Also see Proceedings of the Davenport Academy of Natural Sciences for Account of the Discovery of Inscribed Tablets, by Rev. J. Gass, with A Description by Dr. R. J. Farquharson. Davenport, Iowa, July, 1877. Cuts and views.
[28] Pre-Historic Paces of the U. S., p. 107. See especially 12th Annual Report Peabody Museum.
[29] In a paper, A Deposit of Agricultural Flint Implements Found in Southern Illinois, Smithsonian Report, 1868, Dr. Chas. Rau treats the subject of Aboriginal Agriculture at considerable length. In the Smithsonian Report for 1873, p. 413 et seq., Dr. A. Patton describes the exploration of several remarkable mounds in Lawrence Co., Illinois. In the Smithsonian Report for 1874, p. 351, Taylor McWhorter describes a number of mounds in Mercer Co., Illinois. He estimates the number in the county at one thousand, mostly on the Mississippi River bank. The Antiquities of Whiteside County, Ill., by W. H. Pratt, of Davenport, Iowa, printed in the same Report, p. 354 et seq., is a most valuable contribution to our knowledge of the mounds. The first mound examined yielded eight skulls, two of which were preserved. The third mound opened yielded the skeletons of four adults and several articles of interest, such as pieces of mica, a lump of galena and a dove-colored arrow-head. From the fifth mound opened, a remarkably well-preserved skeleton was recovered. Dr. Farquharson, of the Davenport Academy of Sciences, has contributed one of the most valuable tables of mound-cranial measurements ever published.
[30] The best and most exhaustive treatment of the above is by Mr. Robert Clarke: The Pre-Historic Remains which were Found on the Site of Cincinnati, Ohio, with a Vindication of the Cincinnati Tablet. Cincinnati, 1876. 8vo, 34 pp. It is to be regretted that this valuable discussion of the genuineness of one of the most important Mound-builder relics is only “privately circulated.” Mr. Clarke has fully accomplished the design for which he wrote.
[31] Dr. Daniel Drake’s Picture of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, 1815. Squier and Davis in Ancient Monuments. Gen. Harrison: Ohio Hist. and Phil. Society Trans., vol. i, and others.
[32] Dr. Daniel Wilson’s Pre-Historic Man, 3d ed., 1876, vol. i, pp. 274–5. The following description is given in Squier and Davis’s Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley: “The material is fine-grained, compact sandstone of a light-brown color. It measures five inches in length, three in breadth at the ends, and two and six-tenths at the middle, and is about half an inch in thickness. The sculptured face varies very slightly from a perfect plane. The figures are cut in low relief (the lines being not more than one-twentieth of an inch in depth), and occupy a rectangular space four inches and two-tenths long by two and one-tenth wide. The sides of the stone, it will be observed, are slightly concave. Right lines are drawn across the face near the ends, at right angles, and exterior to these are notches, twenty-five at one end and twenty-four at the other. The back of the stone has three deep longitudinal grooves, and several depressions, evidently caused by rubbing—probably produced by sharpening the instrument used in the sculpture.” [Mr. Gest, however, does not regard these as tool marks, but thinks they are of peculiar significance.] “Without discussing the singular resemblance which the relic bears to the Egyptian Cartouch, it will be sufficient to direct attention to the reduplication of the figures, those upon one side corresponding with those upon the other, and the two central ones being also alike. It will be observed that there are but three scrolls or figures—four of one and two of each of the others. Probably no serious discussion of the question whether or not these figures are hieroglyphical is needed. They more resemble the stalk and flowers of a plant than anything else in nature. What significance, if any, may attach to the peculiar markings or graduations at the end, it is not undertaken to say. The sum of the products of the longer and shorter lines (24 × 7 + 25 × 8) is 368, three more than the number of days in the year; from which circumstance the suggestion has been advanced that the tablet had an astronomical origin, and constituted some sort of a calendar.” We may here add that Col. Chas. Whittlesey published at Cleveland, Ohio, in Historical and Archæological Tract No. 9 (Feb. 1872) of the Western Reserve Historical Society, a statement that the “Cincinnati Tablet” was a fraud. But we are informed that he is since convinced of its genuineness.
[33] Judge M. F. Force: Mound-Builders. Cincinnati, 1872. Rev. S. D. Peet in the American Antiquarian for April, 1878, refers to the visit of the Ohio Archæological and the National Anthropological Conventions to Fort Ancient in September, 1877, and states that during the visit the significance of the walls of the lower enclosure was discovered. “They bear a resemblance,” he remarks, “to the form of two massive serpents, which are apparently contending with one another. Their heads are the mounds, which are separated from the bodies by the opening which resembles a ring around the neck. They bend in and out and rise and fall, and appear like two massive green serpents rolling along the summit of this high hill. Their appearance under the overhanging forest trees is very impressive”—p. 50. See also Mr. Peet’s memoir on a Double-walled Earthwork in Ashtabula County, Ohio, in Smithsonian Report for 1876, pp. 443–4.
[34] Dr. Foster, Pre-Historic Races, p. 145, cites a letter from Prof. E. B. Andrews, of the Ohio Geological Survey, describing an earthwork discovered by him in Vinton County with the ditch outside the parapet. In his Report of Explorations of Mounds in Southern Ohio, published in Tenth Ann. Report of the Peabody Museum of Am. Arch. and Eth., p. 53 (Camb., 1877), the Professor remarks: “On a spur of a ridge about two miles east of Lancaster is an earth wall, evidently for defence. The ditch is on the outside of the wall, where it should be according to modern ideas of defence. In this particular the earthwork differs from all the circles and so-called ‘forts,’ either circular or square, which I have seen, these having the ditch on the inside.”
[35] Foster’s Pre-Historic Races, p. 128: “No one, I think, can view the complicated system of works here displayed and stretching away for miles without arriving at the conclusion that they are the result of an infinite amount of toil expended under the direction of a governing mind, and having in view a definite aim. At this day, with our iron instruments, with our labor-saving machines, and the aid of horse-power, to accomplish such a task would require the labor of many thousand men continued for many months. These are the work of a people who had fixed habitations, and who, deriving their support in part at least from the soil, could devote their surplus labor to the rearing of such structures. A migratory people dependent upon the uncertainties of the chase for a living, would not have the time, nor would there be the motive, to engage in such a stupendous undertaking.”
[36] Foster’s Pre-Historic Races, p. 129.