Introductory Facts—Ruins of Yucatan and other parts of Mexico—Ruins of
North America—Mississippi and Missouri—Look-Out Mountain—Ohio
River—Mount Joliet and others—Indian Races—Ledyard—Bradford—Dr.
Morton—Diversity of Opinions—Pyramids of
Egypt—Speculations—Vassalage—Comparison—Traditions—Embalming—Priesthood—Siamese—Japanese—Astronomy
and Mythology.
There are three questions which will very naturally occur to those of my
readers who have done me the honor to follow me through the preceding
details and statistics:—1st. By whom were these ruins built? 2d. When
were they built? And 3d. For what purpose? Before answering the first
question it is proper to state, that all the ruins of which mention has
been made in the preceding pages, and by Mr. Stephens and by Waldeck,
are not a tithe of those still remaining uninvestigated on the American
continent, and, perhaps I may add, in the single province of Yucatan.
Mounds, tumuli, pyramidal structures, and ruins of cities, have been
seen from the southern extremity of South America even to the western
side of the Rocky mountains—from Florida to the western lakes. There is
every reason to presume that the interior of Yucatan, and other portions
of Mexico, contain remains of even a more striking character than those
it has been my province to describe. The Ohio valley and its vicinage
are supposed to have been covered with more than five thousand villages,
the largest of which stood near the junction of the Missouri and
Mississippi rivers.[10] Regular and scientifically constructed works of
a defensive character, between the Ohio river and the great lakes, are
still to be traced; some of which occupied, it is thought, more than one
hundred acres of ground.
Look-Out Mountain, which stands a thousand feet above the surrounding
country, between the Tennessee and Coos rivers, is one of the
Alleghanies. Although the top is nearly level, it gives rise to a river
which, after winding some distance, plunges abruptly over a precipice.
Immediately below this fall, on each side, are bluffs two hundred feet
high; one of which, by the turn of the stream, forms a kind of isolated
peninsula. On the summit of this are the remains of a fortification,
that follows the curve of the river below for more than thirty-seven
rods, and extends to the very brow of the rock. The only descent and
access is by a kind of fissure, which reaches to the shore beneath.
Thirty feet from the top, intersecting this passage, is a ledge or
platform ninety feet long by two to five wide. At this landing are five
rooms, cut out of the solid rock. The entrance is small; but within they
communicate with each other by doors or apertures. This wonderful
excavation has the appearance of being intended as
a place of the last resort for the inmates. From its peculiar position,
twenty resolute men might successfully contend against the assault of a
numerous army, as not more than one at a time can approach, and the
slightest push would hurl an assailant over a precipice of a hundred and
fifty feet to certain and instant death. That this is a remnant of
antiquity there can be little doubt; and that it has escaped the
attention of the curious, is owing, probably, to its retired and almost
unknown situation.
On the Ohio river, twenty miles below the mouth of the Wabash, is a
remarkable cave, consisting of two rooms, one immediately over the
other. The uppermost is accessible by a square opening; and the lowest
is twelve rods in length and five in breadth. The interior walls are
smooth. The floor is level through the centre, but the sides rise in
stony grades, resembling the seats in the pit of a theatre; and leaving
little doubt that it had been so arranged to accommodate an audience
attending performances or deliberations of some nature. The engravings
and hieroglyphics upon the walls are numerous and well executed. Many
animals are represented, among which are eight that are now unknown.
There are conical mounds in Ohio of various altitudes and dimensions,
some being only four or five feet, and ten or twelve in diameter at the
base; while others, farther south, rise even to a hundred feet, and
cover many acres of ground. They are generally in the form of a cone.
These structures seem to have been built at various periods; and it
would be no matter of surprise if some of them were in existence during
the deluge. The materials which compose them appear to be suited to
their locations. In those positions where stone was not to be had, they
are formed of earth.
At Mount Joliet, near the town of Juliet, on the Illinois river, is
probably the largest mound within the limits of the United States. It is
raised on a horizontal limestone stratum of the secondary formation, and
is sixty feet high; and measures, at the summit, eighty-four rods in
length and fourteen in width; and, at the base, it is much larger. In
the neighborhood of Rock river (Illinois) the mounds are numerous, and
give evidence that there once existed in that vicinity a dense
population.
Southeast of the city of Cuernavaca, on the west declivity of Anahuac,
there is an isolated hill, upon the top of which is a pyramid. The whole
height is upwards of six hundred feet, and it is five times as large as
the tower of Babel. It has five terraces, each of nearly sixty feet in
height, covered with solid masonry, upon the top of which rest the
artificial works; and the whole is surrounded with a broad deep ditch.
In Peru, on the Cordilleras, at a surprising height, are works still
more considerable. From a general resemblance of these structures
throughout the whole American continent in their apparent purpose, age,
and style of architecture, it is generally presumed that the architects
belonged to the same races of native Indians. I say races, for there are
reasons for believing that the American continent has witnessed the
growth and extinction of more than one race of men which had advanced to
a high state of civilization.
Wirt’s impressions are, that three distinct races of men have occupied
this country previous to the arrival of the existing white settlers. The
monuments of the first or primitive race are regular stone walls, brick
hearths, (found in digging the Louisville canal,) medals of copper,
silver swords, and implements of iron. These relics, he thinks, belonged
to a race of civilized men who must have disappeared many centuries ago.
To them he attributes the hieroglyphic characters found on the limestone
bluffs; the remains of cities and fortifications of Florida; the regular
banks of ancient live oaks near them; and the hard and regular bricks
found at Louisville, that were longer in proportion to the width than
those of the present day.
To the second race he attributes those vast mounds of earth found
throughout the whole western regions, from Lake Erie and Western
Pennsylvania to Florida and the Rocky mountains. Some of them contain
the skeletons of human beings, and display immense labor. Many of them
are regular mathematical figures—parallelograms and sections of circles;
showing the remains of gateways and subterraneous passages. Some of them
are eighty feet high, and have trees growing on them apparently five
hundred years old. The soil upon them differs, generally, from that
which surrounds them; and they are most common in situations where it
since has been found convenient to build towns and cities. Many
fragments of earthenware, of curious workmanship, have been dug up
throughout this vast region; some representing drinking vessels, some
human heads, and some idols. They all appeared to be made by the hand,
and hardened in the sun. These mounds and earthen implements indicate a
race inferior to the first, which were acquainted with the use of iron.
The third race are the Indians now existing in the western territories.
In the profound silence and solitude of these western regions, and above
the bones of a buried world, how must a philosophic traveller meditate
upon the transitory state of human existence, when the only traces of
two races of men are these strange memorials! On this very spot
generation after generation has stood, has lived, has warred, grown old,
and passed away; and not only their names, but their nation, their
language has perished, and utter oblivion has closed over their once
populous abodes! We call this country the new world. It is old! Age
after age, and one physical revolution after another, has passed over
it, but who shall tell its history?
Priest has concluded that the Carthaginians, Phœnicians, Persians,
Hindoos, Chinese, Japanese, Roman, and Greek nations of antiquity, and
others, as well as Europeans after their civilization, had more to do
with the peopling of the wilds of America than is generally supposed.
Ledyard, in a letter to Mr. Jefferson, from Siberia, says, “I never
shall be able, without seeing you in person, and perhaps not then, to
inform you how universally and circumstantially the Tartars resemble the
aborigines of America. They are the same people—the most ancient and the
most numerous of any other; and, had they not a small sea to divide
them, they would all have still been known by the same name. * * * With
respect to national or genealogical connexion, which the remarkable
affinity of person and manners bespeaks between the Indians on this and
the American continent, I declare my opinion to be, without the least
scruple, and with the most absolute conviction, _that the Indians on the
one and on the other are the same people_.”[11]
“It appears,” says Bradford, “that the red race may be traced, by
physical analogies, into Siberia, China, Japan, Polynesia, Indo-China,
the Malayan Islands, Hindostan, Madagascar, Egypt, and Etruria. In some
of these nations the pure type of the race may be perceived existing at
present, in others many of its characters have been changed and
modified, apparently by intermarriage; and, in others, its ancient
existence is only to be discovered by the records preserved on their
monuments.”
“We are constrained to believe,” says the learned Dr. Morton, “that
there is no more resemblance between the Indian and Mongol in respect to
arts, architecture, mental features, and social usages, than exists
between any other two distinct races of mankind.”
“I maintain that the organic characters of the people themselves,
through all their endless ramifications of tribes and nations, prove
them to belong to one and the same race, and that this race is distinct
from all others. * * * The evidences of history and the Egyptian
monuments go to prove that the same races were as distinctly marked
three thousand years ago as they are now; and, in fact, that they are
coeval with the primitive dispersion of our species.”
Whatever diversity of origin may have existed among the races of Indians
whose remains are the burden of our speculations, one thing is certain,
that the builders of the ruins of the city of Chi-Chen and Uxmal
excelled in the mechanic and the fine arts. It is obvious that they were
a cultivated, and doubtless a very numerous people. It is difficult to
suppose that any great advance in mechanico-dynamic science could have
been made by these people, without some evidence besides their works
remaining. Yet it is almost impossible to suppose that those vast
erections could have been made by the mere aggregation of men, unaided
by science. Herodotus tells us that a hundred thousand men, relieved
every three months, were employed in building the pyramid of Cheops in
Egypt. Ten years were spent in preparing the road whereon the stones
were to be transported, and twenty years more in erecting the edifice.
Yet though Cheops had a nation of slaves to do his bidding, and though
he employed such multitudes upon this stupendous work, it is generally
supposed that he must have been aided by some kind of machinery more
powerful than any thing known at the present day.
It is also pretty obvious that Chi-Chen, and the other cities of
Yucatan, were built by a nation of slaves. All the buildings whose
remains are now visible, were evidently constructed to gratify the pride
of a single man or set of men. They were monuments raised to the glory
of the few at the expense of the thousands. They are not the kind of
works that the people join in building of their own freewill. They
answer no public purpose or convenience. No nation of freemen would
spend their money or their labor in that way. We may safely conclude
that the doctrines of free government were quite unknown among this
ancient people—that they were governed by a despotism, and that they
were taxed contrary to their will, for these, the only works which were
to memorialize their servitude to posterity.
So much for the builders of these ruins. The next question which occurs,
when were they built? is, if possible, more difficult of solution than
the one to which I have been speaking.
The only way to get any idea of the age of these ruins is, by comparison
with the remains of other cities of whose age we have some knowledge.
Measuring their age by such a scale, the mind is startled at their
probable antiquity. The pyramids and temples of Yucatan seem to have
been old in the days of Pharaoh. Before the eye of the imagination—
“Their lonely columns stand sublime,
Flinging their shadows from on high,
Like dials, which the wizard Time
Had raised to count his ages by.”
The reader is already sufficiently familiar with the general structure
of the buildings which we have attempted to describe, and the present
condition of their ruins. He will remember that there are walls there
now standing, fifteen feet thick and more, built with an art and
strength which defy both competition and decay; that there is one
pyramid upwards of a hundred feet in height, with a building upon its
summit, which supports trees that are planted in soil deposited from the
atmosphere for the last thousand years or more. Let the reader compare
these ruins, in their present condition, with the Cloaca Maxima of Rome.
More than twenty-five hundred years have elapsed since this work was
constructed, to drain off the waters of the Forum and the adjacent
hollows to the Tiber, and there it stands to this day without a stone
displaced, still performing its destined service. How many years before
it will present the ruinous aspect of the “Temple” of Chi-Chen?
Evidently the city of Chi-Chen was an antiquity when the foundations of
the Parthenon at Athens, and the Cloaca Maxima at Rome, were being laid.
Compare with the ruins of Central America the conspicuous remains of
Balbeck, of Antioch, of Carthage—shall I not add, of Tadmor, of Thebes,
of Memphis, and of Gizeh, their Pyramids, their Labyrinths, their
Obelisks, and Sepulchres. Who shall say that while the servile workmen
of Cheops or Cephrinus were sacrificing the lives of countless
multitudes of men, to prove that the gods were not alone immortal, and
to rear for themselves imperishable burial-places, that at the same
time, on another continent, thousands of miles from the Egyptian house
of bondage, a people of a different race, unknowing and unknown to
history, were not laying the foundations of cities and of palaces and of
temples, less stupendous perhaps, but no less a wonder and a mystery to
succeeding nations? It is not for any man now to place a limit to the
age of the American ruins; but one thing will be evident to every one
who shall look at the more ancient of those in Yucatan, that they belong
to the remotest antiquity. Their age is not to be measured by hundreds,
but by thousands of years.
With regard to the purpose of these ruins, I can add little to the
suggestions which have already been made during the progress of my
narrative. They were, without a doubt, built primarily for the honor and
glory of the rulers of the country. They are, as Pliny very justly says,
when speaking of the similar achievements of the Eastern tyrants,
“_Regum pecuniœ otiosa ac stulta ostentatio_.” Their secondary purposes,
doubtless, were to be used as palatial residences, imperishable
sepulchres for the dead, and temples for religious worship. It is
impossible to suppose that any of the ruined buildings of which I have
given a description could have been intended for private abodes, or
could have been constructed by private enterprise. On the contrary, not
a vestige of the ordinary houses in which the masses might have been
supposed to reside, remain. Every memorial of the people is gone, save
the splendid structures which they erected to gratify the pride of their
kings and their priests.
In this connexion it may not be impertinent to allude to some of the
religious opinions and ceremonies of the South American nations, which
may throw light upon the topic under consideration.
Almost all the Indian tribes, even to the Charibs, have a traditionary
account of the deluge and of the creation; and, what is more singular,
relate it as occurring in or near their present locations upon this
continent—leading to the supposition of an antediluvian existence in
America. They also have their great supernatural benefactors. The
Brazilians have the Payzome, the Tamanac race their Amalivaca, the
Chileans their Them, the Muyscas their Bochica, the Peruvians their
Manco Capac, the Mexicans their Quetzalcoatl, and the Chiapasans their
Votan. This latter people represent Noah under the name of Coxox.
The art of embalming seems to have been perfectly well known to the
people who once inhabited the west, which shows that they were not the
same with the roving Indians of later date.[12] The practice of burning
the dead, which prevailed to a great extent in Asia and other parts of
the world, was customary among all the more civilized tribes. Their
usual method of burial was in the sitting posture.[13] Dr. Morton says,
that “no offence excites greater exasperation in the breast of the
Indian than the violation of the graves of his people; and he has been
known to disinter the bones of his ancestors, and bear them with him to
a great distance, when circumstances have compelled him to make a
permanent change of residence. The practice of inhumation is so
different from that practised by the rest of mankind, and at the same
time so prevalent among the American natives, as to constitute another
means of identifying them as parts of a single and peculiar race. This
practice consists in burying the dead in a sitting posture; the legs
being flexed against the abdomen, the arms also bent, and the chin
supported on the palms of the hands.”
All the civilized Americans had a priesthood, and circumcision was
practised by the Mayas of Yucatan, the Calchaquis of Caho.[14] and
Mexicans,[15] who worshipped the sun and stars, believing that departed
souls became stars. Water was held to be sacred for religious
ablution—and the mounds are generally found near it, or have the means
of being well supplied. Adair assures us that the Choctaws called the
old mounds “Nanne-Yah,” “The Hills or Mounts of God;” a name almost
identical with the Mexican pyramids. In Mexico, the Teocalli, or “Houses
of God,” or Houses of the Sun, (for the word “Teolt,” the appellation of
the Supreme Being, was also used to denote that luminary,) were regular
terraced pyramids, supporting chapels, which contained the images of
their idolatry. The temples of the sun and moon, in Mexico, resemble
similar temples among the ancient Romans. The sun was worshipped at
Emesa, says Gibbon, under the name of Elagabalus, under the form of a
black conical stone, which, it was universally believed, had fallen from
heaven on that sacred spot.
The Siamese and Javanese divide their weeks similar to the Mexicans, the
first, like theirs, being market-day; and their cycles, like the Maya
age, consisted of twenty years. This was a custom with them previous to
any connexion with the Hindoos.[16] The belief of the Mayas and
Mexicans, that the world would be destroyed at the end of one of their
ages, coincides singularly with the same impression among the Egyptians,
according to Herodotus, when they saw the sun descend from the Crab
toward Capricorn. In the festival of Isis, when the orb began to
re-appear, and the days grew longer, they robed themselves in white
garments, and crowned themselves with flowers.
The movements of the Pleiades were observed by most of the primitive
nations, says Pritchard, and not less so by the southern and central
Indians. It is an Egyptian legend that the body of Osiris (the moon) was
cut to pieces by Typhon (the sun.) So, likewise, in the Mexican
mythology, the woman serpent (the moon) is said to be devoured by the
sun; a fabulous allusion to the changes of the moon. In Mexico the woman
serpent, or moon, was styled the “mother of our flesh;” so, in Egypt,
that luminary was called the “mother of the world.” The Mexicans,
Peruvians, Araucanians, the Canadian and Huron Indians; as, also, the
Chinese, Malays, and Hindoos, in cases of eclipses of the sun or moon,
shot off arrows at them, made hideous noises, caused dogs to bark and
howl, and in every possible way struggled to separate the two
antagonists.
Thus much with regard to the impressions left upon my mind respecting
the origin and purpose of these ruins. I make no apology for their
vagueness. It would be presumptuous to attempt to have any definite
ideas upon the subject. But in order to afford the reader every facility
for forming clearer views, if possible, than myself, I have collected
and subjoin in another chapter, a mass of historical information
connected with the subject before me, selected from the writings of the
most recent, sagacious, and faithful travellers, who have left us any
record of their studies. These extracts present all the most important
facts known of the early inhabitants of Mexico. How far history can
assist the antiquary in his investigations of this subject, may be
pretty satisfactorily judged by consulting the following chapter.
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