discovered the Mississippi. He found there a numerous population lodged
in well-constructed dwellings, and with their council-houses surmounting
lofty mounds. De Soto and later travellers noted their extensive fields
of maize, beans, squashes, and tobacco, and their well-finished flint
implements. They were Mound-Builders; and though no longer manifesting
in extended geometrical earthworks the special characteristic of the old
race, it is assumed that in them we recover traces of the vanished
people of the Ohio valley.
With this assignment of the Mound-Builders to an affinity with Indian
nations still represented by existing tribes, the vague idea of some
strange prehistoric American race of remote antiquity vanishes; and the
latter tendency has been rather to underestimate their distinctive
peculiarities. Some of these seem to separate them from any Indian tribe
of which definite accounts have been preserved; and foremost among them
is the evidence of comprehensive design, and of scientific skill in the
construction of their sacred enclosures. The predominant impression
suggested by the great military earthworks of the Mound-Builders is that
of a people co-operating under the guidance of approved leaders, with a
view to the defence of large communities. Elaborate fortifications are
erected on well-chosen hills or bluffs, and strengthened by ditches,
mounds, and complicated approaches; but the lines of earthwork are
everywhere adapted to the natural features of the site. The sacred
enclosures are, on the contrary, constructed on the level river-terraces
with elaborate artificiality of design, but on a scale of magnitude not
less imposing than that of the largest hill-forts. On first entering the
great circle at Newark, and looking across its broad trench at the lofty
embankment overshadowed with tall forest trees, my thoughts reverted to
the Antonine vallum, which by like evidence still records the presence
of the Roman masters of the world in North Britain 1700 years ago. But
after driving over a circuit of several miles, embracing the remarkable
earthworks of which that is only a single feature, and satisfying myself
by personal observation of the existence of parallel avenues which have
been traced for nearly two miles and of the grand oval, circles, and
octagon, the smallest of which measures upwards of half a mile in
circumference, all idea of mere combined labour is lost in the higher
conviction of manifest skill, and even science. The octagon indeed is
not a perfect figure. Its angles are not coincident, but the sides are
very nearly equal; and the enclosure approaches so closely to an
accurate figure that its error is only demonstrated by actual survey.
Connected with it by parallel embankments 350 feet long, is a true
circle, measuring 2880 feet in circumference; and distant nearly a mile
from this, but connected with it by an elaborate series of earthworks,
is the great circular structure previously referred to. Its actual form
is an ellipse; the different diameters of which are 1250 feet and 1150
feet respectively; and it encloses an area of upwards of 30 acres. At
the entrance the enclosing embankment curves outward on either side for
a distance of 100 feet, leaving a level way between the ditches, 80 feet
wide, and at this point it measures about 30 feet from the bottom of the
ditch to the summit. The area of the enclosure is almost perfectly
level, so that during rain-floods the water stands at a uniform height
nearly to the edge of the ditch.
The skulls of the Mound-Builders have been appealed to for indications
of the intellectual capacity of the ancient race; but mounds and
earthworks were habitually resorted to at long subsequent dates as
favourite places of interment; so that skulls derived from modern graves
are ascribed to the ancient race; and much difficulty has been found in
agreeing on a typical mound skull. Even after making allowance for
modifications due to artificial malformation, and eliminating those
derived from superficial interments, a very noticeable diversity is
found in the comparatively few undoubtedly genuine mound skulls, which
may lend some countenance to the idea of the presence of two essentially
distinct races among the ancient settlers in the Ohio valley.[26] It
seems to accord with the unmistakable traces of intellectual progress of
a kind foreign to the attainments of any known race of the North
American continent, thus found in association with arts and methods of
work not greatly in advance of those of the Indian savage. The only
satisfactory solution of the problem seems to present itself in the
assumption of the existence among them of a theocratic order, like the
priests of ancient Egypt, the Brahmins of India, or the Incas of Peru,
under whom the vanished race of the Ohio valley—Tallegewi, Muskogees,
Natchez, Alleghans, or other American aborigines,—executed their vast
geometrical earthworks with such mathematical accuracy.
The contents of the earthworks of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys show
that the copper, found in a pure metallic condition at various points
around Lake Superior, was not unknown to their constructors. But in this
they had little advantage over the Iroquois and Algonkin tribes, in
whose grave mounds copper axes and spear heads occasionally occur. It is
even possible that working parties were despatched from time to time to
the ancient copper mines on the Kewenaw peninsula, on Lake Superior, to
bring back supplies of the prized malleable rock, which could be bent
and hammered into shape in a way that no other stone was susceptible of.
But the labours of the native miners were inadequate to provide supplies
that could in any degree suffice to displace the flint or quartzite of
the implement-maker. One use, however, has been suggested for the
copper, in relation to the labours of the flint-workers. Mr. George
Ercol Sellers, whose researches among the workshops of the ancient
tool-makers have thrown much light on their processes, was led, from
careful observation of some of their unfinished work, to the opinion
that copper was in special request in the operations of the
flint-flaker. After referring to the well-known use of horn or
bone-flakers, he thus proceeds: “From the narrowness of the cuts in some
of the specimens, and the thickness of the stone where they terminate, I
have inclined to the belief that, at the period they were made, the
aborigines had something stronger than bone to operate with, as I have
never been able to imitate some of their deep heavy cuts with it; but I
have succeeded by using a copper point, which possesses all the
properties of the bone, in holding to its work without slipping, and has
the strength for direct thrust required.”[27] No copper tool, however,
was recovered by Mr. Sellers among the vast accumulations of implements
and waste chips, hereafter described, on the sites of the ancient
workers’ industrious operations, though some of those found elsewhere
may have been used for such a purpose.
The evidence that the ancient dwellers in the Ohio valley were still in
their Stone age is indisputable. But to a people apparently under the
guidance of an order or cast far in advance of themselves in some
important branches of knowledge, and by whom the utility of the metals
was beginning to be discerned—though they had not yet mastered the
first step in metallurgy by the use of fire,—their speedy advance
beyond the neolithic stage was inevitable. But an open valley,
accessible on all sides, was peculiarly unfavourable for the first
transitional stage of a people just emerging from barbarism. Their
numbers, it is obvious, were considerable; and agriculture must have
been carried out on a large scale to furnish the means of subsistence
for a settled community. They had entered on a course which, if
unimpeded, must have inevitably tended to develop the higher elements of
social life and political organisation. But their duration as a settled
community appears to have been brief. Some faint tradition of the
irruption of the northern barbarians of the New World survives. The
Iroquois, that indomitable race of savage warriors, swept through the
valley with desolating fury; the dawn of civilisation on the northern
continent of America was abruptly arrested; and the present name of the
great river along the banks and on the tributaries of which the
memorials of the Tallegewi abound, is one conferred on it by their
supplanters, who were equally successful in thwarting the aims of France
to introduce the higher forms of European civilisation there.
Some singularly interesting information relative to the traces of the
ancient flint-workers in the Ohio valley, is furnished by Mr. Sellers.
His observations were made when that region still remained, to a large
extent, undisturbed by civilised intruders on the deserted Indian
settlements. He notes many places along the banks of the Ohio and its
tributaries, at an elevation above the spring floods except at rare
intervals of violent freshets, where the flaking process of the old
flint-workers had been extensively carried on, and where cores and waste
chips abound. “At one of those places, on the Kentucky side of the
river,” he says, “I found a number of chert blocks, as when first
brought from the quarry, from which no regular flakes had been split;
some had a single corner broken off as a starting-point. On the sharp
right-angled edge of several I found the indentations left by small
flakes having been knocked off, evidently by blows, as a preparation for
seating the flaking tool. Most of the localities referred to are now
under cultivation. Before being cleared of the timber and subjected to
the plough, no surface relics were found, but on the caving and wearing
away of the river banks, many spear and arrow heads and other stone
relics were left on the shore. After the land had been cleared, and the
plough had loosened the soil, one of the great floods that occur at
intervals of some fifteen or twenty years, would wash away the loose
soil, leaving the great flint workshops exposed.” There, accordingly, he
notes among the materials thus brought to light, the cores or nuclei
thrown aside, caches stored with finished and unfinished implements and
flakes, the tools and wastage, vast accumulations of splinters, etc.,
all serving to illustrate the processes of the ancient flint-workers.
The depth at which some accumulations occur, overlaid by the growth of
the so-called primeval forest, points to them as contemporary with, if
not in some cases older than, the earthworks of the Mound-Builders. The
extent, indeed, to which some are overlaid by subsequent accumulations
suggests a remote era. In 1853 Mr. Sellers first visited the site of one
of those ancient work-yards, on the northern bank of the Saline river,
about three miles above its junction with the Ohio. The region was then
covered with dense forest, with the exception of a narrow strip along
the bank of the river, which had been cleared in connection with
recently opened coal works. But at a later date, in sinking a cistern,
about 200 yards from the river bank, the excavation was made through a
mass of flint chips. Subsequently heavy rains, after ploughing, exposed
some spears and arrow points. “But it was not until the great flood of
the winter of 1862 and 1863 that overflowed this ridge three or four
feet with a rapid current, that the portion under cultivation on the
river bank was denuded, exposing over six acres of what at first
appeared to be a mass of chips or stone rubbish, but amongst it were
found many hammer-stones, celts, grooved axes, cores, flakes, almost
innumerable scrapers and other implements, and many tynes from the buck
or stag, all of which bore evidence of having been scraped to a point.
On exposure to the air they fell to pieces.” The actual site of the
quarry appears to have been subsequently identified. “The greater number
of cores, scattered flakes, finished and unfinished implements, are of
the chert from a depression in a ridge three miles to the south-east,
where there are abundant indications of large quantities having been
quarried.” But the same great work-yard of the ancient Mound-Builders
furnished evidence of other sources of supply. Mr. Sellers noted the
finding “a few cores of the white chert from Missouri, and the red and
yellow jasper of Kentucky and Tennessee,” but he adds, “the flakes of
these have mostly been found in nests or small caches, many of which
have been exposed; and in every case the flakes they contained were more
or less worked on their edges; whereas the flakes from the neighbouring
chert preserved their sharp edges as when split from the mass. These
cache specimens with their worked serrated edges would, if found singly,
be classed as saws or cutting implements. But here where found in mass,
evidently brought from a distance, to a place where harder chert of a
much better character for cutting implements abounds, they tell a
different story.” The material was better adapted for the manufacture of
certain classes of small implements much in demand, and the serrated
edge is simply the natural result of the mode of working of this species
of chert and of the jasper.
The fine-grained quartzite was also in request, especially for the
manufacture of the largest class of implements, including hoes and
spades, equally needed by the primitive agriculturist, and by the
navvies to whose industrious toil the vast earthworks of the Ohio valley
are due. The site of the old quartzite quarry appears to be about eight
miles from the banks of Saline river; but there are many other
localities scattered over the region extending from southern Illinois to
the Mississippi, where the same substitute for chert or hornstone
occurs. Some of the quartzite hoes or spades measure sixteen inches in
length, with a breadth of from six to seven inches, and evince
remarkable dexterity and skill in their manufacture. Here, accordingly,
it becomes apparent that there was a time in the history of this
continent, before its existence was revealed to the race that now
peoples the Ohio valley, when that region was the scene of busy native
industry; and its manufacturers quarried and wrought the chert, jasper,
and quartzite, and traded the products of their skill over an extensive
region. But the germs of an incipient native civilisation were trodden
out by the inroads of savage warriors from the north; and the towns and
villages of the industrious community were replaced by what appeared to
La Salle, the discoverer and first explorer of Ohio river, as the
primeval forest.
It throws an interesting light on the industrial processes of the
ancient flint-workers to learn that, even in a region where the useful
chert abounded, they went far afield in search of other materials
specially adapted for some classes of implements. They were
unquestionably a settled community, in a higher stage than any of the
tribes found in occupation of that or any neighbouring region when first
visited by Europeans. But many tribes, both of the Northern and Southern
States, habitually travelled far distances to the sea coast, where still
the ancient shell mounds attest their presence. The routes thus annually
pursued by the Indians of the interior of Pennsylvania, for example,
were familiar to the early surveyors, and some of their trails
undoubtedly marked the footprints of many generations. In traversing
those routes, as well as in their autumnal encampments on the coast,
opportunities were afforded of selecting suitable materials for their
implements from localities remote from their homes. The lines of those
old trails have accordingly yielded numerous examples of the wayfarers’
weapons and tools, as well as of unfinished implements. We are apt to
think of a people in their Stone period as merely turning to account
materials lying as accessible to all as the loose stones employed as
missiles by the vagrant schoolboy. But such an idea is manifestly
inapplicable, not only to the arts of communities like those by whom the
earthworks of the Ohio valley were constructed, but to many far older
workers in flint or stone. The Indian arrow-maker and the pipe-maker, it
is manifest, often travelled great distances for the material best
suited to their manufactures; and the use of flint or hornstone for
slingstones, lance and arrow heads, as well as for knives, scrapers,
axes, and other domestic and agricultural tools, must have involved a
constant demand for fresh supplies. It might be assumed, therefore,
apart from all direct evidence, that a regular system of quarrying for
the raw material both of the pipe and the implement-maker was pursued;
and that by trade or barter the pipestone of divers qualities, and the
chert or hornstone, the quartzite, jasper, and other useful minerals,
were thus furnished to tribes whose homesteads and hunting-grounds
yielded no such needful supplies. But the same region which abounds in
such remarkable evidences of the ingenious arts of a vanished race, also
furnishes traces of the old miners, by whose industry the flint was
quarried and roughly chipped into available forms for transport to
distant localities, or for barter among the Mound-Builders in the region
traversed by the great river. At various points on Flint Ridge, Ohio,
and localities far beyond the limits of that state, as at Leavenworth,
300 miles south of Cincinnati, where the gray flint abounds, evidences
of systematic quarrying illustrate the character and extent of this
primitive commerce. Funnel-shaped pits occur, in many cases filled up
with the accumulated vegetable mould of centuries, or only traceable by
a slight depression in the surface of the ground. When cleared out, they
extend to a depth of from four or five, to nearly twenty feet. On
removing the mould, the sloping sides of the pit are found to be covered
with pieces of fractured flint, intermingled with unfinished or broken
implements, and with others partially reduced to shape. The largest hoes
and spades hitherto noted appear to have been fashioned of quartzite,
but those of most common occurrence in Ohio and Kentucky are made of the
gray flint or chert, which abounds in the Flint Ridge pits in blocks
amply sufficing for the manufacture of tools upwards of a foot in
length, such as may be assumed to have been employed in the construction
of the great earthworks. But the transportation of the unwrought blocks
of hornstone to the work-yards in the valley would have involved great
labour in the construction of roads, as well as of sledges or waggons
suited to such traffic. In lieu of this, the accumulated waste chips in
the quarries show the amount of labour that was expended there in order
to facilitate the transport of the useful material. Suitable flakes and
chips were no doubt also carried off to be turned to account for
scrapers, knives, and other small implements. Partially shaped disks and
other pieces of all sizes abound in the pits, but the finer
manipulation, by means of which small arrow heads, lances, drills,
scrapers, etc., were fashioned, was reserved for leisure hours at home,
and for the patient labour of the skilled tool-maker, for whose use the
raw material was chiefly quarried.
In the tool-bearing drift of France and England the large characteristic
flint implements occur in beds of gravel and clay abounding in flakes
and chips in every stage of accidental fracture, to some of which M.
Boucher de Perthes assigned an artificial origin and very fanciful
significance. But if the palæolithic flint-worker in any case quarried
for his material before the latest geological reconstruction of the beds
of rolled gravel, the fractured flints may include traces of primeval
quarrying as well as of the tool-maker’s labours; for the rolled gravel
beds occur in river-valleys best adapted to the habitat of post-glacial
man.
In a report furnished to the Peabody Museum of Archæology, by Mr. Paul
Schumacher, he contributes some interesting evidence relative to the
stone-workers of Southern California. The Indians of the Pacific coast,
south of San Francisco, not only furnished themselves with chisels,
axes, and the like class of implements, but with pots for culinary
purposes, made of steatite, usually of a greenish-gray colour. In 1876,
Mr. Schumacher discovered various quarries of the old pot-manufacturers,
with their tools and unfinished articles lying there. The softer stone
had been used for pots, while the close-grained darker serpentine was
chiefly employed in making the weights for digging sticks, cups, pipes,
and ornaments. “I was struck,” he says, “on examining the locality
through a field-glass, by the discovery of so many silver-hued mounds,
the debris of pits, the rock quarries and open-air workshops, so that I
believed I had found the main factory of the ollas of the California
aborigines.”[28] He also discovered the slate quarry, where the rock had
been broken off in irregular blocks, from which pieces best adapted for
chisels were selected and fashioned into the forms specially useful in
making the steatite pots. A venerable Spanish lady told Mr. Schumacher
that she recollected her mother telling her how the Indians had brought
_ollas_ in canoe-loads from the islands in Santa Barbara Channel to the
mainland, and there exchanged them for such necessities as the islanders
were in need of. This tradition was subsequently confirmed by an old
Mexican guide. Similar evidence of systematic industry with the
accompanying trade, or barter, meets the explorer at many points from
the Gulf of Mexico northward to beyond the Canadian lakes. The pyrulæ
from the Mexican Gulf are of frequent occurrence in northern ossuaries
and grave mounds, while corresponding southern sepulchral deposits
disclose the catlinite of the Couteau des Prairies and the native copper
of the Lake Superior mines. Obsidian is another prized material only to
be found _in situ_ in volcanic regions, but met with in manufactured
forms in many diverse regions, remote from the obsidian quarries.