SYMBOLIC MOUNDS.
THE WISCONSIN REGION—ANIMAL MOUNDS—SYMBOLIC MOUNDS—BIG ELEPHANT
MOUND—DADE COUNTY MOUNDS—MAGNITUDE OF EARTHWORKS—ENCLOSED
WORKS OF ART—ROCK RIVER WORKS—THE NORTHERN AZTALAN—ANCIENT
GARDEN BEDS—THE WISCONSIN PLAINS—A SACRED NEUTRAL LAND—THE
ALLIGATOR MOUND—THE GREAT SERPENT, OHIO—SERPENT SYMBOLS—
INTAGLIO EARTHWORKS—SUGGESTIVE INFERENCES—THE ANCIENT RACE—A
SACERDOTAL CASTE—ANTIQUITY OF THE RACE—INFERIORITY OF THE
INDIAN TRIBES.
The well-watered region which stretches westward from Lake Michigan to
the Mississippi, was occupied until recently by a comparatively dense
Indian population; and even now affords shelter to the remnants of
native tribes. But besides the traces of their ephemeral dwellings and
graves, it abounds with earthworks of a distinctive character, peculiar
to the New World. But of this as of other partially explored regions of
the west, the earlier accounts were vague and contradictory; and it is
only very recently that the characteristics of its monuments have been
accurately defined. Mr. J. A. Lapham, to whose _Antiquities of Wisconsin
surveyed and described_, the minute knowledge of these remarkable
earthworks is chiefly due, claims to have first described the Turtle
Mound at Waukesha and other animal effigies of the same territory, so
early as 1836. These notices, however, only appeared in local
newspapers; and general attention was for the first time directed to
them by Mr. R. C. Taylor in the _American Journal of Arts and Sciences_,
in 1838. Their peculiar character was thereby perceived, and such
general interest awakened, that the American Antiquarian Society was
induced to place funds at Mr. Lapham’s disposal for carrying out the
elaborate surveys since published.
The occurrence of “Animal Mounds” is by no means exclusively confined to
the State of Wisconsin. Some examples are specially worthy of notice
among the varied earthworks of the Ohio and Scioto Valleys. But the
important fact connected with the aboriginal traces of Wisconsin is that
its Animal Mounds do not occur interspersed, as in the Ohio Valley, with
civic and sacred enclosures, sepulchral mounds, and works of defence;
but within its well-defined limits, thousands of gigantic basso-relievos
of men, beasts, birds, and reptiles, all wrought with persevering labour
on the surface of the soil, constitute its distinguishing
characteristic; and disclose no evidence of their construction with any
other object in view than that of perpetuating their external forms. The
vast levels or slightly undulating surfaces of prairie land present
peculiarly favourable conditions for the colossal relievos of the native
artist: yet not more so than are to be met with in other localities
where no such mounds occur. It is important therefore to bear in
remembrance that defensive or military structures, and such as are
apparently designed for sacrificial rites or religious ceremonies, are
scarcely to be met with in the territory marked by those singular groups
of imitative earthworks. The country, moreover, is well adapted for
maintaining a large population, in very diverse stages of social
progress. Through its gently undulating surface numerous rivers and
streams flow in sluggish, yet limpid current, eastward and westward, to
empty themselves into Lake Michigan or the Mississippi. The pools and
groups of lakes into which they expand, furnish abundance of wild rice,
which is at once a means of sustenance to numerous aquatic birds, and
also constituted an important source of supply to the aborigines, so
long as they held possession of the territory. The rivers and lakes also
abound with excellent fish; and where the soil remains uninvaded by the
ploughshare of the intruding settler, numerous traces of older
agricultural labour show where the Indians cultivated the maize, and
developed some of the industrial arts of a settled people. Indian
grave-mounds diversify the surface, and enclose ornaments and weapons of
the rude nomads that still linger on the outskirts of that western
state. But such slight and inartificial mounds are readily
distinguishable from the remarkable structures of a remoter era which
constitute the archæological characteristic of the region. Here, indeed,
as elsewhere, the Indians have habitually selected the ancient
earthworks as places of sepulture; and as a rule have given the
preference to the larger and more conspicuous mounds. On some of these
the surveyors recognised recent graves of the Potowattomies. But their
irregular position shows that they bear no relation to the original
design. In their superficial character they correspond to the slight
grave-mounds made with the imperfect implements of the modern Indians;
and they contrast in all other respects with the laborious construction
of the gigantic animal-mounds.
The symbolic earthworks of the Wisconsin plains are not confined to the
representation of animals, though the predominance of animal-mounds has
suggested that name for the whole. Embankments occur in the form of
crosses, crescents, angles, and straight lines; and also seemingly as
gigantic representations of the war-club, tobacco-pipe, and other
familiar implements or weapons. Some of the crosses and other simpler
forms probably originally represented animals, birds, or fishes, with
extended wings or fins. But in those, as in the better-defined
animal-mounds, time has obliterated the minuter touches of the ancient
modeller, and effaced indications of his meaning. Yet fancy still
recognises among the best preserved relievos the elk, buffalo, bear,
fox, otter, and racoon. The lizard is of frequent occurrence; the turtle
and frog also appear; birds and fishes are repeatedly represented; and
man himself figures among the ancient relievos. Of one form of mound
which Mr. Lapham identifies as the otter, seven examples occur. Sixteen
cruciform earthworks are described, and the ordinary examples, of all
sizes, are counted by hundreds.
It is not without reason that some of the larger mounds in the midst of
those emblematic earthworks have been designated observatory mounds, and
assumed to have been constructed in order to afford a view of the
laborious devices. Ordinarily the mound builder is tempted to give
greater prominence to his tumulus by erecting it on the summit of a hill
or bluff; but on the prairie land of Wisconsin, such natural elevations
are wanting; and hence the construction of a class of works for which
the lowest levels were preferred. The “Big Elephant Mound,” which
measures 135 feet in length, is constructed in a valley gently sloping
to the Mississippi, a few miles below the junction of the Wisconsin
River. The ridges on both sides offered a choice of elevated sites; but
the bottom land nearly on a level with the Mississippi at high water,
has been purposely chosen, so that the device might be surveyed from the
neighbouring heights. Fancy is prompt to assign a meaning to the old
modellers’ works. In this example, the prolonged snout, or proboscis,
has led to its designation as the “Big Elephant Mound”; and the
delineator of it, in the Smithsonian Report for 1872, so confidently
relies on its purposed significance that he asks: “Is not the existence
of such a mound good evidence of the contemporaneous existence of the
mastodon and the Mound-Builders?” The figure, though comparatively
large, is surpassed by many. Some indeed are on a gigantic scale. One
mound of peculiar, but indeterminate form, tapers for a length of five
hundred and seventy feet. At its smaller extremity or tail, it slightly
curves to the east. At the opposite extremity are a large cross, and one
of the largest circular mounds. Its device can no longer be recognised;
but much ingenuity and still more labour, have been expended on its
construction. Another remarkable group in Dade County, includes six
quadrupeds of indeterminate species, six parallelograms, a large
tumulus, a circle, and a human figure. The animals are grouped in two
rows; and the tumulus seems as though it had been erected as an
observatory from which to view the elaborate design. An ingenious
English critic recognises in it the possible memorial of a triumph like
that of the ancient Greek charioteer in the national games, with the
appropriate substitution of a sledge for the chariot, and a train of
dogs for the fleet racers of the hippodrome. “Taking,” he says, “the
rudeness of the age and workmanship into account, the impracticability
of the material, and the scale and material, the whole is really not a
bad representation of the dog-drawn sledges of the Kamschatdales of the
present day. Supposing their horns to have been omitted, from the
impracticability of raising earthworks that would stand well, and in
proportion to represent them, they might have signified the elk or the
reindeer. Whatever animal, however, be taken, it is perhaps a legitimate
inference that we have here the colossal trophy of a super-Atlantic
charioteer at some American race; why not the curious hippodrome, or,
more correctly here, cynodrome, with its starting-cells (carceres), its
course, its meta, and road of triumph to the town?”[89]
It was not necessary for the fanciful interpreter to resort to remote
Kamschatka for the model of his dog-drawn sledge, for such are common
enough among the Indians of the North-west. But a general survey of the
earthworks of Wisconsin in no degree tends to confirm this
interpretation, unless in so far as such animal-mounds may have been
monumental memorials, and trophies of achievements in wars and the
chase. As such they are executed on a scale which gives evidence of the
systematic expenditure of an enormous amount of labour; and as the
opinion has latterly found favour with some that the great mounds are
simply the result of many successive interments; and the marks of
regular stratification in some of them have been adduced in confirmation
of this idea: the corresponding proportions of the animal-mounds are
significant. In them at least a preconceived design has guided the
builders from the outset; and some adequate idea of the magnitude of the
Dade County group will be formed from a correct estimate of the
proportions of the supposed charioteer. He is figured, as is usual in
similar mounds, with his limbs extended, and with arms of
disproportionate length; possibly owing to the design originally
representing some implement in each hand. From head to foot he measures
one hundred and twenty-five feet, and one hundred and forty feet from
the extremity of one arm to that of the other. The head alone is a mound
twenty-five feet in diameter, and nearly six feet in highest elevation
from the surrounding soil. Measuring the whole by this scale, it is
abundantly apparent that a group, including altogether fifteen
mound-figures, must have been a work of immense time and labour, and
doubtless owed its origin to some motive or purpose of corresponding
magnitude in the estimation of its constructors.
Mr. Schoolcraft attempted to solve the mystery of the emblematic mounds
by assuming them to be the Totems, or heraldic symbols, in use among the
Indian tribes, thus reproduced in earthworks on a gigantic scale. The
fox, the bear, the eagle, turtle, or other animal, is selected among
them as the sign of the tribe or family. This usage prevailed among the
Iroquois, Hurons, Algonquins, Cherokees, and other nations occupying
very extensive areas; and, accordingly, guided by the superficial
resemblance of the Animal Mounds to such totemic signs, Mr. Schoolcraft
says: “A tribe could leave no more permanent trace of an esteemed
sachem, or honoured individual, than by the erection of one of these
monuments. They are clearly sepulchral, and have no other object but to
preserve the names of distinguished actors in their history.”[90] But
exploration seems to prove that the emblematical mounds of Wisconsin are
not sepulchral; while any correspondence that may be traced between them
and the totemic symbols of tribes once so widely spread as the
Algonquins, Iroquois, and Cherokees, only increases the mystery of
symbols constructed on this colossal scale, and confined to a territory
so limited. So far indeed is a careful survey from confirming any such
convenient and summary fancy, that Mr. Lapham states, as the result of
elaborate explorations, that he conceives four epochs are traceable in
the history of the locality, two of which at least preceded the era of
occupation by the Indian tribes. The period of the animal-mound builders
strikingly contrasts with that of the earthworks previously described,
in the rarity of enclosed works of art. But the few implements
discovered are full of interest from their obvious resemblance to those
of the Mound-Builders. Several of the large hornstone discs which I have
seen are of the same type as those found in immense numbers in the Ohio
Mounds; and Mr. Albert H. Hoy of Racine, Wisconsin, describes in a
letter to me the discovery of about thirty of the same relics, in that
vicinity, under circumstances suggestive of great antiquity. They lay at
a depth of eight feet in undisturbed soil, under a thin bed of peat, in
what appeared to have been the ancient bed of the Rock River.
The sites of the symbolic earthworks of Wisconsin correspond to those
adopted by the Mound-Builders for their sacred enclosures; though others
of their works, and especially the most remarkable of their
animal-mounds, were constructed on prominent heights. Within the fertile
region bounded by the great lakes and the Mississippi, a numerous
population may have long dwelt undisturbed, in the enjoyment of the
profusion which wood and water and the easily cultivated soil supplied.
On the bluffs and terraces surmounting the rivers and lakes by which
facilities of communication with the surrounding territory, and with
more distant regions, were commanded, the earthworks are found in
extensive and evidently dependent groups. But, unlike the rich memorial
mounds of the Scioto Valley, they reveal few enclosed relics to
chronicle the history of their erection, and throw light on the race of
artists who laboriously diversified the natural landscape with such
devices. In a few cases, human remains have been found in them, under
circumstances which did not clearly point to a modern date; but in
summing up the results of his explorations, Mr. Lapham remarks:—“So far
as I have had opportunity to observe, there are no original remains in
the mounds of imitative form, beyond a few scattered fragments that may
have gained a place there by accident. Many of the mounds have been
entirely removed, including the earth beneath for a considerable depth,
in the process of grading streets in Milwaukee; and it is usually found
that the natural surface had not been disturbed at the time of the
erection, but that the several layers or strata of mould, clay, gravel,
etc., are continuous below the structure, as on the contiguous grounds.
Great numbers of the smaller conical tumuli are also destitute of any
remains; and if human bodies were ever buried under them, they are now
so entirely ‘returned to dust’ that no apparent traces of them are
left.”[91]
The extensive works at Aztalan, on the west branch of Rock River,
present analogies of a different kind from the sacred and civic
enclosures of the Mound-Builders. They constitute, it is believed, the
only ancient enclosure, properly so called, throughout the whole region
of the emblematic mounds; and, under the name of the “ancient city of
Aztalan,” were long regarded as one of the wonders of the western world.
Early explorers were on the look-out for the mother city of the Aztecs,
and the first surveyor of the earthworks on Rock River named them
Aztalan, in the full belief that the long-sought city of Mexican
tradition had at length been found. The name was a stimulus to credulity
and wonder; and proved the source of much extravagant exaggeration.
Walls of brick still sustained by their solid buttresses; a subterranean
vault and stairway discovered within one of its square mounds; a
subterranean passage, arched with stone; bastions of solid masonry, and
other features of the like kind: were all made to correspond with the
supposed mother-city of the Aztecs, and the cradle-land of America’s
native civilisation. On being subjected to accurate survey, those
wondrous features vanish. Freed, however, from exaggeration and
falsehood, the Aztalan works still present remarkable characteristics.
An area of seventeen acres on the banks of the Rock River is enclosed on
three sides by a vallum with regular “bastions,” as they have been
termed; although both the construction of the walls, and the site of the
enclosure—commanded as it is by elevated land on nearly every
side,—preclude the idea of its having been a place of defence. Large,
square, terraced mounds occupy the northern and southern angles. In one
of them a human skeleton was found; and in others of the mounds coarse
pottery occurs; but both may have been deposited long subsequent to the
completion of the earthworks of Aztalan. With these exceptions, nothing
has yet rewarded the careful and elaborate excavations of its explorers
tending to throw light on the original builders. Its bastions have been
tunnelled in vain; and cuttings made in some of the largest of a
remarkable range of tumuli outside the enclosures revealed only ashes,
mingled with charcoal and fragments of human bones, unaccompanied by a
single work of art, like those which confer so graphic an interest on
the mounds of the Ohio Valley.
Assuming the works of Aztalan and the animal-mounds of Wisconsin to
belong to the same period: Mr. Lapham assigns the conical mounds to a
later era. These he regards as built for sepulchral purposes, and
exhibiting, both in construction and materials, the workmanship of a
greatly inferior race of builders. Next come what are designated by the
modern settlers “ancient garden beds,” consisting of low, broad,
parallel ridges, as if corn had been planted in drills. They average
four feet in width, and the depth of the space between them is six
inches. These appearances indicate a more perfect system of agricultural
operations than anything known to have been practised by the modern
Indian tribes; but, at the same time, they are no less distinctly
disconnected with the construction of the ancient mounds. Where these
occur within a cultivated area, the parallel ridges of the old
cultivators are carried across them in the same manner as over any other
undulation of the ground. It is obvious, therefore, not only that the
emblematic earthworks preceded them, but that they had neither
sacredness nor any special significance in the eyes of the cultivators
of the soil. Probably, indeed, such traces of agricultural operations
belong to a greatly more modern period.
What, then, are the inferences to be drawn from the ancient monuments
peculiar to the territory lying immediately to the south of the great
copper region of Lake Superior? They are mostly of a negative character,
yet not on that account without significance. If we assume the existence
of contemporary nations in Wisconsin and the Ohio Valley in the period
of the Mound-Builders, the chronicles of that era exhibit them to us in
striking contrast. In the one region every convenient height is crowned
with the elaborate fortifications of a numerous and warlike people;
while, on the broad levels of the river-terraces, ingenious geometrical
structures prove their skill and intellectual development as applied to
the formation of civic and temple enclosures. Their sacred and
sepulchral mounds, in like manner, reveal considerable artistic skill,
and a singular variety in the rites and customs exacted in the
performance of their national worship. Turning to the northern area, all
is changed. Along the river-terraces we look in vain for military
structures. The mounds disclose no altars rich with the metallurgic or
mimetic workmanship of their builders; but, on the contrary, the sole
traces of imitative art occur in the external forms of earthworks, the
exploration of which confutes the idea of their having been erected over
either grave or altar, and reveals no other purpose of their
construction.
When it is considered that, along with the mica of the Alleghanies, the
shells of the Gulf of Mexico, and obsidian from the ancient centre of
American civilisation, the copper of Lake Superior is one of the most
abundant materials found in the Mississippi mounds: we are tempted to
trace some intimate relation between the warlike occupants of the Ohio
and Scioto valleys and the singular race who dwelt in peaceful industry
on the well-watered and plentifully stocked plains to the south of the
copper region, and there constructed their strange colossal memorials of
imitative art. The country seems peculiarly adapted by nature as a
central neutral land for the continent to the east of the Rocky
Mountains. On the east it is guarded by Lake Michigan, and on the north
by the great inland sea which constitutes the fountain of the whole lake
and river chain that sweeps away on its course of twenty-five hundred
miles, over Niagara, and through the islands and rapids of the St.
Lawrence, to the Atlantic. On the west, with its infant streamlets
originating almost from the same source, the Mississippi rolls onward in
its majestic course, receiving as its tributaries the great rivers which
rise alike on the western slope of the Alleghanies and the eastern
declivities of the Rocky Mountains, and loses itself at length in the
Gulf of Mexico. This wonderful river system, and the great level contour
of the regions which it drains, exercised a remarkable influence on the
extinct civilisation of America, as well as on later Indian nomad life,
making its primitive eras so different from any phase of Europe’s
history. The Indians who traded with Cartier at Tadousac, on the lower
St. Lawrence, and those whom Raleigh met with on the coast of Carolina,
obtained their copper from the same northern region towards which the
head-waters of the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence converge; while the
world of Europe between the Rhine and the Baltic remained, even in its
late Roman era, almost as much apart from that on its Mediterranean
shores as the America of centuries before Columbus. It seems, therefore,
not inconceivable that the prairie land of Wisconsin derives some of its
archæological characteristics from its relation to the physical
geography of the region between the Rocky Mountains and the Atlantic,
possibly as a sacred neutral ground attached to the metallurgic region
of Lake Superior, like the famous pipe-stone quarry of the Couteau des
Prairies.
This idea of some peculiar relations connecting the symbolic architects
of Wisconsin with the Mound-Builders of the Ohio, derives confirmation
from the few but remarkable animal-mounds of the latter, in which their
connection with the religious rites of the ancient race is borne out.
One example of an animal-mound, upwards of 250 feet in length, and
probably designed to represent a bear, occupies a high level terrace on
the west bank of the Scioto river. Unlike any of the symbolic mounds of
Wisconsin, it is surrounded by an oval embankment measuring four hundred
and eighty feet in greatest diameter. On the south side a space of about
ninety feet wide breaking the continuity of the embankment, is covered
by a long exterior mound, leaving two avenues of approach where it
overlaps the inner oval. This mound has not been opened; but in the
process of excavating the Ohio canal, large quantities of mica, similar
to what occurs so abundantly in the sacrificial mounds, were found in
its immediate vicinity.
The same canal intersects Newark earthworks; and there, within another
elliptic vallum, is the Eagle Mound, measuring 155 feet in length of
body, and 200 feet between the tips of the wings. It is only a minor
feature of the remarkable group, already described, which includes
geometrical enclosures, mounds, and avenues; but it is distinguished
from all the others, by the great scale of its enclosing walls, and
interior ditch. Unfortunately it was opened by a former proprietor in
search of treasure; and no further record of its contents has been
preserved, except that it covered a hearth of a similar character to the
altars already described as characteristic of the sacrificial mounds.
The fact, however, illustrates the contrast between works bearing so
much external resemblance to each other as the symbolic mounds of the
Mississippi Valleys and those of Wisconsin. In the absence of all
included relics of worship or inhumation, the latter seem but as symbols
of the rites practised by the southern Mound-Builders.
About six miles higher up the same valley, the “Alligator,” of Licking
County, attracts attention as another remarkable colossal animal-mound.
It occupies the summit of a lofty hill or spur, which projects into the
Racoon Creek Valley. The outline and general contour of this huge
lizard-mound are still clearly defined, though agricultural operations
have obliterated some of the minuter traces noted by early visitors. The
average height is four feet; but the head, shoulders, and rump, are
elevated in parts to a height of fully six feet. The tail curls off to
the left side, and is now so indefinite, as it tapers towards a point,
that the precise measurement is uncertain; but the total length of the
“Alligator” may be stated at about 220 feet. Excavations made at various
points have only shown that the figure has been modelled in fine clay
upon a framework of stones of considerable size. But when I visited it,
a rain gully had exposed part of the side of the hill, showing this to
consist to a large extent of loose stones; so that the mound is no doubt
constructed with materials obtained on the spot. A raised circular
structure, designated the altar, and covered with stones which had been
much exposed to the action of fire, is described by former observers as
standing on the right side, and connected with the summit of the mound
by a graded way ten feet broad; but the traces of this feature are now
very slight.
The site of this remarkable monument commands a view of the entire
valley for eight or ten miles, and is by far the most conspicuous point
within that limit. An ancient fortified hill stands about three-fourths
of a mile distant on a spur of the same range of heights; and another
entrenched hill nearly faces it on the opposite side of the valley.
Numerous mounds occupy both the hill-tops and the levels in surrounding
valleys; and it is only the luxuriant growth of the forest which
conceals the great Newark group, with its geometrical enclosures,
parallels, and mounds. The Alligator Mound may, therefore, be assumed to
symbolise some object of special awe or veneration, thus reared on one
of the chief high-places of the nation, where the ancient people of the
valley could witness the celebration of rites of their unknown worship.
Its site was obviously selected as the most prominent natural feature in
a populous district abounding with military, civic, and religious
structures. Yet its imposing proportions are surpassed by another
symbolic work constructed on a height remote from any traces of ancient
settlement.
The Great Serpent of Adam’s County, Ohio, occupies the extreme point of
a crescent-formed spur of land formed at the junction of two tributary
streams of the Ohio. This elevated site has been cut to a conformity
with an oval circumvallation on its summit, leaving a smooth external
platform ten feet wide, with an inclination towards the embankment on
every side. Immediately outside the inner point of this oval is the
serpent’s head, with distended jaws, as if in the act of swallowing
what, in comparison with its huge dimensions, is spoken of as an egg,
though it measures 160 feet in length. Conforming to the summit of the
hill, the body of the serpent winds back, in graceful undulations,
terminating with a triple coil at the tail. The figure is boldly
defined, the earth-wrought relievo being upwards of five feet in height
by thirty feet in base at the centre of the body; and the entire length,
following its convolutions, cannot measure less than a thousand feet.
This singular monument stands alone, and though classed here with the
symbolic animal-mounds of Wisconsin, it has no analogue among the
numerous basso-relievos wrought on the broad prairie-lands of that
region. It is indeed altogether unique among the earthworks of the New
World, and without a parallel in the Old; though it has not unnaturally
furnished the starting-point for a host of speculations relative to
serpent-worship. Among the miniature sculptures of the Mound-Builders,
repeated examples of the serpent occur. On one of the altars of “Mound
City” was a pipe of the form peculiar to the mounds, with a rattlesnake
coiled round the bowl. From another mound of the same earthwork several
sculptured tablets were recovered, representing the rattlesnake,
delicately carved in fine cinnamon-coloured sandstone; and one of them
carefully enveloped in sheets of copper. The character of these
sculptures, and the circumstances under which they were discovered,
suggested to the explorers that they were not designed for ornaments;
but had some relation to superstitious rites. Other serpents are
represented by the Mound-Sculptors; but the rattlesnake is the favourite
type. I recently examined, in the Peabody Museum of Archæology at
Cambridge, Mass., a series of eighteen engraved circular plates made
from the shell of the _Pyrula_, which were obtained from the Brakebill
and Lick Creek Mounds, in East Tennessee. Thirteen of them bear the same
device of a rattlesnake. Among the Mexicans it was the symbol of
royalty; and this helps to give a special interest to a remarkable
tablet figured here, in the same style of art, so suggestive of Mexican
affinities. It is a disk of fine-grained sandstone, nearly 8½ inches in
diameter, and three-quarters of an inch, thick, on which is graven the
elaborate device of two intertwined rattlesnakes, as shown in Fig. 73.
On the back a slight ornament runs round the border; and a fractured
mortice-hole, somewhat out of the true centre, shows where a handle has
been attached to it. It was found in two pieces, near Lake Washington,
Issaquina County, Mississippi; and is now in the possession of Mr. W.
Marshall Anderson, of Circleville, Ohio.
[Illustration: FIG. 73.—Lake Washington Disk.]
The imitative mounds of Wisconsin hitherto described are in bold relief;
but on the Indian Prairie, a few miles from the city of Milwaukee, there
occur five designs, wrought—to use a term of European art,—in
intaglio. Instead of the representations of animals being executed in
relief, the process has been reversed, and the outline has been
completed by piling the excavated earth round the edge. A few similar
examples have been noted at other points; but such a process is more
liable to effacement in the progress of time, unless renewed like the
famous “White Horse” of Berkshire, by a periodical “scouring.” The chalk
hills of southern England present peculiar facilities for effective
colossal intaglio work. Another White Horse, ascribed to Saxon victors
of the Danes, accompanies a group of British earthworks on Braddon Hill,
Wiltshire; and the colossal human figure, armed with a club, at Cerne,
in Dorsetshire, preserves a still closer counterpart to those scattered
over the prairie lands beyond the western shores of Lake Michigan.
But for our present purpose the comparison of these ancient earthworks
with others clearly traceable to modern Indian tribes, is more important
than any analogies between the antiquities of the two hemispheres. One
fact of obvious significance is the great scale on which the prehistoric
races of America wrought, and the consequent evidences of numbers, and
of combined labour perseveringly applied to the accomplishment of their
aim. It is difficult to convey any definite conception of this by mere
description, even though accompanied with minute measurements. A single
cruciform mound measures four hundred and twenty feet between the
extreme points of its limbs. Lizard and other animal-mounds ranging from
eighty to a hundred and fifty feet in length occur in extensive groups;
and by their systematic arrangement, impress the mind with the idea of
protracted toil carried on under the control of some supreme rule, or
stimulated by motives of paramount influence. The Indian tribes that
have come under observation are as diverse in habits, arts, and
religious rites as in language; but none of them have manifested any
capacity for the combination involved in the construction of monuments
which more nearly resemble the great embankments and viaducts of modern
railway engineering. The extent of such works indicates a settled
condition of society, and industry far beyond that of the Iroquois
Confederacy. In all this there may be nothing absolutely incompatible
with the idea of the Indians being degenerate descendants of such a
people, yet it is unsupported by proof. No modern tribe preserves any
traces of such ancestral constructive habits; and while the
animal-mounds appear to be regarded with superstitious reverence by the
Indians, and are rarely disturbed except for purposes of sepulture, they
lay no claim to them as the work of their fathers. The only theory of
their origin is, that they are the work of the great Manitou, and were
made by him to reveal to his red children the plentiful supply of game
that awaits them in the world of spirits. The idea is a consoling one to
tribes whose hunting-grounds have been invaded and laid desolate; and it
is fully as philosophical as a theory gravely propounded to the American
Scientific Association, that the cruciform and curvilinear earthworks
intermingled with the animal-mounds include characters of the Phœnician
alphabet, and are half-obliterated inscriptions commemorative of
explorations by the great voyagers of antiquity.
What then are the inferences thus far deducible as to the races of
Northern America in ante-Columbian centuries? Assuming a community of
arts, and certain intimate relations in race and social condition, among
the ancient people who worked the mines on Lake Superior, and
constructed the varied earthworks that reach southward into Indiana,
Ohio, and Kentucky: there is no reason to suppose that they were united
as one nation. While coincidences of a remarkable kind in the
construction, and still more in the dimensions of their great
earthworks, point to a common knowledge of geometrical configuration,
and a standard of measurement: no two earthworks so entirely correspond
as to show an absolute identity of purpose. The marked diversity between
the truncated, pyramidal mounds of the states on the Gulf, the
geometrical enclosures of Ohio, and the symbolic earthworks of
Wisconsin, indicate varied usages of distinct communities. A dense
population must have centred in certain favourite localities, still
marked by evidence of the combined labours of a numerous people; and
some supreme rule, like that of the Incas of Peru, must have regulated
the operations requisite for the execution of works planned on so
comprehensive a scale.
The Scioto and the Ohio valleys, it may be presumed, were the seats of
separate states, with frontier populations living in part on the produce
of the chase; but depending largely on agricultural industry for the
sustenance of the communities crowded on the flats and river-valleys
where their monuments abound, and for the supply of the workmen by whose
combined labour they were constructed. The religious character and uses
ascribed to one important class of their earthworks, in which scientific
skill is most clearly manifested, points to the probable existence of a
sacerdotal order, such as played an important part in the polity both of
Mexico and Peru. There is indeed so great a discrepancy between the
remarkable combination of science and skill in the execution of the Ohio
earthworks, and the crude state of the arts otherwise associated with
them, as to suggest the idea of a sacerdotal caste, like the Brahmins of
India, distinct in race, and superior in intellectual acquirements to
the great mass of the people.
Of the physical characteristics of the Mound-Builders, notwithstanding
the ransacking of many sepulchral mounds, we possess as yet very partial
evidence. This department of the subject will come under review in a
subsequent chapter; and it will then be seen that while the accepted
Mound-Builders’ type of head has been largely based on the very specimen
selected by Dr. Morton, as “the perfect type of Indian conformation,”
with its undoubted traces of compression, and of the use of the
cradle-board, so characteristic of the Indian hunter: it seems not
improbable that a systematic exploration of the mounds may disclose
evidence of a ruling class differing physically as well as
intellectually from the mass of the community by whose toil the enduring
monuments of their singular rites and customs have been perpetuated.
But, while the Mound-Builders are essentially prehistoric, according to
all New World chronology, there is nothing in the disclosures hitherto
made calculated to suggest for them an extremely remote era. The
marvellous traces of geometrical skill in their great earthworks, more
than anything else, separate them from every known race north of Mexico.
The indications of antiquity in the mines of Lake Superior, and the
mounds of Ohio, suggest no such enormous intervals of time as perplex us
in attempting to deal with the relics of the caves and river-valleys of
Europe. The refilled trenches on the barren rocks of Isle Royale
manifestly demand centuries for the slow accumulation of sufficient soil
and vegetable matter to refill the excavations. Dr. Hildreth ascribes
eight hundred years of growth to a tree felled on one of the mounds at
Marietta; and other trustworthy authorities, including Messrs. Squier
and Davis, furnish similar evidence for lesser periods of four, five,
and six centuries. The longest term thus indicated would be little
enough for the filling up of the deserted trenches of Isle Royal. But
however far back we carry the era of the Mound-Builders, the chief
change which the regions occupied by them have since undergone, is the
clothing of their valleys, and the earthworks erected there, with the
forests which help us to some partial guess at the intervening centuries
since their disappearance. The animal remains hitherto found in their
mounds are those of the existing species of deer, bears, wolves, and
other fauna, not even now wholly extirpated from Ohio; and while their
ingenious sculptures prove that they were familiar with a more southern,
and even a South-American tropical fauna: nothing has yet been
discovered to connect them with an extinct, much less a fossil mammalia,
such as the mastodon. The probability rather is that the ruins of
Clark’s Work, or Fort Ancient, may match in antiquity with those of
England’s Norman keeps, and even that their builders may have lingered
on into centuries nearer the age of Columbus.
The Zuñi, Moquis, Pimos, and other tribes of New Mexico, have left
curious evidences of a people of gentle skill in agriculture, in ceramic
art, and above all, in architecture, beyond anything pertaining to the
northern Indians, or even in some respects to the Mound-Builders. But
there still remains the distinct and perplexing element of a people so
partially civilised, and comparatively rude; yet able to construct
squares, circles, ellipses, and other geometrical figures on a seale
which would tax the skill of many a well-trained civil engineer of the
present day.
Other characteristic traits of the Mound-Builders, especially as shown
in their ingenious sculptures, and illustrated by their mimetic art,
have yet to be considered. But this at least is apparent, that the most
advanced among the Indian tribes of North America within its historical
period represent a phase of life essentially inferior to that which had
preceded it. Before the great river-valleys were overshadowed with their
ancient forests, nations dwelt there practising arts and rites which
involved many germs of civilisation. Their defensive military skill,
their agricultural industry, and even their ideas of the relations of
man to some supreme spiritual power, are suggested by evidence, which,
though inadequate for any detailed chronicle, discloses glimpses of an
unwritten history full of interest even in this tantalising form. We
have still to consider other characteristics of the ancient race,
including their geographical and ethnical relations. But before doing
so, it is desirable to review the history of other ancient American
races among whom civilisation attained a higher development, and of whom
we have historical evidence, as well as the chronicles which archæology
supplies.
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[89] _Journ. Brit. Archæol. Ass._ vol. v. p. 411.
[90] _History of Indian Tribes_, vol. i. p. 52.
[91] _Antiquities of Wisconsin_, p. 80.