White people had not been on Ohio soil very long before they began to
notice peculiar mounds and fortifications built of earth and stone.
Evidently these were very ancient, as they were overgrown by the forest.
The Indian inhabitants were neither building nor using such structures,
nor could they tell the white settlers anything about them. A bit of
digging, here and there, soon showed that the mounds contained human
burials and that with these were strange relics. Hence it was clear that
they had been built by human beings. But by whom? The settlers reasoned,
very naturally, that if the tribesmen living in the region had not
constructed them, then they must have been built by a people preceding
the Indians. And so, lacking a better name, they called them “The
Mound-builders,” just as we of today, viewing the few remaining log
cabins scattered over the countryside, might call the pioneers “The
Cabin-builders.” The settlers, however, who built and lived in the log
cabins of pioneer days, realized the value of records, so that people
who came after them might know who they were and what they did. And so
they wrote history. But the Mound-builders had not yet progressed far
enough on the road to civilization to do this; and so we must look
elsewhere for the answers to those questions which naturally come into
our minds. Who were the Mound-builders? Where did they come from, and
when; why did they build Mounds; and what became of them? The pioneer
settlers who first noticed the Mounds could not open a book and read the
answers to these queries. But as the years have passed, the puzzles have
been solved in a most interesting manner, as we shall see presently.
To begin with the Mounds and Earthworks themselves, it may be said that
there are many thousands of them. They are scattered over 20 or more
states, from the Mississippi River eastward to the Atlantic and
extending southward to the Gulf and into Florida. Ohio, it may be truly
said, was the center of Mound-builder life, as a result of which it has
come to be known as the Mound-builder state. More than 5,000 Mounds,
fortifications and other remains of these interesting people have been
located within its bounds.