I first became fascinated with Indian burial grounds after watching The Shining. In the original novel by Stephen King, there is actually no mention of an Indian burial ground or any Native American influence at all really. But Kubrick’s movie is very clearly about the past impinging on the present and the desecration of sacred land opening up a sink hole to all the layers and horrors of history. The Shining is also explicitly about America's general inability to admit to the gravity of the genocide of the Indians -- or, more exactly, its ability to "overlook" that genocide. Not only is the site called the Overlook Hotel with its Overlook Maze, but one of the key scenes takes place at the July 4th Ball.
The idea that one could disrespect American Indians, that theirs was a history on which we had trampled, was, embarrassingly but truthfully, sort of new to much of the American public in the 1970s. And what could be scarier than having your worst mistakes come back to haunt you? The Marietta Earthworks site is a 2000-year old Hopewell culture ceremonial center constructed between 100 BC and AD 500, located in southern Ohio on the border of West Virginia. Ohio is considered to be the epicenter for the most impressive Hopewell earthworks. Incidentally, the name Ohio in turn originates from the Seneca word ohiːyo', meaning "good river", "great river" or "large creek".
The idea of Ohio becoming a state began as a business venture in a Boston tavern in 1786. At that time, the American Revolutionary War was over, the Brits had been kicked out, and the conversation turned to the wild west, which at that time meant Ohio and Kentucky. So when the Ohio Company landed at the confluence of the Muskingum and Ohio rivers in 1788, they didn’t know what these series of earthworks and mounds meant. Indeed, it is suggested that these first settlers attempted to plan their new settlement around, rather than over, the earthworks. The British government had previously attempted to improve relations with the American Indians already residing in the Ohio territory by prohibiting white settlement in the Ohio Country.
Starting with the Proclamation of 1763, as it is known, the British colonial government placed firm limits on westward expansion. They acknowledged that Indians owned the lands on which they were then residing and white settlers in the area were to be removed. Great Britain's action, which was by no means altruistic in origin, resulted in part in the American Revolution. It angered colonists because they weren't allowed to settle west of the Appalachian Mountains. The Treaty of Paris (1783) brought the Revolution to a close and Great Britain recognized the independence of the United States. By 1843, the last large group of American Indians in Ohio had been made to give up their land.
Independence was bad for Native Americans, who mostly sided with the British or stayed neutral. Indians’ collusion with the British during the American Revolution and the War of 1812 exacerbated American hostility and suspicion toward them. American colonists* refused to see Indians as fellow subjects. Instead, they viewed them as obstacles in the way of their dreams of land ownership and trading wealth. Faulkner’s famous line “The past is never dead. It’s not even the past” is perhaps pertinent here: these landscapes are loaded with meaning. The names of the Ohio tribes included the Illinois tribe (Illini), Iroquois, Chippewa, Delaware, Erie, Ottawa, and Potawatomi, Kickapoo, Kaskaskia, Miami, Wyandot and Shawnee.
*The inhabitants of the American colonies were from quite early on known as “Americans” starting in the early 1600s. However, that was more a term to distinguish British subjects of the American colonies from those born and raised in Britain, and was not a national identity as one might understand it today.