CHAPTER XIII.
SYMBOLIC MOUNDS.
THE WISCONSIN REGION—ANIMAL MOUNDS—SYMBOLIC MOUNDS—BIG ELEPHANT MOUND—DADE COUNTY MOUNDS—MAGNITUDE OF EARTHWORKS—ENCLOSED WORKS OF ART—ROCK RIVER WORKS—THE NORTHERN AZTALAN—ANCIENT GARDEN BEDS—THE WISCONSIN PLAINS—A SACRED NEUTRAL LAND—THE ALLIGATOR MOUND—THE GREAT SERPENT, OHIO—SERPENT SYMBOLS—INTAGLIO EARTHWORKS—SUGGESTIVE INFERENCES—THE ANCIENT RACE—A SACERDOTAL CASTE—ANTIQUITY OF THE RACE—INFERIORITY OF THE INDIAN TRIBES.
The well-watered region which stretches westward from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi, was occupied until recently by a comparatively dense Indian population; and even now affords shelter to the remnants of native tribes. But besides the traces of their ephemeral dwellings and graves, it abounds with earthworks of a distinctive character, peculiar to the New World. But of this as of other partially explored regions of the west, the earlier accounts were vague and contradictory; and it is only very recently that the characteristics of its monuments have been accurately defined. Mr. J. A. Lapham, to whose Antiquities of Wisconsin surveyed and described, the minute knowledge of these remarkable earthworks is chiefly due, claims to have first described the Turtle Mound at Waukesha and other animal effigies of the same territory, so early as 1836. These notices, however, only appeared in local newspapers; and general attention was for the first time directed to them by Mr. R. C. Taylor in the American Journal of Arts and Sciences, in 1838. Their peculiar character was thereby perceived, and such general interest awakened, that the American Antiquarian Society was induced to place funds at Mr. Lapham’s disposal for carrying out the elaborate surveys since published.
The occurrence of “Animal Mounds” is by no means exclusively confined to the State of Wisconsin. Some examples are specially worthy of notice among the varied earthworks of the Ohio and Scioto Valleys. But the important fact connected with the aboriginal traces of Wisconsin is that its Animal Mounds do not occur interspersed, as in the Ohio Valley, with civic and sacred enclosures, sepulchral mounds, and works of defence; but within its well-defined limits, thousands of gigantic basso-relievos of men, beasts, birds, and reptiles, all wrought with persevering labour on the surface of the soil, constitute its distinguishing characteristic; and disclose no evidence of their construction with any other object in view than that of perpetuating their external forms. The vast levels or slightly undulating surfaces of prairie land present peculiarly favourable conditions for the colossal relievos of the native artist: yet not more so than are to be met with in other localities where no such mounds occur. It is important therefore to bear in remembrance that defensive or military structures, and such as are apparently designed for sacrificial rites or religious ceremonies, are scarcely to be met with in the territory marked by those singular groups of imitative earthworks. The country, moreover, is well adapted for maintaining a large population, in very diverse stages of social progress. Through its gently undulating surface numerous rivers and streams flow in sluggish, yet limpid current, eastward and westward, to empty themselves into Lake Michigan or the Mississippi. The pools and groups of lakes into which they expand, furnish abundance of wild rice, which is at once a means of sustenance to numerous aquatic birds, and also constituted an important source of supply to the aborigines, so long as they held possession of the territory. The rivers and lakes also abound with excellent fish; and where the soil remains uninvaded by the ploughshare of the intruding settler, numerous traces of older agricultural labour show where the Indians cultivated the maize, and developed some of the industrial arts of a settled people. Indian grave-mounds diversify the surface, and enclose ornaments and weapons of the rude nomads that still linger on the outskirts of that western state. But such slight and inartificial mounds are readily distinguishable from the remarkable structures of a remoter era which constitute the archæological characteristic of the region. Here, indeed, as elsewhere, the Indians have habitually selected the ancient earthworks as places of sepulture; and as a rule have given the preference to the larger and more conspicuous mounds. On some of these the surveyors recognised recent graves of the Potowattomies. But their irregular position shows that they bear no relation to the original design. In their superficial character they correspond to the slight grave-mounds made with the imperfect implements of the modern Indians; and they contrast in all other respects with the laborious construction of the gigantic animal-mounds.
The symbolic earthworks of the Wisconsin plains are not confined to the representation of animals, though the predominance of animal-mounds has suggested that name for the whole. Embankments occur in the form of crosses, crescents, angles, and straight lines; and also seemingly as gigantic representations of the war-club, tobacco-pipe, and other familiar implements or weapons. Some of the crosses and other simpler forms probably originally represented animals, birds, or fishes, with extended wings or fins. But in those, as in the better-defined animal-mounds, time has obliterated the minuter touches of the ancient modeller, and effaced indications of his meaning. Yet fancy still recognises among the best preserved relievos the elk, buffalo, bear, fox, otter, and racoon. The lizard is of frequent occurrence; the turtle and frog also appear; birds and fishes are repeatedly represented; and man himself figures among the ancient relievos. Of one form of mound which Mr. Lapham identifies as the otter, seven examples occur. Sixteen cruciform earthworks are described, and the ordinary examples, of all sizes, are counted by hundreds.
It is not without reason that some of the larger mounds in the midst of those emblematic earthworks have been designated observatory mounds, and assumed to have been constructed in order to afford a view of the laborious devices. Ordinarily the mound builder is tempted to give greater prominence to his tumulus by erecting it on the summit of a hill or bluff; but on the prairie land of Wisconsin, such natural elevations are wanting; and hence the construction of a class of works for which the lowest levels were preferred. The “Big Elephant Mound,” which measures 135 feet in length, is constructed in a valley gently sloping to the Mississippi, a few miles below the junction of the Wisconsin River. The ridges on both sides offered a choice of elevated sites; but the bottom land nearly on a level with the Mississippi at high water, has been purposely chosen, so that the device might be surveyed from the neighbouring heights. Fancy is prompt to assign a meaning to the old modellers’ works. In this example, the prolonged snout, or proboscis, has led to its designation as the “Big Elephant Mound”; and the delineator of it, in the Smithsonian Report for 1872, so confidently relies on its purposed significance that he asks: “Is not the existence of such a mound good evidence of the contemporaneous existence of the mastodon and the Mound-Builders?” The figure, though comparatively large, is surpassed by many. Some indeed are on a gigantic scale. One mound of peculiar, but indeterminate form, tapers for a length of five hundred and seventy feet. At its smaller extremity or tail, it slightly curves to the east. At the opposite extremity are a large cross, and one of the largest circular mounds. Its device can no longer be recognised; but much ingenuity and still more labour, have been expended on its construction. Another remarkable group in Dade County, includes six quadrupeds of indeterminate species, six parallelograms, a large tumulus, a circle, and a human figure. The animals are grouped in two rows; and the tumulus seems as though it had been erected as an observatory from which to view the elaborate design. An ingenious English critic recognises in it the possible memorial of a triumph like that of the ancient Greek charioteer in the national games, with the appropriate substitution of a sledge for the chariot, and a train of dogs for the fleet racers of the hippodrome. “Taking,” he says, “the rudeness of the age and workmanship into account, the impracticability of the material, and the scale and material, the whole is really not a bad representation of the dog-drawn sledges of the Kamschatdales of the present day. Supposing their horns to have been omitted, from the impracticability of raising earthworks that would stand well, and in proportion to represent them, they might have signified the elk or the reindeer. Whatever animal, however, be taken, it is perhaps a legitimate inference that we have here the colossal trophy of a super-Atlantic charioteer at some American race; why not the curious hippodrome, or, more correctly here, cynodrome, with its starting-cells (carceres), its course, its meta, and road of triumph to the town?”[[89]]
It was not necessary for the fanciful interpreter to resort to remote Kamschatka for the model of his dog-drawn sledge, for such are common enough among the Indians of the North-west. But a general survey of the earthworks of Wisconsin in no degree tends to confirm this interpretation, unless in so far as such animal-mounds may have been monumental memorials, and trophies of achievements in wars and the chase. As such they are executed on a scale which gives evidence of the systematic expenditure of an enormous amount of labour; and as the opinion has latterly found favour with some that the great mounds are simply the result of many successive interments; and the marks of regular stratification in some of them have been adduced in confirmation of this idea: the corresponding proportions of the animal-mounds are significant. In them at least a preconceived design has guided the builders from the outset; and some adequate idea of the magnitude of the Dade County group will be formed from a correct estimate of the proportions of the supposed charioteer. He is figured, as is usual in similar mounds, with his limbs extended, and with arms of disproportionate length; possibly owing to the design originally representing some implement in each hand. From head to foot he measures one hundred and twenty-five feet, and one hundred and forty feet from the extremity of one arm to that of the other. The head alone is a mound twenty-five feet in diameter, and nearly six feet in highest elevation from the surrounding soil. Measuring the whole by this scale, it is abundantly apparent that a group, including altogether fifteen mound-figures, must have been a work of immense time and labour, and doubtless owed its origin to some motive or purpose of corresponding magnitude in the estimation of its constructors.
Mr. Schoolcraft attempted to solve the mystery of the emblematic mounds by assuming them to be the Totems, or heraldic symbols, in use among the Indian tribes, thus reproduced in earthworks on a gigantic scale. The fox, the bear, the eagle, turtle, or other animal, is selected among them as the sign of the tribe or family. This usage prevailed among the Iroquois, Hurons, Algonquins, Cherokees, and other nations occupying very extensive areas; and, accordingly, guided by the superficial resemblance of the Animal Mounds to such totemic signs, Mr. Schoolcraft says: “A tribe could leave no more permanent trace of an esteemed sachem, or honoured individual, than by the erection of one of these monuments. They are clearly sepulchral, and have no other object but to preserve the names of distinguished actors in their history.”[[90]] But exploration seems to prove that the emblematical mounds of Wisconsin are not sepulchral; while any correspondence that may be traced between them and the totemic symbols of tribes once so widely spread as the Algonquins, Iroquois, and Cherokees, only increases the mystery of symbols constructed on this colossal scale, and confined to a territory so limited. So far indeed is a careful survey from confirming any such convenient and summary fancy, that Mr. Lapham states, as the result of elaborate explorations, that he conceives four epochs are traceable in the history of the locality, two of which at least preceded the era of occupation by the Indian tribes. The period of the animal-mound builders strikingly contrasts with that of the earthworks previously described, in the rarity of enclosed works of art. But the few implements discovered are full of interest from their obvious resemblance to those of the Mound-Builders. Several of the large hornstone discs which I have seen are of the same type as those found in immense numbers in the Ohio Mounds; and Mr. Albert H. Hoy of Racine, Wisconsin, describes in a letter to me the discovery of about thirty of the same relics, in that vicinity, under circumstances suggestive of great antiquity. They lay at a depth of eight feet in undisturbed soil, under a thin bed of peat, in what appeared to have been the ancient bed of the Rock River.
The sites of the symbolic earthworks of Wisconsin correspond to those adopted by the Mound-Builders for their sacred enclosures; though others of their works, and especially the most remarkable of their animal-mounds, were constructed on prominent heights. Within the fertile region bounded by the great lakes and the Mississippi, a numerous population may have long dwelt undisturbed, in the enjoyment of the profusion which wood and water and the easily cultivated soil supplied. On the bluffs and terraces surmounting the rivers and lakes by which facilities of communication with the surrounding territory, and with more distant regions, were commanded, the earthworks are found in extensive and evidently dependent groups. But, unlike the rich memorial mounds of the Scioto Valley, they reveal few enclosed relics to chronicle the history of their erection, and throw light on the race of artists who laboriously diversified the natural landscape with such devices. In a few cases, human remains have been found in them, under circumstances which did not clearly point to a modern date; but in summing up the results of his explorations, Mr. Lapham remarks:—“So far as I have had opportunity to observe, there are no original remains in the mounds of imitative form, beyond a few scattered fragments that may have gained a place there by accident. Many of the mounds have been entirely removed, including the earth beneath for a considerable depth, in the process of grading streets in Milwaukee; and it is usually found that the natural surface had not been disturbed at the time of the erection, but that the several layers or strata of mould, clay, gravel, etc., are continuous below the structure, as on the contiguous grounds. Great numbers of the smaller conical tumuli are also destitute of any remains; and if human bodies were ever buried under them, they are now so entirely ‘returned to dust’ that no apparent traces of them are left.”[[91]]
The extensive works at Aztalan, on the west branch of Rock River, present analogies of a different kind from the sacred and civic enclosures of the Mound-Builders. They constitute, it is believed, the only ancient enclosure, properly so called, throughout the whole region of the emblematic mounds; and, under the name of the “ancient city of Aztalan,” were long regarded as one of the wonders of the western world. Early explorers were on the look-out for the mother city of the Aztecs, and the first surveyor of the earthworks on Rock River named them Aztalan, in the full belief that the long-sought city of Mexican tradition had at length been found. The name was a stimulus to credulity and wonder; and proved the source of much extravagant exaggeration. Walls of brick still sustained by their solid buttresses; a subterranean vault and stairway discovered within one of its square mounds; a subterranean passage, arched with stone; bastions of solid masonry, and other features of the like kind: were all made to correspond with the supposed mother-city of the Aztecs, and the cradle-land of America’s native civilisation. On being subjected to accurate survey, those wondrous features vanish. Freed, however, from exaggeration and falsehood, the Aztalan works still present remarkable characteristics. An area of seventeen acres on the banks of the Rock River is enclosed on three sides by a vallum with regular “bastions,” as they have been termed; although both the construction of the walls, and the site of the enclosure—commanded as it is by elevated land on nearly every side,—preclude the idea of its having been a place of defence. Large, square, terraced mounds occupy the northern and southern angles. In one of them a human skeleton was found; and in others of the mounds coarse pottery occurs; but both may have been deposited long subsequent to the completion of the earthworks of Aztalan. With these exceptions, nothing has yet rewarded the careful and elaborate excavations of its explorers tending to throw light on the original builders. Its bastions have been tunnelled in vain; and cuttings made in some of the largest of a remarkable range of tumuli outside the enclosures revealed only ashes, mingled with charcoal and fragments of human bones, unaccompanied by a single work of art, like those which confer so graphic an interest on the mounds of the Ohio Valley.