'Mound builders' definitions:

Definition of 'Mound builders'

From: GCIDE
  • Mound \Mound\, n. [OE. mound, mund, protection, AS. mund protection, hand; akin to OHG. munt, Icel. mund hand, and prob. to L. manus. See Manual.] An artificial hill or elevation of earth; a raised bank; an embarkment thrown up for defense; a bulwark; a rampart; also, a natural elevation appearing as if thrown up artificially; a regular and isolated hill, hillock, or knoll. [1913 Webster]
  • To thrid the thickets or to leap the mounds. --Dryden. [1913 Webster]
  • Mound bird. (Zool.) See moundbird in the vocabulary.
  • Mound builders (Ethnol.), the tribe, or tribes, of North American aborigines who built, in former times, extensive mounds of earth, esp. in the valleys of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. Formerly they were supposed to have preceded the Indians, but later investigations go to show that they were, in general, identical with the tribes that occupied the country when discovered by Europeans.
  • Mound maker (Zool.), any one of the megapodes. See also moundbird in the vocabulary.
  • Shell mound, a mound of refuse shells, collected by aborigines who subsisted largely on shellfish. See Midden, and Kitchen middens. [1913 Webster]

Words containing 'Mound builders'