Mr. Moorehead’s first discovery of pearls was in a small but interesting mound, No. 20, about forty feet in diameter. It had been reduced by plowing to only some two feet in height; and its contents would ere long have been broken into and scattered by the same process. This was strictly a burial mound, and soon yielded five skeletons, one of them being that of a child, nine or ten years of age. With these bones were numerous objects: two large shells made into cups for drinking, several copper articles and ornaments, among them a broad copper bracelet encircling the right wrist, and several hundred pearl and shell beads and small shells. The same mound yielded later some other children’s remains, but with no important objects. A finely polished pipe and two bear’s teeth coated with copper were also found.
Mr. Moorehead points out the evidences of a long occupation of this site by a cultured tribe, who had commerce with the South and West more than with the North or East.
Work was then begun, in the latter part of September, on a large and important mound known as the Oblong (No. 23), 155 feet long by 100 feet wide, with an elevation at present of 14 feet, and originally of perhaps 20 feet. This mound yielded thirty-nine skeletons, lying at depths varying from eight and three fourths to eleven feet below the present surface, nearly on the base-line of the mound. Some of these were surrounded by boulders, others were much charred, and a good deal of variety exists in their condition, all of which Mr. Moorehead describes particularly. All manner of relics and objects were obtained, including pearl beads and a splendid copper ax of seventeen pounds’ weight, of course entirely too large for any practical use, and hence plainly a ceremonial object or badge of some high distinction. Among the most remarkable of the many interesting objects discovered here were the large canine teeth of bears,[[557]] which had not only been drilled through near the base of the root for suspension, like many others, but had also been partly drilled at the middle of one side, and a large pearl inserted into the cavity. These singular ornaments were found at the neck of a skeleton, and had evidently been worn as pendants. It will be remembered that almost identical specimens were found by Professor Putnam in the Marriott mound in the Miami Valley.[[558]] The one here figured is now in the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, with most of the other Hopewell material.
Another somewhat similar example of the taste and art of the same people, also preserved in the Field Museum, came from the mound known as No. 25. This consisted of a large figure of a bird, in hammered copper, fifteen and seven eighths inches long, with a pearl inserted to form the eye. The head is quite expressive, and the tail-feathers well represented, although the wings and the general proportions are rude. This is shown about one third of the actual length.
The Effigy mound was next examined. The first trial shafts proved it to be evidently of human construction, and not of glacial origin, as some had supposed. One or two open cuts were then begun, using teams with a large shovel until indications of burials were found, when the further work would be carried on by hand, with extreme care.
After about two weeks, in which time several skeletons were unearthed, with some shells, beads, and copper ornaments, a burial of extraordinary character was reached on November 14. Here was lying a skeleton which the newspapers soon reported as “The King of the Mound-Builders.” It was much decayed, but was covered and surrounded with a wealth of relics. The skull was surmounted by a tall cap or helmet of copper, from which extended a wonderful pair of antlers, exactly imitating those of a deer, but made of wood and covered with copper. The whole skeleton, to quote the words of Mr. Moorehead, “glittered with mica, pearl, shell, and copper.” Plates of the latter were above, beneath, and around it, with bears’ and panthers’ teeth, etc., and over 1000 beads, many of them of pearl. The succeeding month, during which the last cut was finished down to the base-line, and a third one much advanced, revealed numerous skeletons, with abundant objects of the same general kind, including a remarkable separate deposit of copper articles of curious workmanship, ornaments of cut mica, and one of cannel coal, fragments of meteoric iron and celts made therefrom, and “many thousand pearl and shell beads.” The latest trophy here unearthed was another enormous ax of copper, nearly two feet in length, unparalleled in the world.
The first altar was next reached; it was about four by five feet, and some six inches deep, and had an immense variety of objects upon it and around it, nearly all entirely ruined by the fire. Among them were pearl beads.
The largest altar had been not only heaped with all sorts of valuables, but they had been piled around it so as to form a sloping mass of twelve feet or more in diameter at the base. Among these was a layer of mica plates of extraordinary size, eighteen or twenty inches in diameter. It is not easy even now to obtain sheets of mica of such dimensions, in any quantity. Carvings and effigies in bone and slate, rock crystal arrow-heads, obsidian knives, etc., etc., damaged and broken by heat, were cemented together by half-melted copper. The pearl and shell beads taken out amid the ashes are estimated at not less than 100,000.
The Effigy mound, “a place for ceremony, for sacrifice, for burial,” as Mr. Moorehead calls it, thus combining the character of the first three classes distinguished by Squier and Davis, is seen not to have been constructed at one time, but to have developed gradually through perhaps a long period. The several altars, the more important burials, the store of copper objects, each was surmounted by a small and separate mound. “These may have been built on the level dance or ceremonial floors, from time to time. When the entire floor was covered, the people brought large quantities of earth and gravel, heaped it on top of the irregular contour of the small mounds, and this formed the present Effigy.”
The population that occupied the main inclosure was apparently not very large, as compared with some other of the important earthworks, such as Fort Ancient, or Madisonville. From the distribution of village-site debris, Mr. Moorehead estimates that there could have been only from two hundred to three hundred lodges, even if these were all occupied at the same time. But the indications of traffic and of art show that it must have been a community advanced in culture beyond most of its neighbors. Mr. Moorehead believes it to have been a sort of capital among a body of allied or affiliated tribes who made and occupied the similar earthwork towns of the “mound belt,”—a center of production and distribution of art objects, and a place for the holding of great religious ceremonials. It may be noted, however, that the art was developed in certain directions and not in others wherein it might be expected. In hammered copper-work and in drilling, it was most remarkable, in the latter extending even to the perforation of quartz crystals, but of pottery there is little, and that not very choice—a striking contrast to the abundant and elaborately ornamental potter’s art of the tribes in the Southwest.