Shell Mound and Indian Knoll Culture of Southern Indiana and Kentucky Were Proto-Sioux

There is evidence that the early Dakota also had contact with the archaic Maritime people, both of whom buried their dead in shell mounds. These people are pre-Hopewell and are also called the Shell Mound Tradition. Shell mounds are found most extensively in southern Ohio, Indiana and in northern Kentucky. In Louis F. Burns book “The History of the Osage” he writes, “Recent archaeological findings seem to indicate that both the Dhegiha Sioux and Chewere Sioux were the Indian-Knoll and Shell Mound culture of Kentucky and Tennessee.” Skeletal remains found in these shell mounds are identical to the later Hopewell showing that they had inhabited the Ohio and Wabash Valleys for hundreds of years.