The North Americans of Antiquity / Their origin, migrations, and type of civilization considered

by John T. Short

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]

Arrow Heads in the National Museum (Washington).

Methods Employed by Indians of Hafting Stone Weapons.

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]

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]

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.

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]

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.

Cincinnati Tablet. (Front.)

Cincinnati Tablet. (Back.)

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.

Works in Liberty Township, Ross County, Ohio.

Celts. (Nat. Mus.)
The large celt, upper line, from a mound (Tenn.). The others Surface Finds.

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.

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.

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.

Pendants and Sinkers. (Nat. Mus.) Surface Finds.

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.

Clay Image from a Stone Grave in Burial Mound near Brentwood, Tennessee.

“Stone Sword” from Ancient Earthwork on Big Harpeth River, Tennessee. ¼ Natural Size.

Shell Ornament from the Breast of a Skeleton found in a carefully constructed Stone Coffin in a Mound near Nashville, Tenn.

Plan of Oldtown Works.

Stone Pipe, Murfreesboro, Tenn. ¼ Natural Size.

Pottery from Oldtown, Tenn.

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.

Black Vase from an Aboriginal Cemetery, Nine Miles from Nashville.

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]

Painted Jar from Child’s Grave (Tennessee).
(Prof. Putnam’s Exploration.)

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]

Jar from Child’s Grave (Tennessee).
(Prof. Putnam’s Exploration.)

Works in Washington County, Miss.

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]

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.

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:

I.	Enclosures		For Defence. Sacred. Miscellaneous.
II.	Mounds		Of Sacrifice. 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]

Pestles and Mullers. (Nat. Mus.) Surface Finds.

Section of Altar Mound. (After Squier and Davis.)

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]

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.

Aboriginal Stone Axes. Surface Finds.

Stone Mauls and Hammers. Surface Finds.

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]

Clay Vessels from Mounds in the Mississippi Valley. ¼ Size. (Nat. Mus.)

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.

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.

Copper Relics from Wisconsin. (From photos furnished by Prof. Butler.)

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]

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