Naples Mound 8

About this property

The Naples Mound 8 (also Naples-Russel Mound 8 or Illinois Archaeological Survey #PK 335) is a Havana Hopewell culture mound site located in Pike County, Illinois, United States, three miles east of the city of Griggsville. It is the largest mound on the bluff-top in the lower Illinois Valley. The mound was given the name Naples Mound #8 in 1882. The mound was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. In May and June 1834, Joseph Smith led a Latter Day Saint group of 150 men known as Zion's Camp on a march from Kirtland, Ohio, to Jackson County, Missouri. On June 3, while passing through west-central Illinois three miles east of Griggsville, Illinois, some men discovered a large burial mound on the west side of the Illinois River one mile south of present-day Valley city. Their report said that there were remains of bones on the surface and that when digging it up they found a skeleton about a foot beneath the surface, with a stone arrow point in the ribs. Wilford Woodruff indicated that they had gone to the top of the mound and then while descending, halfway down the mound, Joseph Smith pointed to a location that was then excavated. Through visions this was interpreted as a white Lamanite warrior named Zelph who was killed during a battle with the Nephites. They took the leg bones of "Zelph" away in Wilford Woodruff's wagon and reburied them near Liberty, Missouri, but the arrow head was retained. The Zelph Mound incident was recorded by six men of Zion's Camp in their journals: Woodruff, Heber C. Kimball, Levi Hancock, George A. Smith, Moses Martin, and Reuben McBride. The "Zelph Mound incident" was formally recorded in church history from available sources in 1842 by church historian, Willard Richards. Illinois was made a state in 1818 and white settlers came in and opened some of the burial mounds in the former Native American lands. Judge John G. Henderson of Winchester, Illinois, was impressed by beautifully carved stone smoking pipes a friend showed him which were obtained from burial mounds in Naples, Illinois. Accordingly, he and a Mr. Merrill, in 1876, did some excavations and documentation of some of the Naples mounds in which were found a raccoon and a turtle pipe, copper axes, and human skeletal remains. Henderson also mapped the location of fifteen mounds near Naples, including Naples Mound #8. A map he made shows Naples Mound #8 as being a mile south of Valley City, Illinois and across the Illinois River from Naples, Illinois. Being impressed with mound #8, Henderson illustrated an Eagle pipe unearthed from the mound about 40 years earlier by a Daniel Burn, John W. Windsor and others. In describing Naples Mound #8 Henderson states, "On the right bank of the Illinois river about 300 yards below [south of] Griggsville Landing, rises a lofty bluff fully 300 feet above the level of the river. On the summit is a beautiful, oval mound, 150 long, 92 feet wide in the middle, and 25 or 30 feet high. ... within a radius of 5 miles from Naples there are a least fifty mounds, very few of which have ever been opened". After Henderson wrote an article describing the Naples mounds and the relics found in them, the Smithsonian Institution, in December 1879 began a thorough exploration of them, furnishing six laborers to help with the excavations. Afterwards, Henderson authored the article describing the results in the Smithsonian Annual Report.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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