Ancient Mayas and Mound Builders in Montana's Smith River Valley?

Nestled in Montana's Meagher County, the Smith River Valley stretches northwest to southeast, renowned for its scenic parks, towering gray cliffs, and hot springs near White Sulphur Springs. Legends whisper of peoples lost to time, with secrets buried along its sparkling stream that joins the Missouri River. This valley, called "The Land of the Spirit" by Native tribes, served as neutral ground where warriors from Comanches, Arapahoes, Crows, Blackfeet, Shoshones, and others gathered peacefully to heal in the mineral waters, a tradition predating white settlers.​

Careful digs revealed the valley as a hub for the Mound Builders, who mined flint, agate, and opal for tools, weapons, and jewelry exported across the continent. Quantities of their arrowheads, spearheads, strange pottery, and fossilized bones turned up around 40-50 years before the 1940 article, drawing scientists. Stranger still, beads matching those from Yucatan's Mayas—and ancient Egyptian tombs—appeared here exclusively, fueling theories of Maya migrations via lost Atlantis, reaching north along the Rockies into Montana.​

Tall, fair-haired Mayas with refined features clashed for centuries with squat, dark-haired Mound Builders, building forts and trenches in brutal wars that left relics like javelins, clubs, and arrowheads. No massive battle mounds mar the valley, suggesting it stayed a rare peace zone, perhaps centered on the healing springs both cultures shared. A cataclysmic clash at Colorado's Red Land unearthed 79,000 skeletons plus sugar pots with fossilized maple sap, dated roughly 12,000 years ago and held at the Smithsonian. Fossil beds hold even older traces: three-toed horses, four-toed camels, and giant reptiles predating these ancients.​

Today, the peaceful valley farms crops under watchful cliffs that have seen races rise and fall. How long until the next chapter unfolds?

https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn83030180/1897-12-05/ed-1/?sp=48&q=Arkansas+Mound+prehistoric&r=0.01,0.7,0.291,0.174,0

https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn86075103/1940-12-21/ed-1/?sp=6&q=Arkansas+Mound+prehistoric