Mounds State Park

Mounds State Park preserves ten earthworks built by the Adena and Hopewell peoples starting around 160 BCE, considered sacred ground by the Indigenous nations who built and later inhabited this stretch of the White River, including the Delaware (Lenape), who lived in central Indiana before removal in the 1820s. Lenape tradition holds that Pukwudgies — small, grayish, human-like beings, sometimes described as protectors of sacred places like these earthworks — inhabit the surrounding forest; the tradition is still told and written about today, including by local researchers who've documented sighting accounts around the park and along the White River near Noblesville. It's a real, still-living piece of Delaware folklore rather than an invented trope, and worth treating with the same respect as the sacred earthworks themselves.