Terracing

The “Goodall Focus” Hopewell culture occupied Michigan and northern Indiana from around 200 BCE to 500 CE. The Goodall pattern stretched from the southern tip of Lake Michigan, east across northern Indiana, to the Ohio border, then northward, covering central Michigan, almost reaching to Saginaw Bay on the east and Grand Traverse Bay to the north. The culture is named for the Goodall site in northwest Indiana.

Before European settlers, even before the Odawa, Potawatomi, and Ojibwa, prehistoric people called the Hopewell built hundreds of burial mounds in the river valleys and forests of what we now call Michigan. Some Hopewell lived in the western and southern part of the Lower Peninsula. However, the most sophisticated Hopewell settlements and the largest burial mounds were in Ohio and Illinois. When they buried honored people in the mounds, the Hopewell included items that tell us about their lives.

The Hopewell were part of a huge trading network that stretched across the central United States. Elaborate decorations and jewelry made from Michigan copper North Carolina mica, and shells and pearls from the Gulf of Mexico were discovered in Hopewell mounds. Carved obsidian (a volcanic rock) from the Rocky Mountains and shark teeth from Virginia's Chesapeake Bay also have been found. The most ornate artifacts were in Ohio mounds. Michigan artifacts, such as pots and bowls, are simpler. Archaeologists believe the Hopewell traded furs and food, too, but they decayed long ago.

In their eating habits, the Hopewell fit between hunter-gatherers and farmers. The Hopewell may have grown some plants, but they were not a full-time farming people. They ate nuts, squash, and the seeds from several plants. Hopewell people also ate wild animals, birds, and fish.

The Hopewell people's houses were not permanent, so little evidence remains to tell about them. Scientists believe the houses had wooden pole frames covered with animal skins, grass or herb woven mats, or bark.

The Hopewell built their mounds in Michigan from 10 B.C. until about A.D. 400. Historians believe the Hopewell are the distant ancestors of the native people who still live in Michigan. Still, no one knows why they stopped building mounds or where they went after A.D. 400.

Mounds in Michigan
The Hopewell people are gone, but 17 of their burial mounds still lie in a forest outside Grand Rapids. This group is called the Norton Mounds. Until the mid-nineteenth century, another group called the Converse Mounds sat where downtown Grand Rapids is today. But in the mid-1850s, farmers, construction workers, and curious people dug into the Converse Mounds. The mounds soon disappeared and the city was built where they had stood.