There has been a tendency to view the American Indian as an anachronistic element in the inexorable move towards the ultimate European domination of North America. The native peoples. particularly those in the eastern United States, were thought to be so abjectly inferior and insensitive that even their earlier monumental earthworks were interpreted to represent the handiwork of a prior intellectually superior people, probably ultimately derived from an Old World heartland. Such interpretations, if they were ever warranted by evidence, grew out of the fact that Indian history was traditional and not written and by the time the European intruder began to seriously record the native cultures, they had already been so decimated as to have a reality only in the memory of the oldest generations.
The prehistoric perspective which archaeology permits, while limited to those aspects of culture and behavior likely to survive natural forces, results in quite a different picture than that suggested by the popular stereotype. Beginning sometime prior to 12,000 years ago, a widespread hunting base (Paleo-lndian Tradition) underwent a slow transition until the Indian groups became skilled in the utilization of the many varied and rich natural resources. This relatively long period of development (Archaic Tradition) occurred when the climate associated with the Pleistocene, the Ice Age, was ameliorated, and conditions approximating those of the present were established. Mortuary ritualism, so conspicuous a part of the archaeological record from the first millennium before the Christian Era to about A.D. 400, is an outgrowth of this experimentation; a particular peak was reached in Ohio (Woodland Tradition). Following a short period of relative quiescence, at least in so far as the archaeological evidence is concerned, developments in the Mississippi Valley involving a major reliance upon plant cultivation and undoubtedly influenced in some measure by the "high" cultures of Middle America gave rise to large settled town populations (Mississippian Tradition). This life-style survived into the period of European settlement, though the area of Mississippian domination was much diminished by this later period, and some regions were actually depopulated, e.g., the Ohio Valley. Indiana shares in these developments and preserves a host of archaeological sites reflecting upon them.