THE PROBABLE NATIONALITY OF THE “MOUND-BUILDERS.”
[The following Essay is reprinted without alteration. It appeared in the American Antiquarian for October, 1881, and has a certain degree of historic value as illustrating the progress of archæologic study in the United States. It is, I believe, the first reasoned argument that the constructors of the mounds of the Ohio Valley were the ancestors of tribes known and resident not remote from the sites of these ancient works. Though this opinion has not yet been fully accepted, the tendency of later studies is unquestionably in its favor.]
The question, Who were the Mound-builders? is one that still remains open in American archæology. Among the most recent expressions of opinion I may quote Prof. John T. Short, who thinks that one or two thousand years may have elapsed since they deserted the Ohio valley, and probably eight hundred since they finally retired from the Gulf coast.[[46]] Mr. J. P. MacLean continues to believe them to have been somehow related to the “Toltecs.”[[47]] Dr. J. W. Foster, making a tremendous leap, connects them with a tribe “who, in times far remote, flourished in Brazil,” and adds: “a broad chasm is to be spanned before we can link the Mound-builders to the North American Indians. They were essentially different in their form of government, their habits and their daily pursuits. The latter were never known to erect structures which should survive the lapse of a generation.”[[48]]
On the other hand, we have the recent utterance of so able an ethnologist as Major J. W. Powell to the effect that, “With regard to the mounds so widely scattered between the two oceans, it may be said that mound-building tribes were known in the early history of discovery of this continent, and that the vestiges of art discovered do not excel in any respect the arts of the Indian tribes known to history. There is, therefore, no reason for us to search for an extralimital origin through lost tribes for the arts discovered in the mounds of North America.”[[49]]
Between opinions so discrepant the student in archæology may well be at a loss, and it will therefore be worth while to inquire just how far the tribes who inhabited the Mississippi valley and the Atlantic slope at the time of the discovery were accustomed to heap up mounds, excavate trenches, or in other ways leave upon the soil permanent marks of their occupancy.
Beginning with the warlike northern invaders, the Iroquois, it clearly appears that they were accustomed to construct burial mounds. Colden states that the corpse was placed in a large round hole and that “they then raise the Earth in a round Hill over it.”[[50]] Further particulars are given by Lafitau: the grave was lined with bark, and the body roofed in with bark and branches in the shape of an arch, which was then covered with earth and stones so as to form an agger or tumulus.[[51]] In these instances the mound was erected over a single corpse; but it was also the custom among the Hurons and Iroquois, as we are informed by Charlevoix, to collect the bones of their dead every ten years, and inter them in one mass together.[[52]] The slain in a battle were also collected into one place and a large mound heaped over them, as is stated by Mr. Paul Kane,[[53]] and that such was an ancient custom of the Iroquois tribes, is further shown by a tradition handed down from the last century, according to which the Iroquois believed that the Ohio mounds were the memorials of a war which in ancient times they waged with the Cherokees.[[54]] Mr. E. G. Squier, who carefully examined many of the earthworks in the country of the ancient Iroquois, was inclined at first to suppose the remains he found there were parts of “a system of defence extending from the source of the Allegheny and Susquehanna in New York, diagonally across the country through central and northern Ohio to the Wabash,” and hence drew the inference that “the pressure of hostilities [upon the mound-builders] was from the north-east.”[[55]] This opinion has been repeated by some recent writers; but Mr. Squier himself substantially retracted it in a later work, and reached the conviction that whatever ancient remains there are in Western New York and Pennsylvania are to be attributed to the later Indian tribes and not to the Mound-builders.[[56]]
The neighbors of the Iroquois, the various Algonkin tribes, were occasionally constructors of mounds. In comparatively recent times we have a description of a “victory mound” raised by the Chippeways after a successful encounter with the Sioux. The women and children threw up the adjacent surface soil into a heap about five feet high and eight or ten feet in diameter, upon which a pole was erected, and to it tufts of grass were hung, one for each scalp taken.[[57]]
Robert Beverly, in his History of Virginia, first published in 1705, describes some curious constructions by the tribes there located. He tells us that they erected “pyramids and columns” of stone, which they painted and decorated with wampum, and paid them a sort of worship. They also constructed stone altars on which to offer sacrifices.[[58]] This adoration of stones and masses of rocks—or rather of the genius which was supposed to reside in them—prevailed also in Massachusetts and other Algonkin localities, and easily led to erecting such piles.[[59]]
Another occasion for mound-building among the Virginian Indians was to celebrate or make a memorial of a solemn treaty. On such an occasion they performed the time honored ceremony of “burying the hatchet,” a tomahawk being literally put in the ground, “and they raise a pile of stones over it, as the Jews did over the body of Absalom.”[[60]]
I am not aware of any evidence that the Cherokees were mound-builders: but they appreciated the conveniences of such structures, and in one of their villages William Bartram found their council house situated on a large mound. He adds: “But it may be proper to observe that this mount on which the rotunda stands is of a much ancienter date than the building, and perhaps was raised for another purpose.”[[61]] Lieutenant Timberlake is about our best early authority on the Cherokees, and I believe he nowhere mentions that they built upon mounds of artificial construction. Adair, however, states that they were accustomed to heap up and add to piles of loose stones in memory of a departed chief, or as monuments of important events.[[62]]
The tribes who inhabited what we now call the Gulf States, embracing the region between the eastern border of Texas and the Atlantic Ocean south of the Savannah River, belonged, with few and small exceptions, to the great Chahta-Muskokee family, embracing the tribes known as Choctaws, Chikasaws, Muskokees or Creeks, Seminoles, Allibamons, Natchez and others. The languages of all these have numerous and unmistakable affinities, the Choctaw or Chahta presenting probably the most archaic form. It is among them, if anywhere within our limits, that we must look for the descendants of the mysterious “Mound-builders.” No other tribes can approach them in claims for this distinction. Their own traditions, it is true, do not point to a migration from the north, but from the west; nor do they contain any reference to the construction of the great works in question; but these people seem to have been a building race, and to have reared tumuli not contemptible in comparison even with the mightiest of the Ohio Valley.
The first explorer who has left us an account of his journey in this region was Cabeza de Vaca, who accompanied the exposition of Pamfilo de Narvaez in 1527. He, however, kept close to the coast for fear of losing his way, and saw for the most part only the inferior fishing tribes. These he describes as generally in a miserable condition. Their huts were of mats erected on piles of oyster shells (the shell heaps now so frequent along the southern coast). Yet he mentions that in one part, which I judge to be somewhere in Louisiana, the natives were accustomed to erect their dwellings on steep hills and around their base to dig a ditch, as a means of defence.[[63]]
Our next authorities are very important. They are the narrators of Captain Hernando de Soto’s famous and ill starred expedition. Of this we have the brief account of Biedma, the longer story of “the gentleman of Elvas,” a Portuguese soldier of fortune, intelligent and clear-headed, and the poetical and brilliant composition of Garcilasso de la Vega. In all of these we find the southern tribes described as constructing artificial mounds, using earthworks for defence, excavating ditches and canals, etc. I quote the following passage in illustration:
“The town and the house of the Cacique Ossachile are like those of the other caciques in Florida. * * * The Indians try to place their villages on elevated sites; but inasmuch as in Florida there are not many sites of this kind where they can conveniently build, they erect elevations themselves in the following manner: They select the spot and carry there a quantity of earth which they form into a kind of platform two or three pikes in height, the summit of which is large enough to give room for twelve, fifteen or twenty houses, to lodge the cacique and his attendants. At the foot of this elevation they mark out a square place according to the size of the village, around which the leading men have their houses. * * * To ascend the elevation they have a straight passage way from bottom to top, fifteen or twenty feet wide. Here steps are made by massive beams, and others are planted firmly in the ground to serve as walls. On all other sides of the platform, the sides are cut steep.”[[64]]
Later on La Vega describes the village of Capaha:
“This village is situated on a small hill, and it has about five hundred good houses, surrounded with a ditch ten or twelve cubits (brazas) deep, and a width of fifty paces in most places, in others forty. The ditch is filled with water from a canal which has been cut from the town to Chicagua. The canal is three leagues in length, at least a pike in depth, and so wide that two large boats could easily ascend or descend it, side by side. The ditch which is filled with water from this canal surrounds the town except in one spot, which is closed by heavy beams planted in the earth.”[[65]]
Biedma remarks in one passage, speaking of the provinces of Ycasqui and Pacaha: “The caciques of this region were accustomed to erect near the house where they lived very high mounds (tertres très-elevèes), and there were some who placed their houses on the top of these mounds.”[[66]]
I cannot state precisely where these provinces and towns were situated; the successful tracing of De Soto’s journey has never yet been accomplished, but remains as an interesting problem for future antiquaries to solve. One thing I think is certain; that until he crossed the Mississippi he at no time was outside the limits of the wide spread Chahta-Muskokee tribes. The proper names preserved, and the courses and distances given, both confirm this opinion. We find them therefore in his time accustomed to erect lofty mounds, terraces and platforms, and to protect their villages by extensive circumvallations. I shall proceed to inquire whether such statements are supported by later writers.
Our next authorities in point of time are the French Huguenots, who undertook to make a settlement on the St. John River near where St. Augustine now stands in Florida. The short and sad history of this colony is familiar to all. The colonists have, however, left us some interesting descriptions of the aborigines. In the neighborhood of St. Augustine these belonged to the Timuquana tribe, specimens of whose language have been preserved to us, but which, according to the careful analysis recently published by Mr. A. S. Gatschet,[[67]] has no relationship with the Chahta-Muskokee, nor, for that matter, with any other known tongue. Throughout the rest of the peninsula a Muskokee dialect probably prevailed.
The “Portuguese gentleman” tells us that at the very spot where De Soto landed, generally supposed to be somewhere about Tampa Bay, at a town called Ucita, the house of the chief “stood near the shore upon a very high mound made by hand for strength.” Such mounds are also spoken of by the Huguenot explorers. They served as the site of the chieftain’s house in the villages, and from them led a broad, smooth road through the village to the water.[[68]] These descriptions correspond closely to those of the remains which the botanists, John and William Bartram, discovered and reported about a century ago.
It would also appear that the natives of the peninsula erected mounds over their dead, as memorials. Thus the artist Le Moyne de Morgues, writes: “Defuncto aliquo rege ejus proviciæ, magna solemnitate sepelitur, et ejus tumulo crater, e quo bibere solebat, imponitur, defixis circum ipsum tumulum multis sagittis.”[[69]] The picture he gives of the “tumulus” does not represent it as more than three or four feet in height; so that if this was intended as an accurate representation, the structure scarcely rises to the dignity of a mound.
After the destruction of the Huguenot colony in 1565, the Spanish priests at once went to work to plant their missions. The Jesuit fathers established themselves at various points south of the Savannah River, but their narratives, which have been preserved in full in a historic work of great rarity, describe the natives as broken up into small clans, waging constant wars, leading vagrant lives, and without fixed habitations.[[70]] Of these same tribes, however, Richard Blomes, an English traveler, who visited them about a century later, says that they erected piles or pyramids of stones, on the occasion of a successful conflict, or when they founded a new village, for the purpose of keeping the fact in long remembrance.[[71]] About the same time another English traveler, by name Bristock, claimed to have visited the interior of the country and to have found in “Apalacha” a half-civilized nation, who constructed stone walls and had a developed sun worship; but in a discussion of the authenticity of his alleged narrative I have elsewhere shown that it cannot be relied upon, and is largely a fabrication.[[72]] A correct estimate of the constructive powers of the Creeks is given by the botanist, William Bartram, who visited them twice in the latter half of the last century. He found they had “chunk yards” surrounded by low walls of earth, at one end of which, sometimes on a moderate artificial elevation, was the chief’s dwelling and at the other end the public council house.[[73]] His descriptions resemble so closely those in La Vega that evidently the latter was describing the same objects on a larger scale—or from magnified reports.
Within the present century the Seminoles of Florida are said to have retained the custom of collecting the slain after a battle and interring them in one large mound. The writer on whose authority I state this, adds that he “observed on the road from St. Augustine to Tomaka, one mound which must have covered two acres of ground,”[[74]] but this must surely have been a communal burial mound.
Passing to the tribes nearer the Mississippi, most of them of Choctaw affiliation, we find considerable testimony in the French writers to their use of mounds. Thus M. de la Harpe says: “The cabins of the Yasous, Courous, Offogoula and Ouspie are dispersed over the country on mounds of earth made with their own hands.”[[75]] The Natchez were mostly of Choctaw lineage. In one of their villages Dumont notes that the cabin of the chief was elevated on a mound.[[76]] Father Le Petit, a missionary who labored among them, gives the particulars that the residence of the great chief or “Brother of the Sun,” as he was called, was erected on a mound (butte) of earth carried for that purpose. When the chief died, the house was destroyed, and the same mound was not used as the site of the mansion of his successor, but was left vacant and a new one was constructed.[[77]] This interesting fact goes to explain the great number of mounds in some localities; and it also teaches us the important truth that we cannot form any correct estimate of the date when a mound-building tribe left a locality by counting the rings in trees, etc., because long before they departed, certain tumuli or earthworks may have been deserted and tabooed from superstitious notions, just as many were among the Natchez.
We have the size of the Natchez mounds given approximately by M. Le Page du Pratz. He observes that the one on which was the house of the Great Sun was “about eight feet high and twenty feet over on the surface.”[[78]] He adds that their temple, in which the perpetual fire was kept burning, was on a mound about the same height.
The custom of communal burial has been adverted to. At the time of the discovery it appears to have prevailed in most of the tribes from the Great Lakes to the Gulf. The bones of each phratry or gens—the former, probably—were collected every eight or ten years and conveyed to the spot where they were to be finally interred. A mound was raised over them which gradually increased in size with each additional interment. The particulars of this method of burial have often been described, and it is enough that I refer to a few authorities in the note.[[79]] Indeed it has not been pretended that such mounds necessarily date back to a race anterior to that which occupied the soil at the advent of the white man.
I have not included in the above survey the important Dakota stock who once occupied an extended territory on the upper Mississippi and its affluents, and scattered clans of whom were resident on the Atlantic Coast in Virginia and Carolina. But, in fact, I have nowhere found that they erected earthworks of any pretentions whatever.
From what I have collected, therefore, it would appear that the only resident Indians at the time of the discovery who showed any evidence of mound-building comparable to that found in the Ohio valley were the Chahta-Muskokees. I believe that the evidence is sufficient to justify us in accepting this race as the constructors of all those extensive mounds, terraces, platforms, artificial lakes and circumvallations which are scattered over the Gulf States, Georgia and Florida. The earliest explorers distinctly state that such were used and constructed by these nations in the sixteenth century, and probably had been for many generations. Such too, is the opinion arrived at by Col. C. C. Jones, than whom no one is more competent to speak with authority on this point. Referring to the earthworks found in Georgia he writes: “We do not concur in the opinion so often expressed that the mound-builders were a race distinct from and superior in art, government, and religion, to the Southern Indians of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.”
It is a Baconian rule which holds good in every department of science that the simplest explanation of a given fact or series of facts should always be accepted; therefore if we can point out a well known race of Indians who, at the time of the discovery, raised mounds and other earthworks, not wholly dissimilar in character and not much inferior in size to those in the Ohio valley, and who resided not very far away from that region and directly in the line which the Mound-Builders are believed by all to have followed in their emigration, then this rule constrains us to accept for the present this race as the most probable descendants of the Mound Tribes, and seek no further for Toltecs, Asiatics or Brazilians. All these conditions are filled by the Chahta tribes.[[80]]
It is true, as I have already said, that the traditions of their own origin do not point to the north but rather to the west or northwest; but in one of these traditions it is noticeable that they claim their origin to have been from a large artificial mound, the celebrated Nanih Waiya, the Sloping Hill, an immense pile in the valley of the Big Black River;[[81]] and it may be that this is a vague reminiscence of their remote migration from their majestic works in the north.
The size of the southern mounds is often worthy of the descendants of those who raised the vast piles in the northern valleys. Thus one in the Etowah Valley, Georgia, has a cubical capacity of 1,000,000, cubic feet.[[82]] The Messier Mound, near the Chatahoochee River, contains about 700,000 cubic feet.[[83]] Wholly artificial mounds 50 to 70 feet in height, with base areas of about 200 by 400 feet, are by no means unusual in the river valleys of the Gulf States.
With these figures we may compare the dimensions of the northern mounds. The massive one near Miamisburg, Ohio, 68 feet high, has been calculated to contain 311,350 cubic feet—about half the size of the Messier Mound. At Clark’s Works, Ohio, the embankments and mounds together contain about 3,000,000 cubic feet;[[84]] but as the embankment is three miles long, most of this is not in the mounds themselves. Greater than any of these is the truncated pyramid at Cahokia, Illinois, which has an altitude of 90 feet and a base area of 700 by 500 feet. It is, however, doubtful whether this is wholly an artificial construction. Professor Spencer Smith has shown that the once famous “big mound” of St. Louis was largely a natural formation; and he expresses the opinion that many of the mounds in Missouri and Illinois, popularly supposed to be artificial constructions, are wholly, or in great part, of geologic origin.[[85]] There is apparently therefore no such great difference between the earth structures of the Chahta tribes, and those left us by the more northern mound-builders, that we need suppose for the latter any material superiority in culture over the former when first they became known to the whites; nor is there any improbability in assuming that the Mound-builders of the Ohio were in fact the progenitors of the Chahta tribes, and were driven south probably about three or four hundred years before the discovery. Such is the conviction to which the above reasoning leads us.
In the course of it, I have said nothing about the condition of the arts of the Mound-builders compared with that of the early southern Indians; nor have I spoken of their supposed peculiar religious beliefs which a recent writer thinks to point to “Toltec” connections;[[86]] nor have I discussed the comparative craniology of the Mound-builders, upon which some very remarkable hypotheses have been erected; nor do I think it worth while to do so, for in the present state of anthropologic science, all the facts of these kinds relating to the Mound-builders which we have as yet learned, can have no appreciable weight to the investigator.
[Investigations conducted since the above Essay was printed require some modifications in its statements. The researches of Professor Cyrus Thomas render it likely that the Cherokees were also Mound-builders, and that they occupied portions of Western Pennsylvania and Western Virginia less than two centuries ago. (See also my work The Lenâpè and their Legends, pp. 16–18. Philadelphia, 1885.) Probably the Ohio Valley Mound-builders were the ancestors of some of the Cherokees as well as of the Chahta-Muskoki tribes. Craniologic data from the Ohio mounds are still too vague to permit inferences from them.]