Antiquity of the Mounds—No Tradition of the Mound-builders—Vegetation Covering the Mounds—Age of Mound Crania—Probable Date of the Abandonment of the Mounds—Ancient Shell-heaps—Man’s Influence on Nature—Supposed Testimony of Geology—Agassiz on the Floridian Jaw-bone—Remains on Santos River—The Natchez Bone—Remains on Petit Anse Island—Brazilian Bone caves—Dr. Koch’s Pretended Discoveries—Ancient Hearths—Age of the Mississippi Delta—Dr. Dowler’s Discovery at New Orleans—Dr. Abbott’s Discoveries in New Jersey—Discoveries in California—Inter-Glacial Relics in Ohio—Crania from Mounds in the North-west—No Evidences as yet Discovered Proving Man’s Great Antiquity in America.
AT the opening of the preceding chapter we made some allusions to the supposed antiquity of the Red Indian, a subject of growing archæological significance, though as yet it affords us rather unsatisfactory evidence, scientifically considered, relative to the problem of man’s antiquity on this continent. Quite different, however, is the estimate which we place on data left us by the people of the mounds. The question of the antiquity of the Mound-builders is one which cannot be accurately determined; no chronometric scale can be applied to the uncertain record which they have left behind them. Their history is a sealed book, and the approximate date of their first occupancy of the Mississippi Basin is as uncertain as the period of man’s origin. However, certain data present themselves for our consideration which lead us to conclude that a few thousand years, three or four perhaps, and possibly even less time, is all that is required in which to account for their growth into a nation and the moderate advancement which they made toward civilization. As to when the Mound-builders left this country, is another question, and can be approximated more closely. It is a well-known fact that no tradition was ever found among the Indians as to the origin or the purpose for which the mounds were constructed. They described them as having been found by their ancestors in the same condition in which we now see them, and clothed, if not with the same, at least with a growth of vegetation similar to that which covers them to-day. It is true the Iroquois, who are supposed to have reached the lake regions and the Ohio Valley some time previous to the Algonquins, had certain vague traditions of a people whom they called the “Allighewi;” but there seems to be nothing in those indefinite allusions which would associate that unknown people with the mounds. Still, Indian tradition is nearly valueless in determining this question, since any fact, however grave, was soon forgotten by a people so savage and unsettled. The tribes of the lake region, says Dr. Lapham in his Antiquities, so soon forgot the visit of the Jesuit Fathers that their descendants a few generations later had no tradition of the event. The same is true of the Indians of the Mississippi Valley with reference to De Soto’s expedition, “which must,” remarks Dr. Foster, “have impressed their ancestors with dread at the sight of horses ridden by men, and the sound of fire-arms, which they must have likened to thunder. Sir John Lubbock states that the New Zealanders at the time of Captain Cook’s visit had forgotten altogether Tasman’s visit, made less than one hundred and thirty years before.”[86] Another argument for the construction of the mounds at a remote period, and which is certainly of little more value than Indian tradition, is that which supposes the Mound-builders to have erected works on the lowest of the river terraces existing at the time of their occupancy of the country. Much stress has been laid on the fact that no works have been found on the lowest-formed of the river terraces which mark the subsidence of the western rivers. “And as there is no good reason,” remarks Mr. Baldwin, “why their builders should have avoided erecting them on that terrace while they raised them promiscuously on all the others, it follows, not unreasonably, that this terrace has been formed since the works were erected.”[87] To any one familiar with the great rise and fall which takes place annually in the water-level of the Ohio and Mississippi and all of their tributaries, the fallacy of such an argument is at once apparent. We must at least allow that the Mound-builders learned by experience, just as animals do, even if we could deny them a very high order of intelligence. Little time could have elapsed after their advent to these valleys before they observed the impracticability of erecting mounds or enclosures on most of the alluvial bottoms bordering these streams. The raging torrents which sometimes sweep through the valleys of the central basin, uprooting the largest trees, carrying away natural embankments, forming immense deposits of new alluvium, submerging miles of adjacent country, and in many ways changing its physical conformation, would in a few years obliterate any traces of earthworks built within their reach.[88] Far more certain data, however, is furnished in the arborescent vegetation which covers many of the works, with which to measure part of the period during which they have remained unoccupied, though we are left in uncertainty as to the remoteness of their abandonment. The annular rings of a tree present us indisputable evidence as to its age.[89] It is evident that the forests which cover these remains have grown up since they were vacated, as no difference exists between them and the surrounding vegetation—no break exists in the density of the forests in the immediate vicinity of the works. The oldest of the trees found upon the works present eight hundred annual rings, indicating as many years of growth.[90] This cannot, however, be set down as the limit of the period of their abandonment, since, as it seems that this country was open and mostly unwooded in the sections thickly settled by the Mound-builders, a considerable time would be requisite for the slow encroachments of a forest, even when the trees which now stand upon the mounds may have been preceded by trees of other species or by two or three generations of their own.[91] The age of the trees on the mound-works in the Ohio Valley or farther north, rarely exceeds five hundred or six hundred years, and such cases as that cited by Sir Charles Lyell are the exceptions. Farther south, in the Mississippi Valley and near the Gulf, they are still younger than those at the north.[92] So noticeable is this that we are led to think the Gulf coast may have been occupied by the Mound-builders for a couple of centuries after they were driven by their enemies from the country north of the mouths of the Missouri and Ohio Rivers. The condition of skeletons found in the mounds indicate an antiquity which they furnish us no means of measuring. It is not to be presumed that all human remains discovered in excavating the works were interred immediately previous to the abandonment of the country. Some of them may belong to the middle or beginning of the period of their residence in the territory occupied by the United States. Human remains taken from the mounds, perhaps furnish us better evidence of the long residence of the Mound-builders in this country than any other data in our possession. It suffices to say that few Mound-builder crania have been recovered in a condition to be of any service to science; although of late years, several valuable collections have been made. The preservation of the skeletons depends greatly on the composition of the soil in which they are found. The Loess has afforded well-preserved remains, however, with the gelatinous matter leached out. The crania of the sandy loam of river bottoms, on the other hand, are in all cases so far decayed upon discovery that the greatest precautions fail to prevent them from crumbling to dust when exposed to the light and air. Mastodon bones, on the contrary, recovered from peat swamps, and much older than any of the remains of the Mound-builders, are found to have retained so much of their gelatinous matter as to furnish a nourishing soup.[93] To these evidences may be added the testimony derived from the ancient ruins which points to long-continued occupation and to a considerable lapse of time since their abandonment.
How long the Mound-builders occupied the country north of the Gulf of Mexico it is impossible in the present state of science to determine. Some authors conjecture that they were here two thousand years; that we think would be time enough, though after all it is but conjecture. It seems to us, however, that the time of the abandonment of their works may be more closely approximated. A thousand or two years may have elapsed since they vacated the Ohio Valley, and a period embracing seven or eight centuries may have passed since they retired from the Gulf coast. As an evidence of a large population having existed in this country at a former period, we have immense shell-heaps artificially collected, extending along the Atlantic coast from Nova Scotia to Florida, on the Gulf coast and up the river valleys through nearly all of the Southern States. It is difficult to assign the formation of these vast remains to any definite period or to any particular people. Though of the same character as the Kjökken-Möddings (Kitchen-Middens) of the Danish, they furnish no indications of so great an antiquity. This has been shown by Dr. Jeffries Wyman in his researches in Maine and Massachusetts.[94] Sir Charles Lyell made an examination of a shell-bank on St. Simon’s Island, near the mouth of the Allamaha River, Georgia, so extensive that it covers ten acres to a depth varying from five to ten feet.[95] Dr. Brinton has described immense accumulations in Florida. On Amelia Island, shells exist to the depth of three feet over an area 150 yards wide and a quarter of a mile long. Notable instances of a similar kind are Turtle Mound near Smyrna—a mass of oyster shells thirty feet thick—and a shell-bank on Crystal River four miles from its mouth, reaching a height of forty feet.[96] Dr. Wyman carefully examined many of the fresh-water shell-heaps of Florida and obtained pretty satisfactory results.[97] Near the Silver spring upon a shell-heap covering nearly twenty acres, stand several live-oaks of immense size, the largest of which measured between twenty-six and twenty-seven feet in circumference. Excavations under this monster, taken together with its position on the side of the shell-bank, proved it to be of more recent origin than the latter. Prof. Wyman, by allowing twelve rings to the inch and granting it a semi-diameter of fifty inches, estimated that it was not less than six hundred years old. Of course the shell-bank may have existed a long time before any vegetation appeared upon it. The crania of the shell-banks of Florida differ from those of the Mound-builders in greater thickness as well as greater mean capacity.[98] In his Fresh-water Shell-Mounds of the St. John’s River, and in his memoir on Human Remains in the Shell-heaps of the St. John’s River (Seventh Annual Report of Peabody Museum, pp. 26 et seq.), Dr. Wyman reports having discovered the startling fact that cannibalism prevailed among the barbarous people of the shell-banks. In the Peabody Museum a collection of human bones taken from the shell-banks by Dr. Wyman are arranged to illustrate this sad discovery. It is possible that this people had some relationship to the Caribs. Prof. Forshey has described in brief the vast extent and proportions of the marine shell-banks of the Gulf coast, and the shores of the bayous, lakes and lagoons where Guathodon shells are found. Those of Louisiana, especially near New Orleans, are remarkable, but have yielded no remains, except broken pottery, flint flakes and stone hatchets. A shell-bank at Grand Lake, on the Teche, however, upon which great live-oaks are growing, situated fifteen miles inland, from which the sea has receded since its formation, “yielded unique specimens of axes of hæmatitic iron-ore and glazed pottery.”[99] Probably the most remote shell-bank from the sea containing marine shells, occurs on the Alabama River, fifty miles inland.[100] Fresh-water shell-banks, other than those examined in Florida, furnish evidences of slow accumulation and indicate a comparatively remote antiquity for their origin. On Stalling’s Island, in the Savannah River, two hundred miles above its mouth, is a shell-bank three hundred feet in length by one hundred and twenty feet in width, with an average depth of over fifteen feet.[101] In the American Bottom and on many of the tributaries of the Mississippi, shell-banks occur, composed of varieties of the Unios and Anodons. A remarkable example of such accumulation is the well-known shell-bank a mile and a half south of New Harmony, Indiana, and situated on a high hill 170 feet above the level of an arm of the Wabash River. The bank covers an area of a quarter of an acre, and has attracted the attention of eminent scientists like Leasure, Say, Lyell and others, but nothing of value was developed that would refer the construction of this and similar banks to any people more ancient than the Mound-builders.[102] On the Pacific coast, great numbers of shell-banks exist, but contain nothing different from those in other parts of the country. (See Researches in the Kjökken Möddings of the Coast of Oregon and of the Santa Barbara Islands and Adjacent Mainland, by Paul Schumacher. Bulletin of U. S. Geol. and Geog. Survey, vol. iii, No. 1.) There can be little doubt but these strange and vast accumulations indicating the presence of an extinct population, had a remote beginning, and have been added to from time to time by different peoples, removed from each other both by the diversities of race and the lapse of time.
A trifle more than a decade ago the treatment of the subject of this chapter would have called for a discussion of the antiquity of the magnificent architectural remains of Southern Mexico, and of the still older ruins of the Maya civilization in Yucatan, and the branches of that people in Central America; but the indefatigable labor which has been bestowed by several eminent antiquarians upon the ancient history of the civilized nations of the New World previous to its discovery by Europeans, has transferred this part of the subject to another field; has elevated it from the uncertain position it occupied in archæology to a place in the realm of history. It is true that it is difficult to draw the line between tradition and history, and especially so in this case; but as tradition does not conflict with archæology in its bearing on the ancient civilization of Tropical America, it is better than nothing; certainly archæology thus far has amounted to little more than nothing in revealing the approximate period of the origin of these remains. While it has done much towards verifying tradition and assisted largely in its interpretation, it has not been adequate to the task of solving the age of these remains. Tradition, on the contrary, and we might almost say history, carries us back three thousand years, if not farther, as the period when man—whether the first here or not—appeared upon the Western Continent. The discussion of this part of our subject will be given in a future chapter. Too much doubt exists with reference to the stupendous remains of Peru, especially in the neighborhood of Lake Titicaca, Tiahuanaco, Old Huanaco, and Grau-Chimu, as to whether they antedated the arrival of the Incas by a great lapse of time, to admit of a serious discussion here. Nothing of a scientific character is available as yet upon which even to base conjecture. Rivero and Tschudi, it is true, have treated the subject, and their work has been often quoted, but after all it amounts to but little more than a description of the remains, which serves the good end of exciting interest in the subject. The antiquities and legendary history of the Peruvians have so recently been treated with such ability by Mr. E. G. Squier, that the South American civilization needs no attention in this connection.
In considering the question as to how long man has inhabited this continent, his influence upon nature cannot be overlooked. In the animal kingdom, certain animals were domesticated by the aborigines from so remote a period that scarcely any of their species, as in the case of the lama of Peru, were to be found in a state of unrestrained freedom at the advent of the Spaniards. In the vegetable kingdom more abundant testimony of the same nature is presented. A plant must be subjected to the transforming influences of cultivation for a long time before it becomes so changed as no longer to be identified with the wild species, and infinitely longer before it becomes entirely dependent upon cultivation for propagation. Yet we find that both of these facts have been accomplished with reference to the maize, tobacco, cotton, quinoa and mandico plants; and the only species of palm cultivated by the South American Indians, that known as the Gulielma speciosa, has lost through that culture its original nut-like seed, and is dependent upon the hands of its cultivators for its life.[103] Alluding to the above-named plants, Dr. Brinton remarks: “Several are sure to perish unless fostered by human care. What numberless ages does this suggest? How many centuries elapsed ere man thought of cultivating Indian corn? How many more ere it had spread over nearly a hundred degrees of latitude and lost all resemblance to its original form?”[104] Certainly this class of evidence, though furnishing no chronometric scale, points us to an antiquity for man on this continent more venerable than that suggested either by tumuli or architectural remains. The peculiar value of this argument rests in the fact that with the exception of cotton, none of the plants indicated have ever been cultivated by any other people than the aborigines of America, and could not have matured their characteristics of dependence in the old world, and been brought hither through the channel of immigration.
Back of the age of man’s monuments of an architectural character, beyond the beginning of the first existing shell-heap, and at a time probably more remote than the first cultivation of maize, it has been supposed that man occupied the Western Continent as a contemporary with the mastodon, megalonyx and other extinct animals. Our information in this department is entirely dependent upon the revelations of geological science. Unfortunately very little data which may be termed truly scientific has been brought to light. While considerable seeming testimony to man’s antiquity on this continent has been produced from a geologic quarter, still it mostly has been of an unscientific character. Fossils and human remains are said to have been discovered in localities and in associations that if the statements of those who found them could be relied on, would give man an antiquity here as great as in the valley of the Somme or in the bone caves of Belgium, France, and England. In the instances alluded to, it is not so often feared that the veracity of discoverers is doubtful as that their general lack of acquaintance with the science should make them liable to error. Where a competent geologist is not present to examine a fossil in situ, and report intelligently upon its position and surroundings, the case must remain open to suspicion. Unfortunately for science, this is precisely the weak point in most of the reputed “finds” which are cited as evidence in this field. In 1848, Count Pourtales found in Florida, according to Agassiz, a human jaw and teeth, and bones of the foot, embedded in a calcareous conglomerate forming a part of a coral reef. This reef, according to Agassiz, may be 135,000 years old, and the human remains at least ten thousand years.[105] This statement has been accepted as reliable by Sir Charles Lyell,[106] Daniel Wilson,[107] and other noted scientific gentlemen. Count Pourtales, however, makes a statement which materially alters the case. He says: “The human jaws and other bones found by myself in Florida in 1848, were not in a coral formation, but in a fresh-water sandstone on the shore of Lake Monroe, associated with fresh-water shells or species still living in the lakes (Paulina, Ampullaria, etc.). No date can be assigned to the formation of that deposit, at least from present observation.”[108] Human remains were found a number of years ago embedded in the solid rock in the island of Guadaloupe. “But more careful investigation proved the rock to be a concretionary limestone formed from the detritus of corals and shells.”[109] This rock was ascertained to have been one of very rapid formation.
Sir Charles Lyell, in his Travels in America in 1842, expressed the opinion that certain human remains found embedded in the solid rock near the town of St. Paul on the Santos River, Brazil, were of great antiquity.[110] Subsequently referring to the memoir of Dr. Meigs on the shell-heap of which the rock was a part,[111] he expresses the opinion that shells were brought to the place and heaped up over the remains, and “were bound together in a solid stone by the infiltration of carbonate of lime, and the mound may therefore be of no higher antiquity than those above alluded to on the Ohio.”[112] In a few instances it has been alleged that the remains of man have been found associated with the remains of the mastodon and other extinct animals. More than thirty years ago Dr. Dickson of Natchez discovered the pelvic bone of a man, the os innominatum, mingled with the bones of extinct animals (megalonyx and mylodon). This discovery was made two and one-half miles from Natchez, at the bottom of what is known as Bernard’s Bayou, an immense ravine from thirty to sixty feet deep and several miles long, formed by the convulsions of the earthquake of 1811–12. This bone is now in the possession of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Sir Charles Lyell visited the spot where it was discovered in 1846, and made a careful examination of the bone then in the possession of Dr. Dickson, and also explored the “Mammoth Ravine.” He discusses the case as follows: “It appeared to be quite in the same state of preservation and was of the same black color as the other fossils, and was believed to have come like them from a depth of about thirty feet from the surface. In my Second Visit to America in 1846,[113] I suggested as a possible explanation of this association of a human bone with remains of a mastodon and megalonyx, that the former may possibly have been derived from the vegetable soil at the top of the cliff, where, as the remains of extinct mammalia were dislodged from a lower position, and both may have fallen into the same heap or talus at the bottom of the ravine, the pelvic bone might, I conceived, have acquired its black color from having lain for years or centuries in a dark superficial peaty soil common in that region. I was informed that there were many human bones in old Indian graves in the same district stained of as black a dye.” * * * “No doubt, had the pelvic bone belonged to any recent mammifier other than man, such a theory would never have been resorted to; but so long as we have only one isolated case, and are without the testimony of a geologist who was present to behold the bone when still engaged in the matrix, and to extract it with his own hands, it is allowable to suspend our judgment as to the high antiquity of the fossil”.[114] Both Dr. Joseph Leidy[115] and Prof. C. G. Forshey,[116] who have examined the case, agree with the above. A few years ago a fragment of matting composed of the outer bark of the southern cane (Arundinaria macrosperma) was discovered on Petit Anse Island in Vermillion Bay, Louisiana, in connection with the remains of a fossil elephant. This island, containing about five thousand acres, is the locality of an extraordinary mine of rock salt, discovered and worked considerably during the late rebellion. The salt is found in nearly all parts of the island at the depth of fifteen or twenty feet below the surface of the soil. The matting was discovered near the surface of the salt, and about two feet above it were the remains of an elephant, including the tusks. Prof. Henry was the first to call public attention to the matter in a notice based on the verbal statements of T. F. Cleu, Esq., who presented a specimen of the matting to the Smithsonian Institution.[117] In 1867, Prof. E. W. Hilgard and Dr. E. Fontaine, secretary of the New Orleans Academy of Sciences, examined the locality. We regret to say that the report made by the latter is so confused in its use of terms and so conflicting in its statements as to be of no service to science.[118] Prof. Hilgard is, on the contrary, clear on the subject. He considers the heap in which the matting, elephant bones, and subsequently pottery in great profusion, were found, “A mass of detritus washed down from the surrounding hills.” “The pottery,” he remarks, “at some points form veritable strata three and six inches thick.” He then adds in a note that “it is very positively stated that mastodon bones were found considerably above some of the human relics. In a detrital mass, however, this cannot be considered a crucial test.”[119] Dr. Foster, after citing the above, interposes the objection, “That in an island whose area is less than eight miles square, there would be few floods of sufficient power to transport such heavy bones as the tusks and molars of mastodons to any considerable distance.”[120] Certainly the question is an open one, and in its present unsettled status proves nothing. The same uncertainty attaches itself to the discoveries of Dr. Lund, the distinguished Swedish naturalist, made many years ago in the bone caves of Minas Geraes, Brazil. This indefatigable investigator examined more than eight hundred caverns, and in only six were human remains found. In one instance out of the six, the remains were associated with the bones of animals now extinct, but the original stratification had been disturbed, and the presumption is that it was a case of comparatively recent interment.[121]
The most remarkable instance of the supposed, or we might be allowed in this case to say pretended discovery of human remains in association with those of extinct animals, is that set forth by Dr. Koch. This collector of curiosities described his discovery of a mastodon giganteus in 1839 in Gasconade County, Missouri, at a spot on the Bourbeuse River, first in a newspaper article of January 1839, and cited in the American Journal of Science and Arts.[122] And a second time in the St. Louis Commercial Bulletin of June 25, 1839, which article was also noticed in the above Journal.[123] This article was signed “A. Koch, Proprietor of the St. Louis Museum.” Subsequently he published descriptions in pamphlets, which unfortunately did not always convey the same impressions.[124] Dr. Koch, after referring to the discovery of a back and hip bone of this remarkable animal, gives the following description: “I immediately commenced opening a much larger space; the first layer of earth was a vegetable mould, then a blue clay, then sand and blue clay. I found a large quantity of pieces of rocks, weighing from two to twenty-five pounds each, evidently thrown there with the intention of hitting some object. It is necessary to remark that not the least sign of rocks or gravel is to be found nearer than from four or five hundred yards, and that these pieces were broken from larger rocks, and consequently carried here for some express purpose. After passing through these rocks I came to a layer of vegetable mould; on the surface of this was found the first blue bone, with this a spear and axe; the spear corresponds precisely with our common Indian spear; the axe is different from any I have seen. Also on this earth were ashes nearly from six inches to one foot in depth, intermixed with burned wood and burned bones, broken spears, axes, knives, etc. The fire appeared to have been the largest on the head and neck of the animal, as the ashes and coals were much deeper here than in the rest of the body; the skull was quite perfect, but so much burned that it crumbled to dust on the least touch; two feet from this was found two teeth broken off from the jaw, but mashed entirely to pieces. By putting them together, they showed the animal to have been much larger than any heretofore discovered. It appeared by the situation of the skeleton, that the animal had been sunk with its hind feet in the mud and water, and, unable to extricate itself, had fallen on its right side, and in that situation was found and killed as above described; consequently the hind and fore-feet on the right side were sunk deeper in the mud, and thereby saved from the effects of the fire; therefore I was able to preserve the whole of the hind foot to the very last joint, and the fore foot, all but some few small bones that were too much decayed to be worth saving. Also between the rocks that had sunk through the ashes, were found large pieces of skin that appeared like fresh-tanned sole leather, strongly impregnated with the lye from the ashes; and a great many of the sinews and arteries were plain to be seen on the earth and rocks, but in such a state as not to be moved except in small pieces the size of a hand, which are now preserved in spirits.” “Should any doubts arise in the mind of the reader of the correctness of the above statement, he can be referred to more than twenty witnesses who were present at the time of digging.”[125] Subsequent accounts agree substantially with the above except that we never again hear of the “large pieces of skin,” the “sinews and arteries,” “which are now preserved in spirits.” The presumption is that the author, upon mature reflection, arrived at the conclusion that in reality he had seen nothing of the kind, and in fact had never preserved such relics in spirits.
Dr. Koch made a second discovery about one year subsequently in Benton County, Missouri, in the bottom of the Pomme-de-Terre River, at about ten miles above its junction with the Osage River. His description is as follows: “The second trace of human existence with these animals I found during the excavation of the Missourium. There was embedded immediately under the femur or hind-leg bone of this animal, an arrow-head of rose-colored flint, resembling those used by the American Indians, but of larger size. This was the only arrow-head immediately with the skeleton; but in the same strata, at a distance of five or six feet, in a horizontal direction, four more arrow-heads were found. Three of these were of the same formation as the preceding. The fourth was of very rude workmanship. One of the last-mentioned three was of agate, the others of blue flint. These arrow-heads are indisputably the work of human hands. I examined the deposit in which they were embedded, and raised them out of their embedment with my own hands. The original stratum on which this river flowed at the time it was inhabited by the Missourium theristocaulodon and up to the time of its destruction, was of the upper green sand. On the surface of this stratum, and partly mingled with it, was the deposit of the before-described skeleton. The next stratum is from three to four feet in thickness, and consisted of a brown alluvium of the Eocene region, and was composed of vegetable matters of a tropical production. It contained all the remainder of the skeleton.” “Most of these vegetables were in a great state of preservation and consisted of a large quantity of cypress burs, wood and bark, tropical cane, ferns, palmetto leaves, several stumps of trees, and even the greater part of a flower of the strelitzia class, which when destroyed was not full blown. There was no sign or indication of any very large trees; the cypresses that were discovered being the largest that were growing here at the time. These various matters had been torn up by their roots and twisted and split into a thousand pieces apparently by lightning combined with a tremendous tempest or tornado; and all were involved in one common ruin. Several veins of iron pyrites ran through the stratum.” “The next over this formation was a layer of plastic clay of the Eocene region, also with iron pyrites. It was three feet in thickness; over this a layer of conglomerate from nine to eighteen inches in thickness; over this a layer of marl of the Pliocene region, from three to four feet in thickness; next, a second conglomerate from nine to eighteen inches in thickness. This was succeeded by a layer of yellow clay of the Pliocene; over this a third layer of conglomerate from nine to eighteen inches in thickness, and at last the present surface, consisting of brownish clay mingled with a few pebbles, and covered with large oak, maple, and elm trees, which were, as near as I could ascertain, from eighty to one hundred years old. In the centre of the above-mentioned deposit was a large spring which appeared to rise from the very bowels of the earth, as it was never affected by the severest rain, nor did it become lower by the longest draught.”[126] The preceding accounts were presented to the St. Louis Academy of Sciences in a special paper several years later (1857).[127]
Dr. Foster is inclined to believe that Dr. Koch was not mistaken in his claimed discovery, having arrived at that opinion by pointedly questioning him on the subject a short time before his (Koch’s) death.[128] Charles Rau is also of the opinion that he was truthful.[129] Mr. J. D. Dana, however, discusses the case as follows: “In the account of the second case above cited Dr. Koch says that the Missourium was embedded in a brown alluvium of the Eocene region resting on the ‘upper green sand;’ that next over it was plastic clay of the ‘Eocene region’ and beds of the ‘Pliocene region.’ He thus makes his Missourium to have come from the lower tertiary, and from a bed just above the green sand (cretaceous) when actually from quartenary beds; and he uses the terms Eocene and Pliocene, as if he had no familiarity with geological facts or language. The earlier pamphlet of 1840 avoids this bad geology, ‘the upper green sand,’ in that being called simply quicksand and the other beds merely beds of clay and conglomerate. All the pamphlets sustain the conclusion that Dr. Koch knew almost nothing of geology, and that what he gradually picked up from intercourse with geologists, he generally made much of but seldom was able to use rightly.”[130] The same critic says: “In zoological knowledge he was equally deficient,” and cites the fact of the discoverer recognizing the resemblance to the mastodon, still makes the animal an inhabitant of the watercourses like the hippopotamus; states that his food “consisted as much of vegetables as of flesh, although he undoubtedly consumed a great abundance of the latter,” and makes the marvelous revelation that he “was capable of feeding himself with his fore-foot after the manner of the beaver or otter.” Mr. Dana continues: “He says that one arrow-head lay ‘immediately under the femur or thigh-bone,’ and he further states in his later article of 1857, that ‘he carefully thought to investigate the point as to its having been brought thither after the deposit of the bone’ and decided against it. The observation and conclusion would have been more satisfactory had the author been a better observer.” “The descriptions of the deposits in Gasconade County containing the remains of an animal the principal part of which was consumed by fire is a still more unsatisfactory basis for a safe conclusion as to age. But in the article of 1857, he says that the layer of ashes, etc., ‘was covered by strata or alluvial deposits consisting of clay, sand and soil, from eight to nine feet thick, forming the bottom of the Bourbeuse (River) in general,’ which seems to make it almost certain that the beds were of quite recent origin.”[131] Mr. Dana considers Dr. Koch’s evidence as “very doubtful.”[132] Dr. Foster has figured a fossil which, for a better name, he has designated as a “stone hatchet,” from the modified drift of Jersey County, Illinois.[133] He is positive as to the position in which it was found, but has doubt as to its human origin. The probabilities are that its peculiar shape is due to its exposure to atmospheric agents. He remarks, however: “On the whole, I will not positively assert that this specimen is of human workmanship, but I affirm that if it had been recovered from a plowed field I should have unhesitatingly said it was an Indian hatchet.” In the Proceedings of the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences for July, 1859, Dr. Holmes describes the occurrence of fragments of pottery in close proximity with the bones of the mastodon and megatherium, on the Ashley River in South Carolina. The case, however, has not been considered authentic by scientific men. Dr. Holmes is possibly mistaken.[134] Col. Charles Whittlesey, in 1838, saw at Portsmouth, Ohio, on the Ohio River, remains of ancient fire-places situated eighteen to twenty feet above low water and about fifteen feet below the surface. He states, “at low water and thence up to a height of twelve or fifteen feet is a bed of sand and transported gravel, containing pebbles of quartz, granite, sandstone and limestone, derived partly from the adjacent Carboniferous and Devonian rocks and partly from the northern drift, the upper part much the coarsest. On this is a layer of blue quicksand from one to five feet thick, in which is a timber-bed including large numbers of the trunks, branches, stumps and leaves of trees, such as are now growing on the Ohio, principally birch, black-ash, oak and hickory. Over the dirt-bed is the usually loamy yellow clay of the valley, fifteen to thirty feet thick, on which are very extensive works of the Mound-builders. In and near the bottom of this undisturbed homogeneous river-loam I saw two places where fire had been built on a circular collection of small stones, a part of which were then embedded in the bank.”[135] Near these fire-places the writer of the above found the membranous covering of common river shells (the Unios). We think that no geologist familiar with the constant changes of the Ohio River bed, will consider that the conditions surrounding these ancient fire-places warrant us in assigning them a much greater antiquity than we attach to the Mound-builders’ works in the neighborhood. In 1846, Sir Charles Lyell, when at New Orleans, made an estimate of the time required to account for the immense annual deposit of the Mississippi River in the neighborhood of its delta. From a computation based on certain data, which assumed the area of the alluvial plain which is the result of those deposits, to equal 30,000 square miles, several hundred feet thick in some places, he estimated that probably 100,000 years would be requisite.[136] Subsequently, during the process of excavating for the New Orleans Gas Works, it was found necessary to cut through four buried cypress forests. At the depth of sixteen feet and on the fourth forest level, a human skeleton distinctly of the Indian type,[137] was found under the roots of a cypress tree, together with burnt wood. Dr. Dowler, dividing the history of the delta into, 1. The epoch of grasses or aquatic plants; 2. That of the cypress (Taxodium distichum) basins, and 3. That of the live-oak platform, tabulates the age of the strata overlying the skeleton as follows: