HOUSES OF THE MOUND-BUILDERS.
The general view of the house-life and houses of the Indian tribes
thus far presented will tend to strengthen the hypothesis about to
be stated concerning the earth-works of the Mound-Builders. Apart
from the explanation that the long-houses of the Northern Tribes and
the joint-tenement house of the Sedentary Indians are capable of
affording, they are wholly inexplicable. The Mound-Builders worked
native copper, cultivated maize and plants, manufactured pottery and
stone implements of higher grade than the tribes of the Lower Status
of barbarism; and they raised earth-works of great magnitude,
superior to any works of the former tribes. They fairly belong to
the class of Sedentary Village Indians, though not in all respects
of an equal grade of culture and development. Their embankments,
which inclosed a rectangular space, were in all probability, the
foundations upon which they erected their houses. It is proposed to
consider these embankments under this hypothesis.
Under the name of Mound-Builders certain unknown tribes of the
American aborigines are recognized, who formerly inhabited as their
chief area the valley of the Ohio and its tributary streams. Traces
of their occupation have been found in other places, from the Gulf
of Mexico to Lakes Erie and Superior, and from the Alleghanies to
the Mississippi, and in some localities west of this river.
Without entering upon a discussion of these works, this chapter will
be confined to four principal questions:
I. The house-life of the American aborigines, in the usages of which
the Mound-Builders were necessarily involved.
II. The probable center from which the Mound-Builders emigrated into
these areas.
III. The uses for which their principal earth-works were designed,
with a conjectural restoration of one of their pueblos; and,
IV. The probable numbers of the people.
The Mound-Builders have disappeared, or, at least, have fallen out
of human knowledge, leaving these works and their fabrics as the
only evidence of their existence. Consequently the proposed questions,
excepting the first, are incapable of specific answers; but they are
not beyond the reach of approximate solutions. The mystery in which
these tribes are enshrouded, and the unique character of their
earth-works, will lead to deceptive inferences, unless facts and
principles are carefully considered and rigorously applied, and such
deductions only are made as they will fairly warrant. It is easy to
magnify the significance of these remains and to form extravagant
conclusions concerning them; but neither will advance the truth.
They represent a status of human advancement forming a connecting
link in the progressive development of man. If, then, the nature of
their arts, and more especially the character of their institutions,
can be determined with reasonable certainty, the true position of
the Mound-Builders can be assigned to them in the scale of human
progress, and what was possible and what impossible on their part
can be known.
THE HOUSE-LIFE OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES, IN THE USAGES OF WHICH
THE MOUND-BUILDERS WERE NECESSARILY INVOLVED.
It will be assumed that the tribes who constructed the earth-works
of the Ohio Valley were American Indians. No other supposition is
tenable. The implements and utensils found in the mounds indicate
very plainly that they had attained to the Middle Status of barbarism.
They do not fully answer the tests of this condition, since they
neither cultivated by irrigation, so far as is known, nor
constructed houses of adobe bricks or of stone; but, in addition to
the earth-works to be considered, they mined native copper and
wrought it into implements and utensils--acts performed by none of
the tribes in the Lower Status of barbarism; and they depended
chiefly upon horticulture for subsistence. They had also carried the
art of pottery to the ornamental stage, and manufactured textile
fabrics of cotton or flax, remains of which have been found wrapped
around copper chisels. These facts, with others that will appear,
justify their recognition as in the same status with the Village
Indians of New and Old Mexico and Central America. They occupied
areas free from lakes as a rule, and, therefore, the poorest for a
fish subsistence. This shows of itself that their chief reliance was
upon horticulture. The principal places where their villages were
situated were unoccupied areas at the epoch of European discovery,
because unadapted to tribes in the Loner Status of barbarism, who
depended upon fish and game as well as upon maize and plants.
A knowledge of the general character of the houses of the American
aborigines will enable us to infer what must have been the general
character of those of the Mound-Builders. This, again, was
influenced by the condition of the family. Among the Indian tribes,
in whatever stage of advancement, the family was found in the
pairing form, with separation at the option of either party. It was
founded upon marriage between single pairs, but it fell below the
monogamian family of civilized society. In their condition it was
too weak an organization to face alone the struggle of life, and it
sought shelter in large households, formed on the basis of kin, with
communism in living as an incident of their plan of life. While
exceptional cases of single families living by themselves existed
among all the tribes, it did not break the general rule of large
households, and the practice in them of communism in living. These
usages entered into and determined the character of their house
architecture. In all parts of North and South America, at the period
of European discovery, were found communal of joint-tenement houses,
from those large enough to accommodate five, ten, and twenty families,
to those large enough for fifty, a hundred, and in some cases two
hundred or more, families. These houses differed among themselves in
their plan and structure as well as size; but a common principle ran
through them which was revealed by their adaptation to communistic
uses. They reflect their condition and their plan of life with such
singular distinctness as to afford practical hints concerning the
houses of the Mound-Builders.
THE PROBABLE CENTER FROM WHICH THE MOUND-BUILDERS EMIGRATED INTO
THESE AREAS.
It is well known that the highest type of Village Indian life was
found in Yucatan, Chiapas, and Guatemala, and that the standard
declines with the advance of the type northward into Mexico and New
Mexico, thus tending to show that it was best adapted to a warm
climate; but it does not follow that we must look to these distant
regions for the original home of the Mound-Builders. The nearest
point from which they could have been derived was New Mexico, and
that is rendered the probable point from physical considerations,
and still more from their greater nearness in condition to the
Village Indians of New Mexico, below whom they must be ranked. The
migrations of the American Indian tribes were gradual movements
under the operation of physical causes, occupying long periods of
time and with slow progress. There is no reason for supposing, in
any number of cases, that they were deliberate migrations with a
definite destination. With maize, beans, and squashes (the staples
of an established horticulture), the Village Indians were
independent of fish and game as primary means of subsistence, and
with the former they possessed superior resources for migrating over
the wide expanses of open prairies between New Mexico and the
Mississippi. The movement of the tribes who constructed the
earth-works in question can be explained as a natural spread of
Village Indians from the valley of the Rio Grande, on the San Juan,
to the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, and thence northward to the
valley of the Ohio, which was both easy and feasible. Its successful
extension for any considerable distance north of the gulf was
rendered improbable, by reason of the increasing severity of the
climate. There are some reasons for supposing that climate delayed
the movement for centuries, and finally defeated the attempt to
transplant permanently even the New Mexican type of village life
into a northern temperature so much lower during the greater part of
the year.
A number of archeologists, who have considered the question of the
probable anterior home of the Mound-Builders, are inclined to derive
them from Central America. The ground for this opinion seems to be
the fact that horticulture must have originated in a semi-tropical
region, where this type of village life was first developed, and,
therefore, that all the forms of this life were derived from thence.
It would be a mistake, as it seems to the writer, to adopt the track
of horticulture as that of Indian migration. In its first spread
horticulture would be more apt to return upon the line of the latter
than wait to be carried, by actual migrations, with the people.
Moreover it is unnecessary to invoke such an argument, for the
reason that New Mexico had been for ages the seat of horticultural
and Village Indians, and was necessarily occupied by them long
before the country east of the Mississippi. Every presumption is in
favor of their derivation from New Mexico as their immediate
anterior home, where they were accustomed to snow and to a moderate
degree of cold.
[Footnote: At a recent meeting of the National Academy of Science at
Washington, where this subject was presented, Prof. O. C. Marsh
remarked, in confirmation of this suggestion, that "in a series of
comparisons of Indian skulls, he had been struck with the similarity
between those of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and of the
Mound-Builders. As the shape of the Mound-Builder's skull is very
peculiar, the coincidence is a very striking one."]
THE USES FOR WHICH THEIR PRINCIPAL EARTHWORKS WERE DESIGNED, WITH A
CONJECTURAL RESTORATION OF ONE OF THEIR PUEBLOS.
A brief reference to the character and extent of these works is
necessary as a means of understanding their uses. The authors of the
volume "The Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley" remark, in
their preface, that "the ancient inclosures and groups of works
personally examined and surveyed are upwards of one hundred....
About two hundred mounds of all forms and sizes, and occupying every
variety of position, have also been excavated." [Footnote:
Smithsonian Cont. to Knowledge, Preface, XXXIV.] Out of ninety-five
earthworks, exclusive of mounds, figured and described in this
valuable memoir, and which probably mark the sites of Indian villages,
forty-seven are of the same type and may unhesitatingly be assigned
to the Mound-Builders; fourteen are groups of emblematical earthworks,
mostly in Wisconsin, and may also be assigned to them; but the
remaining thirty-four are very inferior as well as different in
character. They are not above the works of the Indians in the Lower
Status of barbarism, and, therefore, do not probably belong to the
Village Indians who constructed the works in the Scioto Valley. If
to those first named are added the emblematical earth-works figured
and described by Lapham, [Footnote: Smithsonian Cont. to Knowledge,
Vol. V.] and a few other works not known to Squier and Davis, and
since described by other persons, there are something more than one
hundred works, large and small, indicating the sites of Indian
villages, of which perhaps three quarters were occupied at the same
time. The conical mounds raised over Indian graves, which are
numerous, are not included. [Footnote: When a calamity befalls an
Indian settlement it is usually abandoned.]
"A large, perhaps the larger portion of these works," observe the
same authors, "are regular in outline, the square and circle
predominating.... The regular works are almost invariably erected on
level river terraces.... The square and the circle often occur in
combination, frequently connecting with each other.... Most of the
circular works are small, varying from two hundred and fifty to
three hundred feet in diameter, while others are a mile or more in
circuit." [Footnote: Smithsonian Cont. to Knowledge, I, pp. 6 and 8.]
These embankments are, for the most part, slight, varying from two
feet to six, eight, ten, and twelve feet in height, with a broad base,
caused by the washing down of the banks in the course of centuries.
These facts are shown by numerous cross-sections furnished with the
ground-plans by the authors. But the circular embankments are
usually about half as high as the rectangular.
Some idea of the size of Indian villages, and of their nearness to
each other, is necessary to form an impression of their plan of life
and mode of settlement. The illustrations should be drawn from the
Village Indians, to which class the Mound-Builders undoubtedly
belonged. Not knowing the use of wells, they established their
settlements on the margins of rivers and small streams, which
afforded alluvial land for cultivation, and often within a few miles
of each other. In the valley of the Rio Chaco, in New Mexico, there
were several pueblos within an extent of twelve miles, each
consisting of a single joint-tenement house, constructed usually
upon three sides of a court; and westward of the Chaco Valley were,
and still are, the seven Moki pueblos, within an extent of
twenty-five miles. At the present time, in the valley of the Rio
Grande, a single pueblo house, accommodating five hundred persons
makes an Indian village. Two or three such houses as at Taos and
Santo Domingo form a large pueblo and a group of several such houses
as at Zunyi a pueblo of the largest size which once contained
perhaps five thousand persons, now reduced to fifteen hundred. There
are no reasons for supposing that any pueblo in Yucatan or Central
America contained as high a number as ten thousand inhabitants at
the period of the Spanish conquest, although these countries were
extremely favorable for an increase of Indian population. Their
villages were numerous and small. Castanyada, who accompanied the
expedition of Coronado to New Mexico in 1540-1542, estimated the
population of the seventy villages visited by detachments and
situated between the Colorado River Zunyi and the Arkansas at twenty
thousand men which would give a total population in this wide area
of a hundred thousand Indians.
There were seven villages each of Cibola, Tusayan, Quivira, and Hemes,
and twelve of Tiguex; it would give an average of about fourteen
hundred and fifty persons to each village. In all probability these
are fair samples as to the number of inhabitants of the villages of
the Mound Builders with exceptional cases as the village on the site
of Marietta in Ohio where there may have been five thousand if an
impression may be formed from the extent of the earth works occupied
in the manner hereafter suggested. Where several villages were found
near each other on the same stream as in New Mexico, the people
usually spoke the same dialect, which tends to show that those in
each group were colonists from one original village. The earth works
of the Mound Builders must be regarded as the sites of their villages.
The question then recurs for what purpose did they raise these
embankments at an expenditure of so much labor? The must have lived
somewhere in upon or around them. No answer has been given to this
question and no serious attempt has been made to explain their uses.
They have been called defensive enclosures but it is not supposable
that they lived in houses within the embankments for this would turn
the places into slaughter pens in case of in attack. Some of them
have been called sacred enclosures but this goes for nothing apart
from some knowledge of their uses. They were constructed for a
practical intelligent purpose and that purpose must be sought in the
needs and mode of life of the Mound-Builders as Village Indians; and
it should be expressed in the works themselves. If a sensible use for
these embankments can be found, its acceptance will relieve us from
the delusive inferences which are certain to be drawn from them so
long as they are allowed to remain in the category of the mysteries.
It is proposed to submit a conjectural explanation of the objects
and uses of the principal embankments, and to advocate its
acceptance on the ground of inherent probability. It will be founded
on the assumption that the Mound-Builders were horticultural Village
Indians who had immigrated from beyond the Mississippi; that as such
they had been accustomed, to live in houses of adobe bricks, like
those found in New Mexico; that they had become habituated to living
upon their roof terraces as elevated platforms, and in large
households; and that their houses were in the nature of fortresses,
in consequence of the insecurity in which they lived. Further than
this, that before they emigrated to the valley of the Ohio they were
accustomed to snow, and to a moderate degree of winter cold; wore
skin garments, and possibly woven mantles of cotton, as the Cibolans
of New Mexico did at the time of Coronado's expedition.
[Transcriber's Note: Lengthy footnote relocated to chapter end.]
The food of the New Mexicans, at this time, consisted of maize, beans,
and squashes, and a limited amount of game, which was doubtless the
food of the Mound-Builders. Captain Juan Jaramillo, who accompanied
the same expedition, remarks in his relation that the Cibolans
"had hardly provisions enough for themselves; what they had
consisted of maize, beans, and squashes (maiz, des haricots, et des
courges).... The Indians clothe themselves with deer skins, very
well prepared. They have also buffalo-skins tanned, in which they
wrap themselves." [Footnote: Coll. Ternaux-Compans, ix, 369.]
Although several centuries earlier in time, the Mound-Builders, with
habits of life similar to those of the Cibolans, in 1540, would
understand, besides horticulture, the use of adobe bricks, and the
art of constructing long joint-tenement houses, closed up in the
first story for defensive reasons, and built in the terraced form two,
three, and four stories high, the ascent to the roof of the first
story being made by ladders.
If, then, a tribe of Village Indians, with such habits and experience,
emigrated centuries ago in search of new homes, and in course of
time they, or their descendants, reached the Scioto Valley, in Ohio,
they would find it impossible to construct houses of adobe bricks
able to resist the rains and frosts of that climate, even if they
found adobe soil. Some modification of their house architecture
would be forced upon them through climatic reasons. They might have
used stone, if possessed of sufficient skill to quarry it and
construct walls of stone; but they did not produce such houses. Or
they might have fallen back upon a house of inferior grade, located
upon the level ground, such as the timber-framed houses of the
Minnitarees and Mandans, in which case there would have been no
necessity for the embankments in question. Or, they might have
raised these embankments of earth, inclosing rectangles or squares,
and constructed long houses upon them, which, it is submitted, is
precisely what they did. Such houses would agree in general
character and in plan, and in the uses to which they were adapted,
with those of the aborigines found in all parts of America.
The elevated platform of earth as a house-site is an element in
Indian architecture which reappears in a conspicuous manner in the
solid pyramidal platforms upon which the great stone structures in
Yucatan and Central America were erected, and which sprang from the
defensive and the communal principles in living. This latter
principle required large houses for the accommodation of a number of
families in the Lower Status of barbarism, and large enough in some
cases, when the people were in the Middle Status, to accommodate an
entire tribe. When adobe bricks were used the house was usually a
single structure, three or four rooms deep and three or four stories
high, constructed in a block, and in the nature of a fortress. The
ground story was little used, except for storage, and they lived,
practically, upon the roof terraces. When the use of stone came in,
the structure often consisted of a main building four or five
hundred feet long, and two wings two and three hundred feet in length,
inclosing three sides of an open court, the fourth side being
protected by a low stone wall. Such were the pueblos now in ruins
upon the Rio Chaco in New Mexico.
In the highest form of this architecture in Yucatan and Chiapas, the
pyramidal elevation appears faced with dry stone walls. The
buildings upon its summit were often in the form of a quadrangle,
with an open court in the center; but the buildings were generally
disconnected at the four angles, as in the House of the Nuns at Uxmal.
All of these forms are parts of one system of indigenous architecture;
and the several parts are susceptible of articulation in a series
representing a progressive development of a common thought, that of
joint residence, with the practice of communism in living in large
groups in the same house, or in one group consisting of the entire
household.
Let us, then, inquire whether the principal embankments of the
Mound-Builders were adapted, as raised platforms of earth, for the
sites of long houses constructed on the communistic principle, and
in the general style of the houses of the American aborigines.
In the valley of the Scioto, in Ohio, and within an extent of twelve
miles, were found the remains of seven villages of the Mound-Builders,
four upon the east and three upon the west side of the river. They
are among the best of their works, and furnish fair examples of the
whole. One of the number, the High Bank Pueblo, is shown in
ground-plan in the engraving, Fig. 46. It is the only one in which
the inclosure is octagonal instead of square. The remains of each of
the seven consist principally of embankments like railway grades
several feet high and correspondingly broad at the base, inclosing a
square or slightly irregular area, the embankment on each of the
four sides being about a thousand feet long, with an opening or
gateway in the middle and at the four angles of the square. Attached
to or quite near to five of the seven are large circular inclosures,
each formed by a similar though lower embankment of earth and
inclosing a space somewhat larger than the squares. The respective
heights of the embankments, forming four of the rectangles, are
given at four, six, ten, and twelve feet; and of three of the
circular embankments, at five and six feet, respectively.
The embankments inclosing the squares were probably the site of
their houses; since, as the highest, and because they are straight,
they were best adapted to the purpose. The situations of these
pueblos at short distances from each other on the same stream
accords with the usages of the Village Indians of New and Old Mexico
and Central America in locating their villages. These pueblos were
probably occupied by Mound-Builders of the same tribe, and were not
unlikely under a common government, consisting of a council of chiefs.
It is probable, also, that they were constructed, one after the other,
by colonists from an original village.
In the engraving, Fig. 46, the form and relations of the embankments
are shown, with cross-sections indicating their elevation and
present ground-dimensions. It was taken from the work of Squier and
Davis. [Footnote: Smith Con., vol. i, p1. xvi.]
These authors remark that "the principal work consists of an octagon
and circle, the former measuring nine hundred and fifty feet, the
latter ten hundred and fifty feet in diameter.... The walls of the
octagon are very bold, and, where they have been least subject to
cultivation, are now between eleven and twelve feet in height by
about fifty feet base. The wall of the circle is much less, nowhere
measuring over four or five feet in altitude. In all these respects,
as in the absence of a ditch and the presence of the two small
circles, this work resembles the Hopeton Works." [Footnote: ib., p.
50.]
Of the latter, which is nine miles above on the Scioto, they remark
that "the walls of the rectangular work are composed of a clayey
loam twelve feet high by fifty feet base.... They resemble the heavy
grading of a railway, and are broad enough on the top to admit of
the passage of a coach." [Footnote: ib., p. 51.]
It will be noticed that the octagonal work shown in the engraving
consists of seven distinct embankments. Six of these are about four
hundred and fifty feet long, and the remaining one, which once
consisted of two equal sections, as shown by the mound to face an
original opening in the center, now forms one continuous embankment
facing one side of the inclosed area. If these embankments were
reformed, with the materials washed down and now spread over a base
of fifty feet, with sloping sides and a level summit, they would
form new embankments thirty-seven feet wide at base, ten feet high,
and with a summit platform twenty-two feet wide. If a surface
coating of clay were used, the sides could be made steeper and the
summit platform broader. On embankments thus reformed out of their
original materials respectable as well as sufficient sites would be
provided for long joint-tenement houses, comparted into chambers
like stalls opening upon a central passage way through the structure
from end to end, as in the long-houses of the Iroquois. Such
embankments were strikingly adapted to houses of the aboriginal
American model, the characteristic feature of which was sufficient
length to afford a number of apartments. This feature became more
marked in the houses of the Village Indians, among whom houses three
hundred, four hundred, and even five hundred feet in length have
been found, as elsewhere stated.
These embankments answered as a substitute for the first story of
the house constructed of adobe bricks, which was usually from ten to
twelve feet high, and closed up solid on the ground, externally. The
gateways entering the square were protected, it may be supposed,
with palisades of round timber set in the ground, each row of stakes
commencing at the opposite ends of the embankments and contracting
after passing each other to a narrow opening on the inside, which
might be permanently closed. Indian tribes in a lower condition than
the Mound-Builders were familiar with palisades. The inclosed square
was thus completely protected by the long-houses standing upon these
embankments and the gateways guarding the several entrances. The
pueblo, externally, would present continuous ramparts of earth ten
feet high, around an inclosed area, surmounted with timber-framed
houses with walls sloping like the embankments, and coated with
earth mixed with clay and gravel, rising ten or twelve feet above
their summits; the two forming a sloping wall of earth twenty feet
high. It seems extremely probable, for the reasons stated, that they
raised these embankments as foundations, and planted their
long-houses upon them, thus uniting the defensive principle with
that of communism in living. Such houses would harmonize with the
general plan of life of the American aborigines, and with the
general type of their house architecture.
It is not necessary to know the exact form or internal plan of these
houses in order to establish this hypothesis. It is sufficient to
show that these embankments as restored were not only adapted, but
admirably adapted, to joint-tenement houses of the aboriginal
American type. The restoration, Fig. 47, was drawn by my friend
James G. Cutler, esq., of Rochester, architect, in accordance with
the foregoing suggestions. It shows not only the feasibility of
occupying these embankments with long houses, but also that each
pueblo was designed by the Mound-Builders to be a fortress, able to
resist assault with the appliances of Indian warfare. From the
defensive character of the great houses of the Village Indian in
general, this feature might have been expected to appear in the
houses of the Mound-Builders.
In this restoration the houses are nearly triangular and of simple
construction. Indians much ruder than they are supposed to have been,
as the Minnitarees and Mandans, walled their houses with slabs of
wood standing on a slope, and roofed them at a lower angle, covering
both the sloping external walls and the roof with a "concrete of
tough clay and gravel," a foot or more thick. Long triangular houses
of the width of the summit of these embankments, with their doorways
opening upon the square, and with the interior comparted in the form
of stalls upon each side of a central passage way, would realize,
with the inclosed court, some of the features and nearly all the
advantages of the New Mexican pueblo houses. Occupying to the edge
of the embankments, these of the Mound-Builders could not be
successfully assailed from without either by Indian weapons or by
fire; and within, their apartments would be as secure and capacious
as those of the Village Indians in general at the period of their
discovery. The inclosed court, which is of unusual size, is one of
the remarkable features of the plan. It afforded a protected place
for the villagers and a place of recreation for their children, as
well as room for their drying-scaffolds, of which Mr. Cutler has
introduced a number of the Minnetaree and Mandan model, and for
gardens if they chose to use a part of the area for that purpose.
They would also require room for a large accumulation of fuel for
winter use. The only assailable points are the gateways, of which
the embankments show seven. These undoubtedly were protected by rows
of round timber set in the ground, and passing each other in such a
manner as to leave a narrow opening, with a mound back of each, upon
which archers could stand and shoot their arrows over the heads of
those between them and the gateway in front. Such at least is the
object which the presence of the mound in each case suggests.
In the engraving, Fig. 48, there is a ground plan of a section of
one of the long-houses resting upon the restored embankment. It
shows eight apartments upon opposite sides of the central passage,
each nine feet wide by six feet deep, and surrounded by raised bunks
used both for seats and beds. The passage is eight feet wide and
runs through the house from end to end, with fire-pits in the center
for each four apartments. In interior plan it is an exact transcript
of the long-house of the Iroquois, and therefore adapted to the
joint habitation of a large number of related families, and to the
practice of communism.
Another section shows the embankment below the line A-B, which, as
stated, is ten feet high upon a base thirty-seven feet wide, and
with a summit platform twenty-two feet wide, which forms the floor
of the house. Above this is a cross-section of the structure. Round
posts six inches in diameter are set in the ground upon the lines of
the central passage, defining also the several stalls. These posts,
which rise eight feet above the level of the floor and are forked at
the top, support string-pieces which run the length of the house.
Against these, planks of split timber are placed so as to form a
sloping external wall, and these are covered with clay and gravel a
foot or more thick. A simpler method would be the use of poles set
close together and sunk in the ground, afterwards coated in the same
manner. Cross-pieces of round timber rest upon the stringers over
each pair of posts. The roof over the central passage is formed
independently of poles bracing against each other at the center from
opposite sides. This is also covered with concrete or mud mortar.
Openings through the roof are left over the fire-pits for the exit
of the smoke. The principle of construction adopted is that employed
in the dirt lodges of the Minnitarees and Mandans of the Upper
Missouri. As thus restored, this pueblo of the Mound-Builders is not
superior in the mechanism of the houses to those of the tribes named.
[Footnote: There are some reasons for supposing that the Minnitarees
are descendants of the Mound Builders.]
An elevation of a portion of one of the houses, on the court side,
is also furnished, showing the embankment with a ladder resting upon
it used as steps, and which could be taken up at night; also one of
the doors by which the house was entered.
It is not necessary, as before suggested, that the actual form and
structure of the houses of the Mound-Builders should be shown to
establish the hypothesis that these embankments were the veritable
sites of their houses. If it is made evident that the summit
platforms of these embankments, when reformed from their own
materials, would afford practicable sites for houses, which when
constructed would have been comfortable dwellings adapted to the
climate and to Indian life in the Middle Status of barbarism, this
is all that can be required. The restoration of this pueblo
establishes the affirmative of this proposition, with the superadded
confirmation of that defensive character which marks all the house
architecture of the Village Indians in New and Old Mexico and
Central America.
With their undoubted advancement beyond the Iroquois and Minnitarees,
the Mound-Builders may have constructed better houses upon these
platform elevations than the plans indicate. No remains of adobes
have been found in connection with these embankments, and nothing to
indicate that walls of such brick had ever been raised upon them.
The disintegrated mass would have shown itself in the form of the
embankment after the lapse of many centuries. On the contrary, they
were found in the precise form they would have assumed, under
atmospheric influences, after structures of the kind described had
perished, and the embankments had been abandoned for centuries.
These embankments, therefore, require triangular houses of the kind
described, and long-houses, as well, covering their entire length.
But the interior plan might have been different, for example, the
passage way might have been along the exterior wall, and the stalls
or apartments on the court side, and but half as many in number, and,
instead of one continuous house in the interior, four hundred and
fifty feet in length, it might have been divided into several,
separated from each other by cross partitions. The plan of life,
however, which we are justified in ascribing to them, from known
usages of Indian tribes in a similar condition of advancement, would
lead us to expect large households formed on the basis of kin, with
the practice of communism in living in each household, whether large
or small. There is a direct connection in principle between the
platform elevations inclosing a large square on which the High Bank
Pueblo was constructed, and the pyramidal platforms in Yucatan,
smaller in diameter but higher in elevation, upon which were erected
the most artistic houses constructed by the American aborigines. In
the latter cases the central area rises to the common level of the
embankments upon which the houses were constructed. The former has
the security gained by a house-site above the level of the
surrounding ground; and it represents about all the advance made by
the Village Indians in the art of war above the tribes in a lower
condition of barbarism. They placed their houses and homes in a
position unassailable by the methods of Indian warfare.
There is some diversity, as would be expected, in the size of the
squares inclosed by these embankments. They range from four hundred
and fifty to seventeen hundred feet, the majority measuring between
eight hundred and fifty and a thousand feet. Gateways are usually
found at the four angles and at the center of each side. A
comparison of the dimensions of twenty of these squares, figured in
the "Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley," gives for the
average nine hundred and thirty-seven feet. The aggregate length of
the embankments shown in Fig. 46 is three thousand six hundred feet,
which, at an average of ten feet for each apartment, would give
three hundred and sixty upon each side of the passage way, or seven
hundred and twenty in all. From this number should be deducted such
as were used for storage, for doorways, and for public uses.
Allowing two apartments for each family of five persons, the High
Bank Pueblo would have accommodated from fifteen hundred to two
thousand persons, living in the fashion of Indians, which is about
the number of an average pueblo of the Village Indians. This result
may be strengthened by comparing houses of existing Indian tribes.
The Seneca-Iroquois village of Tiotohatton, two centuries ago, was
estimated at a hundred and twenty houses. Taking the number at one
hundred, with an average length of fifty feet, and it would give a
lineal length of house-room of five thousand feet. It was the
largest of the Seneca, and the largest of the Iroquois villages, and
contained about two thousand inhabitants. A similar result is
obtained by another comparison. The aggregate length of the
apartments in the pueblo of Chettro Kettle, in New Mexico, now in
ruins, including those in the several stories, is four thousand
seven hundred feet. It contained probably about the same number of
inhabitants.
The foregoing explanation of the uses of these embankments rests
upon the defensive principle in the house architecture of the
Village Indians, and upon a state of the family requiring joint
tenement houses communistic in character. To both of these
requirements this conjectural restoration of one of the pueblos of
the Mound-Builders responds in a remarkable manner. In the
diversified forms of the houses of the Village Indians, in all parts
of America, the defensive principle is a constant feature. Among the
Mound-Builders a rampart of earth ten feet high around a village
would afford no protection, but surmounted with long-houses, the
walls of which rose continuous with the embankments, the strength of
these walls, though of timber coated with earth, would render a
rampart thus surmounted and doubled in height a formidable barrier
against Indian assault. The second principle, that of communism in
living in joint-tenement houses, which is impressed not less clearly
upon the houses of the Village Indians in general than upon the
supposed houses of the Mound-Builders, harmonized completely with
the first. From the two together sprang the house architecture of
the American aborigines, with its diversities of form, and they seem
sufficient for its interpretation. The Mound-Builders in their new
area east of the Mississippi finding it impossible to construct
joint tenement houses of adobe bricks to which they had been
accustomed substituted solid embankments of earth in the place of
the first story closed up on the ground and erected triangular
houses upon them covered with earth. When circumstances compelled a
change of plan, the second is not a violent departure from the first.
There is a natural connection between them. Finally, it is deemed
quite sufficient to sustain the interpretation given that these
embankments were eminently adapted to the uses indicated, and that
the pueblo as restored, and with its inclosed court, would have
afforded to its inhabitants pleasant, protected and attractive homes.
With respect to the large circular inclosures, adjacent to and
communicating with the squares, it is not necessary that we should
know their object. The one attached to the High Bank Pueblo contains
twenty acres of land, and doubtless subserved some useful purpose in
their plan of life. The first suggestion which presents itself is,
that as a substitute for a fence it surrounded the garden of the
village in which they cultivated their maize, beans, squashes, and
tobacco. At the Minnetaree village a similar inclosure may now be
seen by the side of the village surrounding their cultivated land,
consisting partly of hedge and partly of stakes, the open prairie
stretching out beyond. We cannot know all the necessities that
attended their mode of life; although houses, gardens, food, and
raiment were among those which must have existed.
There is another class of circular embankments, about two hundred
and fifty feet in diameter, connected with each other in some cases
by long and low parallel embankments, as may be seen in Fig 46.
Undoubtedly they were for some useful purpose, which may or may not
be divined correctly, but a knowledge of which is not necessary to
our hypothesis respecting the principal embankments. It may be
suggested as probable that the Mound-Builders were organized in
gentes, phratries, and tribes. If this were the case, the phratries
would need separate places for holding their councils and for
performing their religious observances. These ring embankments
suggest the circular estufas found in connection with the New
Mexican pueblos, two, four, and sometimes five at one pueblo. The
circles were adapted to open-air councils, after the fashion of the
American Indian tribes. As there are two of these connected with
each other, and two not connected, it is not improbable that the
Mound-Builders at this village were organized in two and perhaps
four phratries, and that they performed their religious ceremonies
and public business in these open estufas.
[Footnote: The solid rectangular platforms found at Marietta, Ohio,
and at several places in the Gulf region, are analogous to those in
Yucatan. They are an advance upon the ring inclosures, and were
probably designed for religious uses. That the Mound Builders were
at one time accustomed to adobe brick is proven by their presence at
Seltzertown, in the State of Mississippi, forming a part of the wall
of a mound. (See Foster's Pre-Historic Races of the U.S., p. 112.)]
Practice of Cremation.--Among other works are the conical mounds,
which are numerous, found in or near circular embankments. They vary
in height from five to ten and twenty feet; with one, the Grave
Creek Mound, seventy feet high. They are classified by Squier and
Davis, who surveyed and examined them, into "Mounds of Sacrifice,"
"Mounds of Sepulture," and "Mounds of Observation." The first kind
only in which the so-called altars are found will be noticed.
At the center of each of the mounds of this class, and on the ground
level there was found a bed of clay artificially formed into a
shallow basin and then hardened by fire These basins have been
termed "altars" by Squier and Davis in their work on the "Ancient
Monuments of the Mississippi Valley." Mr. Squier remarks in a resume
of this work published separately that "some are round others
elliptical and others square or parallelograms.... The usual
dimensions are from five to eight feet." [Footnote: Trans. Am Eth Soc]
[Illustration: FIG 49--Mound Artificial Clay Basin]
At Mound City on the Scioto River there is a group of twenty six
mounds in one inclosure an engraving of one of which taken from
Mr. Squier's paper is shown in Fig 49. It is seven feet high by
fifty five feet base and contained the artificial clay basin in
question. 'F' is the basin which is round, and measures from c to d
nine feet, and from a to e five feet. The height from b to e is
twenty inches, and the dip of the curve a to e is nine inches.
"The body of the altar," Mr. Squier remarks, "is burned throughout,
though in a greater degree within the basin where it was so hard as
to resist the blow of a heavy hatchet, the instrument rebounding as
if struck upon a rock. The basin, or hollow of the altar, was filled
up even full with dry ashes, intermingled with which were some
fragments of pottery.... One of the vases, taken in fragments from
the mound, has been very nearly restored. The sketch B presents its
outlines and the character of its ornaments. Its height is six, and
its greatest diameter eight inches.... Above the deposit of ashes,
and covering the entire basin, was a layer of silvery or opaque mica
in sheets overlapping each other, and immediately over the center of
the basin was heaped a quantity of human bones, probably the amount
of a single skeleton, in fragments. The position of these is
indicated by O in the section. The layer of mica and calcined bones,
it should be remarked to prevent misapprehension, was peculiar to
this individual mound, and not found in any other of the class."
[Footnote: Observations, etc, Trans Am Eth Soc ii p 161] Calcined
bones, however, were found in three out of some twenty mounds of
this class examined. [Footnote: Ane Monte pp. 157, 159]
The question now recurs, what was the use of the basin of clay, and
what the object of the mound itself? The terms "altars" and
"mounds of sacrifice," employed in describing them, imply that human
sacrifices were offered on these "altars," "upon which glowed the
sacrificial fires." [Footnote: Ib, p. 15]
There is no propriety, I respectfully submit, in the use of either
of these terms, or in the conclusions they would force us to adopt
Human sacrifices were unknown in the Lower Status of barbarism; but
they were introduced in the Middle Status, when the first organized
priesthood, distinguished by their apparel, appears. In parts of
Mexico, and, it is claimed, in parts of Central America, these
atrocious rites were performed, but they were unknown in New Mexico,
and, without better evidence than these miscalled altars afford,
they cannot be fastened upon the Mound-Builders. Moreover, these
clay beds were not adapted to the barbarous work. Wherever human
sacrifices are known to have occurred among the American aborigines,
the place was an elevated mound platform, in the nature of a temple,
as the Teocalli of Mexico, and the raised altar or sacrificial stone
stood before the idol in whose worship the rites were performed.
There is neither a temple nor an idol, but a hollow bed of clay
covered by a mound raised in honor over the ashes of a deceased chief,
for assuredly such a mound would not have been raised over the ashes
of a victim. Indians never exchanged prisoners of war. Adoption or
burning at the stake was the alternative of capture; but no mound
was ever raised over the burned remains. Human sacrifices seem to
have originated in an attempt to utilize the predetermined death of
prisoners of war in the service of the gods, until slavery finally
offered a profitable substitute, in the Upper Status of barbarism.
Another use suggests itself for this artificial basin more in
accordance with Indian usages and customs, namely, that cremation of
the body of a deceased chief was performed upon it, after which the
mound in question was raised over his ashes in accordance with
Indian custom.
Cremation was practiced by the Village Indians only among the
American aborigines. It was not general even among them, burial in
the ground being the common usage; but it was more or less general
in the case of chiefs. The mode of cremation varied in different
areas, but the full particulars are not given in any instance. In
Nicaragua the body of a deceased chief of the highest grade was
wrapped in clothes and suspended by ropes before a fire until the
body was baked to dryness; then, after keeping it a year, it was
taken to the market-place, where they burned it, believing that the
smoke went "to the place where the dead man's soul was." [Footnote:
Herrera's Hist. America, ii, 133.] From this or some similar conceit
the practice of cremation probably originated.
THE PROBABLE NUMBERS OF THE MOUND-BUILDERS.
There are no reasons for supposing, from the number of their
villages, that the Mound-Builders were a numerous people. My friend,
Prof. Charles Whittlesey, in a discussion of the rate of increase
of the human race, estimates them at 500,000. [Footnote: Trans.
Am. Ass. for the Adv. of Science, 1873, p. 320.]
With thanks for the moderateness of the estimate, one-third of that
number would have been more satisfactory. Dense populations, an
expression sometimes applied to the Mound-Builders, have never
existed without either flocks and herds, or field agriculture with
the use of the plow. In some favored areas, where the facilities for
irrigation were unusual, a considerable population has been
developed upon horticulture; but no traces of irrigating canals have
been found in connection with the works of the Mound-Builders.
Furthermore, it was unnecessary in their areas. Transplanted from a
comparatively mild to a cold climate, they must have found the
struggle for existence intensified. Like the Cibolans in 1540, it
was doubtless at all times equally true of them, that "they had
barely provisions enough for themselves." And yet there is no cereal
equal to maize in the rich reward it returns even for poor
cultivation. It grows in the hill, can be eaten green as well as ripe,
and is hardy and prolific. At the same time, while it can be made
the basis of human subsistence, it is not sufficient of itself for
the maintenance of vigorous, healthful life. Vegetables and game
were requisite to complete the supply of food. The difficulties in
the way of production set a limit to their numbers. These also
explain the small number of their settlements in the large areas
over which they spread. Although they found native copper on the
south shore of Lake Superior, and beat it into chisels and a species
of pointed spade, the number of copper tools found is small, much
too small to lead to the supposition that it sensibly influenced
their cultivation. A pick pointed with a stone chisel, a spade of
wood, and a triangular piece of flint set in a wooden handle and
used as a knife, were as perfect implements as they were able to
command. Horticulture practiced thus rudely was necessarily of
limited productiveness.
The idea has been advanced that "the condition of society among the
Mound-Builders was not that of freemen, or, in other words, that the
state possessed absolute power over the lives and fortunes of its
subjects." [Footnote: Foster's Pre-historic Races, etc., p. 386.]
It is a sufficient answer to this remarkable passage that a people
unable to dig a well or build a dry stone wall must have been unable
to establish political society, which was necessary to the existence
of a state.
From the absence of all traditionary knowledge of the Mound-Builders
among the tribes found east of the Mississippi, an inference arises
that the period of their occupation was ancient. Their withdrawal
was probably gradual, and completed before the advent of the
ancestors of the present tribes, or simultaneous with their arrival.
It seems more likely that their retirement from the country was
voluntary than that they were expelled by an influx of wild tribes.
If their expulsion had been the result of a protracted warfare, all
remembrance of so remarkable an event would scarcely have been lost
among the tribes by whom they were displaced. A warm climate was
necessary for the successful maintenance of the highest form of
Village Indian life. In the struggle for existence in this cold
climate Indian arts and ingenuity must have been taxed quite as
heavily to provide clothing as food. It is therefore not improbable
that the attempt to transplant the New Mexican type of village life
into the valley of the Ohio proved a failure, and that after great
efforts, continued through centuries of time, it was finally
abandoned by their withdrawal, first into the gulf region through
which they entered, and, lastly, from the country altogether.
The Tlascalans practiced cremation, but it was generally limited to
the chiefs. [Footnote: Herrera's Hist. America, ii, 302.] It was the
same among the Aztecs. "Others were burnt and the ashes buried in
the temples, but they were all interred with whatever things of
value they possessed." [Footnote: ib., iii, 220.] The Mayas of
Yucatan came nearer the Romans in the practice, for they preserved
the ashes in earthen vessels. "The dead were much lamented," remarks
Herrera, "in silence by day and with dismal shrieks by night....
filling their mouths with ground wheat [maize] that they might not
want food in the other world.... The bodies of their lords were
burnt and their ashes put into large vessels, over which temples
were built. Some made wooden statues of their parents, and leaving
an hollow in the necks of them, put in their ashes and kept them
among their idols with great veneration." [Footnote: ib., iv, 175.]
In New Mexico cremation is occasionally practiced at the present time.
That the Mound-Builders should have had this custom, in view of its
prevalence among the Village Indians, would afford no cause of
surprise. I think we may, not without reason, recognize in this
artificial basin of clay a cremation bed, upon which the body was
placed in a sitting posture, covered with fuel, and then burned--in
some cases partially, and in others until every vestige of the body
had been burned to ashes--after which, or even before the burning, a
mound was raised over them as a mark of honor and respect. These
mounds have yielded a large number of copper and stone implements,
pipes, fragments of water jars, and other articles usually entombed
with the remains of the dead. It seems to have been their method of
cremation; and it must be admitted to be quite as respectable as any
known form of this strange practice of a large portion of the human
race.
[Relocated Footnote: "The snow and cold are wont to be great,"
Coronado remarks in his relation, "for so say the inhabitants of the
country; and it is very likely so to be, both in respect of the
manner of the country and of the fashion of their houses, and their
furs and other things, which the people have to defend them from cold....
They have no cotton-wool growing, because the country is cold, yet
they wear mantles thereof, as your honor may see by the show thereof;
and true it is that there was found in their houses certain yarn
made of cotton-wool.... In this country there are certain skins,
well dressed, and they dress them and paint them when they kill
their oxen [buffaloes], for so they say themselves."--Hakluyt's Coll.
of Voyages, Lond. ed., 1600, iii, 377.]