SPANISH FORT, Ala.—Outdoor enthusiasts and history buffs can take a step back in time Sunday as 5 Rivers Delta Resource Center hosts its periodic Bottle Creek Indian Mounds tour and lecture.

The six-hour class includes a one-hour presentation on Native American culture, followed by a boat ride and guided tour of the mounds themselves.

And for those worried about the authenticity of the material, 5 Rivers Assistant Manager Shonda Borden is quick to note the tour will be led by a historian, botanist and herpetologist, or a zoologist who specializes in reptiles, amphibians crocodilians and turtles.

Anna Hardwick of Daphne, who homeschools her two elementary-school-age daughters, opted to take the trek in the spring to compliment her Alabama history curriculum.

“It’s one thing to tell my girls about history. It’s another to get to show them,” Hardwick said. “And considering how rich this area’s Native American culture is, I think it’s important for them to understand what was here — and practiced — before cultures started intermingling.”

Of course, as an amateur historian herself, Hardwick admits she probably gleaned as much from the experience as her daughters.

“It really makes you feel so small when you get out there and see these magnificent mounds and really get a glimpse at a different time — and type — of life,” she said.

Borden said many local residents are surprised to learn there was once a thriving civilization right in the middle of the Mobile-Tensaw Delta.

Indeed, evidence of the Bottle Creek civilization rises from the water in the form of a 45-foot-tall, flat-topped earthen mound surrounded by 17 smaller mounds. The area, known simply as “Mound Island,” is a 5- by 2-mile stretch of swamp land, bordered on the eastern side by the predictably named Bottle Creek.

Borden said the tribe built the mounds one basket of dirt at a time and because it has been designated as a national historic landmark, it is illegal to remove artifacts or dig on the site.

“It’s almost as if you’re stepping back in time, treading in the same footsteps of those that walked hundreds of years before,” she said.

It is believed that the tallest earthen mounds housed temples and abodes for chiefs and other elite citizens, while the smaller structures housed huts for storage and work spaces.

5 Rivers’ historical gurus are also quick to note the Bottle Creek Indians are actually part of a larger group of Mississippian-era Native Americans called the Mound Builders. It is also believed Mound Island was a “prosperous center of trade” between the 13th and 15th centuries, Borden said.

“They left bits and pieces of evidence that have enabled researchers to speculate about how they lived using the artifacts they left behind,” she said.

Tour participants will learn how the civilization could thrive — and stave off starvation — by  storing primary crops in “shell-tempered” pottery. They also used rivers as highways, trading marine shells and salt for copper from the Great Lakes, or mica from the Appalachians, Borden said.

Want to go?

*What: Bottle Creek Indian Mound lecture and tour

*When: 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Nov. 7

*Where: 5 Rivers Delta Resource Center

*Cost: $60 per person, includes coffee, lunch and snacks

*Reservations required. Call Captain Michael Dorie at 251-259-8531