The Mounds
Monongahela, Washington County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Site of two Indian Burial Mounds built between 2,000 and 3,000 years ago by the Adena people. Late 19th century excavations found skeletons, pottery, copper implements, and other antiquities.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Long before European settlers reached the Monongahela Valley, people of the Adena culture raised two burial mounds on this site some two to three thousand years ago. When nineteenth-century diggers opened them, they uncovered human remains alongside pottery, copper implements, and other artifacts left by a sophisticated ancient society. These earthworks are among the tangible traces of the Woodland-era peoples who shaped the landscape of the Ohio Valley.
Why it matters
The mounds testify to the deep antiquity and cultural achievement of Native peoples in the region, reaching far back beyond the written record of America.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Queen Aliquippa
McKeesport, PA · est. 2003
In the years before the French & Indian War, the forks of the Ohio were contested ground where the Seneca and other nations navigated the rivalry between Britain and France. Queen Aliquippa was a respected leader whose favor the British colonies actively courted — so much so that a young George Washington detoured to pay his respects to her in 1753 during his mission to the Ohio Country. Her death the following year came just as the frontier war she had aligned with was erupting.
Col. George Morgan
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George Morgan was one of the most experienced Indian traders and agents on the early American frontier, and from 1796 to 1810 he made his home on this ground. It was here that Aaron Burr, the former vice president, came calling with a scheme to raise a private venture in the West. Morgan grew alarmed at what he heard and became one of the first to warn President Thomas Jefferson of Burr's designs.
Simon Girty (1741-1818)
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Born near Harrisburg, Simon Girty was captured and adopted by the Seneca as a teenager in 1756, and he came to move fluidly between Native and colonial worlds. He worked as an interpreter at Fort Pitt before defecting to the British in 1778, after which he advised and accompanied Native war parties in raids on frontier settlements during the Revolution. Reviled by many American settlers, he remains a deeply contested figure and is buried in Canada.
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