[57] These measurements were carefully made by Dr. S. H. Headlee, of St. James, Missouri, and communicated to the editors of the Cincinnati Quar. Jour. of Science, published in January number, 1875, pp. 94–5.
[58] A sensational description of this mound which appeared in the St. Louis Times is used by Mr. S. M. Hosea as the basis of an article on Sacrificial Mounds in the above number of the Cincinnati Quarterly Jour. of Science, p. 62. The account contains some wonderful statements, which are evidently made by some unscientific person, and hence are utterly worthless. Although, judging from internal evidence, we have little faith in the reliableness of the correspondent, we give a paragraph for what it is worth: “The approach or causeway which leads across the trench from the north is ten feet in width. Ascending from this causeway to the summit of the mound are the remains of a rude flight of stairs, constructed originally of roughly-hewn stones. Most of these steps are now displaced, and quite a number have rolled down into the trench below, but there is unmistakable evidence that they were at one time arranged in regular order of ascent, and could doubtless be again replaced in position by an intelligent architect.” “By a series of investigations, I found that about a foot beneath the surface there was a regular solid platform of stone covering the entire top of the mound. This platform, though constructed by rude and unmechanical hands, is placed in position with a precision and firmness that might well defy the ravages of the elements in all coming ages. About twelve feet from the northern edge of the mound, and directly on a line with the approach and stairway, I noticed a very perceptible elevation of the earth, covering an area of about twenty by fifteen feet; and driving a pick into the elevated ground, the point struck upon solid rock a few inches below the surface. * * * Pushing our work, we soon unearthed a piece of workmanship that an antiquarian would have worked a week to bring to light. The newly-discovered curiosity consisted of a flat rock twelve feet long, ten feet wide, and eleven inches thick. The centre of the stone was hollowed to a depth of six inches, with a margin of about one foot around the edge.” “At the south end of the stone, a round hole five inches deep and four in diameter was drilled. Amongst the dirt taken out of this place hewn in the stone, was a large fossil tooth and a piece of small broken stone column, and several bits of pottery ware.” This description is very suggestive of the Mexican Temple or Teocalli, but unfortunately for the facts, Dr. Headlee, who made the measurements given in the text a short time subsequently, failed to find any certain evidences that either a stairway or temple had existed on the mound.
[59] Report on the Geology of Arkansas, vol. ii, p. 414—cited by Foster.
[60] See on chambered mounds similar to English barrows, Curtiss in Peabody Museum Reports, vol. ii, p. 717; Broadhead in Smithsonian Report for 1879, pp. 350 et seq. (with cuts).
[61] “Within the State, from Pulaski County to Arkansas, in all the little valleys which wind in and out among the flint-crowned hills of the Ozarks, are seen what may be termed garden mounds. These are elevated about two or three feet above the natural surface of the land, and are from fifteen to fifty feet in diameter, varying thus in size according to the amount of richer soil which could be scraped together. Their presence may always be detected in fields of growing grain by its more luxuriant growth and deeper green.”—A. J. Conant in the Transactions cited above, p. 354. The same writer has treated the subject more fully in a recent work published at St. Louis, entitled, “The Commonwealth of Missouri.”
[62] Ancient Monuments, p. 115, and Pre-Historic Races, p. 120.
[63] Baldwin’s Ancient America, p. 72.
[64] Prof. Forshey, in Foster’s Pre-Historic Races, pp. 121, 122, remarks: “There is a class of mounds west of the Mississippi Delta and extending from the Gulf to the Arkansas and above, and westward to the Colorado in Texas, that are to me, after thirty years’ familiarity with them, entirely inexplicable. In my Geological Reconnoissance of Louisiana in 1841–2, I made a pretty thorough report upon them. I afterwards gave a verbal description of their extent and character before the New Orleans Academy of Sciences. These mounds lack every evidence of artificial construction based on implements or other human vestigia. They are nearly all round, none angular, and have an elevation hemispheroidal of one foot to five feet, and a diameter from thirty feet to one hundred and forty feet. They are numbered by millions. In many places, in pine forests and upon the prairies, they are to be seen nearly tangent to each other as far as the eye can reach, thousands being visible from an elevation of a few feet. On the gulf-marsh margin, from the Vermillion to the Colorado, they appear barely visible, often flowing into one another, and only elevated a few inches above the common land. A few miles interior they rise to two and even four feet in height. The largest I ever saw were perhaps one hundred and forty feet in diameter and five feet high. These were in Western Louisiana. Some of them had abrupt sides, though they are nearly all of gentle slopes. There is ample testimony that the pine trees of the present forests antedate these mounds. The material for their construction is like that of the vicinity everywhere, and often there is a depression in close proximity to the elevation.” We can make no conjecture concerning the use of those mounds described by Prof. Forshey, except to suggest that they in all probability served as foundations for dwellings in a low country, which at that time may have been moister and more marshy than at present. If such was the case, the whole region must have presented the appearance of a continuous community instead of the proper proportion of country and village. This crowded state of affairs could have been produced by the pressure from enemies in the north, and the lack of agricultural lands evidently was sufficient alone to cause a migration to the south.
[65] A number of the cuts in this chapter illustrative of the Arts of the Mound-builders, are copies of those used by Dr. Charles Rau in his Catalogue of the Archæological Collection of the National Museum, Washington, Smithsonian Contribution No. 287 (1876), granted me through the courtesy of Professor Henry. A few also are from the memoir by Prof. Jos. Jones on the Aboriginal Remains of Tennessee. Smithsonian Contribution No. 259 (1876). For an able classification of these Mound Relics (a work which I could not undertake in a volume not devoted exclusively to the Mound-builders), I refer the reader to Rau’s Memoir above cited, as being altogether the most satisfactory attempt of the kind of which I have any knowledge. For a classification of works in Ohio, see Antiquities of Ohio: Report of the Committee of the State Archæological Society to the Centennial Commission of Ohio (Columbus, Ohio, 1877, 8vo). The incompleteness of the work is to be regretted. Ohio, out of its vast fund of material, certainly ought to furnish a more satisfactory contribution to the subject of archæology. The work comprises seven chapters, of which the last is the least satisfactory of all, for while bearing the title “Location of Ancient Earthworks in Ohio,” it enumerates only one hundred and sixteen out of the ten thousand mound-works in the State. Still the memoir is not without value. Its chapters on Stone Relics, Copper Relics, and Insignia and Ornaments are comparatively thorough.
[66] Ancient Monuments, p. 143. Prof. E. B. Andrews has shown that the supposed uniformity of stratification in altar mounds is a fallacy. In many instances the earth has been dumped together indiscriminately.