CHAPTER I.

[Illustration: COURT AND TOWER OF THE PALACE, PALENQUE. (After

Waldeck.)]

THE

NORTH AMERICANS

OF

ANTIQUITY

_THEIR ORIGIN, MIGRATIONS, AND TYPE OF

CIVILIZATION CONSIDERED_

BY JOHN T. SHORT

THIRD EDITION

[Illustration]

NEW YORK

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS

FRANKLIN SQUARE

1882

Copyright, 1879, by JOHN T. SHORT.

PREFACE.

The growing interest in the origin, migrations and life of the races of

American Antiquity has led me to believe that the subjects considered

in these pages would meet with the favorable attention of the public

and of the specialist in this field. With such a conviction I present

this volume, realizing the difficulties which attend any efforts to

elucidate such dark problems. Yet I cannot conceal my satisfaction

that the age of North American Antiquity is not all darkness, but on

the contrary is rapidly growing radiant with light, while a host of

patient searchers for its truths roll up the obscuring curtain. The

recent discoveries by Geo. Smith, Cesnola, and Schliemann naturally

cause us to turn with national pride to the rich antiquarian fields

in our own land. Very satisfactory results have been obtained within

a few years in the exploration of Mound-works and the Cliff-dwellings

of the West. A just view of the civilization of the builders of these

remains, however, requires that it be considered in connection with the

traditional history and civilization of the ancient races of Mexico and

Central America, so marked was the influence of the ancient peoples of

this continent upon each other.

Regarding this to be important, I have endeavored to present a

comprehensive view of the civilization of the Mound-builders,

Cliff-dwellers, and Pueblos, and to bring to the attention of the

reader the traditional history and architectural remains of the Mayas

of Yucatan and the Nahuas of Mexico. Only the probable origin and

the most remote period of the growth of these latter peoples could

receive attention within the limits prescribed for this work, since it

is my design that this volume shall serve as a manual of information

relating to the earliest period of North-American Antiquity, and as

an introduction to Ancient American History. My material relating to

the Mound-builders has been drawn almost entirely from the Smithsonian

Reports, the Proceedings of scientific societies, and private memoirs.

Still it is but justice to one honored co-laborer in the same field,

Col. J. W. Foster, to say that his excellent work, _The Pre-Historic

Races of the U. S._, has been of great service in our investigation

of this subject. Although his sources of information have been, with

few exceptions, before me, my appreciation of his work is attested

by my constant reference to it. Nevertheless, the wonderful advances

which have been made in Mound-exploration since the issue of the

_Pre-Historic Races_, called for a fresh treatment of the subject.

On the Mayas and Nahuas the following manuscript works in the

possession of the Congressional Library at Washington were consulted,

and yielded valuable material:

_Las Casas_: Historia Apologética de las Indias occidentals, 4 vols.

folio.

_Las Casas_: Historia de Indias, 4 vols. folio.

_Panes_ (_D. Diego_): Fragmentos de Historia de Nueva España, folio.

_Echevarria y Veitia_: Historia del origen de gentes que poblaron la

America Septentrional, 1755, 3 vols. folio (about one-fourth of the

work is published in Kingsborough’s Mex. Antiq., vol. viii).

_Escalante in Teniente_ (_Jose Cortes_): Memoria sobre las Provincias

del Norte de Nueva España 1799, folio.

_Duran_ (_Diego_): Historia Antigua de la Nueva España 1585, 3 vols.

folio (part of the work has been published in Mexico).

These, together with the large number of printed books relating to

America in the Congressional Library added to works in my possession,

afforded an ample field for research.

I must express my appreciation of the courteous attentions of the

accomplished Librarian of Congress, the Hon. A. R. Spofford, who

together with his assistants did everything possible to facilitate

my investigations. To the uniform and friendly interest which Mr.

Spofford has manifested in my work, its successful completion is

largely due. The substantial assistance which I received from the

lamented Professor Joseph Henry—the record of whose kindly offices

to his fellowmen can never be written—was invaluable to me. Besides

placing the latest material at my disposal, he generously furnished

most of the engravings in this work relating to the Mound-builders.

Dr. Charles Rau, also of the _Smithsonian Institution_, has placed

me under obligations for valued services. To Professor F. V. Hayden

and to the painstaking offices of Mr. James Stevenson of the _U. S.

Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories_, I am indebted

for the engravings as well as the sources of information relating to

the Cliff-dwellers. The Hon. J. R. Bartlett, of Providence, R. I., with

equal generosity has conferred like favors. Prof. F. W. Putnam, of the

Peabody Museum of American Archæology and Ethnology at Cambridge,

Mass., and his courteous assistants, Mr. Carr and Miss Smith, have

provided me with valuable engravings and reports. Robert Clarke,

Esq., and Mr. E. Gest, of Cincinnati, have also sent me engravings,

and the former in particular has conferred frequent favors. Professor

Ph. Valentini, of Albion, N. Y., with rare liberality, contributed

interesting material relating to the Nahua Calendar. To Mr. Stephen

Salisbury, Jr., of Worcester, Mass., Dr. R. J. Farquharson, of the

Davenport Academy of Sciences, Rev. S. D. Peet, editor of the _American

Antiquarian_, Cleveland, O., and to A. J. Conant, Esq., of St. Louis,

Mo., I am indebted for the interest they have manifested, and for the

material which they have brought to my attention.

Señor Orozco y Berra, of the City of Mexico, the distinguished author

of the _Geografía de las lenguas Mexicanas_, has from time to time

freely made important suggestions concerning some of the problems under

consideration. To my friend the Rev. John W. Butler, of the City of

Mexico, whose intelligent efforts in my behalf have been unremitting,

I have special reason to be thankful. To all these generous friends I

must be permitted here to express my deep sense of gratitude for their

favors.

However, this pleasant task would be but half performed were I to

omit the recognition of the unselfish friendship of the justly

eminent author of the _Native Races of the Pacific States_. Mr.

Hubert Howe Bancroft, whose rare erudition and breadth of thought are

only surpassed by his magnanimity of nature and manliness of spirit,

with a liberality which has scarce a parallel in authorship, sent me

the majority of the engravings illustrative of the Maya and Nahua

architecture and sculpture, used in the fourth volume of the _Native

Races_. To this I may add the no less valuable encouragement which

he so heartily gave during the progress of my work. Although some

of my investigations were prosecuted before the publication of the

_Native Races_, and though all of Mr. Bancroft’s sources relating to

subjects which have received our mutual attention were before me and

underwent a critical examination at my hands, it is but fair to state

that the assistance which I derived from the _Native Races_ has been

of incalculable service in the preparation of this volume. If in any

place I have omitted to render full credit to Mr. Bancroft, and to

that imperishable monument of learning and industry, his great work,

the omission has been due to inadvertence rather than intention. My

obligations to Mr. Bancroft can never be discharged, nor can the kind

attentions of Mr. Henry L. Oak, of the Bancroft Library, San Francisco,

be forgotten.

Still my examination of the sources has not always led me to the same

conclusions as were reached by the author of the _Native Races_. This

may be owing to our different standpoints of observation, or possibly

to an inappreciable bias in my own mind. It is, however, but justice to

myself to say that this work has been prosecuted to its completion with

the spirit of inquiry rather than of advocacy, and is the embodiment of

an honest search for the truth.

THE AUTHOR.

COLUMBUS, O., _November, 1879_.

PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION.

This, the third edition of “The North Americans of Antiquity,” has been

carefully revised and new facts incorporated. In this connection I

take the opportunity of thankfully acknowledging the kindly reception

and marked consideration which this work has enjoyed at the hands of

specialists, of learned Societies in both America and Europe, and from

the University of Leipzig.

J. T. S.

COLUMBUS, OHIO, _September, 1881_.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

ANCIENT INHABITANTS OF THE UNITED STATES.

The Aborigines — Antiquity of the Red Indian — The Mound-builders

— Geographical Distribution of Mound-works — Frontier

Defences of the Mound-builders — Michigan Mounds — Mounds

in the North-west — On the Upper Missouri — In Dakota —

Animal Mounds of Wisconsin — Elephant Mound — Discoveries

at Davenport, Iowa — Davenport Tablet — Heart of the

Mound-builder Country — Cahokia — Resemblances to Mexico —

St. Louis and Cincinnati Works — Cincinnati Tablet — Works

in Ohio — Fortified Places — Fort Ancient — Signal Systems —

Works at Newark — The Ohio Valley — Explorations in Tennessee

— Burial in Stone Coffins — Mound Colonies in the South-east

— Mr. Anderson’s Calendar Stone — Mounds of the Lower

Mississippi Valley — Seltzertown Mound — Alabama and Georgia

Mounds — Pyramid of Kolee-Mokee — Explorations in Missouri

— Sun-dried Bricks — Remains in the South-west — Direction

of the Migration — Architectural Progress — Altar Mounds —

Mounds of Sepulture — Ancient Copper Mines — Astronomical

Knowledge.

CHAPTER II.

ANTIQUITY OF MAN ON THE WESTERN CONTINENT.

Antiquity of the Mounds — No Tradition of the Mound-builders

— Vegetation Covering the Mounds — Age of Mound Crania —

Probable Date of the Abandonment of the Mounds — Ancient

Shell-heaps — Man’s Influence on Nature — Supposed Testimony

of Geology — Agassiz on the Floridian Jaw-bone — Remains

on Santos River — The Natchez Bone — Remains on Petit

Anse Island — Brazilian Bone caves — Dr. Koch’s Pretended

Discoveries — Ancient Hearths — Age of the Mississippi Delta

— Dr. Dowler’s Discovery at New Orleans — Dr. Abbott’s

Discoveries in New Jersey — Discoveries in California —

Inter-Glacial Relics in Ohio — Crania from Mounds in the

North-west — No Evidences as yet Discovered Proving Man’s

Great Antiquity in America.

CHAPTER III.

DIVERSITY OF OPINION AS TO THE ORIGIN OF THE ANCIENT

AMERICANS.

Conflict of Discovery and Dogmatism — Arabic Learning in the

VIIIth Century — Spirit of the Early Writers on America —

Common Opinion as to the Origin of the Americans — Father

Duran — Lost Tribes of Israel — Garcia — Lascarbot —

Villagutierre — Torquemada — Pineda, etc. — Abbé Domenech —

Modern Views — Pre-Columbian Colonization — Plato’s Atlantis

— Kingsborough — The “Book of Mormon” — Phœnicians — George

Jones — Greek and Egyptian Theories — The Tartars — Japanese

and Chinese Theories — Fusang — The Mongol Theory — Traces of

Buddhism — White-Man’s Land — The Northmen — The Welsh Claim.

CHAPTER IV.

ORIGIN OF THE AMERICANS AS VIEWED FROM THE STANDPOINT

OF SCIENCE.

Origin Theories — Indigenous Origin — Separate Creation Theory

— Dr. Morton’s Theory — Agassiz’s Views — Dr. Morton’s

Cranial Measurements — Dr. Morton’s Theory of Ethnic Unity

Groundless — Ethnic Relationships — Typical Mound-skull —

Crania from the River Rouge — Dr. Farquharson’s Measurements

— Crania from Kentucky — Researches in Tennessee by Prof.

Jones — Measurements — Prof. Putnam’s Collection of Crania

from Tennessee Mounds — Low Type Crania from the Mounds —

Development Observable in Mound Crania — Head-Flattening

Derived from Asia — Diseases of the Mound-builders —

Physiognomy of the Ancient Americans — Languages — Evolution

and its Bearing on the Origin of the Americans — Darwin

and Hæckel on the Indigenous American — The Autochthonic

Hypothesis Groundless — Unity of the Human Family — Accepted

Chronology Faulty.

CHAPTER V.

TRADITIONAL HISTORY OF THE ORIGIN OF THE MAYA

NATIONS.

Ancient Civilization of Tabasco and Chiapas — The Tradition of

Votan — The First Immigrants to America — The City of Nachan

— The Votanic Document — Ordoñez — Brasseur and Cabrera on

the Tzendal Document — The Empire of the Chanes — The Oldest

Civilization — The Earliest Home of the Mayas — The Quichés —

Their Origin Tradition — The Quiché Cosmogony — The Creation

of Man — The Quiché Migration — Tulan — Mt. Hacavitz — Human

Sacrifices Instituted — Four Tulans — Association of the

Mayas and Nahuas — Heroic Period of the Quichés — Xibalba and

its Downfall — Exploits of the Quiché Chieftains — War of

the Sects — Xibalba and Palenque the Same — Mayas of Yucatan

and their Traditions — Culture-heroes — Zamna and Cukulcan —

Christ Myth.

CHAPTER VI.

TRADITIONAL HISTORY OF THE ORIGIN OF THE NAHUA

NATIONS.

The Early Inhabitants of Mexico — Quinames — Miztecs and Zapotecs

— Totonacs and Huastecs — Olmecs and Xicalancas — The Nahuas

— The Cholula Pyramid — Its Origin Explained by Duran — No

Relation to a Flood — Ixtlilxochitl’s Deluge Tradition —

The first Toltecs — The Codex Chimalpopoca Account — The

Discovery of Maize — Sahagun’s Origin of the Nahuas — They

came from Florida — Their Settlement in Tamoanchan — Their

Migrations — Hue Hue Tlapalan — Its location, according to

the Sources — Not Identical with Tlapallan de Cortés — Not

in Central America — Probably in the Mississippi Valley —

Beginning of the Toltec Annals — The Chichimecs not Nahuas

— The Nahuatlacas — The Aztecs — Aztlan — As Described by

Early Writers — Aztec Migration — Aztec Maps — Señor Ramirez

on Migration Maps — The seven Caves — Three Claims for the

Location of Aztlan — The culture Hero, Quetzalcoatl.

CHAPTER VII.

THE ANCIENT PUEBLOS AND CLIFF-DWELLERS.

The Casas Grandes of Chihuahua — Ruins in the Casas Grandes and

Janos Valleys — Casa Grande of the Rio Gila — Ruins in the

Gila Valley — Also in the Valley of the Rio Salado — Ruins

in the Cañon of the Colorado — In the Valley of the Colorado

Chiquito — Pueblos of the Zuñi River — Zuñi and the “Seven

Cities of Cibola” — “El Moro” — Pueblos of the Chaco Valley

— Cliff-dwellers — Mr. Jackson’s Discoveries in the Valley

of the Rio San Juan — Cliff-houses of the Rio Mancos —

Cliff-dwellings on the McElmo — Traditional Origin and Fate

of the Cliff-dwellers — Ancestors of the Moquis — Remarkable

Discoveries by Mr. Holmes — The Seven Moqui Towns — The

Montezuma Legend.

CHAPTER VIII.

ANCIENT AMERICAN CIVILIZATION AND SUPPOSED OLD WORLD

ANALOGIES. — ARCHITECTURE, SCULPTURE, AND HIEROGLYPHICS.

Analogies, Real and Fancied — MAYA ARCHITECTURE — The American

Pyramid — The Palace of Palenque — The French Roof at

Palenque — The Trefoil Arch — Yucatanic Architecture — Uxmal

— The Casa de Monjas — Kabah — Casa Grande of Zayi — QUICHÉ

ARCHITECTURE — Copan — Circus of Copan — Description by

Fuentes — Utatlan — NAHUA ARCHITECTURE — Remains in Oajaca

— Mitla — Grecques at Mitla — Remains in the State of Vera

Cruz — Cholula — Pyramid of Xochicalco — The Temple of Mexico

— Teotihuacan — Los Edificios of Quemada — Maya and Nahua

Architecture Compared — Old World Analogies — SCULPTURE — Of

the Mounds — At Palenque — At Uxmal — Of the Nahuas — Ancient

American Art and its Old World Analogies — Egyptian Tau at

Palenque — Serpent Sculpture — Nahua Symbolism probably

Asiatic — HIEROGLYPHICS — Maya MSS. and Books — Landa’s

Alphabet — Attempts at the Interpretation of Maya MSS. by

Bollaert, Charencey, and Rosny — Rosny’s Classification of

the Hieroglyphics — Hopes that a Key has been Discovered —

The Mexican Picture-writing — Aztec Migration Maps.

CHAPTER IX.

CHRONOLOGY, CALENDAR SYSTEMS, AND RELIGIOUS

ANALOGIES.

No Mound-builder Chronology Known — Maya Calendar — Landa on

the Calendar — Maya Days — Maya Months — The Katun — The

Ahau Katun or Great Cycle — The Maya System Adjusted to our

Chronology — The Adjustment by Perez — Intercalary Days —

The Nahua Calendar — The Sources — Divisions of the Mexican

Calendar — The Aztec Year — The Nemontemi — Aztec Months —

Aztec Days — Nahua Ritual Calendar — Mexican Calendar Stone

— Sources of Interpretation — History of the Stone — Its

Interpretation — Date of the Origin of the Calendar Stone

— Date of the Nahua Migration — Analogies with the Nahua

Calendar — RELIGIOUS ANALOGIES — Jewish Analogies — Deluge

Traditions — Supposed Parallels in Jewish and Mexican History

— Analogies of Doctrine — Analogies of Ceremonial Law —

Yucatanic Trinity Myth — Mexican and Asiatic Analogies —

Buddhism in the New World — Scandinavian Analogies — Mexican

and Greek Analogies — Brasseur de Bourbourg’s Comparisons.

CHAPTER X.

LANGUAGE AND ITS RELATION TO NORTH AMERICA

MIGRATIONS.

Diversity of Languages in America — Causes of Diversity —

Richness of American Languages — Polysynthesis — Grimm’s

Law — The Maya-Quiché Languages — Stability of the Maya —

Oldest American Language — The Maya compared to the Greek,

the Hebrew, the North European, the Basque, West African,

and the Quichua Languages — Epitome of Maya Grammar — The

Mizteco-Zapotec Languages — The Nahua or Aztec — The Classic

Tongue — Ancient and Modern Nahua — Epitome of Aztec Grammar

— Geographical Extension of the Aztec — In the South — In

the North-west — Buschmann’s Researches — The Sonora Family

— Opata-Tarahumar-Pima Family — Moqui and Aztec Elements

— Aztec in the Shoshone and in the Languages of Oregon

and the Columbian Region — Line of Aztec Elements — The

Nahua probably the Language of the Mound-builders — The

Otomi — Supposed Chinese Analogies — Japanese Analogies —

Geographical Names.

CHAPTER XI.

PROBABILITIES THAT AMERICA WAS PEOPLED FROM THE OLD WORLD

CONSIDERED GEOGRAPHICALLY AND PHYSICALLY.

Legends of Atlantis — Brasseur de Bourbourg’s Theory — The

Subject Examined in the Light of Science — Retzius’ View — Le

Plongeon’s Observations — Identity of European and American

Plant Types — Revelations of the _Dolphin_ and _Challenger_

Expeditions — The Atlantic Floor — Challenger and Dolphin

Ridges — “Challenger Plateau” probably once Dry Land —

Identity of European and South American Fauna — Elevation and

Depression of Coast Level — Of Greenland, the United States,

and South America — The Gulf Stream — Equatorial Current —

The Trade-Winds — Accidental Discovery of Brazil — America

Probably Reached by Ancient Navigators — The Caras — Atolls

of the Pacific Ocean — A Pacific Continent — Contiguity

of the Continents at the North — Aleutian Islands — The

Kuro-Suvo — Behring’s Straits — Inviting Appearance of the

American Shore — Remoteness of the Migration — Prof. Grote’s

View — Prof. Asa Gray’s Observations — Conditions Favorable

to a Migration — Mr. John H. Becker’s Observations.

CHAPTER XII.

CONCLUSION

APPENDIX.

A. MADISONVILLE EXPLORATIONS.

B. ELEPHANT PIPE.

C. CHARNAY EXPLORATION.

D. HOUSE ARCHITECTURE OF THE MOUND-BUILDERS AND PUEBLOS.

INDEX

THE

NORTH-AMERICANS

OF

ANTIQUITY.

CHAPTER I.

ANCIENT INHABITANTS OF THE UNITED STATES.

The Aborigines — Antiquity of the Red Indian — The Mound-builders

— Geographical Distribution of Mound-works — Frontier Defences

of the Mound-builders — Michigan Mounds — Mounds in the

North-west — On the Upper Missouri — In Dakota — Animal Mounds

of Wisconsin — Elephant Mound — Discoveries at Davenport,

Iowa — Davenport Tablet — Heart of the Mound-builder Country

— Cahokia — Resemblances to Mexico — St. Louis and Cincinnati

Works — Cincinnati Tablet — Works in Ohio — Fortified Places

— Fort Ancient — Signal Systems — Works at Newark — The Ohio

Valley — Explorations in Tennessee — Burial in Stone Coffins

— Mound Colonies in the South-east — Mr. Anderson’s Calendar

Stone — Mounds of the Lower Mississippi Valley — Seltzertown

Mound — Alabama and Georgia Mounds — Pyramid of Kolee-Mokee

— Explorations in Missouri — Sun-dried Bricks — Remains in

the South-west — Direction of the Migration — Architectural

Progress — Altar Mounds — Mounds of Sepulture — Ancient Copper

Mines — Astronomical Knowledge.

On that eventful morning nearly four centuries ago, when the spell

of uncertainty and mystery which enshrouded the Atlantic was broken,

and the darkness of the deep vanished with the darkness of the night,

the illustrious admiral discovered a world populated with beings

like himself. They were male and female, with all the physical

characteristics common to the rest of mankind, and differed from the

Spaniards only in that their skin was of a copper hue, and their cheek

bones more prominent. They were tattooed and wore their straight black

hair, cut short above the ears, with a few unshorn locks falling upon

their shoulders.[1] These naked uncivilized men and women were the

same in their physical type with those discovered subsequently on the

islands and the main land by the Cabots, Vespucius, Verrezano, and

Cartier. To rehearse their descriptions of the natives whom they first

met would be but to repeat the experience and observations of Columbus.

Nearly five centuries earlier the Norse adventurer Thorwald Ericson

(1002 A.D.) encountered natives on the New England coast, corresponding

in appearance, habits, and condition to those who occupied the country

when colonized by the first settlers. To these natives they gave the

name of _Skrellings_, from _skraekja_, a name which they had previously

applied to the Eskimo, meaning _to cry out_.[2] Thorfin Karlsefne, who

also reached the New England coast four years later than Thorwald,

describes the natives as sallow-colored and ill-looking, having ugly

heads of hair, large eyes and broad cheeks. They came in canoes to

his ships for the purposes of trade, and though peaceable at first,

soon exhibited hostility and treachery.[3] It is probable that these

Skrellings were North American Indians, who had interbred with the

Atlantic Coast Eskimo. How long the red man’s occupation of the

country antedated its discovery by the Scandinavians is uncertain.

His traditions are worthless on that subject. His chronology of moons

and cycles is an incoherent and contradictory jumble. Nor does he

know any more certainly from whence he came. It would seem that his

race came by installments, if it came at all, and that he was just

as far advanced in the arts of hunting and war and domestic life

on the day in which he first possessed himself of the soil, as on

that in which he was driven from it by the European. Only under the

fostering care of the white man has he shown any improvement, and that

has been of such an uncertain character as to amount to proof of his

incapacity for self-civilization. The Indian, measured by his low

condition in the scale of progress from the extremest barbarism towards

semi-civilization, belongs to what is known as the flint age (old-stone

or Palæolithic) in Europe, in which the rudest flint implements seem

to have been the chief auxiliaries which he possessed with which to

supplement and assist his hands in securing a livelihood or to protect

his person and family from ferocious beasts. Perhaps we may more

properly place him in a position midway between the flint and the

stone ages (new-stone or Neolithic), for he no doubt was possessed of

polished stone implements of a limited number and variety. Whether made

by his own hands or by those of his predecessors is uncertain.[4] In

thus assigning the Indian his place in the scale by which man’s state

of barbarism or degree of civilization has been measured by scholars in

Europe, we do not pretend to claim for him the antiquity of the man of

the flint age in any other part of the globe.[5]

[Illustration: Arrow Heads in the National Museum (Washington).]

[Illustration: Methods Employed by Indians of Hafting Stone Weapons.]

[Illustration: Indian and Mound-builder Spear-Heads.]

Dr. Abbott, of New Jersey, in an extended treatment of the _Stone Age_

in his own State, has shown many evidences of the protracted occupancy

of the Atlantic States by a people whose weapons resemble those of

ancient man in Europe. Col. Charles Whittlesey has called attention

to the discovery of Indian remains in the “Shelter Cave,” near

Elyria, Ohio, and also in a cave near Louisville, Kentucky, where the

conditions seemed to point to an interment as long ago as two thousand

years, but the evidences both as to the remains having been those of

the red man and the period of burial are too uncertain to be of any

service in the construction of a theory.[6]

The eras or ages which have been observed to mark the different stages

of the development of pre-historic man in Europe (in the manufacture

of implements and the construction of places of abode), are apparently

reversed in America.

The Neolithic and Bronze ages preceded the Palæolithic at least in

the Mississippi Basin—not that the last inhabitants deteriorated and

lost the higher arts which are well known to have been cultivated upon

the same soil occupied by them, but that they were preceded by a race

possessed of no inferior civilization, who were not their ancestors,

but a distinct people with a capacity for progress, for the exercise of

government, for the erection of magnificent architectural monuments,

and possessed of a respectable knowledge of geometrical principles.

The remains of this mysterious people known as the mound-builders

are spread over thousands of square miles of the United States, and

it is a question whether the antiquarian is more surprised at the

greatness of their number than in many instances at the immensity

of their proportions. The entire valley region of the Missouri,

Mississippi and Ohio rivers with that of their affluents was occupied

by this remarkable people—presenting us with a parallel to the ancient

civilization which flourished in the earliest times on the watercourses

of the old world. The geographical distribution of these mounds may be

described in general terms with a view to the territory occupied by

them in the United States, as central, western, and southern.

The publication of the valuable works of Squier and Davis, of Dr.

Lapham and those of Mr. Squier alone, in which the remains of these

regions are described, was like a revelation which brought to light

the wonders of an entombed civilization.[7] In treating of the mounds

geographically, we find no evidences of this people having reached the

Atlantic seaboard, unless we except the great shell-heaps found in

various localities on the coast, and of which we will speak further on.

It is true that in South Carolina a few vestiges of their residence

are found on the Wateree River near Camden, and in the mountainous

regions of North Carolina,[8] where they wrought mica mines for the

mineral which they prized as precious, and which so often accompanies

the remains of their dead. No _authentic_ remains of the Mound-Builders

are found in the New England States, nor even in the State of New

York. In the former, we have an isolated mound in the valley of the

Kennebec in Maine, and dim outlines of enclosures near Sanborn and

Concord in New Hampshire, but there is no certainty of their being the

work of this people.[9] In the latter, it was at first supposed that

the remains found in the western portion of the State were uniform

in their plan of construction with the works of the Ohio valley; but

Mr. Squier pronounces them to be purely the work of Red Indians.

This conclusion should not be viewed as final, even though Cusick’s

vague statement (in _Schoolcraft_, vol. v) that the Iroquois “were

compelled to build fortifications in order to save themselves from

the devouring monsters” lends it an air of plausibility. Either people

may have been their builders. Col. Whittlesey would assign these

fort-like structures, differing from the more southern enclosures in

that they were surrounded by trenches on their outside, while the

latter uniformly have the trench on the inside of the enclosure, to

a people anterior to the Red Indian and perhaps contemporaneous with

the Mound-builders, but distinct from either.[10] A quite reasonable

view is that of Dr. Foster, that they are the _frontier_ works of the

Mound-builders, adapted to the purposes of defence against the sudden

irruptions of hostile tribes. He remarks, “If our country were to

become a desolation, the future antiquary would find the sea-coast

studded with fortifications of a complex form, and as he penetrated

to the interior they would disappear altogether.”[11] It is probable

that these defences belong to the last period of the Mound-builders’

residence on the lakes, and were erected when the more warlike peoples

of the North who drove them from their cities first made their

appearance. Passing along the boundary of the Mound-builders’ territory

towards the west, we find the great lakes in all cases to have served

as its limit on the north. Mr. Henry Gillman has described in several

publications[12] his exploration of mounds in Michigan and the lakes.

One of the richest mounds in relics and human remains is known as “the

Great Mound of the River Rouge,” situated on the stream from which it

takes its name, near the Detroit River and about four and a half miles

from the centre of the city of Detroit. The mound now measures twenty

feet in height, and must originally have measured 300 feet in length

by 200 in width, though the removal of large quantities of sand from

it has greatly reduced its proportions and destroyed many valuable

relics. Many other mounds surrounding it have also been removed. The

most remarkable result of the exploration was the discovery of tibiæ

flattened to an extreme degree, such as is peculiar to platycnemic

man. A circular mound in the vicinity yielded even more remarkable

specimens of this singular flattening or compression. Two specimens

presented unprecedented proportions; the transverse diameter of one

shaft being 0.42 and the other 0.40 of the antero-posterior diameter.

The circular mound yielded eleven skeletons besides a large number of

burial vases and stone implements of all descriptions peculiar to the

mounds. Of the crania from this mound we shall speak in Chapter IV.

In 1872, Mr. Gillman examined a remarkable group of tumuli situated

at the head of St. Clair River. These mostly stand on the shores of

Lake Huron. The relics, besides human remains, consisted of pieces of

mica, and necklaces of beads of the teeth of the moose alternating with

well-wrought beads of copper. The same peculiarity of flattened _tibiæ_

was markedly prominent in the remains.[13] The same investigator has

examined mounds at Ottawa Point, Michigan, near the mouth of the Oqueoc

River, at Point La Barbe in the Straits of Mackinac, and at Beaver

Harbor on Beaver Island in Lake Michigan. Excepting ancient copper

mines, no known works extend as far north as Lake Superior anywhere in

the central region. Farther to the North-west, however, the works of

the same people are comparatively numerous. Dr. Foster quotes a British

Columbia newspaper, without giving either name or date, as authority

for the discovery of a large number of mounds, seemingly the works of

the same people who built farther east and south.[14] On the Butte

Prairies of Oregon Wilkes and his exploring expedition discovered

thousands of similar mounds.[15]

[Illustration: Great Serpent, Adams Co., O.]

Lewis and Clarke, in the Journal of their expedition up the Missouri

River, describe the remains of fortifications on Bonhomme Islands at

as early a date as 1804–5–6, but until recently their statements have

been received with a degree of doubt.[16] This doubt has, however,

been fully set at rest by the members of the United States Geological

Surveying Expedition of 1872. Not only has it been shown that works

exist at Bonhomme’s Island, but all the way up through the Yellowstone

region and on the upper tributaries of the Missouri mounds are found

in profusion.[17] Dr. C. Thomas, of the above-named expedition, made

interesting discoveries in Dakota Territory, near the Northern Pacific

Railroad crossing of the James River. Mounds were examined giving

evidence of perhaps greater antiquity than those common in the interior

of the country, if their contents be depended upon as furnishing a

means of test.[18] The Missouri valley seems to have been one of the

most populous branches of the wide-spread Mound-builder country. The

valleys of its affluents, the Platte and Kansas rivers, also furnish

evidence that these streams served as the channels into which flowed

a part of the tide of population which either descended or ascended

the Missouri. The Mississippi and Ohio river valleys, however, formed

the great central arteries of the Mound-builder domain. In Wisconsin

we find the northern central limit of their works; occasionally on the

western shores of Lake Michigan, but in great numbers in the southern

counties of the State, and especially on the lower Wisconsin River.

The peculiar and fantastic forms of most of these mounds have led some

writers to suppose that they belonged to a different race from that

which occupied the valleys to the south. Instead of the usual type

of the pyramid and circle, these remains mostly represent animals,

or birds, or men. Still Dr. Lapham, who has described them fully in

his admirable work[19] on the _Antiquities of Wisconsin_, concluded

that sufficient resemblances between these remains and those of the

south exist to ascribe to them a common origin. A few instances of the

circle and square are found in association with the animal mounds,

while in Ohio, on Brush Creek in Adams County, the “Great Serpent,”

and the “Alligator” in Licking County furnish proof that either the

same people built them or at least the same impulses, religious or

otherwise, actuated the people of both districts. The former of the

above figures is well described by its name, “with its head conforming

to the crest of a hill, and its body winding back for 700 feet in

graceful undulations, terminating in a triple coil at the tail.”

The length of the latter “from the point of the nose following the

curves of the tail to the tip, is about 250 feet, the breadth of the

body forty feet and the length of the legs or paws each thirty-six

feet.”[20] Until recently no effigy mounds were believed exist further

south than Ohio; however, Mr. C. C. Jones, Jr., in the _Smithsonian

Report_ for 1877 has shown this to be a mistake. Mr. Jones describes

an eagle-shaped stone mound north of Eatonton, in Putnam Co., Georgia,

of the following dimensions: Height of tumulus at the breast of the

bird, seven or eight feet; length from the top of the head to the

extremity of the tail, 102 feet; distance from tip to tip of the wings,

120 feet; greatest expanse of tail, 38 feet. A careful regard to the

proportions of the bird are shown. A similar stone mound, of nearly the

same proportions, was found near Lawrence Ferry on the Oconee River

in Putnam County. In this instance a circle of stones encloses the

effigy. At Trenton, Wisconsin, and in many other places examined by

Dr. Lapham, cruciform works were found, some of which were constructed

with the arms extending toward the cardinal points.[21] Instances of

extinct or unknown animal forms occur occasionally: one instance is

that of an animal somewhat resembling a monkey, having a body of about

160 feet in length, while the tail describes a semicircle and measures

alone 320 feet.[22] The most remarkable instance of the kind, however,

is that of the big elephant mound found a few miles below the mouth

of the Wisconsin River, so perfect in its proportions and complete in

its representations of an elephant that its builders must have been

well acquainted with all the physical characteristics of the animal

which they delineated.[23] This fact suggests the inquiry whether these

people were Asiatic in origin and penetrated to the interior of the

country before their recollections of the elephant were forgotten,

or whether they were contemporaneous with the mastodon of North

America? In the remarkable works at Aztlan, Dr. Lapham finds not only

resemblances to the Ohio antiquities, but striking analogies with those

of Mexico.[24]

[Illustration: Elephant Mound, Wisconsin.]

Across the Mississippi in Minnesota and Iowa, the predominant type

of circular tumuli prevail, extending throughout the latter State to

the Missouri. There are evidences that the Upper Missouri region was

connected with that of the Upper Mississippi by settlements occupying

the intervening country. Mounds are found even in the valley of the Red

River of the North.[25]

Eastern Iowa, especially in the neighborhood of Davenport, has

furnished some of the most interesting mounds that have yet been

examined. Several gentlemen—especially Rev. Mr. Gass—of the Davenport

Academy of Sciences have within a couple of years recovered a number of

fine specimens of copper axes, nearly all wrapped in Mound-builder’s

cloth. This cloth had been “preserved by the antiseptic action of

the salts of copper, in all probability of the carbonates. In all

specimens one thread of the warp is double or twisted, and there are

about four to the one-fourth of an inch.”[26] Stone pipes of excellent

workmanship carved to represent various animals were found. Pottery,

copper beads in considerable numbers, mica and sea-shells (Pyrula and

Cassis), one which had an internal capacity of 152 cubic inches, or

five and one-half pints, were among the relics recovered. Most of the

human remains were much decayed; although some, among them a skull,

were preserved. The character of the Altar mound in this group is

rather unusual. Within the mound hewn rectangular stones were laid upon

one another with perfect regularity, so as to break joints, forming

something resembling the exterior appearance of a chimney. We are not

aware of any similarly shaped altar ever having been discovered in the

mounds. The most remarkable discovery of all, however, was made January

10, 1877, by Rev. Mr. Gass and his assistants in one of the mounds

which previously had been examined in part. Two tablets of coal slate

covered with a variety of figures and hieroglyphics were found.[27] One

of these, the larger, is of a most interesting character. On one side,

as will be seen in the accompanying cut, a number of persons with hands

joined have formed a semicircle around a mound, upon which a fire has

been kindled, probably for the purpose of sacrifice, or for converting

into a hardened and water-proof covering the layer of clay which may

have been spread over the remains of some distinguished personage

beneath. The presence of a layer of baked clay above human remains

in so many Ohio mounds leads to this conjecture. The three prostrate

human figures may be those of wives or servants of the deceased, to be

sacrificed upon his grave, as has been the custom from the remotest

times in India and among many savage tribes. The conspicuousness of

the sun, moon, and stars, suggest even a sadder thought, that perhaps

it may be purely a religious ceremony in which human victims are being

offered to the heavenly bodies. Sabine worship, which spread throughout

the entire length of the continent, is known to have been accompanied

with the most horrid rites. Above the arch of the firmament are

hieroglyphics which if deciphered no doubt would tell of the nature of

this and other similar scenes. On the reverse side of the tablet is a

rude representation of a hunting scene in which various animals, such

as the buffalo cow, deer, bear, etc., etc., are figured. It has been

conjectured that a large animal in the upper left-hand corner may be a

mammoth, but there is little ground for the supposition. The scene is

probably a representation of the exploits of the person buried in the

mound. The smaller tablet is evidently a calendar stone with signs of

the zodiac regularly marked upon it; of this calendar we shall speak in

a future chapter. The above conjectures as to the significance of the

representations on these tablets are based upon the supposition that

they are genuine and not the work of an impostor, of which we cannot

refrain from expressing a slight suspicion. That Rev. Mr. Gass has

given a true account of his discovery there cannot be the slightest

doubt—that he and his co-laborers in the work of excavation believe

them to be genuine is equally certain.

[Illustration: The Davenport Tablet.]

Descending to the interior, we find the heart of the Mound-builder

country in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. It is uncertain whether its

vital centre was in Southern Illinois or in Ohio—probably the former

because of its geographical situation with reference to the mouths of

the Missouri and Ohio Rivers. To enter upon a detailed description

of the antiquities of this remarkable region would alone more than

occupy the entire limits which we have prescribed for this work. This

undertaking has already been well performed by Atwater, Squier and

Davis, Foster, Baldwin, and many others. We shall therefore confine

our remarks to notices of the most conspicuous remains and the general

peculiarities of Mound-builder architecture. This people possessed

a due appreciation of the physical advantages of certain localities

for their cities. The site of St. Louis was formerly covered with

mounds, one of which was thirty-five feet high, while in the American

bottom on the Illinois side of the river their number approximates two

hundred. In a group of sixty or more, lying between Alton and East St.

Louis, stands the most magnificent of all the Mound-builders’ works,

the great Mound of Cahokia, which rises to a height of ninety-seven

feet and extends its huge mass in the form of a parallelogram, with

sides measuring 700 and 500 feet respectively. On the south-west there

was a terrace 160 by 300 feet, reached by means of a graded way. The

summit of the pyramid is truncated, affording a platform of 200 by 450

feet. Upon this platform stands a conical mound ten feet high. Dr.

Foster remarks: “It is probable that upon this platform was reared a

capacious temple, within whose walls the high-priests gathered from

different quarters at stated seasons, celebrating their mystic rites,

whilst the swarming multitude below looked up with mute adoration.”[28]

When we consider the analogy between the general features of this

pyramid and that on which the temple of Mexico was situated, it is not

unnatural to reflect that Cahokia may have served as the prototype of

the more magnificent structure which was so often deluged with the

blood of its thousands of human victims. The temple of Mexico and many

others of its type may have been the embodiment of the same principles

of architecture employed at Cahokia, but carried to greater perfection

under the more favorable conditions afforded in the valley of Anahuac,

or precisely the reverse may be true. Such speculations are, however,

more easily set forth than sustained. Dr. Foster, through a mistake,

states that the monster mound has been removed. This, we are happy to

say, is not the case.[29]

[Illustration: Drilled Ceremonial Weapons. (Nat. Mus.)]

Numerous interesting explorations have been conducted recently in

Illinois with rich results. Among the most notable of these are the

discoveries of Mr. Henry R. Howland, reported in a paper read before

the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences, March, 1877 (_Bulletin of the

Buffalo Soc. of Nat. Sc._, vol. iii., p. 204 _et seq._). In January,

1876, Mr. Howland witnessed the removal of a mound near Mitchell

Station in the American Bottom. In a stratum four or five feet from the

base, composed chiefly of human bones, a large quantity of matting and

a number of copper relics were disclosed to view. The matting was a

coarse vegetable cane-like fibre simply woven, without twisting. Among

the articles wrapped in the matting were several miniature tortoise

shells formed of copper. They were of beaten copper of one sixty-fourth

of an inch in thickness, the largest being but two and one-eighth

inches in length. “A narrow flange or rim, about five thirty-secondths

of an inch in width, is neatly turned at the base, and over the entire

outer surface the curious markings peculiar to the tortoise shell are

carefully produced by indentation—the entire workmanship evincing

a delicate skill of which we have never before found traces in any

discovered remains of the arts of the Mound-builders.” These shells

were covered with several wrappings, the first and nearest to the

shell proving to be of vegetable fibre, the second of a dark-brown

color; when placed under the microscope and examined by Dr. G. J.

Engleman and Sir Joseph Hooker, proved to be a very fine cloth woven

from animal hair—of the rabbit and possibly of the deer. The third

envelope was made from the intestine of some animal. The lower jaws of

deer were discovered in which the forward part containing the teeth

were encased in thin copper and wrapped in the fine hair-cloth just

described. From holes bored in the back of each jaw, it is inferred

that the articles were suspended from the neck as totems or badges

of authority. Three wooden spool-like objects were found in the same

place, partially plated with thin copper. Copper rods or needles from

fourteen to eighteen inches in length, a beautiful shell necklace, and

a spear head of chert a foot long, were also discovered. Among the rest

were several sea-shells (_Busycon Perversum_), evidently brought from

the Gulf a thousand miles distant. In the summer of 1874, Mr. H. R.

Enoch, of Rockford, Ill., discovered a tablet in a mound situated on

the bank of Rock River, five miles south of Rockford. The “Rockford

Tablet” created quite a sensation at first because it was thought to

bear upon its face several symbols found upon the Mexican Calendar

stone. However, a thorough investigation of its claims prove it to be

a fraud, no doubt placed in the mound where discovered for the purpose

of deception. Mr. J. Moody of Mendota, Ill., in referring to the twelve

symbols of the tablet said to be Mexican, remarks: “Six are nearly

exact counterparts of that number of Lybian characters which I find

represented in Priest’s _American Antiquities_. * * * From a comparison

of the Rockford Tablet with the plates in the work referred to above,

the inference is almost irresistible that the engraver had a copy of

Priest’s _American Antiquities_ before him while doing his work.” (See

_Congrès International des Américanistes, Luxembourg_, 1877. Tome ii,

p. 160.)

The same sagacity which chose the neighborhood of St. Louis for these

works, covered the site of Cincinnati with an extensive system of

circumvallations and mounds. Almost the entire space now occupied by

the city was utilized by the mysterious builders in the construction

of embankments and tumuli built upon the most accurate geometrical

principles, and evincing keen military foresight.[30] Dr. Daniel Drake

described these works in 1815, and many others subsequently.[31] The

most important discovery made among these remains was that of the

“Cincinnati Tablet” in 1841. This singular relic was taken from a large

mound formerly thirty-five feet high, removed at the above date from

the extension of Mound Street across Fifth Street. When found, it was

lying on a level with the original surface under the skull of a much

decayed skeleton, with two polished, pointed bones about seven inches

long, and a bed of charcoal and ashes. This stone in all probability

served the double purpose of a record of the calendar and a scale

for measurement.[32] Mr. E. Gest, the courteous owner of the tablet,

provided the accompanying cuts expressly for this work, regarding them

as the first correct representations of the stone.

[Illustration: Cincinnati Tablet. (Front.)]

[Illustration: Cincinnati Tablet. (Back.)]

[Illustration: Dagger ½ Size. (Nat. Mus.)]

The vast number as well as the magnitude of the works found in the

State of Ohio, have surprised the most careless and indifferent

observers. It is estimated by the most conservative, and Messrs.

Squier and Davis among them, that the number of tumuli in Ohio equals

10,000, and the number of enclosures 1000 or 1500. In Ross County

alone, 100 enclosures and upwards of 500 mounds have been examined.

Some of the works exhibit fine engineering skill; such, for instance,

are those near Liberty, Ohio, where two embankments, each forming a

perfect circle, are found in conjunction with a perfect square. The

larger circle measures 1700 feet in diameter and contains forty acres,

while the smaller has a diameter of 800 feet. The square contains

twenty-seven acres and measures 1080 feet on each side. One set of

works in Pike County consists of a circle enclosing a square, the

four corners of which each touch the circular embankment. The opening

or doorway through the circle is opposite the opening in the square.

Prof. E. B. Andrews found a conical mound enclosed by a circle, the

base of the mound reaching to the edge of the ditch outside of which

is the circular wall. The mound was located on the Hocking River,

nine miles northward of Lancaster, Ohio (see _Tenth Ann. Rep. of

Peabody Mus. of Arch. and Eth._, p. 51). The works at Hopetown, near

Chillicothe, present several combinations of the square and circle.

The two principal figures of these works are a square and circle—each

containing exactly twenty acres. The discovery of these geometrical

combinations—executed with such precision—in many parts of the country,

lead to the belief that the Mound-builders were one people spread over

a large territory, possessed of the same institutions, religion, and

perhaps one government. These facts are highly important as shedding

light upon the degree of their civilization. The evidence is ample

that they were possessed of regular scales of measurement, of the means

of determining angles and of computing the area to be enclosed by a

square and circle, so that the space enclosed by these figures standing

side by side might exactly correspond. In a word, their scientific and

mathematical knowledge was of a very respectable order.

[Illustration: Works in Liberty Township, Ross County, Ohio.]

[Illustration: Celts. (Nat. Mus.)

The large celt, upper line, from a mound (Tenn.). The others Surface

Finds.]

[Illustration: Aboriginal Chisels, Gouges and Adzes. (Nat. Mus.)

Surface Finds.]

The military works of the Mound-builders, other than those previously

mentioned as existing on the Lakes and in Western New York State,

are of a twofold character, consisting first of fortified eminences,

of which an instance is found in Butler County, Ohio, where 16³⁄₁₀

acres are walled in on the summit of a hill, and the entrance to the

enclosure guarded by a complicated system of covered ways. On Paint

Creek, Ross County, a remarkable stone work encloses 140 acres, in

the centre of which was an artificial lake, probably to supply water

in case of a siege. Perhaps the most remarkable fortification left

by the Mound-builders is that known as Fort Ancient, Ohio, on the

Little Miami River, forty-two miles north-east of Cincinnati. The

specialist is already familiar with the oft-quoted description of the

Survey by Prof. Locke, made in 1843. We will therefore only refer to

a few of the measurements contained in that description. “The work

occupies a terrace on the left bank of the river, two hundred and

thirty feet above its waters. The place is naturally a strong one,

being a peninsula defended by two ravines, which, originating on the

east side, near to each other, diverging and sweeping around, enter

the Miami, the one above, the other below the work. The Miami itself,

with its precipitous bank of two hundred feet, defends the western

side.” * * * “The whole circuit of this work is between four and five

miles. The number of cubic yards of excavation may be approximately

estimated at 628,800”. The embankment stands in many places twenty feet

in perpendicular height. The most interesting and valuable paper on

this work is that by Mr. L. M. Hosea, of Cincinnati, in the _Quarterly

Journal of Science_ (Cincinnati), October, 1874, p. 289 _et seq._ This

writer observes that it has often been remarked that the form of Fort

Ancient resembles a rude outline of the continent of North and South

America. None of the mounds contained in the enclosure have yielded

any relics of special interest. The greatest possible diversity of

opinion exists concerning the antiquity of the abandonment of the

works. Judges Dunlevy and Force, the latter in his memoir on the

_Mound-builders_,[33] estimate the period as a thousand years, while

Mr. Hosea thinks several thousand years would be required to produce

the numerous little hillocks and depressions which mark the spot where

trees have grown, fallen and decayed. Reasoning from other data, we are

inclined to the more conservative opinion of Judge Force as altogether

the safer. Fort Ancient, which could have held a garrison of 60,000 men

with their families and provisions, was one of a line of fortifications

which extend across the State and served to check the incursion of the

savages of the North in their descent upon the Mound-builder country.

The second class of military works, which are exceedingly numerous on

all the watercourses—existing not only on the Ohio and Mississippi, but

on all their tributaries, especially on the Muskingum, Scioto, Miami,

Wabash, Illinois, Kentucky, and minor streams—are mounds which served

as outlooks. These were always placed in positions to command extended

views, and from which signals could be given to still others of the

same character, or probably to settlements remote from the watercourses.

[Illustration: Square Mound, Marietta.]

A system of these works no doubt formerly existed on the Great Miami

River extending north of Dayton, Ohio, southward to the Ohio River,

and connected with the great settlement on the site of Cincinnati

and with the high bluffs on the Kentucky shore. The great Mound

at Miamisburgh, ten miles south of Dayton, formed a part of this

chain. This monster mound is sixty-eight feet high and 852 feet in

circumference, and may have served the double purpose of a signal

station and the base of a small edifice devoted to astronomical or

religious purposes. There is little doubt that the Mound-builders in

the latter period of their occupancy of this region, when apprehensive

of danger from their enemies, employed a system of signal telegraph

by which communication was had, through means of the watch-fire or

the torch, between localities as distant as those now occupied by

Cincinnati and Dayton. Only a few minutes were necessary by means of

such a perfected system in which to transmit a signal fifty or one

hundred miles. Squier and Davis remark on this subject: “There seems

to have existed a system of defences extending from the sources of the

Alleghany and Susquehanna in New York, diagonally across the country,

through Central and Northern Ohio to the Wabash. Within this range the

works which are regarded as defensive are largest and most numerous.”

The signal system we have reason to believe was employed throughout the

entire extent of this range of works. The majority of the enclosures

found in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys are presumed not to have

been designed for military purposes, since the trench is usually

_inside_ of the embankment. However, instances of the trench being

outside of the parapet occur in Southern Ohio.[34] The most magnificent

Mound-builder remains in Ohio are the extensive and intricate works

near Newark in Licking County. The survey made by Col. Whittlesey and

published in the _Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley_, is

the most reliable as well as the fullest source of our information

concerning their magnitude, though the plan has been corrected

considerably by more recent surveys. These works occupy an area of two

miles square, and formerly consisted of twelve miles of embankment.

The spacious gateways—one of which has embankments on both sides

measuring thirty-five feet in height from the bottom of the interior

trench—the labyrinthine system of avenues, the strangely-shaped mounds,

one of which resembles a huge bird-track with a middle toe 155 feet

in length and the remaining two each 110 feet in length—together with

the solitude of the ancient forest which entombed this buried city,

we confess impressed us with a sense of wonderment and that strange

perplexity which an insoluble mystery exercises over the mind. We

can appreciate the remark of Mr. Squier in his description: “Here

covered with the gigantic trees of a primitive forest, the work

truly presents a grand and impressive appearance; and in entering

the ancient avenue for the first time, the visitor does not fail to

experience a sensation of awe, such as he might feel in passing the

portals of an Egyptian temple, or in gazing upon the ruins of Petra of

the Desert.” It is estimated that a force of thousands of men assisted

by modern appliances and implements as well as horse-power, which the

Mound-builder did not possess, would require several months in which

to construct these works.[35] At Marietta a most interesting system of

works exist, covering an area three-fourths of a mile long and half

a mile broad. These occupy the river terrace or second bottom at the

confluence of the Muskingum River with the Ohio, and present analogies

with the works further south and with those of Mexico.[36] Two

irregular squares inclose fifty and twenty-seven acres respectively.

The walls of the larger are between five and six feet high and from

twenty to thirty feet wide at the base. Within an enclosure are four

truncated pyramids or platforms, one of which, the largest, is 188 feet

long, 132 feet wide, and only 10 feet high, with a graded way reaching

to its summit, as have also two of the other pyramids. No one can look

at these structures without seeing the force of Lewis H. Morgan’s

Pueblo theory,[37] which makes these mounds or flattened pyramidal

elevations the foundation for edifices of a perishable nature;

constructed perhaps of hewn wood, but not of a combination of the adobe

and wood as he supposes, since no material for such a combination is

found in the Ohio valley.[38] The most elevated of the Marietta works

is an elliptical mound thirty feet high, enclosed by an embankment.

[Illustration: Graded Way near Piketon, Ohio.]

The most recent and satisfactory exploration of mounds in Ohio, was

that conducted by Prof. E. B. Andrews for the Peabody Museum of

American Archæology and Ethnology, and published in the Tenth Annual

Report of the Trustees (Cambridge, 1877). The mounds examined are in

Fairfield, Perry, Athens, and Hocking Counties. In Fairfield County

they were all located upon hills and commanded extensive views. Their

contents indicated great age, being much decayed. At New Lexington in

Perry County, ancient flint diggings, unquestionably worked by the

Mound-builders, were examined, many of the pits being six to eight feet

deep. In Athens County, on Wolf Plain, situated in Athens and Dover

Townships, several circles and nineteen conical mounds are found. One

of the latter measures forty feet high, with a diameter of 170 feet,

and contains 437.742 cubic feet. Another, known as the Beard Mound, was

excavated, and the interesting fact discovered that in its construction

the dirt had been “thrown down in small quantities—averaging about a

peck—as if from a basket.” Prof. Andrews is of the opinion that the

mound was a long time in building, “for we find,” he remarks, “at

many different levels, the proof that grasses and other vegetation

grew rankly upon the earth heap and were buried by the dirt.” In a

neighboring mound known as the George Connett Mound, under a bed of

charcoal five feet below the summit, a skeleton was found in a box or

coffin, enclosed by timbers. The upper part of the coffin and middle of

the body had been destroyed by fire. A circle of five hundred copper

beads was found around the body. A copper instrument resembling a

calker’s chisel, measuring 141 mm. in length, width at flattened end,

52 mm., diameter of cylindrical part, 20 mm. The instrument was formed

from sheet copper, beaten with such care that no traces of the hammer

are visible. “The edges are brought together and united very closely

by a slight overlap.” Professor Andrews describes and figures a piece

of leather ornamented with oval copper beads taken from a point eight

feet below the surface of a mound designated as the “school-house

mound.” The original piece measured eight or ten inches square, but

unfortunately fell into the hands of bystanders, who tore it in pieces

for relics. The Professor regards the curiosity as of Mound-builder

origin, and thinks it belonged to an ornamented dress. We cannot

detail these interesting explorations here, and must dismiss them with

the deduction that in certain cases the cremation of the bodies found

in mounds was accidental, caused by the heat penetrating through a

layer of earth on which a fire had been kindled. In other instances,

the body seems to have been burned intentionally, and the ashes and

charred bones heaped together in the centre of the mound. Some clay and

stone tubes of fine workmanship were obtained. The same document above

cited contains a valuable paper by Mr. Lucian Carr on his interesting

exploration of a mound in Lee County, Virginia.

Grave Creek Mound, situated twelve miles below Wheeling in West

Virginia, is the Monster work of the Ohio Valley. It measures seventy

feet in height and nine hundred feet in circumference. Its form is that

of a truncated cone, the flattened area on the top being fifty feet in

diameter.[39] The States of Indiana[40] and Illinois formed with Ohio

a portion of the great centre of the Mound-builder country, as the

remains found on the watercourses of both States testify. The valleys

of the Wabash, Kankakee, Illinois and Saline Rivers were the once

populous dwelling-places of a thrifty and industrious people who have

left thousands of structures behind them.[41] The Alleghany Mountains,

the natural limit of the great Mississippi basin, appears to have

served as the eastern and south-eastern boundary of the Mound-builder

country. In Western New York, Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia,

and in all of Kentucky and Tennessee, their remains are numerous

and in some instances imposing. In Tennessee especially, the works

of the Mound-builders are of the most interesting character. Prof.

Joseph Jones, of the University of New Orleans, has by his thorough

and recent explorations under the patronage of the Smithsonian

Institution, brought to light very interesting materials for the study

of the history of this people. The works of defence in the shape

of stone forts, by some thought to be peculiar to New York and the

lake boundaries, with occasional exceptions in the Ohio Valley, have

been found to abound in Coffee and other counties. One very perfect

example of this kind of fortification, but very imperfectly described

and figured by Haywood,[42] is that known as the stone fort near

Manchester, Tenn. This enclosure, containing over fifty-four acres, has

been minutely described by Prof. Jones.[43] In the accompanying cut

the reader will obtain a pretty clear idea of the form of this fort.

The wall, which varies from four to ten feet in height, is composed

of loose rocks gathered apparently from the bed of the streams below,

and the vicinity. The ditch shown in the cut at the rear of the works

was probably designed to convey water from one creek to the other.

The entrance is quite complicated and constitutes the most remarkable

feature of the fortification.

[Illustration: Pendants and Sinkers. (Nat. Mus.) Surface Finds.]

[Illustration: STONE FORT.]

One peculiarity of burial noticeable in this locality, and one

which evidently indicates progression when we come to compare these

people with those farther north, is the fact that the ancient race of

Tennessee buried their dead in rude stone coffins or cists, constructed

of flat pieces of limestone or slaty sandstone which abound in the

central portions of the State. In most of the mounds this mode of

burial prevailed, but was not confined to them, for outside of the

mounds in many enclosures a large number of stone graves occur. Of

the class of “Stone-grave Burial Mounds”, one situated twelve miles

from Nashville, near Brentwood, is worthy of mention. This mound was

about forty-five feet in diameter by twelve feet high, and contained

one hundred skeletons. These were mostly in stone graves, which were

constructed in ranges one above another, three or four deep. The lower

graves were short and square, containing bones that had apparently

been deposited after the flesh had been removed. The upper graves

were full length and contained remains in which the bones occupied

their natural relation to each other. The workmanship both of the

mound and stone cists was of the most perfect character. The lids

of the upper stone cists were so arranged as to present a perfectly

rounded, sloping rock surface. The mound was situated on the eastern

slope of a beautiful hill, covered with a heavy growth of the native

forest. In a large and carefully constructed stone tomb, Prof. Jones

discovered the skeleton of an aged individual of immense length, having

toothless jaw bones. In a grave occupied by a skeleton of a female,

a small compartment or stone box was found near the head, separated

from the main coffin by stone slabs, in which was the skeleton of an

infant. It should be added that in the square or short graves so often

met with, the skull was placed in the centre and the other bones

arranged around it.[44] Numerous stone graves not covered by mounds

were found on the Cumberland River opposite the mouth of Lick Branch,

surrounding a chain of four mounds. A similar graveyard was found

on the same bank of the Cumberland, a mile and a half farther down.

Others were met with on White Creek, nine miles from Nashville, at

Sycamore in Cheatham County; at Brentwood, in White County near Sparta,

and along the tributaries of the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers at

short intervals. At Oldtown on the Big Harpeth, is an extensive and

remarkable collection of stone graves. All these burial grounds seem

to be those of the people who constructed the mounds, for most of the

mounds examined contained stone graves, not in their upper strata, but

on the level of the surrounding land. A mound opposite Nashville, on

the east bank of the Cumberland River, of great interest, was examined.

Prof. Jones is convinced that it formerly served as the site or base

of a temple. Its dimensions were one hundred feet in diameter by only

ten feet high. In the centre of the mound and only three feet from its

surface the Professor uncovered a large sacrificial vase or altar,

forty-three inches in diameter, composed of a mixture of clay and

river-shells. The rim of this flat earthen vessel or sacrificial altar

was three inches in height and appeared mathematically circular. The

surface of the “altar” was covered by a layer of ashes about one inch

in thickness. The antlers and jaw-bone of a deer were found resting on

the surface of the altar, and it is probable that part of the animal

had been consumed as a sacrifice. The whole had been carefully covered

with three feet of earth and the ashes preserved. In this mound rude

sarcophagi were ranged around this sacred centre with the heads toward

the altar and the feet toward the circumference of the circle, while

the directions of the bodies were those of radii. Those bodies near

the altar were ornamented with numerous beads of sea-shell and bone.

In a carefully constructed stone sarcophagus, in which the face of

the skeleton was turned toward the setting sun, the beautiful shell

ornament shown in the cut, measuring 4.4 inches in diameter, was found

lying on the breast-bone of the skeleton. It was made from some large

shell derived from the sea-coast. Of the numerous interesting places

examined by Prof. Jones, the site of Oldtown, on the Big Harpeth River,

about six miles south-west of Franklyn, Tennessee, is worthy of special

attention. The plan of the works and their general dimensions will be

seen in the cut. At present, the crescent-shaped wall of 2470 feet in

extent is but from two to six feet in height, having been reduced to

its present condition by the plowshare. Thirty years ago it is said

to have been so steep that it was impossible to ride a horse over

it. Within the enclosure are two pyramidal mounds; the larger is one

hundred and twelve by sixty-five feet and eleven feet high, and the

smaller, seventy by sixty feet by nine feet high; also a small burial

mound measuring thirty by twenty feet and 2.5 feet high. Another burial

mound is covered by the residence of the owner, Mr. Thomas Brown. Many

curiously-shaped clay vessels were obtained at these works by the

explorers. Some of the vases were fashioned into effigies of frogs and

various animals, and one vase obtained by Mr. Brown in excavating for

the foundation for his residence, had a neck terminating in two human

heads. Some of the vessels from Oldtown are figured in the cut.

[Illustration: Clay Image from a Stone Grave in Burial Mound near

Brentwood, Tennessee.]

[Illustration: “Stone Sword” from Ancient Earthwork on Big Harpeth

River, Tennessee. ¼ Natural Size.]

[Illustration: Shell Ornament from the Breast of a Skeleton found in a

carefully constructed Stone Coffin in a Mound near Nashville, Tenn.]

[Illustration: Plan of Oldtown Works.]

[Illustration: Stone Pipe, Murfreesboro, Tenn. ¼ Natural Size.]

[Illustration: Pottery from Oldtown, Tenn.]

[Illustration: Black Vase from an Aboriginal Cemetery, Nine Miles from

Nashville.]

The art of painting seems to have been extensively practised by the

mound people of Tennessee, not only in the decoration of pottery, but

in representing ideal conceptions, which they spread out in extensive

pictures upon the smooth faces of rocky walls overhanging the rivers.

The material generally used was _red ochre_. Prof. Jones says: “The

painting representing the sun on the rocks overhanging the Big Harpeth

River, about three miles below the road which crosses this stream

and connects Nashville and Charlotte, can be seen for a distance

of four miles, and it is probable that the worshippers of the sun

assembled before this high place for the performance of their sacred

rites.”[45] The Professor’s vast collection of relics in stone and

clay, including several images, we cannot here describe. We refer the

reader to the Memoir itself. The Professor has clearly shown that the

Mound-builder people and the Indians were distinct, and has set at

rest a question upon which some few doubts were still entertained by

a certain school of Archæologists, which has really never been very

strong. The connection with or identity of the Mound-builders and the

Toltics or the same family of people is also shown satisfactorily. We

will add that the Professor is disposed to consider the Natchez as the

connecting link between the Mound-builders and the Nahuas. We regard

the Memoir one of the most important which has ever appeared on the

subject of mound exploration. The rich collection of crania will be

referred to in a future chapter.

In September, 1877, Prof. F. W. Putnam and Mr. Edwin Curtiss, also

a party under Major Powell excavated a large number of mounds and

stone graves, mostly in the neighborhood of Nashville, Tennessee. The

results were substantially the same as those obtained by Prof. Jones.

Prof. Putnam found within an earthwork near Lebanon, in Wilson County,

sixty miles east of Nashville, what he considers to be the remains of

dwellings of the Mound-builders. There were circular ridges of earth

varying from a few inches to a little over three feet in height, with

diameters ranging from ten to fifty feet. Within these enclosures, a

few inches below the surface, hard floors, upon which fires had been

made, were discovered. Under these floors, in many instances, infants

and children had been buried, while the adults had been interred in a

neighboring mound. Accompanying the skeletons of the children, many

beautiful vessels of strange and artistic forms were found (cuts of

three of these were kindly furnished by Prof. Putnam for this work),

all evincing the tenderness with which the offspring of this people

were regarded. Prof. Putnam examined nineteen of the earth-circles,

which he adds, “proved to my satisfaction that the ridges were formed

by the decay of the walls of a circular dwelling. * * * These houses

had probably consisted of a frail circular structure, the decay of

which would only leave a slight elevation, the formation of the ridge

being assisted by the refuse from the house.”[46]

[Illustration: Painted Jar from Child’s Grave (Tennessee).

(Prof. Putnam’s Exploration.)]

[Illustration: Dish from Child’s Grave (Tennessee).

(Prof. Putnam’s Exploration.)]

Colonies of Mound-builders seem to have passed the great natural

barrier into North Carolina and left remains in Marion County, while

still others penetrated into South Carolina and built on the Wateree

River. In March, 1873, Mr. Jas. R. Page examined several mounds in

Washington and Issaquena Counties in the State of Mississippi. One

mound explored in Washington County on the old bank of the Mississippi

River, was a truncated cone eighty feet in diameter by forty feet

high. A mound in the neighborhood, only eleven feet high, yielded

rich returns for the labors of excavation. A white oak on its summit

measured thirty-six inches in diameter. This mound yielded twelve

skeletons with their crania. The group was in a sitting posture around

a circle, with their faces looking toward its centre. Directly in

front of the mouth of each skeleton were placed two or three vessels

of pottery, beautifully ornamented with etchings and graceful lines.

The object of the vessels, placed in such near proximity to the mouths

of the buried remains, can only be conjectured. We regret that no

measurements of the crania are given, and what is more, we deplore the

loss of most of the crania in the course of their transportation.[47]

Mr. W. Marshall Anderson, of Circleville, Ohio, examined Mounds in

Issaquena County, Miss., with interesting results; in one mound

opened, not far from its outer edge, three skeletons were found

buried in a standing position, as though they had acted as the guards

of a more distinguished person deposited in the centre. Penetrating

the mound still farther by means of a trench, Mr. Anderson reached a

large deposit of ashes and burnt earth. Near the centre of the mound

and five feet above the level of the earth, upwards of twenty-five

unbroken specimens of fine pottery were discovered. At the very centre

three individuals had been buried apparently in great state, with

all the insignia of their important positions in life. These were

ornaments, urns, vases, beads, and arrow-points; while adjoining the

heads of each were food and drinking vessels. Not far removed from

these, two skeletons were found with bowls placed upon their heads

like helmets. Mr. Anderson is the possessor of a very remarkable stone

disk obtained for him by Dr. Robinson from a Issaquena mound near

Lake Washington, Miss. The disk is nearly eight and a half inches

in diameter and three-quarters of an inch thick, of fine-grained

sandstone. The device which it bears upon its face is composed of two

entwined rattlesnakes. A trifling ornamental border is graven on the

reverse side of the disk. When found it was broken in two pieces. Mr.

Anderson, in comparing its strange device to the Aztec Calendar Stone,

remarks: “Here are the eighteen pipes of the border corresponding to

the eighteen months of the year, but the twenty days of the month and

the five intercalaries are not to be found. The thirteen hieroglyphical

figures, and the four zodiacal signs, which as multiples give the

fifty-two years of the Aztec cycle, are also absent on the Mississippi

stone.”[48] The serpent-symbol appears to have played its part among

the Mound-builders, as well as in Mexico and Central America. The great

serpent of Adams County, Ohio, is the most extensive delineation of

the all-important symbol on the continent. Out of eighteen engraved

circular plates made of the shell of the Pyrula and taken from

Brakebill and Lick Creek Mounds in East Tennessee (and now deposited

in the Peabody Museum of Archæology) thirteen bear the device of a

rattlesnake. In one of the mounds of “Mound City,” Ross County, Ohio,

several small tablets representing the rattlesnake were unearthed,

while other mounds in the same locality yielded pipes bearing the same

representation.[49]

[Illustration: Jar from Child’s Grave (Tennessee).

(Prof. Putnam’s Exploration.)]

[Illustration: Works in Washington County, Miss.]

[Illustration: Aboriginal Shuttle-like Tablets. (Nat. Mus.) Surface

Finds.]

On the Southern Mississippi, in the area embraced between the

termination of the Cumberland Mountains near Florence and Tuscumbia in

Alabama and the mouth of Big Black River, this people left numerous

works, many of which were of a remarkable character.[50] The whole

region bordering on the tributaries of the Tombigbee, the country

through which the Wolf River flows and that watered by the Yazoo River

and its affluents, was densely populated by the same people who built

mounds in the Ohio Valley. Mr. Fontaine describes the mounds of this

region and of the Tennessee River Valley as being most frequently of

the truncated pyramidal type, and refers to one (seen by him in 1847)

seventy feet high, covering an acre of ground. It is remarkable that

the entire valley of the great river from Cairo to the mouth of Pointe

à la Hache, fifty miles below New Orleans, is thickly studded with

mounds.[51] As at Cahokia the Monarch Mound occupied a space equal

to six acres, so at Seltzertown, Mississippi, we have another immense

mound covering nearly the same area. Its dimensions are: length, about

six hundred feet; breadth, four hundred feet at the base; height,

forty feet, with a summit nearly four acres in area, reached by means

of a graded way. The structure lies with its greatest length nearly

due east and west. Upon the platform summit are three conical mounds,

one at each end and the third in the centre. The mound at the western

extremity of the summit rises to a height of nearly forty feet, while

the one at the opposite extreme does not fall far short of the same

altitude. This would give a total height of eighty feet above the level

of the base. Both of these mounds are truncated. Eight other mounds of

minor proportions are observable. The most remarkable feature connected

with this mound is a wall of sun-dried bricks, built two feet thick, as

its support on the northern side. These were filled with grass rushes

and leaves, while some of the bricks of great size used in angular

tumuli which mark the corners of the mound, retain the impressions of

human hands.[52] The Mound-builders were certainly numerous in the

Gulf States east of the Mississippi. On the Etowah River in Alabama a

mound seventy-five feet high and twelve hundred feet in diameter at the

base, has a graded avenue leading to its flattened summit. It has close

affinities to the Mexican and Yucatan mounds.[53] M. F. Stephenson

describes a group of ten mounds near Cartersville, Georgia, on the

Etowah River, the principal one of which is eighty feet high and one

hundred and fifty feet square on the top. A stone idol, gold beads,

mica mirrors, translucent quartz beautifully wrought, and many relics

of interest were here discovered. He also describes three chambers hewn

out of the solid rock at the falls of Little River, near the Alabama

line; while at Nacooche the crest of a conical hill was cut off at

fifty feet from its base, leaving a platform top with an area of an

acre and a half. Two sides are quite precipitous, but the others are

protected by a ditch and wall. Two other instances of the stone wall

are mentioned. First at Yond Mountain, four thousand feet high of solid

granite, and perpendicular on all sides except a small space which

is protected by a stone wall of artificial construction. The second

instance is quite similar, occurring at Stone Mountain, which reaches a

height of 2360 feet.[54] These natural eminences no doubt were utilized

for the purposes of worship or observation, just as many natural hills

in Mexico were graded and shaped symmetrically to serve similar uses.

Wm. McKinley, Esq., has described and surveyed additional works in

Georgia of quite a remarkable character, on Sapelio Island in McIntosh

County and on Dry Creek in Sacred Grove, Early County. But the most

lofty work of all, the giant of the mounds, is the pyramid of Kolee

Mokee in the same county, reaching a height of ninety-five feet and

having a circumference at its base of 1128 feet. Its form is that of

a parallelogram, 350 feet long and 214 wide. The plane on the summit

measures 181 feet in length by 82½ feet in width.[55] In Florida the

works of the Mound-builders have been extensively examined by Prof.

Jeffries Wyman, to whose labors we shall refer in the next chapter.

Dr. A. Mitchell made some interesting explorations in 1848 on Amelia

Island, and was rewarded by the recovery of some well-marked mound

crania.[56]

Returning to the confluence of the Missouri with the Mississippi,

the point at which we left the western boundary of the Mound-builder

country in order to treat the characteristics of its central region,

we find mounds, as we previously stated, in great numbers in the

neighborhood of St. Louis. In the valley of the St. Francis River,

mounds that have been explored have yielded many rich relics, artistic

water vessels, vases and statuettes. In Green County, Missouri, N. Lat.

37° 20´ and 16° Long, west of Washington City, is a very remarkable

truncated conical mound which has only been externally surveyed. This

mound is 60 feet high, 350 feet in diameter at the base, and 130 feet

in diameter on the top. It is surrounded by a trench (except about

twenty feet at the north) about two hundred feet wide and four feet

deep. On the north the excavation is seven or eight feet deep.[57]

These trenches served a double purpose—that of furnishing material for

the construction of the mound, and when completed, of providing an

impassable moat filled with water, that neither enemies nor the rabble

might approach the sacred mount.[58] In Phillips County, Prof. Cox

discovered an ancient fortification near Helena, built like a part of

the Seltzertown mound, of sun-dried bricks; stems and leaves of the

cane were used instead of straw in making the bricks.[59]

Professor Swallow, in company with a number of scientific gentlemen,

opened a large mound in Lewis’ Prairie, west of New Madrid, Missouri

(in December, 1856), in which he found a great collection of earthen

dishes and vases. The mound was elliptical in form, measuring 900

feet in periphery at the base, 570 feet at the top and twenty feet in

height. The remarkable feature of the mound was that it contained a

room formed of poles, lathed with split cane and plastered with clay

both inside and out, forming a solid mass. “Over this room was built

the earthwork of the mound, so that when it was completed the room was

in its centre. The earthwork was then coated with the plaster, and

over all nature formed a soil. This mud plastering was left rough on

the outside of the room, but smooth on the inside, which was painted

with red ochre.”[60] Some of the plastering was burned as red and hard

as brick, while other parts were only sun-dried. Professor Swallow

believes the mounds of the region to be very ancient. On mounds

and neighboring embankments a sycamore tree twenty-eight feet in

circumference, three feet above the ground, a black-walnut twenty-six

feet in circumference, a white ash twelve feet and a chestnut oak

eleven feet in circumference were observed. In addition to these

evidences of age, the Professor states that six feet of stratified

sands and clays have formed around the mounds since they were deserted.

(See Eighth _Annual Report of Peabody Museum_, pp. 16 _et seq._

Cambridge, 1875.)

Mr. A. J. Conant, in a very able paper published in the _Transactions

of the St. Louis Academy of Sciences_ for April 5, 1876, has more fully

described the mound works near New Madrid. On the western bank of the

Bayou St. John, partly in a cypress swamp covered with heavy timber

and partly on adjacent prairie land, an earthwork encloses an area of

about fifty acres. In this enclosure are three large mounds, one of

which is pyramidal in form and still has traces of a graded way. An

ancient well is discernible near it. A circular mound at the opposite

end of the enclosure is estimated by Mr. Conant to have afforded a

place of burial for a thousand individuals. The bodies were buried with

their heads pointing toward the centre of the mound. A gourd-shaped

vase, a small jug or drinking vessel, and an earthen pan or platter

was found with each skeleton. The mouths of the vases were fashioned

into the form of the head of some bird or the figure of some animal or

of a human female. In depressions about three feet deep, within the

enclosure, remains of burnt clay ovens were found. Fire-places were

disclosed, as well as fragments of earthen vessels capable of holding

ten or twelve gallons. The veritable kitchens of the Mound-builders,

with their furniture, seem to have been brought to light. In front of

the enclosure and projecting out into the bayou, are tongues of land

about thirty feet long by ten or fifteen feet in width, and about the

same distance apart, “resembling upon a small scale the wharves of a

seaport town.” Mr. Conant pronounces them artificial, and that when

employed by these builders, the present cypress swamp was the channel

of a river. The multitude of mound works which are scattered over the

entire south-eastern portion of Missouri indicate that the region “was

once inhabited by a population so numerous, that in comparison its

present occupants are only as the scattered pioneers of a newly-settled

country.”[61]

[Illustration: Discoidal Stones. (Nat. Mus.)

Central figure, upper line, from Illinois Mound.]

Prof. C. G. Forshey in _Foster’s Pre-Historic Races_, presents most

valuable information relative to the mounds in the south-west. His

observations convince us that the State of Louisiana and the valleys of

the Arkansas and Red Rivers were not only the most thickly populated

wing of the Mound-builder domain, but also furnish us with remains

presenting affinities with the great works of Mexico so striking that

no doubt can longer exist that the same people were the architects

of both. He describes works, some of them of immense proportions, on

the Mississippi fifty miles above Vicksburg; on Walnut Bayou; the

south-west bend of Lake St. Joseph, and at Trinity in the parish of

Catahoula, Louisiana. On the east bank of the Little River, a couple of

miles above its mouth, where it empties into Lake Ocalohoola, stands a

bluff walled with roughly hewn stone. The same writer observed a mound

near Natchez twenty-five feet high, standing isolated in a swamp. This

mound is one among many in different parts of the lower Mississippi

region surmounted by comparatively younger trees than are found on the

remains farther north. Works occur in the Atchafalaya basin, in the

rear of Baton Rouge, on the uplands of Lake Pontchartrain and on the

banks of Bayou Gros Tête. A remarkable group of truncated pyramids,

peculiarly Mexican in their style of architecture, exist in Madison

Parish, Louisiana, and are figured in Squier and Davis and copied

by Foster.[62] It is needless to discuss the fact that the works of

the Mound-builders exist in considerable numbers in Texas, extending

across the Rio Grande into Mexico, establishing an unmistakable

relationship as well as actual union between the truncated pyramids

of the Mississippi Valley and the Tocalli of Mexico and the countries

further south.[63] There can be no doubt as to the unity of the origin

of the works in both countries. There are evidences also that the most

recent works of Louisiana and Texas do not compare in antiquity with

any found in the Ohio Valley, showing it to be altogether probable

that the Mound-builders occupied the Lower Mississippi Valley and

Gulf coast for a considerable period after they were driven from the

northern and central region by their enemies.[64] Several recent

writers, with no more proof than that obsidian from Mexico has been

found in the mounds, have confidently expressed the belief that the

Mound-builders entered the Mississippi Valley and the Central Region

from the South. This was based also on the assumption that no remains

were found in the North-west. It, however, is proper to note here the

marks of architectural progression observable in the geographical

distribution of ancient works. Men all around the world have been

mound or pyramid builders. To attempt to demonstrate this well-known

fact to an intelligent reader by citing the customs of antiquity and

the works of the present great Asiatic nations, would seem little

less than pedantry rather than the work of serious investigation. The

religious idea in man, whether observed in the darkest heathenism or

partially enlightened civilization, has always associated a place of

sanctuary with the conditions of elevation and separateness. It matters

not whether you apply the rule to the practices of the most obscure

antiquity, where a hill or natural eminence was the sanctuary of an

idol, the residence of a god, or examine the motives which prompt the

erection of the dome of a St. Paul or a St. Peter’s, or coming nearer

home, analyze the reasons for the construction of the ordinary church

spire, the same inexplicable intuition is found at the bottom of them

all. The simple mound so common in the northern and central region

of the United States, represents probably the first attempts at the

imitation of nature in providing a place of worship. In the absence

of hills and natural eminences on great plains like the prairies of

the North-west (for instance in such cases as are cited on pages 28

and 29), nothing would be more natural than the construction of an

artificial hillock, especially if the elements and nature were the

objects of worship. The next step might have been again a copy or an

imitation, but instead of choosing a subject from inanimate nature,

an advance is made in the artistic scale, and the animal kingdom

furnishes not only one but varied models for reproduction. The custom

among savage tribes of personifying the deity, of dressing him up in

some form, tangible and visible, was especially characteristic of the

mythology of the Nahua nations of Mexico. It is not necessary to go to

Egypt, or India, or China to find animals of various kinds dedicated

to and associated with the national gods, for in the Maya and Nahua

mythologies, as well as in the traditions of some of the wild tribes of

the Pacific coast, the serpent, the coyote, the beaver and the buzzard

play an active part. The erection of religious structures representing

animals no doubt sacred to the Mound-builders, was carried on to a

remarkable extent in Wisconsin. These strange works probably indicate

the second step in their scale of architectural progression. In the

Ohio Valley, while the ordinary mound is found in great numbers, and a

few instances of animal mounds occur, three new architectural features

present themselves in marked prominence, all of which are artistically

in advance of those existing in the North and North-west. These are

the enclosures, the truncated mounds, and principally the truncated

pyramids, all of which are a departure from the strict imitation of

nature, and exhibit the gradual growth of the architectural idea and

the outcropping of the notion of utility. South of the Ohio Valley

the animal mounds disappear altogether and the truncated mounds grow

less common, while the truncated pyramid, the highest artistic form,

with its complicated system of graded ways and its nice geometrical

proportions, becomes the all predominant type of structure. In the

Lower Mississippi Valley, in some cases, as we have observed, dried

brick were used in the walls and angles of pyramids of the most

perfect type. Stone was also employed in a few instances. Here we find

the transition to Southern Mexico complete. No break exists in the

architectural chain.

[Illustration: Stone Plates. ⅙ Natural Size. (Nat. Mus.)

The left and central figures from an Alabama Mound.]

Squier and Davis (and Foster as well as most other writers have

followed their example) classified the works of the Mound-builders as

follows:

{_For Defence._

I. ENCLOSURES {_Sacred._

{_Miscellaneous._

{_Of Sacrifice._

II. MOUNDS {_For Temple-Sites._

{_Of Sepulture._

{_Of Observation._

To this some have added mounds for residence.

It does not fall within the scope of this work to treat of the specific

character and uses of the works of the Mound-builders, but rather

to note their extent and indications of age with relation to their

bearing on the antiquity of man in this country. Some of the arts and

manufactures of the Mound-builders are set forth in the illustrations

interspersed throughout the chapter.[65] A few of the cuts figure

objects found upon the surface. Yet it is not improbable that a due

proportion of these objects were of Mound-builder origin.

The domestic arts appear the most advanced of any among this ancient

people. Pottery of respectable quality and of varied patterns is

abundant among their remains. Coarse cloth woven of vegetable fibre,

and in some instances partly made of hair, has been discovered in

mounds in several localities. Shell and copper beads for the purposes

of ornamentation were made in great numbers. Copper axes of good

quality have occasionally been exhumed. Copper and bone needles with

well-drilled eyes were made by them. They wove baskets and coarse

matting. They carved pipes in stone or moulded them in clay, sometimes

in fantastic forms, while again they fashioned them with rare skill

into the perfect effigies of animals and birds, or possibly ornamented

them with likenesses of their own faces. With the exception of a

few observations on the altar and sepulchral mounds, we refrain from

a further treatment of the works above classified, as having no

particular bearing on the question in hand, and refer the reader to

the works of Squier and Davis, and also to that of Dr. Foster, already

often quoted. Of the Altar or Sacrificial Mounds, the first-named

authors remark: The general characteristics of this class of mounds

are: 1. That they occur only within the vicinity of the enclosures

or sacred places; 2. That they are stratified; 3. That they contain

symmetrical altars of burned clay or stone, on which were deposited

various remains which in all cases have been more or less subjected to

the action of fire.[66] The same authors present the following section

of a mound examined by them at Mound City, near Chillicothe, Ohio,

which is a fair sample of the usual stratification observed in altar

mounds.[67] The altar which this mound contained was a parallelogram

measuring 8 × 10 feet at its base and 4 × 6 feet at its top. It was

only eighteen inches in height, and contained a basin with a dip of

nine inches. In this basin were found fine ashes, fragments of pottery

and shell beads. A reference to the figure shows that the sand-stratum

is semicircular, with its extremities resting on the outer sides of

the altar. The skeleton shown in the figure designates a point three

feet below the apex of the mound where two well-preserved skeletons

were found. The strata were disturbed for their burial evidently at

a considerable period after the construction of the mound. This is a

fair example of the “intrusive burial” practised in the mounds by Red

Indians. The same authors found some of these altars rich in relics;

one especially in the vicinity of the above-described mound contained

nearly two hundred pipes carved in stone. Also a considerable number

of pearl and shell beads and copper ornaments covered with silver. It

is quite probable that the copper was from their Lake Superior mines,

as they alone are known to yield deposits of silver with copper. The

same peculiarity was observed with reference to the copper ornaments

and implements found in the Marietta works. The pipes secured in this

mound were much calcined by heat, and considerable copper had been

fused in the basin of the altar. In some of the mounds examined large

collections were obtained, and in some instances, articles made of

obsidian, which it is believed could be procured nowhere nearer than

the Mexican mountains of Cerro Gordo, or the region west of the Rocky

Mountains.[68]

[Illustration: Pestles and Mullers. (Nat. Mus.) Surface Finds.]

[Illustration: Section of Altar Mound. (After Squier and Davis.)]

[Illustration: Vase from an Ohio Mound.]

The evidences are abundant that some mysterious rites were performed

at the altar mounds; cremation only may have been practised, but we

fear that even more awful and heart-sickening ceremonies took place

upon these altars as well as upon the high temple sites in which human

victims may have been offered to appease the elements or the sun or

moon by their death agonies. What splendid ceremonial, what mystic

rites administered by a national priesthood in the presence of a devout

multitude may have accompanied these horrible sacrifices, are beyond

even the limits of conjecture. Besides cremation, inhumation was also

practised extensively. Multitudes of mounds were devoted either

partly or exclusively to such uses. Mr. Tomlinson, the owner of the

Grave Creek Mound, who sank a shaft from its original summit to its

centre, and intercepted it by a tunnel along the surface of the ground,

speaking of the latter excavation, remarks: “At the distance of one

hundred and eleven feet we came to a vault, which had been excavated

before the mound was commenced, eight by twelve feet and seven in

depth. Along each side and across the ends, upright timbers had been

placed, which supported timbers thrown across the vault as a ceiling.

These timbers were covered with loose unhewn stone, common to the

neighborhood. The timbers had rotted and tumbled into the vault. * * *

In this vault were two human skeletons, one of which had no ornaments,

the other was surrounded by six hundred and fifty ivory (shell) beads,

and an ivory (bone) ornament six inches long.” Thirty-five feet above

the bottom vault another was found containing a skeleton decorated with

copper rings, plates of mica and shell disks. The number of disks cut

from the shell known as the _Buscycon perversum_ and collected by the

excavators was 2350; of mica 250 specimens, and of the little shell

known as _Marginella apicina_, 500; all of which had been pierced and

strung as beads. Ten skeletons were subsequently found together upon

enlarging the horizontal tunnel. Ashes, charcoal and burnt bones were

also discovered in large masses. Though this was the largest of this

class of mounds, still the general characteristics of the contents are

the same in all of them, and are usually disposed in the same relative

position to each other.[69] One of the most interesting explorations of

sepulchral mounds was that conducted in the autumn of 1865 by Professor

O. C. Marsh, assisted by Mr. Geo. P. Russell, of Salem, Mass., in

what is known as the “Taylor Mound,” situated two and a half miles

south of Newark, Ohio. The mound was ten feet high and eighty feet in

diameter, and was surmounted by a forest of oak trees ranging from two

and a half to eight feet in thickness, while the decaying trunks of

a former growth were lying upon the ground. The mound was excavated

from the apex downward. Five feet from the surface a pipe and a tube

of stone unknown in Ohio were found. Seven feet from the top, in a

thin white layer of earth, a string of more than one hundred beads of

native copper were found around the neck of a child about three years

old. The salts of the copper had preserved the cord of vegetable fibre

on which they were strung. The beads were about one-fourth of an inch

in length and one-third in diameter. They evidently had been hammered

out of the metal in its original state, and the workmanship displayed

no inferior skill. One foot deeper the remains of two adults, male and

female, were found carefully buried in layers of bark, their heads

towards the east, and the body of the female resting upon that of

the male skeleton. Immediately above these were found a considerable

number of charred human bones and the evidences of cremation or human

sacrifice in honor to the couple (probably man and wife) below. The

Professor even expresses the fear that the wife—who appears to have

been about thirty years of age—may have been put to death and buried

above the remains of her deceased consort. A foot deeper the party

found another layer of charcoal, ashes and charred bones, similar to

the above, and immediately beneath it a carefully-buried skeleton, much

decomposed, lying in a white layer of earth, and with its head toward

the east. A few inches below this skeleton several carelessly-buried

skeletons were found near the natural level of the earth. Below the

natural surface a cist six feet long, three feet wide and two feet deep

was found containing the remains of eight or more skeletons, which seem

to have been imperfect when buried. The remains had been thrown into

the grave in a careless and perhaps hasty manner. In the grave were

found nine lance and arrow-heads of flint. Six small hand-axes, one of

them of hematite and the others of compact greenstone or diorite, a

small hatchet of hematite, a flint chisel and scraper, fine needles or

bodkins made of the metatarsal bones of the common deer, a whistle made

from the tooth of a young bear, and spoons cut from the shells of river

mussels. A rude vessel of clay was found, but broken, while several

bones of animals, all but two of existing species in Ohio at present,

were discovered; though it is worthy of remark that the remains of

the deer were of a size seldom attained by the species at the present

day. All the skulls found in the mound were broken, and all but two so

badly decayed that no effort was made to preserve them. These two were

of small size showing the vertical occiput, prominent vertex and large

inter-parietal diameter. There is abundant evidence that the mound had

never been disturbed by Indians.[70]

[Illustration: Stone Pipes from Ohio Mounds.]

One of the best evidences which we have of the systematic government

and habits of the Mound-builders, together with the comparatively

advanced state of the practical arts among them, is found in the

ancient copper mines of the Lake Superior Region so extensively

operated by them at quite a remote period.[71] These were first

discovered by Mr. S. O. Knapp, agent of the Minnesota Mining Company,

in 1848. One excavation explored by this gentleman was thirty feet

deep, filled with clay and a mass of mouldering vegetable matter.

Eighteen feet from the surface he found a mass of copper ten feet long,

three feet wide and two feet thick, weighing over six tons. By digging

around this great lump of metal, he observed that it was resting on “a

cob-work of round logs or skids six or eight inches in diameter, the

ends of which showed plainly the strokes of a small axe or cutting tool

about two and a half inches in width”. The wood, from its exposure to

moisture, had lost all its consistency, and opposed no more resistance

to a knife-blade than would ordinary peat. After having raised the

mass of copper over five feet along the foot wall of the lode on the

timbers by means of wedges, the ancient miners had abandoned the task.

The walls of the mine still show the marks of fire; charcoal and stone

mauls were taken from this and similar excavations. The largest of

these mauls weighed thirty-six pounds and was encircled by a double

groove around its centre. Withes were probably wound in these grooves

by which two men could wield the maul very effectively. The number of

smaller hammers of greenstone and porphyry removed from these works by

Mr. Knapp exceeded ten cart-loads. In one of the pits a rude oak ladder

was found, made by trimming the branches of a tree at a distance from

the trunk to leave a sufficient foothold. Wooden levers, preserved

beneath the water, were also of frequent occurrence. A copper maul,

shaped by pounding in a cold state, and weighing upwards of twenty

pounds, was found in this locality, as well as many well-formed copper

implements designed for various purposes. Upon a mound of rubbish near

one of the excavations, Messrs. Foster and Whitney saw a pine stump ten

feet in circumference—the trunk having been broken fifteen feet from

the ground—which must have grown and died after the earth was thrown

up. Mr. Knapp mentions a hemlock which he found growing on a heap of

rubbish which had 395 rings of annual growth. Fallen and decayed trees

of a previous generation were found lying across the pits. In front

of the Waterbury mine are blocks of stone weighing two and three tons

which had been removed by the ancient miners from the shaft, and when

observed by Colonel Whittlesey, they were covered by a forest growth of

the full size and kind common to the neighboring region. Under a pile

of rubbish the remains of a trough of cedar bark was brought to light

and had been used to carry off water baled from the mine by means of

wooden bowls, some of which were preserved by water in the mines. Mr.

S. W. Hill communicated to Dr. Foster in 1872 the discovery of mining

pits in Isle Royal, measuring fifty feet in depth.[72] In the Ontonagon

region for thirty miles traces of the ancient miners abound. The idea

that the Indians formerly worked these mines was abandoned shortly

after their discovery. They possess no tradition of copper mines, nor

did their ancestors visited by the Jesuit Fathers in the early part of

the seventeenth century obtain any intelligence of mines, though they

penetrated this region in 1660. They often mention the occurrence of

loose masses of copper found in the shape of boulders, but could learn

nothing from the Indians as to their origin. It is quite certain that

no traditions were current among them on the subject. “Instead,” says

Col. Whittlesey, “of viewing copper as an object of every day use, they

regarded it as a sacred Manitou, and carefully preserved pieces of it

wrapped up in skin in their lodges for many years; and this custom has

been continued to modern times.”[73] Father Allouez, in his _Relation_,

has described this custom.[74] Father Dablon, who shortly afterward

visited the Lake Superior tribes, has described their superstitions

concerning an island where the missionaries first met with copper.[75]

That the Mound-builders were these ancient miners, there is abundant

evidence. Col. Whittlesey has described a collection of copper

implements from Carp River containing pieces of native silver, such as

have often been found in the Ohio mounds.[76] We have already referred

to this peculiarity of the Lake Superior copper. The use of copper by

the Mound-builders was very general all the way from Wisconsin to the

Gulf, and the labor involved in a journey of a thousand miles from the

Ohio Valley to the copper regions, the toil of the summer’s mining,

and the tedious transportation of the metal to their homes upon their

backs, and by means of an imperfect system of navigation, indicates

either industry and resolution such as no savage Indian ever possessed,

or a condition of servitude in which thousands occupied a position of

abject slavery.

[Illustration: Aboriginal Stone Axes. Surface Finds.]

[Illustration: Stone Mauls and Hammers. Surface Finds.]

[Illustration: Copper Celts—the smaller from a Mound near Savannah,

Tennessee. (Nat. Mus.)]

No permanent abodes were erected by the miners in this region, no

mounds were constructed, but the indications all point to a summer’s

residence only and a return to the south with the accumulation of

their toil when the severities of winter approached. Frederick von

Hellwald expresses it as his opinion that the Mexicans obtained all

their copper from the Lake Superior mines, and adds that no evidences

exist that copper was mined in Mexico or Central America prior to the

Spanish Conquest.[77] Humboldt affirms that various metals were mined

by the Mexicans, but does not specify copper.[78] Col. Whittlesey and

Prof. Andrews estimate that in the ancient Lake Superior mines worked

by the Mound-builders, the removed metal would aggregate a length of

one hundred and fifty miles in veins of varying thickness. This fact

certainly indicates that great supplies were transported southward.

This remarkable people was evidently possessed of the beginnings of

science; at least if the Davenport and Cincinnati tablets are genuine,

astronomy must have received considerable attention at their hands. In

the former tablet we observe a cycle divided into twelve months (which,

however, is so modern and coincides so strictly with our division

as to excite suspicion of fraud), while in the latter we have the

number 368 as the sum of the products of the longer and shorter lines,

suggestive of an approximation to the number of days in a year. Other

supposed astronomical instruments have been discovered in the mounds

of Ohio, and several of these, _antique tubes, telescope devices_,

were discovered in the course of excavations made in 1842 in the most

easterly of the Elizabethtown group, West Virginia. Mr. Schoolcraft

makes the following statement concerning them: “Several tubes of stone

were disclosed, the precise object of which has been the subject of

various opinions. The longest measured twelve inches, the shortest

eight. Three of them were carved out of steatite, being skillfully cut

and polished. The diameter of the tube externally was one inch and

four-tenths; the bore eight-tenths of an inch. By placing the eye at

the diminished end, the extraneous light is shut from the pupil, and

distant objects are more clearly discerned.”[79] A silver figure found

in Peru represents a man in the act of studying the heavens through one

of these tubes, and Captain Dupaix saw a stone in Mexico bearing the

figure of a man sculptured on its side in the act of using a similar

tube.[80]

[Illustration: Clay Vessels from Mounds in the Mississippi Valley. ¼

Size. (Nat. Mus.)]

[Illustration: Clay Tube from an Ohio Mound. ½ Natural Size. (Peabody

Mus.)]

With reference to the civilization of the Mound-builders, however

much writers may differ, we think the following conclusions may be

safely accepted: That they came into the country in comparatively

small numbers at first (if they were not Autochthones, and there is

no substantial proof that the Mound-builders were such), and during

their residence in the territory occupied by the United States they

became extremely populous. Their settlements were widespread, as the

extent of their remains indicate. The magnitude of their works, some of

which approximate the proportions of Egyptian pyramids, testify to the

architectural talent of the people and the fact that they had developed

a system of government which controlled the labor of multitudes,

whether of subjects or slaves. They were an agricultural people, as the

extensive ancient garden-beds found in Wisconsin and Missouri indicate.

Their manufactures afford proof that they had attained a respectable

degree of advancement, and show that they understood the advantages of

the division of labor.[81] Their domestic utensils, the cloth of which

they made their clothing, and the artistic vessels met with everywhere

in the mounds, point to the development of home culture and domestic

industry. There is no reason for believing that the people who wrought

stone and clay into perfect effigies of animals have not left us

sculptures of their own faces in the images exhumed from the mounds.

[Illustration: Large Clay Vessel from Milledgeville, Georgia. Size 14

Inches High and 13 Inches across Aperture. (Nat. Mus.)]

They mined copper, which they wrought into implements of war, into

ornaments and articles for domestic use. They quarried mica for mirrors

and other purposes.[82] They furthermore worked flint and salt mines.

They probably possessed some astronomical knowledge, though to what

extent is unknown.

Their trade, as Dr. Rau has shown, was widespread, extending probably

from Lake Superior to the Gulf, and possibly to Mexico.[83] They

constructed canals by which lake systems were united, a fact which

Mr. Conant has recently shown to be well established in Missouri.[84]

Their defences were numerous and constructed with reference to

strategic principles, while their system of signals placed on lofty

summits, visible from their settlements and communicating with the

great watercourses at immense distances, rival the signal systems in

use at the beginning of the present century. Their religion seems to

have been attended with the same ceremonies in all parts of their

domain. That its rites were celebrated with great demonstrations is

certain. The sun and moon probably were the all-important deities, to

whom sacrifices (possibly human) were offered. We have already alluded

to the development in architecture and art which marked the possible

transition of this people from north to south. Here we see but the

rude beginnings of a civilization which no doubt subsequently unfolded

in its fuller glory in the valley of Anahuac, and spreading southward

engrafted a new life upon the wreck of Xibalba. Though there is no

evidence that the Mound-builders were indigenous, we must admit that

their civilization was purely such—the natural product of climate and

the conditions surrounding them.[85]

[Illustration: Copper Relics from Wisconsin.

(From photos furnished by Prof. Butler.)]