De Witt Clinton having paid more attention to the antiquities of America than any other person of whom I am aware, I shall here insert his description of the forts. He says, "These forts were, generally speaking, erected on the most commanding ground. The walls, or breastworks, were earthen. The ditches were on the exterior of the works. On some of the parapets, oak trees were to be seen, which, from the number of concentric circles, must have been standing one hundred and fifty, two hundred and sixty, and three hundred years; and there were evident indications, not only that they had sprung up since the erection of these works, but that they were at least a second growth. The trenches were in some cases deep and wide, and in others shallow and narrow; and the breastworks varied in altitude from three to eight feet. They sometimes had one, and sometimes two entrances, as was to be inferred from there being no ditches at those places. When the works were protected by a deep ravine, or large stream of water, no ditch was to be seen. The areas of these forts varied from two to six acres; and the form was in general an irregular ellipsis; in some of them, fragments of earthenware and pulverized substances, supposed to have been originally human bones, were to be found."
"I believe we may confidently pronounce, that all the hypotheses which attribute these works to Europeans are incorrect and fanciful: 1st. on account of the present number of the works; 2d. on account of their antiquity; having from every appearance been erected a long time before the discovery of America; and, finally, their form and manner are varient from European fortifications, either in ancient or modern times.
"It is equally clear that they were not the work of the Indians. Until the Senecas, who are renowned for their national vanity, had seen the attention of the Americans attracted to these erections, and had invented the fabulous account of which I have spoken, the Indians of the present day did not pretend to know any thing about their origin. They were beyond the reach of all their traditions, and were lost in the abyss of unexplored antiquity."
At the Bull shoals, east branch of White river in Missouri, several feet below the surface of the banks, reliqua were found which indicated that this spot had formerly been the seat of metalurgical operations. The alloy appeared to be lead united with silver. Arrow-heads cut out of flint, and pieces of earthen pots which had evidently undergone the action of fire, were also found here. The period of time at which these operations were carried on in this place must have been very remote, as the present banks have been since entirely formed by alluvial deposits.
Near the Teel-te-nah (or dripping-fork), which empties itself into the La Platte, and not far distant from its junction with that river, there is an extensive cavern, in which are deposited several mummies. Some tribes which roam this region have a tradition, that the first Indian ascended through this aperture, and settled on the earth's surface.
A few years since, on the Merrimac river in St. Louis county, a number of pigmy graves were discovered. The coffins were of stone; and the length of the bodies which they contained, judging from that of the coffins, could not have been more than from three feet and a half to four feet. The graves were numerous, and the skeletons in some instances nearly entire.
In the month of June (1830), a party of gentlemen, whilst in pursuit of wild turkeys, in Hart county, Kentucky, discovered, on the top of a small knoll, a hole sufficiently large to admit a man's body. Having procured lights, they descended, and at the depth of about sixty feet, entered a cavern, sixteen or eighteen feet square, apparently hewn out of solid rock. The whole chamber was filled with human skeletons, which they supposed, from the size, to be those of women and children. The place was perfectly dry, and the bones were in a state of great preservation. They wished to ascertain how deep the bones lay, and dug through them between four and seven feet, but found them quite as plentiful as at the top: on coming to this depth, dampness appeared, and an unpleasant effluvia arising, obliged them to desist. There was no outlet to the cavern. A large snake, which appeared to be perfectly docile, passed several times round the apartment whilst they remained.
In a museum at New York, I saw one of those mummies alluded to, which appeared to be remarkably small; but I had not an opportunity of examining it minutely. Those that have been found in the most perfect state of preservation were deposited in nitrous caves, and were enveloped in a manner so different from the practices of the Indians, that the idea cannot be entertained of their being the remains of the ancestors of the present race. Flint gives the following description of one of them which he carefully examined. He says, "The more the subject of the past races of men and animals in this region is investigated, the more perplexed it seems to become. The huge bones of the animals indicate them to be vastly larger than any that now exist on the earth. All that I have seen and heard of the remains of the men, would seem to shew that they were smaller than the men of our times. All the bodies that have been found in that high state of preservation, in which they were discovered in nitrous caves, were considerably smaller than the present ordinary stature of men. The two bodies that were found in the vast limestone cavern in Tennessee, one of which I saw at Lexington, were neither of them more than four feet in height. It seems to me that this must have been nearly the height of the living person. The teeth and nails did not seem to indicate the shrinking of the flesh from them in the desiccating process by which they were preserved. The teeth were separated by considerable intervals; and were small, long, white, and sharp, reviving the horrible images of nursery tales of ogres' teeth. The hair seemed to have been sandy, or inclining to yellow. It is well known that nothing is so uniform in the present Indian as his lank black hair. From the pains taken to preserve the bodies, and the great labour of making the funeral robes in which they were folded, they must have been of the 'blood-royal,' or personages of great consideration in their day. The person that I saw, had evidently died by a blow on the skull. The blood had coagulated there into a mass, of a texture and colour sufficiently marked to shew that it had been blood. The envelope of the body was double. Two splendid blankets, completely woven with the most beautiful feathers of the wild turkey, arranged in regular stripes and compartments, encircled it. The cloth on which these feathers were woven, was a kind of linen of neat texture, of the same kind with that which is now woven from the fibres of the nettle. The body was evidently that of a female of middle age, and I should suppose that her majesty weighed, when I saw her, six or eight pounds."
The silly attempts that have been made to establish an oriental origin for the North American Indians, have never produced any other conviction in an unbiased mind, than that the facts brought forward to support that theory existed only in the imaginations of those who advanced them. The colour, the form, the manners, habits, and propensities of the Indians, all combine to establish that they are a distinct race of human beings, and could never have emanated from any people of European, Asiatic, or African origin. The notion that climate would be sufficient to produce an essential change in the appearance of any number of individuals, cannot now be maintained; since from the discovery of America, Europeans, Africans, and Indians have inhabited all regions of this vast continent, without undergoing the slightest characteristic change from the descendants of the original stock, who have remained in their primitive locations. The Power that induces the existence of plants and lower animals indigenous to the different sections of the earth, seems also to induce the existence of a race of men peculiar to the regions in which they are found.