Prehistoric man

by Sir Daniel Wilson

Among the characteristics of ancient and modern nations discernible in peculiar rites and customs, or disclosed in their arts, there are some that indicate widely-diffused hereditary influences, and so furnish a clew to remote affinities of race. The practice of circumcision, for example, which prevails both in Asia and Africa, wherever the influence of Semitic nations can be traced, strikingly illustrates the value of such indices. Another ancient custom, that of systematic cranial distortion, was common to nations of both hemispheres, and is proved by the evidence of ancient sculpture to have been in use at the period of highest architectural art in Central America. The Indian war-trophy of the scalp, and its singular counterpart, the peace-pipe, are also significant usages of the New World; though the former appears to have been equally common among ancient Asiatic nations. Herodotus refers to scalping as one of the most characteristic war-customs of the Scythians, and to their hanging the scalp-trophies to the warrior’s bridle-rein. Hence the ἀποσκυθίζειν of Euripides, quoted by Rawlinson, when remarking on the resemblance of such ancient customs to those of the Red Indians. The correspondence is worthy of note, in connection with others afterwards referred to, as possibly indicative of something more than a mere American counterpart to Egyptian and Oriental accumulations of trophies of the slain—the skulls, the hands, the ears, or even the foreskins,—repeatedly referred to in the Old Testament Scriptures, and recorded with minute detail on the paintings of Egypt, and the sculptures of Nimroud and Khorsabad. But no such analogies throw light on the singular usage of the peace-pipe. The ethnical relations which it indicates belong exclusively to the New World, where it seems to perpetuate a significant symbolism derived from an extinct native civilisation. As such, it is worthy of study by the American ethnologist, as the most curious of the many practices connected with the use of the strange nicotian stimulant. The pipe appears to have been associated with solemn religious rites and civic ceremonials, both in ancient and modern times. It bore a prominent part in the worship of the old Mound-Builders; and still retains its place among the paraphernalia of the inspired medicine-man or priest, and the most sacred credentials of the ambassador or war-chief.

The implements designed for the use of tobacco or other narcotic herbs, occupy a prominent place among the works of art of which the sacrificial mounds are the principal depositories. In accordance with the almost universal custom of barbarous and semi-civilised nations, the Mound-Builders devoted to their dead whatever had been most prized in life, or was deemed valuable for some talismanic charm. Hence the Mississippi mounds, and the ancient tombs of Mexico and Peru, disclose the same kind of evidence of the past as Wilkinson has deduced from the catacombs of Egypt, or Dennis from the sepulchres of Etruria. But in addition to this, the remarkable religious rites of the American Mound-Builders have preserved not only their altars, but the offerings laid upon them. The perishable garments of the dead have necessarily disappeared; and of instruments or utensils of wood or other combustible materials it is vain to expect a trace, where even metal has melted, and the stone been calcined in the blaze of sacrificial fires; but articles of copper and stone, of fictile ware, and even of shell, ivory, and bone, have escaped the destructive flame, and withstood the action of time. In such enduring characters inscriptions are legibly graven upon the altars of the Mound-Builders. Let us try to translate their records into the language of modern thought.

What such relics record in reference to metallurgy has already been seen. The Mound-Builders were acquainted with several of the metals. They had both the silver and lead of Iowa and Wisconsin in use. Implements and personal ornaments of copper abound on their altars; and the mechanical combination of silver with the native copper of which those are made, indicates that they derived their supplies from Lake Superior, where alone the metals have hitherto been found in the singular mechanico-chemical combination of crystals of silver in a copper matrix. Their sacrificial fires have in some cases fused the metallic offerings on the altars into a mass of molten metal, so that the Mound-Builders had thus presented to them this all-important lesson of metallurgy. Mr. F. S. Perkins, of Burlington, Wisconsin, whose collection of native copper implements numbers upwards of sixty specimens, has arrived at the conclusion that some of those from the ancient mounds have been cast in moulds; and Mr. J. W. Foster concurs in the belief that the Mound-Builders had learned to smelt the ores.[^[101]] This still requires further proof. At Cincinnati, I saw in the collection of Mr. Cleneay, a choice specimen of a copper axe, found on the banks of Hog Creek, a tributary of the Great Miami. It measures fifteen inches long, and weighs 5 lb. 5½ oz.; but though well-proportioned, and finished with unusual care, it is entirely the work of the hammer. Only in one case, of an axe from the Lockport Mound, have I seen indications which seem to suggest a process of casting. But specimens of accidentally melted copper repeatedly occur; and Mr. Jas. B. Skinner, of Cincinnati, showed me a melted mass of pure silver, of 4 lb. weight, found lying on a heap of charcoal, in cutting through the embankment surrounding a large mound at Marietta. Nothing further was needed than the practical sagacity by which similar accidents have been turned to account, to lead the Mound-Builders one step beyond this, to the use of the crucible and the mould. It would not, therefore, surprise me to find partial traces of the use of both. Their imitative skill, and ability in modelling, had already taught them the use of the mould when working in clay. But they had, at best, a very rudimentary knowledge of metallurgy; they do not appear to have acquired, by barter or otherwise, any specimens of the alloyed metals; and only mechanically combined their copper with silver. Hematite, though prized by them, was used simply as a stone. They were familiar with silver, and shaped it into many personal ornaments. The sulphuret of lead was also known to them; and was turned to account both for use and ornamentation.

Thus far, then, it appears that the Mound-Builders shared in the metallurgic wealth of the great copper region. We are reminded, accordingly, that the broad undulating prairie-lands of Wisconsin, with their remarkable symbolic earthworks, lie directly between the shores of Lake Superior and the region occupied by the Mound-Builders. The monuments of the latter abound with examples of their builders’ arts; and are surrounded with varied proofs of settled occupation, civic and religious structures, and permanent defensive military works. Throughout Wisconsin, on the contrary, the symbolic mounds stand alone, and have hitherto been found, with a few rare exceptions, to contain no relics. Neither earthworks adapted to religious rites, nor military defences, attest that that region was occupied by a numerous population, such as its many natural advantages fitted it to sustain. Hence the conjecture that the mineral country on the southern shores of the Great Lake was the recognised source of supply for the whole population north of the Gulf of Mexico; and that different tribes throughout the vast basin of the Mississippi and its tributaries were wont to send working parties thither, as to a region common to all. Such an idea accords with the further conjecture that the symbolic mounds of Wisconsin may be memorials of sacred rites, or pledges of neutrality among nations from the various tributaries of the great river, as they annually met on this border-land of the common metallic storehouse. It is obvious that the Mound-Builders were a highly religious people. Their superstitious rites were of frequent occurrence, and accompanied with costly sacrifices; while in the numerous symbolic mounds of Wisconsin, labour alone is the sacrifice, and the external form preserves the one idea at which their builders aimed.

So far, this theory of a sacred neutral ground and common mineral region is conjectural. Nevertheless, it involves certain facts to be borne in view for comparison with others of a diverse kind. In the once densely peopled regions of Ohio and Illinois, where the works of the Mound-Builders abound, the river-valleys were occupied by an ingenious and industrious agricultural population: who, if not aggressive and war-like, employed their constructive skill on extensive works for military defence. Whencesoever the danger existed that they had thus to apprehend and guard against, there is no trace of its localisation within the region lying immediately to the south of Lake Superior, through which their path lay to the great copper country. More probably offensive and defensive warfare was carried on between tribes or states of the Mound Race settled on different tributaries of the same great water-system. But the growing civilisation of the nations of the Mississippi valley was also exposed to the aggression of barbarian tribes of the North-west; for if the Mound-Builders differed in culture and race from the progenitors of the modern Red Indian, some of their arts and customs render it probable that the latter were not unknown to them.

So far, then, we connect the race of the Mounds with the shores of Lake Superior, and thus trace out for them a relation to regions of the North. But the objects wrought by their artistic skill reveal no less certainly their familiarity with animals of southern and even tropical latitudes; and the materials employed in their manufactures include mica of the Alleghanies, the obsidian of Mexico, and jade and porphyry derived probably from the same region, or from others still farther south. Such facts warn us against any hastily constructed hypothesis of migrations for a people to whom the resources of so many dissimilar regions were partially known. We see in them, however, proofs of an extensive traffic; and may assume, as at least exceedingly probable, the existence of widely extended relations among that singular race. It is not to be inferred from the use of terms specifically applied to modern trade, that they are intended to suggest the possession of a currency and exchanges, of banking agencies, or manufacturing corporations. But, without confounding the traces of a rudimentary civilisation with characteristics of its mature development, there are proofs sufficient to justify the inference that the Mound-Builders traded with the copper of Lake Superior for objects of necessity and luxury brought from widely-separated regions of the continent. Such exchanges may have been effected by many intermediate agencies, rather than by any direct traffic. But the river system of the Mississippi has furnished to the later forest tribes facilities for interchange under far less favourable circumstances; and such a systematic trade among an ingenious and settled people may have materially contributed to the progress of civilisation in the populous valleys of the Ohio.

Turning next to the carvings in stone recovered from the mounds, they include objects of singular interest, some of which, at least, fully merit the designation of works of art. Compared, indeed, with the sculptures in porphyry and the great Calendar Stone of Mexico; the elaborate façades and columned terraces of Uxmal, Zayi, and Kabah; and the colossal statues, basso-relievos and hieroglyphics of Copan and Palenque: the art of the Mound-Builders, which expended its highest efforts on the decoration of a tube, or the sculpture of a pipe-bowl, may appear insignificant enough. But the imagination is apt to be impressed by mere size, and requires to be reminded of the superior excellence of a Greek medal or a Roman gem to all the colossal grandeur of an Egyptian Memnon. The architecture and sculpture of Central America preserve to us the highest intellectual efforts of the New World, and are animated by a historical significance which cannot be overestimated. Nevertheless, examples among the miniature works of art of the Ohio Valley admit of comparison with them in some essential elements of artistic skill. Apart, indeed, from the significance of the hieroglyphics with which the colossal statues of Copan are graven, they might rank with the monstrous creations of Hindu art; whereas some of the objects taken from altars of “Mound City” furnish specimens of imitative design and portrait-sculpture full of character and individuality.

The simplicity, variety, and minute expression in many of the miniature mound-sculptures, their delicacy of execution and imitative skill, render them just objects of interest. But foremost in every trait of value for the elucidation of the history or characteristics of their workers, are the human heads, which, when the accuracy of many of the miniature sculptures of animals is considered, it can scarcely be doubted, perpetuate faithful representations of the ancient people by whom they were executed. Equally well-authenticated portraiture of Umbrian, Pelasgian, or other mythical races of Europe would be invaluable to the ethnologist. It would solve some of the knottiest problems of his science, better than all the obscure disquisitions to which the aboriginal population of Greece and Italy has given rise. American ethnologists, accordingly, have not failed to turn such iconographic evidence to even more account than legitimate induction will sustain, in support of their favourite argument for an indigenous unity of the whole ancient and modern races of the New World.

By means of such artistic relics we can determine the physical characteristics of the Mound-Builders, and of contemporary tribes or nations known to them. We also learn the character of fauna, native and foreign to the region occupied by them, with which they were familiar. I have had an opportunity of carefully inspecting the valuable collection of mound-sculptures in the possession of Dr. E. H. Davis of New York.[^[102]] In some cases, perhaps, their artistic merits have been overrated. Nevertheless the minute accuracy with which many of the objects of natural history have been copied is remarkable; and confirms the reliance to be placed on the ethnical portraiture perpetuated in their representations of the human head.