Rainy River mounds in Ontario reached 40 ft under clay caps

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Key facts

• The Rainy River site holds at least 17 burial mounds spread along a 3 km stretch of the river in southwestern Ontario, above the US border.
• Most mounds stand about 20 ft tall; one rises to roughly 40 ft.
• In their original state the mounds were capped with a smooth layer of clay plaster; the presenter argues that a 40 ft clay-capped platform merits the designation 'earthen pyramid' rather than a simple mound.
• The site was renamed Kay-Nah-Chi-Wah-Nung (Rainy River Mounds) in 1998; before that it was known as the Manito Mounds, a name given during 1960s excavations that also triggered government protection of the site.
• Archaeologist Walter Kenyon oversaw the 1960s removal of thousands of artifacts and a few skeletons, delivered to the Royal Ontario Museum.
• Kenyon went on to excavate further burial mounds along the Canada-US border and was arrested at the Grimsby site in 1977; the resulting court case produced stronger laws protecting First Nations patrimony in Canada.
• The Kay-Nah-Chi-Wah-Nung (Rainy River Mounds) Historical Centre and Museum was built in 1987 and is owned and managed by the Rainy River First Nations.
• The centre maintains a 3 km trail, five museum galleries, and a lab holding more than 10,000 artifacts, most repatriated from Kenyon's collections at the Royal Ontario Museum.
• The site museum states ancestors occupied the area for 8,000 years; the first inhabitants made copper tools and hunted game with atlatls.
• The Laurel culture built the first pyramid mounds between 300 BCE and 1100 CE and lived in villages nearby; the later Blackduck culture built lower, linear mound groups until European contact.
• Continuous habitation is attributed to the site's microclimate: south-facing slopes allowed modest farming and the rapids never froze, permitting year-round fishing.

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