Prehistoric man

by Sir Daniel Wilson

Assuming the works of Aztalan and the animal-mounds of Wisconsin to belong to the same period: Mr. Lapham assigns the conical mounds to a later era. These he regards as built for sepulchral purposes, and exhibiting, both in construction and materials, the workmanship of a greatly inferior race of builders. Next come what are designated by the modern settlers “ancient garden beds,” consisting of low, broad, parallel ridges, as if corn had been planted in drills. They average four feet in width, and the depth of the space between them is six inches. These appearances indicate a more perfect system of agricultural operations than anything known to have been practised by the modern Indian tribes; but, at the same time, they are no less distinctly disconnected with the construction of the ancient mounds. Where these occur within a cultivated area, the parallel ridges of the old cultivators are carried across them in the same manner as over any other undulation of the ground. It is obvious, therefore, not only that the emblematic earthworks preceded them, but that they had neither sacredness nor any special significance in the eyes of the cultivators of the soil. Probably, indeed, such traces of agricultural operations belong to a greatly more modern period.

What, then, are the inferences to be drawn from the ancient monuments peculiar to the territory lying immediately to the south of the great copper region of Lake Superior? They are mostly of a negative character, yet not on that account without significance. If we assume the existence of contemporary nations in Wisconsin and the Ohio Valley in the period of the Mound-Builders, the chronicles of that era exhibit them to us in striking contrast. In the one region every convenient height is crowned with the elaborate fortifications of a numerous and warlike people; while, on the broad levels of the river-terraces, ingenious geometrical structures prove their skill and intellectual development as applied to the formation of civic and temple enclosures. Their sacred and sepulchral mounds, in like manner, reveal considerable artistic skill, and a singular variety in the rites and customs exacted in the performance of their national worship. Turning to the northern area, all is changed. Along the river-terraces we look in vain for military structures. The mounds disclose no altars rich with the metallurgic or mimetic workmanship of their builders; but, on the contrary, the sole traces of imitative art occur in the external forms of earthworks, the exploration of which confutes the idea of their having been erected over either grave or altar, and reveals no other purpose of their construction.

When it is considered that, along with the mica of the Alleghanies, the shells of the Gulf of Mexico, and obsidian from the ancient centre of American civilisation, the copper of Lake Superior is one of the most abundant materials found in the Mississippi mounds: we are tempted to trace some intimate relation between the warlike occupants of the Ohio and Scioto valleys and the singular race who dwelt in peaceful industry on the well-watered and plentifully stocked plains to the south of the copper region, and there constructed their strange colossal memorials of imitative art. The country seems peculiarly adapted by nature as a central neutral land for the continent to the east of the Rocky Mountains. On the east it is guarded by Lake Michigan, and on the north by the great inland sea which constitutes the fountain of the whole lake and river chain that sweeps away on its course of twenty-five hundred miles, over Niagara, and through the islands and rapids of the St. Lawrence, to the Atlantic. On the west, with its infant streamlets originating almost from the same source, the Mississippi rolls onward in its majestic course, receiving as its tributaries the great rivers which rise alike on the western slope of the Alleghanies and the eastern declivities of the Rocky Mountains, and loses itself at length in the Gulf of Mexico. This wonderful river system, and the great level contour of the regions which it drains, exercised a remarkable influence on the extinct civilisation of America, as well as on later Indian nomad life, making its primitive eras so different from any phase of Europe’s history. The Indians who traded with Cartier at Tadousac, on the lower St. Lawrence, and those whom Raleigh met with on the coast of Carolina, obtained their copper from the same northern region towards which the head-waters of the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence converge; while the world of Europe between the Rhine and the Baltic remained, even in its late Roman era, almost as much apart from that on its Mediterranean shores as the America of centuries before Columbus. It seems, therefore, not inconceivable that the prairie land of Wisconsin derives some of its archæological characteristics from its relation to the physical geography of the region between the Rocky Mountains and the Atlantic, possibly as a sacred neutral ground attached to the metallurgic region of Lake Superior, like the famous pipe-stone quarry of the Couteau des Prairies.

This idea of some peculiar relations connecting the symbolic architects of Wisconsin with the Mound-Builders of the Ohio, derives confirmation from the few but remarkable animal-mounds of the latter, in which their connection with the religious rites of the ancient race is borne out. One example of an animal-mound, upwards of 250 feet in length, and probably designed to represent a bear, occupies a high level terrace on the west bank of the Scioto river. Unlike any of the symbolic mounds of Wisconsin, it is surrounded by an oval embankment measuring four hundred and eighty feet in greatest diameter. On the south side a space of about ninety feet wide breaking the continuity of the embankment, is covered by a long exterior mound, leaving two avenues of approach where it overlaps the inner oval. This mound has not been opened; but in the process of excavating the Ohio canal, large quantities of mica, similar to what occurs so abundantly in the sacrificial mounds, were found in its immediate vicinity.

The same canal intersects Newark earthworks; and there, within another elliptic vallum, is the Eagle Mound, measuring 155 feet in length of body, and 200 feet between the tips of the wings. It is only a minor feature of the remarkable group, already described, which includes geometrical enclosures, mounds, and avenues; but it is distinguished from all the others, by the great scale of its enclosing walls, and interior ditch. Unfortunately it was opened by a former proprietor in search of treasure; and no further record of its contents has been preserved, except that it covered a hearth of a similar character to the altars already described as characteristic of the sacrificial mounds. The fact, however, illustrates the contrast between works bearing so much external resemblance to each other as the symbolic mounds of the Mississippi Valleys and those of Wisconsin. In the absence of all included relics of worship or inhumation, the latter seem but as symbols of the rites practised by the southern Mound-Builders.

About six miles higher up the same valley, the “Alligator,” of Licking County, attracts attention as another remarkable colossal animal-mound. It occupies the summit of a lofty hill or spur, which projects into the Racoon Creek Valley. The outline and general contour of this huge lizard-mound are still clearly defined, though agricultural operations have obliterated some of the minuter traces noted by early visitors. The average height is four feet; but the head, shoulders, and rump, are elevated in parts to a height of fully six feet. The tail curls off to the left side, and is now so indefinite, as it tapers towards a point, that the precise measurement is uncertain; but the total length of the “Alligator” may be stated at about 220 feet. Excavations made at various points have only shown that the figure has been modelled in fine clay upon a framework of stones of considerable size. But when I visited it, a rain gully had exposed part of the side of the hill, showing this to consist to a large extent of loose stones; so that the mound is no doubt constructed with materials obtained on the spot. A raised circular structure, designated the altar, and covered with stones which had been much exposed to the action of fire, is described by former observers as standing on the right side, and connected with the summit of the mound by a graded way ten feet broad; but the traces of this feature are now very slight.

The site of this remarkable monument commands a view of the entire valley for eight or ten miles, and is by far the most conspicuous point within that limit. An ancient fortified hill stands about three-fourths of a mile distant on a spur of the same range of heights; and another entrenched hill nearly faces it on the opposite side of the valley. Numerous mounds occupy both the hill-tops and the levels in surrounding valleys; and it is only the luxuriant growth of the forest which conceals the great Newark group, with its geometrical enclosures, parallels, and mounds. The Alligator Mound may, therefore, be assumed to symbolise some object of special awe or veneration, thus reared on one of the chief high-places of the nation, where the ancient people of the valley could witness the celebration of rites of their unknown worship. Its site was obviously selected as the most prominent natural feature in a populous district abounding with military, civic, and religious structures. Yet its imposing proportions are surpassed by another symbolic work constructed on a height remote from any traces of ancient settlement.

The Great Serpent of Adam’s County, Ohio, occupies the extreme point of a crescent-formed spur of land formed at the junction of two tributary streams of the Ohio. This elevated site has been cut to a conformity with an oval circumvallation on its summit, leaving a smooth external platform ten feet wide, with an inclination towards the embankment on every side. Immediately outside the inner point of this oval is the serpent’s head, with distended jaws, as if in the act of swallowing what, in comparison with its huge dimensions, is spoken of as an egg, though it measures 160 feet in length. Conforming to the summit of the hill, the body of the serpent winds back, in graceful undulations, terminating with a triple coil at the tail. The figure is boldly defined, the earth-wrought relievo being upwards of five feet in height by thirty feet in base at the centre of the body; and the entire length, following its convolutions, cannot measure less than a thousand feet.

This singular monument stands alone, and though classed here with the symbolic animal-mounds of Wisconsin, it has no analogue among the numerous basso-relievos wrought on the broad prairie-lands of that region. It is indeed altogether unique among the earthworks of the New World, and without a parallel in the Old; though it has not unnaturally furnished the starting-point for a host of speculations relative to serpent-worship. Among the miniature sculptures of the Mound-Builders, repeated examples of the serpent occur. On one of the altars of “Mound City” was a pipe of the form peculiar to the mounds, with a rattlesnake coiled round the bowl. From another mound of the same earthwork several sculptured tablets were recovered, representing the rattlesnake, delicately carved in fine cinnamon-coloured sandstone; and one of them carefully enveloped in sheets of copper. The character of these sculptures, and the circumstances under which they were discovered, suggested to the explorers that they were not designed for ornaments; but had some relation to superstitious rites. Other serpents are represented by the Mound-Sculptors; but the rattlesnake is the favourite type. I recently examined, in the Peabody Museum of Archæology at Cambridge, Mass., a series of eighteen engraved circular plates made from the shell of the Pyrula, which were obtained from the Brakebill and Lick Creek Mounds, in East Tennessee. Thirteen of them bear the same device of a rattlesnake. Among the Mexicans it was the symbol of royalty; and this helps to give a special interest to a remarkable tablet figured here, in the same style of art, so suggestive of Mexican affinities. It is a disk of fine-grained sandstone, nearly 8½ inches in diameter, and three-quarters of an inch, thick, on which is graven the elaborate device of two intertwined rattlesnakes, as shown in Fig. 73. On the back a slight ornament runs round the border; and a fractured mortice-hole, somewhat out of the true centre, shows where a handle has been attached to it. It was found in two pieces, near Lake Washington, Issaquina County, Mississippi; and is now in the possession of Mr. W. Marshall Anderson, of Circleville, Ohio.