SEPULCHRAL MOUNDS.
SOURCES OF INFORMATION—HILL MOUNDS—THE SCIOTO MOUND—THE TAYLOR
MOUND—THE ISSAQUINA MOUND—THE ELLIOT MOUND—THE LOCKPORT MOUND
—BLACK BIRD’S GRAVE—SCIOTO VALLEY MOUNDS—SYMBOLICAL RITES—
HUMAN SACRIFICES—THE GRAVE CREEK MOUND—COMMON SEPULCHRES—
CREMATION—SCIOTO MOUND CRANIUM—SACRED FESTIVALS.
When the significance of the military and sacred enclosures of the
Mound-Builders has been fully estimated as memorials of a remarkable
people belonging altogether to prehistoric ages of the New World, their
sepulchral mounds acquire a new value. In the former we see unmistakable
indications of a settled condition of society greatly in advance of
anything attained by the Red Indian, and of populous communities devoted
to agriculture and other industrial arts. From the latter we may hope to
recover some traits of ethnical character; to find in the gifts to the
dead illustrations of their arts and customs; and to catch by means of
their sepulchral rites some glimpses of the nature of that belief which
stimulated the Mound-Builders to the laborious construction of so many
sacred earthworks. Their great mounds are for us not merely the
sepulchres of an ancient race; they are the cemetery of an early though
partial civilisation, from whence we may derive illustrations of the
life, manners, and ideas of a people over whose graves the forest had so
long resumed its sway, that it seemed to the Red Indians’ supplanters to
have been the first occupant of the soil.
Barrows, dunes, moat-hills, cairns, and earth or stone mounds of various
kinds, abound in many parts of the Old as well as of the New World, and
are nowhere more abundant than in some districts of the British Isles.
But although corresponding primitive structures are met with from the
Gulf of the St. Lawrence to the Isthmus of Panama, and beyond it, far
into the southern continent: nevertheless the works of the
Mound-Builders have a character of their own altogether peculiar; and
though numbered by thousands, they are limited to well-defined areas,
leaving a large portion of the continent, including the whole of the
Atlantic sea-board, without any traces of their presence. The
Mound-Builders were not a maritime people. Their whole traffic was
confined to the great rivers, along the banks of which their ancient
traces abound, and to communication by long-obliterated overland routes
of travel. Notwithstanding the careful observations which have been put
on record relative to the mounds and earthworks of “The West,” much yet
remains to be disclosed; for, happily, the excavation of such
earth-pyramids is a work greatly too laborious and costly to tempt those
who are influenced by mere idle curiosity; while their contents, however
valuable to the archæologist, offer no such stimulus to cupidity as, in
Mexico and Peru, has led to the destruction of thousands of the
memorials of extinct arts and customs.
As a general rule, the earth and stone works appear to have been alike
constructed of materials derived from the immediate neighbourhood; so
that such differences do not, in the majority of instances, supply any
indication of diversity in the enclosed deposits. A special character,
however, appears to pertain to one class, designated “Hill Mounds,” from
the sites they occupy. Of these Mr. Squier remarks: “The most elevated
and commanding positions are frequently crowned with them, suggesting at
once the purposes to which some of the mounds or cairns of the ancient
Celts were applied: that of signal or alarm posts. It is not unusual to
find detached mounds among the hills back from the valleys, and in
secluded places, with no other monuments near. The hunter often
encounters them in the depths of the forests when least expected:
perhaps overlooking some waterfall, or placed in some narrow valley
where the foot of man seldom enters.” Similar structures crown many
western heights; but some at least are of Indian origin; and our
knowledge of the characteristics and contents of those of an earlier
race must be greatly extended, before we can assign the true and
probably varied objects aimed at in their erection.
But it is to the exploration of one of the smaller hill-mounds that we
owe the recovery of the most characteristic illustration of the physical
type of the ancient Mound-Builders. The “Scioto Mound Cranium,”
described in a later chapter, was obtained from a mound erected on the
summit of a commanding height overlooking the valley of the Scioto, with
its numerous earthworks. A conical knoll, crowning the hill, rises with
such regularity as almost to induce the belief that it is artificial;
and on its apex stands the tumulus overshadowed by the trees of the
primitive forest. Here under a covering of tough yellow clay, impervious
to moisture, a plate of mica rested on an inner cairn, composed chiefly
of large rough stones; and within this, a compacted bed of carbonaceous
matter contained the skull, with a few bones, and some shells of
fresh-water molluscs, disposed irregularly round it. This, therefore, it
will be seen, confirms the idea that cremation played an important part
in the ancient sepulchral rites.
More recently Professor O. C. Marsh explored the Taylor Mound, another
of the hill-mounds, about two and a half miles south of Newark.
Apparently a cemetery had been excavated on the summit of the ridge,
within which lay the remains of at least eight skeletons, chiefly of
women and children, all huddled together, and some of them showing
evidence of long exposure. Along with those were found nine lance or
arrow-heads of flint, six small axes, one of them made of hematite, and
the remainder of diorite or compact greenstone, a small wedge or hatchet
of hematite, a flint chisel, a scraper, numerous implements of bone and
horn, including needles, a spatula or modeller’s tool, and a whistle
made from the tooth of a black bear. Above this ossuary a number of dead
had been disposed: some of them evidently interred with care, others as
if slaughtered and flung upon the heap of dead; while a mass of
incinerated human remains left no doubt on the minds of the explorers
that cremation had taken place directly over the dead, and before the
regular interment was completed. Hence they were led to the conclusion
that the funeral rites had probably included a suttee sacrifice.
Directly under the apex of the mound upwards of one hundred beads of
native copper, intermingled with a few shell beads, lay in contact with
portions of the cervical vertebræ of a young child, showing that they
had been worn as a necklace. The shell beads are about half an inch
long, and have been carefully polished. The copper beads are only half
this length, and wrought with the hammer out of the native copper; but
with so much skill, that in most of them it is difficult to detect the
joining. Only two of the skulls were sufficiently preserved to indicate
their true form. Both were small, and showed the vertical occiput and
large parietal diameter, supposed to pertain to the Mound-Builders, but
which are characteristic of many American crania.
The contents of the two hill-mounds are thus seen to differ widely; and
so far furnish no clew to any special mode of burial or funeral
ceremonies. But the interment of a detached skull, as shown in the
Scioto Mound, is no solitary case. I was shown by Mr. L. M. Hosea, of
Cincinnati, a large bowl-shaped vessel of steatite, capable of holding
about two gallons, discovered by the blowing down of a tree which stood
on the summit of a mound on the borders of Lincoln and Casey Counties,
Kentucky. It had been inverted over a human skull, beside which lay a
number of shell beads, and a quantity of mica. In the same mound was a
large conch-shell, hollowed out, and filled with bone implements,
including two large, well-finished whistles, several deers’ horn
hammers, and about thirty bone pins and awls. A perforated copper plate,
and some well-finished stone and flint implements, completed the
contents of the mound. Unfortunately the skull was too much decayed to
admit of preservation.
I am indebted to Mr. W. Marshall Anderson for some curious disclosures
of the contents of another mound recently opened by him at Issaquina,
Mississippi. The first remarkable discovery was the exposure of three
skeletons disposed vertically, as if they had been buried with their
heads above ground. On reaching the natural level, a heap of ashes, with
numerous fragments of bone, showed where cremation had taken place. Over
this were three skeletons disposed at length, side by side, with a
drinking vessel and a wide-mouthed bowl of native pottery close to the
head of each. Numerous implements, including tools of copper,
well-finished celts of jasper and lignite, and a grotesque clay-pipe
representing a human head with dog’s ears, and a frog’s mouth, lay
alongside of them. But most noticeable of all was the discovery of two
inverted bowls in the centre of the mound, underneath each of which lay
a human skull. One of them is described by Mr. Anderson as “a beautiful
skull, worthy of a Greek.” But on being exposed to the sun, as they
dried, they crumbled to ashes, “literally,” as he says, “disintegrating
before my eyes, whilst I was busy gathering up copper and stone
implements which would have waited for ever unharmed.”
The only skeletons exposed in the Evans Mound,—a large mound, near
Newark, Ohio, at the opening of which I was present, were in a similar
condition of extreme decay. Among the contents of the Taylor Mound, in
the same locality, the curious fact was communicated to me, that the
fractured quarter of a nearly spherical mass of hematite was found,
which at the time attracted less notice than a well-finished wedge and
hatchet of the same material. But on subsequently opening the Elliot and
Wilson Mounds, situated about five miles apart, in the same valley, each
of them was found to include among its contents a corresponding fragment
of hematite, which on being placed in juxtaposition, proved to be
portions of the same broken sphere, or nodule of hematite, valued in all
probability for some wonder-working power. Meteoric stones and pieces of
hematite have been repeatedly found in the Mounds; and were evidently
objects of special regard. The Elliot Mound furnished another object of
interest, in a pipe 7½ inches long, neatly carved in grey limestone,
with the bowl finished in the form of a bear’s head. As shown in Fig.
72, it is of an unusual style of design.
[Illustration: FIG. 72.—Stone Pipe, Elliot Mound, Ohio.]
The establishment of the village of Lockport, on the outskirts of
Newark, and the more recent erection of extensive ironworks there, have
swept away a curious group of mounds in that neighbourhood, including a
truncated pyramid, the contents of which appear to have been of unusual
interest. I examined in the collection of Mr. Wm. L. Merrin, a solid
copper armlet, a pair of remarkable objects like double cymbals, a
sheath subdivided into three tubes, supposed to be a quiver, a polished
axe, and several perforated plates, all of copper; a perforated lead
amulet, a polished chisel of diorite, numerous large shell beads, and
large plates of mica cut into a horse-shoe shape: all of which were
found at the base of the Lockport Mound, along with a number of
skeletons. Subsequently other objects of interest, including a large,
well-finished stone maul, of oval shape, with a deep groove round its
centre, and a mass of pure lead weighing upwards of four pounds, have
been found on its site, in opening up a road. But it is obvious that in
this, as in so many other cases, we have to regret the destruction of a
valuable memorial of the past, without any adequate record of its
disclosures being preserved. Happily a more intelligent interest has now
been awakened in the subject; the rarer objects of antiquity in stone
and in metal are highly prized, and are therefore likely to be preserved
as marketable articles even by those who can see in them no other value;
and as each mound or earthwork discloses some novel feature, further
research may be expected to add materially to our knowledge.
The remoter hill-mounds may reveal similar analogies in structure or
contents to those of the plains; and so furnish evidence that the
population which crowded the great centres, was diffused in smaller
numbers, far inland from the river’s banks, in outlying valleys and
among the secluded recesses of the hills. There, perhaps, as among the
higher valleys of the Andes under the rule of the Incas, a pastoral
people supplemented the agricultural industry of the central provinces,
and shared with them the common rites and superstitions of the national
religion.
In some cases the lofty site of the hill-mound may have determined its
selection from the same motive which occasionally guides the modern
Indian in his choice of a spot for his grave. Of this a striking
illustration is furnished in the history of one modern tumulus on the
Missouri. Upwards of half a century has elapsed since Black Bird, a
famous chief of the Omahaws, visited the city of Washington, and when
returning was seized with small-pox, of which he died on the way. When
the chief found himself dying, he called his warriors around him, and,
like Jacob of old, gave commands concerning his burial, which were as
literally fulfilled. Dressed in his most sumptuous robes, and fully
equipped with his scalps and war-eagle’s plumes, he was borne about
sixty miles below the Omahaw village, to one of the loftiest bluffs on
the Missouri, which commands a magnificent extent of river and
landscape. His favourite war-horse, a beautiful white steed, was led to
the summit; and there, in presence of the whole nation, the dead chief
was placed on its back, looking towards the river, where, as he had
said, he could see the canoes of the white men as they traversed the
broad waters of the Missouri. His bow was placed in his hand, his shield
and quiver, with his pipe and medicine-bag, were hung by his side. A
store of pemmican and a well-filled tobacco-pouch were supplied, to
sustain him on the long journey to the hunting-grounds of the good
Manitou, where the spirits of his fathers awaited his coming. The
medicine-men of the tribe performed their most mystic charms to secure a
happy passage to the land of the great departed; and all else being
completed, each warrior of the chiefs own band covered the palm of his
right hand with vermilion, and stamped its impress on the white sides of
the devoted war-steed. This done, the Indians gathered turfs and soil,
and placed them around its feet and legs. Gradually the pile rose with
the combined labour of many willing hands, until the living steed and
its dead rider were buried together under the memorial mound; and high
over the crest of the lofty tumulus which covered the warrior’s
eagle-plumes, a cedar post was reared to mark more clearly to the
voyagers on the Missouri, the last resting-place of Black Bird, the
great chief of the Omahaws.
One of the most striking evidences of the extent of occupation of the
country, and the denseness of its ancient population, is furnished by a
map in the _Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley_, showing a
section of twelve miles of the Scioto Valley. Square, circular, and
polygonal enclosures, single and in groups, parallels, ditches, and
mounds, occupy every available terrace along the banks of the Scioto
River, and its tributary Paint Creek. A group of mounds in Ross county,
Ohio, occupies the third terrace on the east side of the Scioto Valley,
nearly a hundred feet above the river, and about equidistant from two
remarkable sacred enclosures. The principal mound is twenty-two feet
high; and on penetrating to its centre the traces of a rude sarcophagus
of unhewn logs were indicated by the cast which still remained in the
compacted earth. The bottom had been laid with matting or wood, the only
remains of which were a whitish stratum of decomposed vegetable matter;
and the timbers of the sarcophagus had in like manner decayed, and
allowed the superincumbent earth to fall on the skeleton. Alongside of
it were several hundred beads, made of the columellæ of marine shells
and the tusks of some animal, several of them bearing marks which seemed
to indicate that they were turned, instead of being carved, or ground
into shape by the hand. They retained their position, forming a triple
row, as originally strung round the neck of the dead; and, with the
exception of a few laminæ of mica, were the only objects discovered in
the grave. A layer of charcoal, about ten feet square, lay directly
above the sarcophagus; and seemed, from the condition of the carbonised
wood, to have been suddenly quenched by heaping the earth over it while
still blazing.
Similar layers of charcoal constitute a noticeable feature in mounds of
this class, and seem to indicate either that sacrifices were performed
over the bier, or that funeral rites of some kind were celebrated, in
which fire played an important part. On these funeral pyres probably
many perishable articles were consumed; as the beds of charcoal are
intermingled occasionally with fragments of bone, stone implements, and
other evidences of sacrifices and tribute to the deceased. It is also
apparent that the fire was kindled and allowed to blaze only for a
limited time, when its flames were quenched by heaping the earth over
the glowing embers; so that while charcoal occurs beneath as well as
above the skeleton, the bones are unaffected by fire. The rite was
practised where cremation was not followed; and may have been symbolical
of the lamp of life quenched for ever in the grave. Implements, both of
stone and metal, have been found in these grave-mounds, but for the most
part their contents indicate a different condition of society and mode
of thought from what Indian sepulture implies. Weapons are of rare and
exceptional occurrence. The more common articles are personal ornaments,
such as bracelets, perforated plates of copper, beads of bone, shell, or
metal, and similar decorations worn on the body at the time of its
interment. Among the objects which appear to have been purposely
disposed around the dead, plates of mica occur most frequently. In some
cases the skeleton has been found entirely covered with this material;
and in others the laminæ have been cut into regular figures: disks,
ovals, and symmetrical curves. As a general rule, however, it would
appear that reverence for the dead was manifested in other ways than by
depositing costly gifts in the grave; nor do the relics found indicate
any belief akin to that which induces the modern Indian to lay beside
his buried chief the arms and weapons of the chase, for use by him in
the future hunting-grounds or on the war-path. In a few cases the simple
sarcophagus has been constructed of stone instead of wood; in others the
body appears to have been merely wrapped in bark or matting. In some of
the Southern States both cremation and urn-burial seem to have been
practised; but throughout the valleys of the Ohio and its tributaries a
nearly uniform system of sepulchral rites has been traced. These no
doubt bore some important relation to the solemn religious observances
indicated by other works of the same people; and as it is not in the
sepulchral mounds, but in those which cover the “altars” on which the
sacrificial fires of the ancient worshippers appear to have often
blazed, that the greater number of their works of art, and even their
implements and weapons have been found: it may be that there, rather
than at the grave-mounds, they propitiated the manes of the dead, and
sought by sacrifices of love and reverence to reach beyond this world to
one unseen. Other indications, however, present analogies to the
arrangements of cists and cinerary urns in ancient British tumuli, which
suggest no less clearly the probability of human sacrifices, and a
suttee self-immolation at the grave of the great chief, so congenial to
the ideas of barbaric rank. Such cruel rites we know were practised
among the Mexicans and Peruvians on the largest scale; wives,
concubines, and attendants being immolated by the latter on the tomb of
their deceased Inca, in some cases even to the number of thousands.
The Grave Creek Mound, at the junction of Grave Creek with the Ohio
river, in the State of Virginia, commands, on various accounts, a
prominent distinction among the sepulchral monuments of America. It
occupies a site on an extensive plain in connection with works now much
obliterated; but its own gigantic proportions bid effectual defiance to
the operations which are rapidly erasing less salient records of the
ancient occupants of the soil. In the year 1838, when various
circumstances combined to direct an unusual degree of attention to
American antiquities, Mr. Tomlinson, the proprietor of the land, had it
explored at considerable cost. A shaft sunk from the top, and a tunnel
carried to the centre, disclosed two sepulchral chambers, one at the
base, and another thirty feet above. They had been constructed, as in
other cases, of logs, which had decayed, and permitted the
superincumbent earth, with stones placed immediately over them, to fall
upon the skeletons. In the upper chamber a single skeleton was found in
an advanced state of decay, whilst the lower one contained two
skeletons, one of which was believed to be that of a female. Beside
these lay between three and four thousand shell beads, a number of
ornaments of mica, several bracelets of copper, and sundry relics of
stone carving, referred to, along with works of art from other ancient
mounds, in a future chapter. But among them was included an inscribed
stone disc, which constitutes one of the marvels of American
antiquities. On reaching the lower vault, after removing its contents,
it was determined to enlarge it into a convenient chamber for visitors,
and in doing so ten more skeletons were discovered, all in a sitting
posture, but in too fragile a state to admit of preservation. The
position of these immediately around the sepulchral chamber, in the very
centre of the mound, precludes all idea of subsequent interment, and
scarcely admits of any other mode of accounting for their presence than
that which the human sacrifices both of ancient and modern American
obsequies suggest.
A tumulus of the gigantic proportions of the Grave Creek Mound serves
emphatically to impress the mind with the conviction that such
structures, even when of smaller dimensions, were no accompaniments of
common sepulture, but the special memorials of distinguished chiefs; or,
it may be, at times, of venerated priests. Of the busy population that
once thronged the valleys of the West we have no other memorials than
those which commemorate the toil of many to give a deathless name to one
now as nameless as themselves. The investigators of their works, after
describing in detail the monumental mounds, remark: “The graves of the
great mass of the ancient people who thronged our valleys, and the
silent monuments of whose toil are seen on every hand, were not thus
signalised. We scarcely know where to find them. Every day the plough
uncovers crumbling remains, but they elicit no remark; are passed by,
and forgotten. The wasting banks of our rivers occasionally display
extensive cemeteries; but sufficient attention has never been bestowed
upon them to enable us to speak with any degree of certainty of their
date, or to distinguish whether they belonged to the Mound-Builders or a
subsequent race. These cemeteries are often of such extent as to give a
name to the locality in which they occur. Thus we hear, on the Wabash,
of the ‘Big Bone Bank’ and the ‘Little Bone Bank,’ from which, it is
represented, the river annually washes many human skeletons, accompanied
by numerous and singular remains of art, among which are more
particularly mentioned vases and other vessels of pottery, of remarkable
and often fantastic form.”[87] I have been fortunate enough to obtain an
interesting example of the latter class of pottery, from Big Bone Bank,
figured on a subsequent page, which is specially valuable from the
striking analogy it suggests to familiar forms of Peruvian pottery.
The Ohio and Erie canal traverses the river-terrace of the Scioto Valley
in the vicinity of Chillicothe, where the ancient works of the
Mound-Builders are more abundant than in any other area of equal limits
hitherto explored. In some cases the canal has been cut through them,
and it can scarcely admit of doubt that many interesting traces of the
arts and habits of the remarkable people who once filled the
long-deserted scene, must have been disclosed to heedless eyes. Here and
there, doubtless, a stray relic was picked up, wondered at, and
forgotten; but no note was taken of the circumstances under which it was
found, and no record made of the discovery. And so must it ever be. The
pioneers of civilisation in the uncleared wilds of the West are too
entirely preoccupied with the present, to spare a thought for long
forgotten centuries. Happily, however, this state of things is passing
away, and every year shows increasing evidence of intelligent zeal in
the recovery and preservation of whatever is calculated to throw light
on the prehistoric ages of America.
The contents of the Scioto Valley Mound, as well as of others described
above, prove that the human remains were deposited in them long after
the body had gone to decay; and while numerous indications serve to show
that cremation was extensively practised by the Mound-Builders, it is
not improbable that a custom may have prevailed analogous to the modern
Indians’ scaffolding and subsequent sepulture of the bones of their
dead. The remains thus periodically gathered were sometimes deposited in
a common ossuary, as in that of the Taylor Mound; and in other cases
were burnt, with fitting rites, and their ashes heaped together, forming
mounds, such as one opened on the bank of Walnut Creek, in the Scioto
Valley. The principal portion of this consisted seemingly of
long-exposed and highly-compacted ashes, intermingled with specks of
charcoal, and small bits of burned bones. Beneath this was a small mound
of very pure white clay, resting on the original soil, without any
traces of the action of fire, over which the incinerated remains had
been piled into a mound, nine feet in height by forty in base. The
customs of the North American Indians, however, were very diverse; and
among the ancient Mexicans and Peruvians inhumation, cremation,
urn-burial, and mummification, accompanied with deposition in artificial
vaults and in caves, were all practised. It need not therefore surprise
us to find exceptions among the ancient Mound-Builders to any practice
recognised as most prevalent among them. Considering the decayed state
of most of the bones recovered from the great sepulchral mounds, where
they were equally protected from external air and moisture: if the
common dead were inhumed under the ordinary little grave-mound, their
bones must, for the most part, have long since returned to dust. Nor
must it be overlooked that the extremely comminuted state to which most
of the skeletons in the larger mounds have been reduced, when brought to
light by modern explorers, is due, in part at least, to the falling in
of a superincumbent mass of earth and stones upon them, when the timber
ceiling of their sarcophagus had sustained the weight long enough only
to render them the less able to resist its crushing force. The perfect
preservation of the “Scioto Mound cranium” was due to its being imbedded
in charcoal, over which a superstructure of large stones enveloped with
tough yellow clay had been piled, without any treacherous timber vaults.
It lay in the centre of the carbonaceous deposit, resting on its face.
The lower jaw was wanting, and only the clavicle, a few cervical
vertebræ, and some of the bones of the feet were huddled around it.
Unaccompanied though it was by any relics of art, it is, in itself, one
of the most valuable objects hitherto recovered from the American
mounds.
Such are some of the traces we are able to recover of the sepulchral
rites of this people. In discussing the conclusions suggested alike by
their disclosures, and by those which the sacrificial mounds, the sacred
circumvallations, and the buried works of art reveal, we are dealing
with characteristics of a race pertaining to periods long preceding any
written history. For us these are their sole chronicles; and yet, even
from such data, we are able to deduce some traits of moral and
intellectual character. Perhaps the most important fact for our present
purpose is the rarity of weapons of war among the sepulchral deposits.
It accords with other indications of the condition of the
Mound-Builders. They had passed beyond that rude stage of savage life in
which war and the chase are the only honourable occupations of man.
Their weapons of war, like their fortresses, were means for the defence
of acquisitions they had learned to prize more highly. They had
conquered the forests, and displaced the spoils of the hunter with the
wealth of autumn’s harvestings; and with the habits of a settled
agricultural people, many new ideas had taken the place of the wild
imaginings and superstitions of the savage. As among all agricultural
nations, the vernal and autumnal seasons doubtless had their appropriate
festivals; and we can still, in imagination, reanimate their sacred
enclosures and avenues with the joyous procession bearing its
thank-offering of first-fruits, or laden with the last golden treasures
of the harvest-home.
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[87] _Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley_, p. 171.