On this continent, only Monks Mound in Cahokia, Illinois at 14 acres is larger than Emerald Mound, which is a mound covering eight acres. This mound was build during the middle through the late Mississippian Period (1250 - 1600 CE) by the Natchez native people and occupied from about 1200 to 1730 CE.

Emerald mound was constructed for ceremonial structures, temples, and as a burial of the political and religious leaders; it has a flat top with secondary mounds built on either end. At different stages in the construction of Emerald mound, some six additional mounds were constructed along the perimeter of the top platform.

At its height, Emerald mound would have been the center of religious and civic rituals for the area, with the ceremonial center located on top of Emerald Mound, an unusual feature rarely seen in other mound centers.

The people of the tribe lived in a widely dispersed settlement pattern, mainly in small hamlets and on family farms. They periodically assembled at the ceremonial centers for religious and social events. This settlement appears to have been one of the last active expressions of the large platform mound-building culture.

Some time before 1730, the Natchez had abandoned Emerald Mound, possibly because of social upheaval that followed extensive fatalities from the European diseases introduced to the American Southeast Cultures by the de Soto expedition during the 1540s.

Much later, when the La Salle Expedition of 1682 arrived, the main ceremonial center had been moved from Emerald Mound to the Grand Village of the Natchez, some twelve miles to the southwest.

Emerald Mound was abandoned during the French colonial period, and by then, the hereditary chief of the Natchez was living at the Grand Village mound.

The Emerald mound covers eight acres, measuring 770 feet long by 435 feet wide at the base and is 35 feet in height. Emerald Mound has a flat top with two smaller secondary mounds at each end, the largest of the two adding an additional 30 feet in height, making the summit about 65 feet above the surrounding landscape.

The secondary mounds were the bases of a temple and residence of a priest or ruler and other elites.

Today, among other mounds, I am stopping at Emerald mounds, one previously visited on other journeys along the Natchez Trace, but on this visit, I spend some time to learn that the mound is of the Mississippian period culture, a culture of people who was still using this mound for ceremonial purposes when the French settled in Louisiana in the early 1700′s.

The drive down the trace is pleasant and I stop at Rocky Springs, Mount Locust Stand and then Emerald Mounds, all of which I have not seen.