Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines

by Lewis Henry Morgan

The foregoing explanation of the uses of these embankments rests upon the defensive principle in the house architecture of the Village Indians, and upon a state of the family requiring joint tenement houses communistic in character. To both of these requirements this conjectural restoration of one of the pueblos of the Mound-Builders responds in a remarkable manner. In the diversified forms of the houses of the Village Indians, in all parts of America, the defensive principle is a constant feature. Among the Mound-Builders a rampart of earth ten feet high around a village would afford no protection, but surmounted with long-houses, the walls of which rose continuous with the embankments, the strength of these walls, though of timber coated with earth, would render a rampart thus surmounted and doubled in height a formidable barrier against Indian assault. The second principle, that of communism in living in joint-tenement houses, which is impressed not less clearly upon the houses of the Village Indians in general than upon the supposed houses of the Mound-Builders, harmonized completely with the first. From the two together sprang the house architecture of the American aborigines, with its diversities of form, and they seem sufficient for its interpretation. The Mound-Builders in their new area east of the Mississippi finding it impossible to construct joint tenement houses of adobe bricks to which they had been accustomed substituted solid embankments of earth in the place of the first story closed up on the ground and erected triangular houses upon them covered with earth. When circumstances compelled a change of plan, the second is not a violent departure from the first. There is a natural connection between them. Finally, it is deemed quite sufficient to sustain the interpretation given that these embankments were eminently adapted to the uses indicated, and that the pueblo as restored, and with its inclosed court, would have afforded to its inhabitants pleasant, protected and attractive homes.

With respect to the large circular inclosures, adjacent to and communicating with the squares, it is not necessary that we should know their object. The one attached to the High Bank Pueblo contains twenty acres of land, and doubtless subserved some useful purpose in their plan of life. The first suggestion which presents itself is, that as a substitute for a fence it surrounded the garden of the village in which they cultivated their maize, beans, squashes, and tobacco. At the Minnetaree village a similar inclosure may now be seen by the side of the village surrounding their cultivated land, consisting partly of hedge and partly of stakes, the open prairie stretching out beyond. We cannot know all the necessities that attended their mode of life; although houses, gardens, food, and raiment were among those which must have existed.

There is another class of circular embankments, about two hundred and fifty feet in diameter, connected with each other in some cases by long and low parallel embankments, as may be seen in Fig 46. Undoubtedly they were for some useful purpose, which may or may not be divined correctly, but a knowledge of which is not necessary to our hypothesis respecting the principal embankments. It may be suggested as probable that the Mound-Builders were organized in gentes, phratries, and tribes. If this were the case, the phratries would need separate places for holding their councils and for performing their religious observances. These ring embankments suggest the circular estufas found in connection with the New Mexican pueblos, two, four, and sometimes five at one pueblo. The circles were adapted to open-air councils, after the fashion of the American Indian tribes. As there are two of these connected with each other, and two not connected, it is not improbable that the Mound-Builders at this village were organized in two and perhaps four phratries, and that they performed their religious ceremonies and public business in these open estufas.

[Footnote: The solid rectangular platforms found at Marietta, Ohio, and at several places in the Gulf region, are analogous to those in Yucatan. They are an advance upon the ring inclosures, and were probably designed for religious uses. That the Mound Builders were at one time accustomed to adobe brick is proven by their presence at Seltzertown, in the State of Mississippi, forming a part of the wall of a mound. (See Foster's Pre-Historic Races of the U.S., p. 112.)]

Practice of Cremation.—Among other works are the conical mounds, which are numerous, found in or near circular embankments. They vary in height from five to ten and twenty feet; with one, the Grave Creek Mound, seventy feet high. They are classified by Squier and Davis, who surveyed and examined them, into "Mounds of Sacrifice," "Mounds of Sepulture," and "Mounds of Observation." The first kind only in which the so-called altars are found will be noticed.

At the center of each of the mounds of this class, and on the ground level there was found a bed of clay artificially formed into a shallow basin and then hardened by fire These basins have been termed "altars" by Squier and Davis in their work on the "Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley." Mr. Squier remarks in a resume of this work published separately that "some are round others elliptical and others square or parallelograms…. The usual dimensions are from five to eight feet." [Footnote: Trans. Am Eth Soc]

[Illustration: FIG 49—Mound Artificial Clay Basin]

At Mound City on the Scioto River there is a group of twenty six mounds in one inclosure an engraving of one of which taken from Mr. Squier's paper is shown in Fig 49. It is seven feet high by fifty five feet base and contained the artificial clay basin in question. 'F' is the basin which is round, and measures from c to d nine feet, and from a to e five feet. The height from b to e is twenty inches, and the dip of the curve a to e is nine inches. "The body of the altar," Mr. Squier remarks, "is burned throughout, though in a greater degree within the basin where it was so hard as to resist the blow of a heavy hatchet, the instrument rebounding as if struck upon a rock. The basin, or hollow of the altar, was filled up even full with dry ashes, intermingled with which were some fragments of pottery…. One of the vases, taken in fragments from the mound, has been very nearly restored. The sketch B presents its outlines and the character of its ornaments. Its height is six, and its greatest diameter eight inches…. Above the deposit of ashes, and covering the entire basin, was a layer of silvery or opaque mica in sheets overlapping each other, and immediately over the center of the basin was heaped a quantity of human bones, probably the amount of a single skeleton, in fragments. The position of these is indicated by O in the section. The layer of mica and calcined bones, it should be remarked to prevent misapprehension, was peculiar to this individual mound, and not found in any other of the class." [Footnote: Observations, etc, Trans Am Eth Soc ii p 161] Calcined bones, however, were found in three out of some twenty mounds of this class examined. [Footnote: Ane Monte pp. 157, 159]

The question now recurs, what was the use of the basin of clay, and what the object of the mound itself? The terms "altars" and "mounds of sacrifice," employed in describing them, imply that human sacrifices were offered on these "altars," "upon which glowed the sacrificial fires." [Footnote: Ib, p. 15]

There is no propriety, I respectfully submit, in the use of either of these terms, or in the conclusions they would force us to adopt Human sacrifices were unknown in the Lower Status of barbarism; but they were introduced in the Middle Status, when the first organized priesthood, distinguished by their apparel, appears. In parts of Mexico, and, it is claimed, in parts of Central America, these atrocious rites were performed, but they were unknown in New Mexico, and, without better evidence than these miscalled altars afford, they cannot be fastened upon the Mound-Builders. Moreover, these clay beds were not adapted to the barbarous work. Wherever human sacrifices are known to have occurred among the American aborigines, the place was an elevated mound platform, in the nature of a temple, as the Teocalli of Mexico, and the raised altar or sacrificial stone stood before the idol in whose worship the rites were performed. There is neither a temple nor an idol, but a hollow bed of clay covered by a mound raised in honor over the ashes of a deceased chief, for assuredly such a mound would not have been raised over the ashes of a victim. Indians never exchanged prisoners of war. Adoption or burning at the stake was the alternative of capture; but no mound was ever raised over the burned remains. Human sacrifices seem to have originated in an attempt to utilize the predetermined death of prisoners of war in the service of the gods, until slavery finally offered a profitable substitute, in the Upper Status of barbarism.