ST. LOUIS — The last couple of hundred years have been cruel to Sugar Loaf Mound. Quarrying nearly destroyed it in the 1800s; road construction of Interstate 55 further scarred it in the 1960s. Now, as preservationists strive to save the Missouri city’s only surviving Indian mound, they’ve found a natural ally: the descendants of its ancient builders, the Osage tribe of Oklahoma.
Sugar Loaf, between the highway and the Mississippi River about four miles south of the Gateway Arch, is all that remains of a network of Indian earthworks that gave St. Louis the nickname "Mound City.” Last fall, an elderly couple who own the 900-square-foot house on top of the mound put the property up for sale. There are two other houses at the base of the mound.
Under a plan that tribal officials say has the support of Osage Chief Jim Gray, the tribe would purchase the mound, demolish the homes and develop the property.
The Osage Nation Congress, based in Pawhuska adjourned Wednesday without taking up a bill that authorizes the purchase. Though lawmakers aren’t scheduled to convene again until September, Gray could call a special session as early as July to decide whether the tribe should buy Sugar Loaf.
The Osage didn’t build Sugar Loaf, but the tribe believes its ancestors include a mound-building people that disappeared long before the arrival of Europeans in North America. That society built earthworks throughout the Midwest, the best-known examples being the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site in Collinsville, Ill.
Andrea Hunter, the director of the tribe’s historic preservation office, said archaeological evidence bolsters the tribe’s claim — passed on through the Osage oral tradition — that their forefathers built the earthen mounds.
The mound was listed in 1984 on the National Register of Historic Places.
by the associated press
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