THE MOUND-BUILDERS.
About two thousand years ago there lived a very curious people in North
America known as the Mound-builders. Where they came from no one knows,
but it is supposed that they were either descendants of people from
Japan, who had been driven across the Pacific by storms, and washed on
the western coast of America, or that they originally came from Asia by
the way of Behring Strait. Many people suppose them to have been the
descendants of the Shepherd Kings, who journeyed from Central India to
Egypt about the time of the building of the Tower of Babel; they were
called the Shepherd Kings because they were shepherds, and came down
into Egypt driving their flocks before them. Here they conquered the
country and made themselves kings; they built many wonderful temples,
and founded Heliopolis, the City of the Sun, in honor to their great
god, the Sun, whom they worshipped, under the name of Osiris; Isis, the
moon, being their chief goddess. It was supposed that Osiris dwelt in
the body of the sacred bull Apis, and therefore this bull was adored as
a god. He lived in a splendid temple, the walls of which shone with gold
and silver, and sparkled with gems and precious stones brought from
India and Ethiopia; it was the duty of the priests to wait upon him with
the greatest care, and he was always fed from golden dishes. At the time
of the rising of the Nile there was always a festival to Apis, when he
was displayed to the people covered with the richest and finest
embroidered cloths, and surrounded by troops of boys singing songs to
him. If he lived twenty-five years he was drowned in a sacred fountain,
but if he died before that time all Egypt went into mourning, which
continued until a new Apis was found. The successor must be a perfectly
black calf, with a square white spot on the forehead, the figure of an
eagle upon the back, a crescent on the side, and a beetle on the tongue.
Of course these marks were made by the priests, but the people did not
know that, and supposed that the soul of Apis had passed into this calf,
which they received with great joy.
The Egyptians worshipped many other animals besides the sacred bull; the
dog, wolf, hawk, crocodile, and cat were all considered gods, and any
one who might kill one of these animals, even by accident, was punished
with death. When a cat died every one in the family cut off his
eyebrows, and when a dog died the whole head was shaven. And if on their
journeys the Egyptians found the dead body of a cat or dog, they always
brought it home and embalmed it with great care. The reason why the
Egyptians reverenced these animals was, that they believed that the soul
of man, after his death, passed into the bodies of different animals,
and that after three thousand years it would return and inhabit a human
form again, so, of course, they did not look upon a cat or dog as we do,
merely as an animal to be petted or used, but they thought that in this
animal dwelt the soul of some human being, and hence it was sacred to
them. One of the great gods of Egypt was the River Nile; and no wonder
that they worshipped it, as it was to them the means of life. It never
rains in Egypt, and the land would be like a desert were it not for the
overflowing of the Nile. Once a year this great river, swollen by the
waters that have poured into it from the lake country above, overflows
its banks, watering the country on either side of it, and leaving, when
it recedes, a deposit of rich mud upon the land; then the people sow and
plant, sure of a good harvest. Up and down the Nile Valley extends a
chain of rocky mountains, and these the Egyptians used as places of
burial. The tombs, or catacombs, as they are called, are ornamented with
pictures and sculptures which may be seen to this day. The subjects of
these paintings were always taken from life. People were represented
planting, sowing, and reaping, spinning, weaving, sewing, washing,
dressing, and playing. Even the games of children were shown in these
tombs, and the balls and dolls and toys with which they played. Would
you not feel strange to stand in one of these catacombs and see the
figure of a doll carved in the rock, and to know that it is the tomb of
some little Egyptian girl who died three thousand years ago? The games
which children play to-day are not new, and when you have a game of ball
or top or leap-frog, when you play with your dolls, or sit down and tell
each other fairy stories, you are only doing the same thing that the
little Egyptian and Grecian boys and girls did thousands of years ago;
it makes them seem like real children to think that, doesn't it?
But different as the Egyptian religion was from ours, there was one
thing which they believed which we also believe in, the resurrection of
the dead; and as to-day we symbolize this belief by pictures of the
lily, the egg, the butterfly, and other objects, so the Egyptians used
the lotus, which bloomed on the waves of the Nile, opening every morning
and closing every night, as the symbol of the resurrection, and we find
this flower, carved in stone, used as an ornament all throughout Egypt.
Of all the works of the ancient Egyptians, the greatest are the
pyramids, the tombs of the kings; these were mostly built during the
reigns of the Shepherd Kings.
After a long time, perhaps five or six hundred years, the ancient
inhabitants of Egypt drove out the Shepherd Kings. It is supposed then
that they crossed back to Asia, wandering through that country from the
south to the north, spending some time in Siberia, where they built
mounds like those in our own country, then crossing Behring Strait they
reached North America, wandered down the Mississippi Valley, building
mounds and temples, journeyed through Mexico, where are found some of
the most remarkable of these remains, and so on across the Isthmus of
Panama into Peru, where at the time of the conquest of that country by
the Spaniards the sun and moon were worshipped as gods, just as had been
done in Egypt thousands of years before, and where was found a
magnificent temple of the sun, the inside walls of which were covered
almost entirely of gold. So you see the reason why it is thought that
_perhaps_ the mound-builders were descendants of the Shepherd Kings is
that these mounds and temples are like those found in the old world. In
Mexico and Peru all the great buildings were made in the pyramidal form,
while, as I have said, in Siberia have been found mounds like those in
the United States.
Some of the most curious of these mounds are found in the State of Ohio.
One, in the form of a serpent, with the tail ending in a triple coil, is
very curious. It is about a thousand feet long and extends along a bluff
which rises above Brush Creek, in Adams County, Ohio. The neck of the
serpent is stretched out and slightly curved over, and in its mouth is
another mound in the form of an egg.
Many of these mounds, from their shapes, it is thought, were used for
fortifications, and sometimes they are at regular spaces apart, which
shows they may have been used for sending signals across the country.
They were made almost entirely of earth, but sometimes brick and stone
were used. Sometimes they were built very high, and on the tops of these
highest mounds have been found pieces of burned wood, showing that they
were probably used as places of worship, and that the priests offered up
burnt-offerings and sacrifices there. The mounds are sometimes in the
form of animals and men. In those that were used as places of worship
human bones have been found, and with them many things which show that
the Mound-builders must have known some of the arts which the tribes who
lived in America at the time of its discovery by the Europeans knew
nothing of; among these things are carvings in stone, pottery, articles
of ornament in metal, silver and copper tools, such as axes, chisels,
and knives, beside beads, bracelets, carved pipes, models in clay of
birds, quadrupeds, and human faces, etc.
Is it not strange to think of this race of people who lived here in our
own America so many years ago? We would like to know how they lived,
what they looked like, and what language they spoke, but we cannot even
guess. We only know that ages after the time of the Mammoth and
Mastodon, this curious race, coming doubtless from the East, entered the
Mississippi Valley; that they settled there and built those wonderful
mounds at least two thousand years ago, if not longer; that finally they
disappeared, and we should never have known of them but for the works
they have left.