chert was quarried almost throughout the area ; hema tite ore for implements and ochre for paint were procured in Mis souri ; granitic and other durable rocks were distributed over the northern borders by ice-sheets of the glacial period and were uti lized by the inhabitants for implement-making. Copper from the Lake Superior region found an important place in the native arts and remarkable skill was shown in its manipulation by the mal leating processes. Among examples of copper work found in the
Hopewell mounds in Ohio, are a head-dress consisting of a high frontal piece made of sheets of copper covered with indented figures out of which rise a pair of wooden antlers neatly plated with sheet copper; certain spool-like objects, probably ear-orna ments, each skilfully formed of thin sheets of copper over a wooden base; and artificial copper noses on two skeletons and a necklace of 320 pearls. At the Mound City group, a few miles eastward, three sets of copper antlers belonging to head-dresses were unearthed. Personal orna ments of the same material from the mounds are of great variety, including beads, pen dants, pins, ear-o r n a m e n t s, bracelets, gorgets, etc. ; but none of the copper objects are more remarkable than the repousse figures in sheet-copper, some of which suggest Mexican in fluence.
The presence of quantities of mica in the mounds of the middle region show that the inhabitants procured that desirable and readily worked material from North Carolina. By reason of the abundance and variety of these materials, "the range of Ethic arti facts," says Holmes, "is greater than in any other region north of the valley of Mexico. The sword-like blades of Tennessee ap proach the highest place among American chipped products, and the agricultural implements of the Illinois region constitute a unique and remarkable class without parallel in any country." Thus there are numberless implements for cutting, scraping, bor ing, piercing, digging and hammering; axes, celts, adzes, chisels, discoidal "chunkey-stones" used in gaming, banner-stones, orna ments and tobacco pipes, in great variety and excellence of form, design and finish. As mortuary offerings hoards of stone imple ments have been found, one of the most noteworthy of which was a deposit, in an Ohio mound, of many hundreds of beautifully chipped obsidian implements, transported from unknown sources at least a thousand miles away. Another interesting mortuary deposit in one of the Hopewell mounds of Ohio consisted of more than 8,000 large flint discs. Pigment palettes from Alabama, and engraved shells and sculp tured utensils of the middle dis tricts are among many other art products of the mound-building Indians. Perhaps in pottery alone did these people fall short of the ancient Pueblos of the Southwest, yet the elaborately engraved and painted vases and effigy vessels, particularly those representing the human head, of the middle Mississippi region, and the scroll decorated receptacles of the lower Mississippi and the Gulf coast, display both excellent taste and skill. Bottle-shape vases were a favourite form of receptacle.