THE FIRST OHIOANS
White people had not been on Ohio soil very long before they began to notice peculiar mounds and fortifications built of earth and stone. Evidently these were very ancient, as they were overgrown by the forest. The Indian inhabitants were neither building nor using such structures, nor could they tell the white settlers anything about them. A bit of digging, here and there, soon showed that the mounds contained human burials and that with these were strange relics. Hence it was clear that they had been built by human beings. But by whom? The settlers reasoned, very naturally, that if the tribesmen living in the region had not constructed them, then they must have been built by a people preceding the Indians. And so, lacking a better name, they called them “The Mound-builders,” just as we of today, viewing the few remaining log cabins scattered over the countryside, might call the pioneers “The Cabin-builders.” The settlers, however, who built and lived in the log cabins of pioneer days, realized the value of records, so that people who came after them might know who they were and what they did. And so they wrote history. But the Mound-builders had not yet progressed far enough on the road to civilization to do this; and so we must look elsewhere for the answers to those questions which naturally come into our minds. Who were the Mound-builders? Where did they come from, and when; why did they build Mounds; and what became of them? The pioneer settlers who first noticed the Mounds could not open a book and read the answers to these queries. But as the years have passed, the puzzles have been solved in a most interesting manner, as we shall see presently.
To begin with the Mounds and Earthworks themselves, it may be said that there are many thousands of them. They are scattered over 20 or more states, from the Mississippi River eastward to the Atlantic and extending southward to the Gulf and into Florida. Ohio, it may be truly said, was the center of Mound-builder life, as a result of which it has come to be known as the Mound-builder state. More than 5,000 Mounds, fortifications and other remains of these interesting people have been located within its bounds.