Devil’s Backbone overlooks the Ohio River and Fourteen Mile Creek. (located in Charlestown State Park, Charlestown, Indiana) It is about 14 miles from the Falls of the Ohio, which was a natural place for pre-Columbian Native Americans to settle. Travel on the Ohio River past the falls was hazardous.
A team of archaeologists has proposed that Devil’s Backbone before Columbus was a temple Complex. (the state of Indiana has never conducted an archaeological exam). Here are my proposals from the tribes involved, listed in order of likelihood.
- Shawnees: They were associated with the Ohio River further upriver, but a group lived just five miles away in Tullytown, near Charlestown.
- Siouan Tribes: The Lakota/Sioux and kindred tribes. These Indians lived along the Ohio River, especially on the north side. They split up, groups going south, west of the Mississippi, and to the Great Lakes area.
- Cherokees: They once had a town on the Cumberland River, near the Ohio River. Even in the present, they live in eastern Kentucky
