MOBILE-TENSAW DELTA — The large, earthen mound rises 45 feet out of the Mobile-Tensaw Delta northwest of Stockton. It was made by many hands some 600 to 800 years ago.

“This is a highly symbolic location and a very unique site,” said Gregory Waselkov, director of the University of South Alabama Center for Archaeological Studies. “We get to see it pretty much the way it looked then. This is one of only two such sites not developed like Moundville.”

The Moundville site, occupied from around A.D. 1000 until 1450, was a large settlement of Native American culture on the Black Warrior River near Tuscaloosa, according to the Web site of the state park at Moundville. The large Indian mounds there are now covered with manicured grass, not the way it would have looked at the time, Waselkov said.

“Because the Indian mounds are accessible only by boat, Dr. Waselkov initiated USA-sponsored trips aboard the Delta Explorer several years ago,” said Jo Ann Flirt, director of Historic Blakeley State Park, located north of Spanish Fort on State Highway 225. “Blakeley State Park’s dock on the Tensaw provides us with a ‘gateway to the Delta’ as we launch regular educational and scenic two-hour boat and special tours like the Dec. 6 excursion to the Bottle Creek Indian mounds located deep in the Delta.”

Located on the banks of the Tensaw River, Blakeley State Park is a nature park and an historic site of an 1814 riverfront town, the first county seat of Baldwin County, and the site of the last major battle of the Civil War.

Flirt said the Delta Explorer eco-tour boat was purchased by Blakeley and put into operation five years ago as part of their mission to educate school children and adults about the environment and the history of the immediate land area and of the vast Mobile-Tensaw River Delta.

“You would have seen a large open plaza at the foot of this mound,” Waselkov told a group of visitors to the site last Sunday, just before they began their slippery climb to the top. “They would dig with stones and wooden hoes and then carry the mud in baskets to make the mound.”

The creation of the mounds, he said, was a symbolic formation of the world, a recreation of the “earth island,” the three-tiered universe which included a watery underworld.

“A giant spider was sent down to bring back mud to create the world,” he said, explaining one variation on that Native American creation myth. “The Choctaw said the people came out of the mound like ants.”

From a distance, the visitors last week looked a little like ants as they scrabbled their way to the top of the tallest Indian mound.

“They came here from Moundville and set up this little community,’’ Waselkov told the group dressed out in orange vests to make them visible in the dense undergrowth where several hunters walked past during the day in search of wild pigs. “It was a kind of colonization of the area. Many (Native Americans) were mound builders, but the ones here did it bigger and better than anyone else.”

The Indians who occupied the Bottle Creek site from A.D. 1200 to 1400 were organized as a two-tiered society or chiefdom, he said. Most of the people lived away from the mounds in small houses on the highest land of the Delta where they raised corn, beans and other cultivated crops. However, the chief’s house or temple occupied the highest mounds, he said.

“This one has not been excavated, so we don’t know for sure,” he said, referring to the tallest — Mound A.

Waselkov said less than 1 percent of the Bottle Creek site has been excavated because the remote location makes it logistically difficult and more expensive.

“There’s been some talk about research consortium,” he said. “In the future, there may be more research but it will never look like Moundville.”

Water levels in the Bottle Creek area differ sharply by seasons, so trips must be carefully scheduled, Flirt said. The number of passengers on the boat is limited to 50.

”So far every trip has been sold out,” Flirt said. “We are deeply appreciative of the volunteer time of Waselkov, Bonnie Gums and other members of the Archaeological Center staff in guiding these tours.”

For more information on Blakeley Park services to the public, visit www.blakeleypark.com or call 626-0798. In addition to public tours, the park also offers charter boat trips to private, school and civic groups.