[1741] Hist. Mag., Feb., 1866.
[1742] Cf. Congrès des Amér., 1877, i. 316; C. Thomas in Amer. Antiq., vii. 66; Warden’s Recherches, ch. 4; Baldwin’s Anc. America, ch. 2.
[1743] Cf. Short, p. 158.
[1744] Force, To what Race, etc., p. 63.
[1745] Cf. Henry Gillman’s “Ancient Men of the Great Lakes” in Amer. Assoc. Adv. Sci. (Detroit, 1875), pp. 297, 317; Boston Nat. Hist. Soc. Proc., iv. 331; Smithsonian Rept., 1867, p. 412; C. C. Jones’s Antiq. Southern Indians; Peabody Mus. Repts., iv., vi., xi.; Jos. Jones’s Aborig. Remains of Tennessee; Jeffries Wyman in Am. Journal of Arts, etc., cvii. p. i.; W. J. McGee in Ibid. cxvi. 458; and Dr. S. F. Landrey on “A moundbuilder’s brain” in Pop. Science News (Boston, Oct., 1886, p. 138).
[1746] Cf. Holmes’s “Objects from the Mounds” in Powell’s Bur. of Ethnol. Repts., iii.; C. C. Baldwin’s “Relics of the Moundbuilders” in West. Reserve Hist. Soc. Tract, no. 23 (1874); Foster on their stone and copper implements in Chicago Acad. Science, i. (1869); objects from the Ohio mounds in Stevens’s Flint Chips, 418; images from them in Science, April 11, 1884, p. 437. In the mounds of the Little Miami Valley, native gold and meteoric iron have been found for the first time (Peab. Mus. Rept., xvi. 170).
[1747] See, on such impositions in general, MacLean’s Moundbuilders, ch. 9; C. C. Abbott in Pop. Sci. Monthly, July, 1885, p. 308; Wilson’s Prehist. Man, ii. ch. 19; Putnam in Peab. Mus. Repts., xvi. 184; Fourth Rept. Bur. Ethnol. 247.
The best known of the disputed relics are the following: The largest mound in the Ohio Valley is that of the Grave Creek, twelve miles below Wheeling, which was earliest described by its owner, A. B. Tomlinson, in 1838. It is seventy feet high and one thousand feet in circumference. (Cf. Squier and Davis, Foster, MacLean, Olden Time, i. 232; and account by P. P. Cherry—Wadsworth, 1877.) About 1838 a shaft was sunk by Tomlinson into it, and a rotunda constructed in its centre out of an original cavity, as a showroom for relics; and here, as taken from the mound, appeared two years later what is known as the Grave Creek stone, bearing an inscription of inscrutable characters. The supposed relic soon attracted attention. H. R. Schoolcraft pronounced its twenty-two characters such “as were used by the Pelasgi,” in his Observations respecting the Grave creek mound, in Western Virginia; the antique inscription discovered in its excavation; and the connected evidence of the occupancy of the Mississippi valley during the mound period, and prior to the discovery of America by Columbus, which appeared in the Amer. Ethnological Soc. Trans., i. 367 (N. Y., 1845). Cf. his Indian Tribes, iv. 118, where he thinks it may be an “intrusive antiquity.” The French savant Jomard published a Note sur une pierre gravée (Paris, 1845, 1859), in which he thought it Libyan. Lévy-Bing calls it Hebrew in Congrès des Amér. (Nancy, i. 215). Other notices are by Moïse Schwab in Revue Archéologique, Feb., 1857; José Perez in Arch. de la Soc. Amér. de France (1865), ii. 173; and in America in the Amer. Pioneer, ii. 197; Haven’s Archæol. U. S., 133, and Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc., April 29, 1863, pp. 13, 32; Amer. Antiquarian, i. 139; Bancroft’s Nat. Races, v. 75.
Squier promptly questioned its authenticity (Amer. Ethnol. Soc. Trans., ii.; Aborig. Mts., 168). Wilson laughed at it (Prehistoric Man, ii. 100). Col. Whittlesey has done more than any one to show its fraudulent character, and to show how the cuts of it which have been made vary (Western Reserve, Hist. Soc. Tracts), nos. 9 (1872), 33 (1876), 42 (1878), and 44 (1879.) Cf. on this side Short, p. 419; and Fourth Rept. Bur. Ethnol., 250. Its authenticity is, however, maintained by MacLean (Moundbuilders, Cinn., 1879), who summarizes the arguments pro and con.
What is known as the Cincinnati tablet was found on the site of that city in 1841 (Amer. Pioneer, ii. 195). Squier accepted it as genuine, and thought it might be a printing-stone for decorating hides (Amer. Ethnol. Soc. Trans., ii.; Aborig. Mts. (1847), p. 70). Whittlesey at first doubted it (West. Res. Hist. Tracts, no. 9), but was later convinced of its genuineness by Robert Clarke’s Prehistoric Remains found on the site of Cincinnati (privately printed, Cinn., 1876).