INDIAN MOUNDS. The old Mexican villages, it is said, were built of unbaked bricks, fourteen inches square, and covered with limbs of trees and turf, which, when they mouldered away, formed a mound, similar in shape to those which meet the traveller’s eye from the Red river of Hudson’s bay to the state of Missouri, and probably to the gulf of Mexico. The number of these barrows has, however, been greatly exaggerated. We have seen it stated, on grave authority, that for a length of five hundred miles, and a breadth of from eighty to two hundred, the mounds are seldom an acre apart, and on this enormous blunder was founded a conclusion that the population was once immense. We, who speak from knowledge, affirm that, judging from such data, the former population was not so great as the present. We have seen mounds on the tributaries of Hudson’s bay, and on the waters of the Mississippi, and their numbers warrant no such speculations. They are common enough, indeed, but by no means so common, or of such magnitude, as to make it certain that the ancestors of the present race of aborigines were very numerous. We draw this inference from several facts.
Travelling some years ago near the St. Peter’s river, we saw, at a distance of about a mile, an erection which looked like one of the conical tents of the Indians. A distinguished individual had lately died, and our guide informed us that the object above mentioned was an earthen lodge which his relatives had raised over him. Being pressed for time, we did not approach it nigher. Supposing it to have been, which we see no reason to doubt, what the guide stated, it must, when the top crumbled down, have assumed the shape of a mound.
The Indians of those regions do, to this day, bury at least half of their dead. They respect the dead highly, and to protect their remains from wolves and dogs, erect over them an edifice of stakes, which, as they possess axes, they can easily cut. Now is it not probable, that before they had the means to cut stakes without excessive toil, they raised a mound of earth in its stead? What corroborates this supposition is, that many, and indeed the greater number, of the mounds are not larger than would be required for such purpose. That they were ever intended for dwellings is out of the question; for we are to learn that any traces of bricks, timbers, or masonry, have ever been found in any of them. We have already said that the fragments of pottery found in them are precisely similar to the earthen pots still in use among the modern Assinneboins. Again, fragments of bone are found in most of them; but could bones have remained any great length of time in damp earth undecayed? We think not—at least, we have known instances where the human frame has been utterly resolved into its native elements within the lapse of a century. But someof the mounds, and especially those near St. Louis, are so large as to be esteemed beyond the powers and industry of the present race of Indians. Before we adopt this conclusion, we should remember that, as late as the discovery of the Mississippi, several tribes kept the bones of their friends for years, and then buried them together, a practice, the remains of which are still distinctly visible among the Dahcotahs. On such occasions, a large mound must have been raised, by the united efforts of a tribe. If we suppose that successive layers were from time to time deposited on the national burial heap, which is, surely, no extravagant theory, the objection that the red men had neither power, inclination, nor motive to raise such tumuli, vanishes.
‘On the banks of White river,’ says a writer in Silliman’s Journal, ‘where the earth had caved in, I found part of an earthen coffin, in which the neck bones and the skull were yet remaining; and on the top of the neck bone, as I dug to see what bone could be inserted thus in part of an earthen box, I found a parcel of pieces of bones cut round, and remaining on the neck in the exact position in which they had been used as a necklace. They were pierced, but the string had entirely disappeared; they were the one eighth of an inch thick, and three fifths in diameter; and the bones of which they were made were much better preserved than those of the skeleton.This, I was confident, did not belong to the modern tribes of Indians which inhabit some parts of that country.[85] I found, among the clay which rolled down from the same mound, several pieces of lead ore, (common galena,) which had been carried there. It is not uncommon to find this ore amongst human bones, throughout the whole country; probably they used trinkets made of lead, and this was a provision for them to dress in the other world.’
On the plantation of Mr. John Kain, of Knox county, near the north bank of Holston river, five miles above its junction with the French Broad, is a curious collection of mounds of earth, evidently the work of art, but of an almost antediluvian antiquity, if we may form any conjecture of their age from that of the forest which grows around and upon them. They are about half a dozen in number, and arise on about half an acre of level ground, without any seeming regularity. They are pyramidal in their shape, or rather sections of pyramids, whose bases are from ten to thirty paces in diameter. The largest one in this group rises about ten feet above the level ground, and is remarkably regular in its figure. A perpendicular section of this mound was made about a year since, but no important discovery was made. It was found to consist of the surface thrown up, and contained a good deal of ashes and charcoal.
This group of mounds is surrounded by a ditch, which can be distinctly traced on three sides, and inclosing, besides the mounds, several acres of ground. It is, like the mounds, covered with trees, which grow in it and about it. At every angle of this ditch, it sweeps out into a semicircle, and it appears in many respects well calculated for defence.
There are many other mounds of the same form in Tennessee. At thejunction of the French Broad with the Holston, there is one in which human bones are said to have been found. Farther up French Broad, near Newport, is a very large mound. It reposes on a very level and extensive plain, and is itself the largest I ever saw. It is thirty feet high, and its base covers half an acre of ground. As it ascends from its base, there is a slight inclination from a perpendicular on all sides, and the upper surface is as level as the rest is regular. From the great size of this mound, its commanding situation, and the mystery which veils its history, it is a most interesting spot of ground. There are many other mounds of this description in the state of Tennessee.
A mound of large dimensions is situated in the interior of the Cherokee nation, on the north side of the Etowee, vulgarly called the Hightower river, one of the branches of the Coosa. It stands upon a strip of alluvial land, called River Bottom. It is described by the Rev. Elias Cornelius, who visited it in company with eight Indian chiefs. The first object which excited attention was an excavation, about twenty feet wide, and in some parts ten feet deep. Its course is nearly that of a semicircle; the extremities extending towards the river, which forms a small elbow. ‘I had not time,’ says this writer, ‘to examine it minutely. An Indian said it extended each way to the river, and had several unexcavated parts, which served for passages to the area which it incloses. To my surprise, I found no embankment on either side of it. But I did not long doubt to what place the earth had been removed; for I had scarcely proceeded two hundred yards, when, through the thick forest trees, a stupendous pile met the eye, whose dimensions were in full proportion to the intrenchment. I had at the time no means of taking an accurate admeasurement. To supply my deficiency, I cut a long vine, which was preserved until I had an opportunity of ascertaining its exact length. In this manner I found the distance from the margin of the summit to the base to be one hundred and eleven feet; and judging from the degree of its declivity, the perpendicular height cannot be less than seventy-five feet. The circumference of the base, including the feet of three parapets, measured one thousand, one hundred and fourteen feet. One of these parapets extends from the base to the summit, and can be ascended, though with difficulty, on horseback. The other two, after rising thirty or forty feet, terminate in a kind of triangular platform. Its top is level, and, at the time I visited it, was so completely covered with weeds, bushes, and trees of a most luxuriant growth, that I could not examine it as well as I wished. Its diameter, I judged, must be one hundred and fifty feet. On its sides and summit are many large trees, of the same description and of equal dimensions with those around it. One beech tree, near the top, measured ten feet and nine inches in circumference. The earth on one side of the tree was three and a half feet lower than on the opposite side. This fact will give a good idea of the mound’s declivity. An oak, which was lying down on one of the parapets, measured at the distance of six feet from the but, without the bark, twelve feet four inches in circumference. At a short distance to the south-east is another mound, in ascending which I took thirty steps. Its top is encircled by a breastwork three feet high, intersected through the middle with another elevation of a similar kind. A little further is another mound, which I had not time to examine.
‘On these great works of art, the Indians gazed with as much curiosityas any white man. I inquired of the oldest chief if the natives had any tradition respecting them, to which he answered in the negative. I then requested each to say what he supposed was their origin. Neither could tell; though all agreed in saying, “they were never put up by our people.” It seems probable they were erected by another race, who once inhabited the country. That such a race existed, is now generally admitted. Who they were, and what were the causes of their degeneracy, or of their extermination, no circumstances have yet explained. But this is no reason why we should not, as in a hundred other instances, infer the existence of the cause from its effects, without any previous knowledge of its history.
‘In regard to the objects which these mounds were designed to answer, it is obvious they were not always the same. Some were intended as receptacles for the dead. These are small, and are distinguished by containing human bones. Some may have been designed as sites for public buildings, whether of a civil or religious kind; and others, no doubt, were constructed for the purposes of war. Of this last description is the Etowee mound. In proof of its suitableness for such a purpose, I need only mention that the Cherokees, in their late war with the Creeks, secured its summit by pickets, and occupied it as a place of protection for hundreds of their women and children. Gladly would I have spent a day in examining it more minutely; but my companions, unable to appreciate my motives, grew impatient, and I was obliged to withdraw, and leave a more perfect observation and description to some one else.’