All throughout the Midwest and as far south as Texas and east to New York effigy mounds thrust their symbolic human, animal and bird shapes up from the rich earth. Most were plowed under. But some of these 2000 year old mounds have been saved thanks to the U.S. National Park Service. One grouping of bear effigies continues to march across the ridge high above the Iowa side of the Mississippi River in Effigy Mounds National Monument.
In the Preface to this historical fiction book for young adults, Vinson Brown of Happy Camp Publishers says, “The thousands of earth mounds built by ancient North Americans hold some of the great mysteries of this continent.”
Published in 1980, this little 80 page book is still in print and has enjoyed numerous printings. The story is set in the late 1000’s between the Hopewellian people, who lived along vast rivers from about 400 B.C. to 900 A.D., and the Mississippian or Temple Mounds culture from about 700 A.D. to 1700 A.D. Yellow Moon and her people say the bear shaped mounds were markings of “the Ancient Ones.” Unlike the mounds left by the Hopewell builders, Yellow Moon’s mounds contain little evidence of weapons of war or of warlike deaths. Rather, they piece together a trading history as broad as the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, north to Lake Superior and west to the Rockies and the Great Plains. These people produced exquisite works of art, glazed pottery, copper tools as well as gold and gem inlaid jewelry.
Vinson Brown goes on to explain that “The accuracy of both the text and the illustrations [drawn by George Armstrong a Chicago folksinger and artist] has been verified by the Midwest Archeological Center of the National Park Service. As the author enters into the daily life of her young main character, Yellow Moon, we learn to feel and see these ancient Americans as the living beings they were, and to appreciate their lives and their timeless creations as part of the history of our land.”
Yellow Moon, is shown here with her blind grandfather, Star Gazer; one of George Armstrong's twenty-one black and white illustrations.
Near the end of the book, Yellow Moon celebrates her 13th birthday. She is now a woman who has suffered great loss—her beloved grandfather has died and her best friend has moved away to become part of another family. Her mother, Singing Star, scrapes a deerskin and glosses it with beaver fat. Yellow Moon crouches to talk and watch. “What was once hard and stiff grows soft under your fingers, Mother. Do you think memories, too, will soften?”
“We often can make something beautiful from something ugly,” her mother says. “But it takes work. It takes waiting. Patience and careful stirring can crack open hurtful places, too, and make them well again.”
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