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.