The Effigy Mounds are believed to have represented the totems or clan symbols of their builders. Thus the Great Serpent Mound may have been the totem of the Serpent or Snake tribe. They also very likely played a part in the religion of the people who built them, as most primitive people appear to worship natural objects.
Although most of the Effigy Mounds are found in southern Wisconsin, the Great Serpent Mound is the largest and finest known.
THE ARCHÆOLOGIST AND HIS WORK
All that we have seen and learned of the Mounds and Earthworks, up to this point, is merely what anyone, by using his eyes, might see and learn; in fact, just what the pioneers observed. In other words we have looked at them from the outside, without knowing the secrets buried inside them. And now, since the Mound-builders left no written history behind them, we must get acquainted with another branch of science in order to obtain the information we desire. This new science is known as Archæology, and the man or woman who works at it is called an archæologist. Archæology is really the science of old things; that is, it concerns itself with the things which human beings did before they became intelligent enough to write and leave behind them their own histories. Since he has no intentional records to guide him, the archæologist depends mostly on exploration or digging into ancient ruins and remains for his information. Thus he finds the rude relics of by-gone ages, relics lost or thrown away by their one-time users, and from these he pieces together the story of a people.
Having met the archæologist, we may now get an insight into the interiors of the mounds, cemeteries and village-sites of the Mound-builders. Let us go ahead of our story for a moment and explain that archæologists, as a result of their explorations, have found that there were numerous kinds, or cultures as he calls them, of Mound-builders. While all of them were closely related, and belonged to the same race, they differed greatly among themselves in manners and customs. Some of them were rather highly advanced in their civilization, while others were rather backward, just as is true of the various tribes and nations of Indians of later or historic times. With some of them the trait or habit of building mounds was very important while with others it was only a sort of “side-line.” Some of them merely placed their dead upon the surface and piled earth above the remains to form a Mound, while others prepared carefully made tombs of logs within the Mound for the dead. Some were skilled in the use of copper and silver, the weaving of cloth and the making of potteryware, while others contented themselves with only flint and stone and the simpler arts of living.
VARIOUS KINDS OF MOUND-BUILDERS
In Ohio alone there were three outstanding kinds or cultures of Mound-builders, besides several less important ones. These three are known as the Fort Ancient, the Adena and the Hopewell cultures, taking their names from the places where their Mounds were first examined and identified. The Fort Ancient peoples were the least advanced of the three, yet they were the most numerous and prosperous of the prehistoric peoples of Ohio. Their old village-sites are numerous in the southern half of the State, as at the Baum, Gartner and Feurt sites, and always are accompanied by burial Mounds and cemeteries. A number of them have been explored by the Ohio State Museum where the relics are on display. They used no metals and had but little art, but they made many useful, practical things of flint, stone, bone, shell, clay and wood.
Adena peoples were more highly advanced than the Fort Ancient but were not nearly so numerous. They worked copper into ornaments and were highly artistic in carving stone and bone. They are noted for their large shapely mounds, the great Miamisburg Mound being an example.
Fig. 6—The Seip Group of Earthworks, Ross County, Ohio.