Late Prehistoric Period

A.D. 900 to 1650

The Late Prehistoric Period refers to the centuries preceding the movement of Europeans into the Ohio country. The American Indian cultures occupying Ohio during this period lived in large villages often surrounded by a stockade wall. Sometimes they built their villages on high ground overlooking a river. Leadership may have become centralized in one or two leaders, perhaps including a war chief.

Late Prehistoric people grew maize (or corn), beans, and squash in their fields. They continued to hunt, fish, and gather wild plant foods, but maize was, by far, their most important source of food.

Their ritual life was centered on the plazas at the center of their villages and often the dead were buried in graves surrounding the plaza. Effigy mounds represent a new development during this period. Serpent Mound and the Alligator Mound appear to have been shrines to important spirits that still were revered by the tribes of the historic period.

During the Late Prehistoric Period, several distinctive cultures arose in different parts of Ohio: the Fort Ancient culture in central and southern Ohio, Sandusky culture in northwestern Ohio, Whittlesey culture in northeastern Ohio, and the Monongahela culture in eastern Ohio.

Archaeologists have found European trade items at a few late Late Prehistoric sites. These likely were not brought directly to Ohio by European visitors, but were instead obtained by the Ohio groups through trade with tribes farther to the east that had direct contact with the newcomers.

The Late Prehistoric Period also is called the Mississippian Period. In the Mississippi Valley and in the Southeastern United States, large cites grew up during this time. The largest was Cahokia in Illinois.

Perhaps similar large cities would have become established in Ohio, but the Beaver Wars and then the movement of Europeans into the region forever changed the lives of Ohio's American Indian peoples.