When folks around the
country plan their yearly vacations, Indiana may not be on their short lists of
places to visit in this great land of ours, but we do have a handful of things
to do that would make it worth your while to stop here for more than just a pee
break on your way to bigger and better things north, south, east, or west of
here. The Indianapolis 500, Brickyard 500, Notre Dame campus, College Football
Hall of Fame, Historic Brown County, and Paoli Peaks are all nice places to
visit if you are a non-Hoosier and want to see what this state has to offer.
We at The Hoosier Gazette
feel the best way we can help travelers thinking of stopping here is not to
point out which places in Indiana are the best to see, but to find out which is
the worst and warn travelers not to waste an extra gallon of gas going out of
their way to visit something that is about as fun as watching the grass grow or
paint dry.
After weeks of polling
friends, neighbors, relatives, and co-workers who have traveled extensively
around the state, there was one place we could all agree is the most boring in
Indiana: Angel Mounds State Historic Site in Warrick County.
What is Angel Mounds? It
is a field with a few grass-covered mounds and a couple of adobe walls where a
group of Native Americans called the Mississippians lived from 1100-1400 A.D.
according to the Angel Mounds website,
www.angelmounds.org. The site also says that Angel Mounds was “the
religious, political, and economic center of the region.” I have visited this
place myself and can tell you that this speaks volumes about the crappy lives of
the Mississippians. Take a look for yourself at some selections from the Angel
Mounds virtual tour:
The Angel Mounds website
also states, “No one today knows why the residents of Angel Mounds abandoned the
site.” I am not an archaeologist, but I can tell why the Mississippians left
the site: They were bored out of their minds! If all there was to do for fun
was to pile dirt into a big mound and grow corn until the soil was worn out, I
would split too!
Maybe the most
disappointing thing about Angel Mounds is not the letdown of expecting something
really cool and seeing a few hills but the Mississippians themselves. What kind
of Indians grow corn and dig dirt? When I think of Native Americans, I think of
warriors who kicked major tail and killed bison for a living, not farmed corn by
the river! You gotta be kidding me! Maybe they didn’t leave; perhaps they were
wiped out by REAL Indians.
To summarize, if you are
staying in the Evansville area or just passing through northern Warrick County
on Interstate 64, don’t go out of your way to stop at Angel Mounds unless you
are a mound enthusiast or have a grandfather who is half Mississippian.
