Archaeology Magazine - November/December 1995 - 114

per from the upper Great Lakes, mica from the Caroliapart. In another photograph taken by ERIM a single
line about 1,025 feet long is visible 47 miles southwest
nas, shells from the Gulf of Mexico, and obsidian from
the Rocky Mountains. Diverse peoples from Missouri
of Newark. A shadowy parallel line is discernible about
to New York, and from Michigan to Florida, adopted
200 feet to the east. In a ca. 1930 black-and-white
artistic and architectural
motifs of the Hopewell.
from the National Anthropological
photograph
Archives of the Smithsonian Institution, two almost
Although some items from Ohio, such as Licking
County's Flint Ridge flint, trickled out to the ends of
parallel lines are visible on the outskirts of Chillicothe,
the Hopewell world, there is more evidence of exotic
56 miles southwest of Newark. One line is interrupted
material coming into Ohio than of Ohio goods going
by a semicircular feature. Squier and Davis do not
out. Perhaps the mica and obsidian were not trade
depict a parallel-walled roadway in this area on their
1845 map, but they do show a small semicircular
goods, but tribute or offerings from visiting dignitaries.
It is conceivable that Newark and Chillicothe were
earthwork. It is here, not far from High Bank Works,
that the Great Hopewell Road seems to end. These
great religious centers, and that pilgrims came here
from across eastern North America to leave rare and
indistinct and intermittent lines inscribed across the
fields of south-central Ohio may or may not be remprecious offerings of copper and mica. In return, they
took away a blessing
nants of a sacred road,
rather than a commodbut they are in the right
ity. Such pilgrimages
place, at the right comwould have been facilipass bearing, and are of
the Great
RoadPerhaps
Hopewell
tated by formal sacred
the right dimensions to
be traces of such a road.
roadways that may have
a spirit
was
path
been called, in the forWe may never know
two communities
gotten language of the
why Ohio's Hopewell
ritually
uniting
would have built such a
Hopewell, "white roads."
with
each
other
and
The timing of their ritupathway from Newark to
als may have been based
Chillicothe. No surviving
with
the community
on a lunar calendar,
of the dead.
records or traditions can
which would explain the
be reliably attributed to
earthworks marking the
the Hopewell. In the sixlunar cycle that lie at
teenth century, when the
each end of the Great Hopewell Road.
Spanish encountered the Maya of the Yucatán and
asked of them the purpose of their long straight highFor now, the argument for the road's existence rests
natives
said
were
sacred
routes
of
the
roads,
they
upon archival data, aerial photography, and ground
ways,
- and for the
The
name
for
them
survey. Much work remains to be done. More sophistipilgrimage.
Maya
- was
road."
Daniel
cated remote-sensing techniques must be applied to the
"white
sache,
Milky Way
meaning
search. Telltale parallel lines must be excavated to see
Brinton, a nineteenth-century anthropologist, recorded
if they are the remnants of ancient earthworks or
an obscure tradition of the Lenni Lenape, or Delaware
Indians, that, "in the good old times... a string of white
something else entirely natural soil formations or,
perhaps, historic drainage lines. Finally, ground surveys
wampum beads... stretched from the Atlantic to the
and excavations should focus on areas alongside and
Pacific, and on this white road their envoys travelled
from one great ocean to the other, safe from attack."
between the walls to gain a clearer understanding of
how these roads were used.
Among the eastern Algonquian peoples, wampum was
not merely a form of money. It was also an instruThere are precedents in prehistoric America for
ment - or a sacrament - for negotiating peace, proposlong, straight roadways connecting one sacred place
a
or
at
the
death
of
with
another. While analogies with cultures widely sepcondolences
offering
ing marriage,
arated in space and time may be questionable, the
chief. Among the Iroquois, the "great white wampum
belt" signified purity and peace. The Delaware referred
knowledge that such roads were widespread in the
Americas makes their presence in the Ohio Valley less
to life's journey as the "Beautiful White Path," one ritof an anomaly. There are sound reasons for entertainually enacted in Big House ceremonies. American
Frank
believes
the
White
Path
anthropologist
Speck
ing the possibility that the Great Hopewell Road did
also represented the Milky Way, the Spirit or Ghost
exist, a remarkable accomplishment by a remarkable
over
which
the
the
dead
would
continue
souls
of
Path,
people, and that this research has restored a page from
a lost epic.
.their journey into the spirit world. Perhaps the Great
Road
was
a
two
Hopewell
spirit path ritually uniting
communities with each other and with the community
Bradley T. Lepper^ a curator of archaeologyat the Ohio
of the dead.
Historical Society, is affiliated with Denison University in
The Hopewell participated in a trading network that
much
of
North
America.
Granville,Ohio.
They acquired copspanned

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Archaeology Magazine - November/December 1995

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