We recently conversed with a missionary from the Creek Nation, who had been preaching among the Indians in that locality, who says Osceola has two sisters living there, both exemplary Christians, upon whom the serpent’s trail had evidently rested very lightly.
CHAPTER VII.
AS we approach the upper shores of the St. John’s River, extensive swamp-lands, overgrown with various kinds of timber, are seen, where very bony-looking stock eke out a spare subsistence during a portion of the year, but commence recruiting as soon as the grass begins to grow, in February. Habitations are not frequent, the only variations being mounds, or bluffs, as they are usually termed. Many of these voiceless monuments of the mute past, around which cluster records of deep import, are found scattered throughout various portions of Florida, as in many other localities, furnishing food for the thoughtful, and conjecture for the inquiring mind. All efforts heretofore made to enlighten the world, or explain these curious structures, are founded upon the diversity of opinion and research of the different writers. Their appearance sheds sufficient light on the subject for us to know they are the cemeteries of an early, though partial, civilization—probably a relic of the Mexican race—from which we may derive illustrations of the habits, manners, and ideas of a people, “on whose graves the firmly-rooted oak has so long kept its dominion that it seems to the Indian supplanters to have been the first occupant of the soil.”
Although we have no means left us of determining the cause by which the change was produced, the day dawned on them not less abruptly than that of the Aztecs of Mexico, or the Incas of Peru, when their sacred fires were extinguished, their altars desecrated, and the “primeval forest slowly resumed its sway over the deserted temples and silent cities of the dead,” thus leaving glimpses of an unwritten history, full of interest, even in a tantalizing form. The remains of the American mound-builders are replete with surprise for us, which the magnificence of Montezuma’s capital throws in the shade; and, while reading with implicit faith the narrative of the conqueror, we cannot but think the age of America’s infancy lies buried in these older mounds. The chasm between these monumental mounts and the present time has never been bridged by any historian, however well versed in archæological records, or chronological data—except their belief in the resurrection of the body, which may be inferred from the careful manner in which they disposed of their friends after death.
It is within the remembrance of some persons still living that tribes of Indians now extinct have been seen passing through the country on pilgrimages to the graves of their sires, where they regard the earth that entombs the dust of their friends as too sacred for any thing but a shrine. When the Spanish invaders came to conquer Mexico, they disinterred the bones from the mounds, when the Indians entreated them to desist, “as their owners would not find them together when they returned.” “Ancestral veneration was a peculiar trait belonging to the aborigines, which is shadowed with an air of melancholy.”
In these tumuli were deposited all the implements which the departed were supposed to require on their entrance into the unexplored regions. Here we find the ax upon which months and years had been expended in reducing to useful proportions, attrition being the only means employed; also the mortar and pestle, to pound their maize; the stone spear and arrow-head, to kill game; the bone fish-hook, to seize the astonished finny tribe as they swam though the purling streams of the newly-found paradise; the calumet, to be used while communing face to face with the Great Spirit; the pearl ornaments, to deck their persons in a becoming manner for their new position; the essential wampum, that no reflections could be cast as to their former condition in life, as lacking the important requisite to become a member of the élite society in the “long-fancied mild and beautiful hunting-grounds.”
Mausoleums reared with many hands, inscriptionless monuments, tombs without epitaphs! Whose ashes rest beneath your storm-beaten, time-scarred surfaces? what prowess could you boast beyond your peers? was it the hand of violence or disease that severed the silver cord, and ushered you into the presence of the Great Spirit? We may continue to question, but the locked secrets of by-gone deeds will be borne on no zephyr, however soft, to gratify the longings of those who try to lift the misty veil of obscurity. When searching for a record of the architects of these pyramidal structures, we find our mind drifting upon the quicksands of instability. That the archæological history of the mound-builders in America is in its infancy cannot be doubted, although some imagine they have probed it to the foundation, as they have stood where a few bones, beads, and pottery were thrown out. Mounds are not limited to America, but are found in Europe and Asia, although dignified by different titles—as barrows, moat-hills, and cairns—all belonging to the same family as our earth-mounds. The Indians say that before the “pale faces” scattered them, they had mounds erected for different purposes—for sepulture, for sacrifice, for signals, for refuge in war, and the residence of the cazique. The first and most frequent of these was for sepulture. Homer and Hesiod both speak of monumental mounds over the graves of heroes.
While surveying these colossal works, reared by hands of clay, a wonder seizes our minds how the almost nude aborigines, with so limited a number of implements, could collect so much material, and fashion it into any form adapted to their necessities. It is true, they had some knowledge of the manner in which stone could be utilized, as chert and flint have both been found in the oldest earth-works, several feet below the surface—from which also can be deduced facts with reference to their roving habits of life, as this formation does not exist naturally in Florida.
The strong argument against Florida not having been the first location of the inhabitants who built these earth-works, is their tendency toward the West, not being found on the Atlantic coast, showing the course of emigration to have been from the West to the South. These structures also indicate strength, and not the hasty work of a nomadic tribe, having once been the site of a vast population.
The Florida mounds, unlike those of the Mexicans, bear no marks of magnificence or grandeur, but are of gigantic proportions, in consideration of the appliances with which they had to work, not having either plow or draft animals. They are the only records left us for determining the habits, occupation, and manner of living, of its former residents, which, if more enduring, are scarcely less satisfactory than a foot-print in the sand, as a guide to the pursuits and inclinations of its owner.