One curious circumstance tends to render this view more tenable. On plate xxi. of Messrs. Squier and Davis's work four groups of squares with circles are delineated, situated in different parts of the country; but all the four squares are almost identical in size, each side measuring 1080 feet. Why four temples should be exactly alike is a mystery, but that a tetrarchy of chiefs should be bound down to equal dimensions for their rival residences seems reasonable from a civil point of view.
It does not seem difficult to explain the meaning of the inside ditch when fortification was not intended, as it must have been almost a necessity with a people who had not arrived at the elevation of using brick drains or drain-pipes. Without some such arrangement all the rain that fell within these solid enclosures would have remained on the surface, or in the squares could only have escaped through the openings, but a deep and broad ditch all round would drain the whole surface without inconvenience, and secure the only mode which would prevent the enclosure, be it a temple or palace, from becoming a swamp.
Messrs. Squier and Davis divide the conical mounds which they excavated into two classes. The first they call "Mounds of sacrifice," because on digging into them they found on the level of the soil what appeared to be altars—raised floors which exhibited evidence of intense heat, and what they considered a long-continued practice of burning. It is evident, however, that such results might be produced in a week as well as in years, and it is very difficult to understand why at any time that which had been an altar should be buried in a tumulus. If it had been used for years, why, and on what occasion, was it agreed to bury it? If it was the funereal pyre of some chief, and used for burning sacrifices for the time the funeral services lasted, and was then buried, the case is intelligible enough, but the other hypothesis is certainly not easy of explanation.
The true "Sepulchral mounds" are, as before mentioned, immensely numerous, and of all sizes, from a few feet up to such as the Grave Creek mound, 70 feet high and 1000 feet in circumference, or that at Miamisburgh, 68 feet high, and 852 feet in circumference at its base. The dead were buried in them apparently without coffins or cists, unless of wood, and generally in the contracted doubled-up position found so frequently in Scandinavia and in Algeria.
The "Temple mounds" are generally square or oblong truncated pyramids, with inclined planes leading up to them on three and frequently on all four sides. They are in fact in earth the same form as the Teocallis of the Mexicans, though the latter seem always to have been in stone. Whether in the one material or the other, they are of a perfectly intelligible templar form. If a human sacrifice or any great ceremonial is to take place before all the people, the first requisite is an elevated platform where the ministrants can stand above the heads of the crowd, and be seen by all; and the absence of this in the Ohio and in our English circles is one of the most fatal objections to the temple theory. In one or two instances a single earthen Teocalli is found within the circles, but this no further militates against the supposition that they were residences than the presence of a chapel or place of worship in any of our palaces would prove them to be temples also. It must, however, be borne in mind that it is always difficult to draw a hard and fast line between the House of God and the Palace of the King. In Egypt it is never possible, and in the middle ages royal monasteries and royal residences were frequently interchangeable terms. We should not therefore feel surprised if, in America, we found the one fading into the other. But, on the whole, the enormous number of these circular enclosures—1000 and 1500 in one State—their immense size, 100 and 200 acres being not unfrequent, and the general absence of all signs of preparations for worship, seem sufficient to prove that they must be classed among civil and not among sacred erections. This seems to be the case even though sometimes three or four temple mounds are found together surrounded by a rampart just sufficient to enclose them with the necessary space for circulation all round; in which case, however, it is evident that they have passed the line separating the two divisions, and may, probably must, be classified as really sacred enclosures. These are generally found in the South, in Texas, and in the States most nearly bordering on Mexico, which looks as if they belonged to another race more nearly allied to the Toltecs or Aztecs than to the northern tribes.
The only remaining class of mounds are those representing "Animals," to which plates xxxv. to xliv. of Messrs. Squier and Davis's book are devoted. One of these, our authors have no doubt, represents a serpent 700 feet long as he lies with his tail curled up into a spiral form, and his mouth gaping to swallow an egg (?) 160 feet long by 60 feet across. This at first sight looks so like one of Stukeley's monstrous inventions that the first impulse is to reject it as an illusion on the part of the surveyors. When, however, we bear in mind that the American mound-builders did represent not only men, but animals, quadrupeds, and lizards, in the same manner, and on the same relative scale, all improbability vanishes. At the same time the simple fact that the form is so easily recognisable here is in itself sufficient to prove that our straight-lined stone rows were not erected with any such intention, and could only be converted into Dracontia by the most perverted imagination.
Though therefore we may assume that this mound really represents a serpent, it by no means follows that it was an idol or was worshipped. It seems to represent an action—the swallowing of something, but whether a globe or a grave is by no means clear, and must be left for further investigation. It is, however, only by taking it in connection with the other animal mounds in America that we can hope to arrive at a solution. They were not apparently objects of worship, and seem to have no connexion with anything found in the Old World.
The other mounds representing quadrupeds are quite unmistakable: they are a freak of this people whoever they were. But it seems difficult to explain why they should take this Brobdignagian way of representing the animals they possessed, or were surrounded by. If we knew more of the people, or of their affinities, perhaps the solution would be easy; at present it hardly interests us, as we have no analogue in Europe.[596]
It only now remains to try and ascertain if any connexion exists or existed between these American monuments and those of the Old World; and what light, if any, their examination may be expected to throw on the problems discussed in the preceding chapters. If it is wished to establish anything like a direct connexion between the two continents, we must go back to the far distant prehistoric times when the conformations of land and water were different from what they now are. No one, I presume, will be found to contend that, since the continents took their present shape, any migration across the Atlantic took place in such numbers as to populate the land, or to influence the manners or customs of the people previously existing there. It may be that the Scandinavians did penetrate in the tenth or eleventh centuries to Vinland, by the way of Greenland, and so anticipated the discovery of Columbus by some centuries;[597] but this is only a part of that world-pervading energy of the Aryan races, and has nothing whatever to do with the people of the tumuli. If any connexion really existed between the Old and the New World, in anything like historic times, everything would lead us to believe that it took place viâ Behring Strait or the Aleutian Islands. It seems reasonable to suppose that the people who covered the Siberian Steppes with tumuli may have migrated across the calm waters of the Upper Pacific, and gradually extended themselves down to Wisconsin and Ohio, and there left these memorials we now find. It may also be admitted that the same Asiatic people may have spread westward from the original hive, and been the progenitors of those who covered our plains with barrows, but beyond this no connexion seems to be traceable which would account for anything we find. Nowhere, however, in America do these people ever seem to have risen to the elevation of using even rude stones to adorn their tombs or temples. Nor do they appear to have been acquainted with the use of iron or of bronze; all the tools found in their tombs being of pure unalloyed native copper—both of which circumstances seem to separate these American mound-builders entirely from our rude-stone people in anything like historic times.