PHOTO CREDIT: Aerial photograph of the Yorktown Enclosure. Image courtesy of Delaware County's Office of GIS and Information Services.
For thousands of years before Euro-Americans arrived, Native Americans lived on the land we now call Muncie and Delaware County. Archeological evidence suggests that, by the Woodland Period (approximately 1000 BCE - 1000 CE), east-central Indiana was widely inhabited by Native Americans. They were affiliated with the Adena and, later, the Hopewell cultures based in what is now southern Ohio.
Many of the recovered artifacts from the Woodland Period found in Muncie and Delaware County also suggest some degree of cultural distinction, although we do not know what these groups called themselves. We do know that in the Woodland Period, Native Americans constructed earthworks across east-central Indiana, about a dozen or so in Delaware County alone. Early settlers destroyed most of these as they established farms in the mid-19th century. Three survive today, including the Yorktown Enclosure, the Parkinson Mound, and the Bell Creek Mound. An Adena mound dating from 80 BCE can still be found along the White River just east of the town of Windsor in Randolph County.
Links
Indiana's Mounds and Earthworks - Indiana DNR.
The Windsor Mound
Sign for Windsor Mound, Adena Culture (just east of Delaware County on Windsor Road). Photo courtesy of Jeanne Zeigler.