At the time when Haven was first intimating (1856) that this view might yet become accepted, it was doubtless held to be best established that those who built the mounds were quite another race from those who lived among them when Europeans first knew the country. The fact that the Indians had no tradition of their origin was held to be almost conclusive, though it is alleged that the southern Indians in later times retained no recollections of the expedition of De Soto, and Dr. Brinton thinks that it is common for Indian traditions to die out.[1730] It is not till recent years that any considerable number of moundbuilder skulls have been known, and from the scant data which the early craniologists had, their opinion seems to have coincided with those in favor of a vanished race.[1731] It was a favorite theory, not yet wholly departed, that they were in some way connected with the more southern peoples, the Pueblo Indians, the Aztecs, or the Peruvians; either that they came from them, or migrated south and became one with them.[1732] The bolder theory, that we see their descendants in the red Indians, is perhaps gaining ground, and it has had the support of the Bureau of Ethnology and some able expounders.[1733]
THE GREAT SERPENT MOUND.
This follows a survey given in Squier’s Serpent Symbol (N. Y., 1851), p. 137. It is criticised by Putnam in Peabody Museum Reports, xviii. 348, and Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc., Oct., 1883. Putnam has recently purchased over sixty acres about the effigy, which is to be held by the trustees of the Peabody Museum as a park (Repts., xxi. 14); and his recent explorations show that the projections in the side of the head (shaded dark in the cut) are not a part of the construction. He also finds two distinct periods of occupation in this region, to the oldest of which he attributes this work (Peab. Mus. Rept. 1888). W. H. Holmes made a survey in 1886 (Amer. Antiquarian, May, 1887, ix. 141; Science, viii. 624, Dec. 31, 1886). Cf. J. P. MacLean, in Amer. Antiquarian, vii. 44, and his Moundbuilders, p. 56; Baldwin’s Anc. America, 29. T. H. Lewis describes a snake mound in Minnesota (Science, ix. 393). On the serpent symbol see S. D. Peet, in Amer. Antiquarian, viii. 197; ix. 13, where he manifests a somewhat omnivorous appetite.
Of the opposing theory of a disappeared race, Capt. Heart in reply to Barton (Amer. Philolog. Asso. Proc. iii.) gave, as Thomas thinks, “the earliest clear and distinct expression,” but Squier and Davis may be considered as first giving it definite meaning; and though Squier does not seem to have actually revoked this judgment as respects the mounds in the Mississippi valley, he finally reached the conclusion that those in New York were really the work of the Iroquois.[1734] This ancient-race theory, sometimes amounting to a belief in their autochthonous origin, has impressed the public through some of the best known summaries of American antiquities, like those of Baldwin, Wilson, and Short,[1735] and has been adopted by men of such reputation as Lyell.[1736] The position taken by Professor F. W. Putnam, the curator of the Peabody Museum of Archæology at Cambridge, is much like that taken earlier by Warden in his Recherches, that both views are, within their own limitations, correct, and, as Putnam expresses it, “that many Indian tribes built mounds and earthworks is beyond doubt; but that all the mounds and earthworks of North America are by these same tribes, or their immediate ancestors, is not thereby proved.”[1737] Thomas (Fifth Report, Bureau Ethnol.) holds this statement to be too vague. It is certainly shown in the whole history of archæological study that uncompromising demarcations have sooner or later to be abandoned.
Morgan finds it difficult to dissociate the mounds with his favorite theory of communal life.[1738] There is no readier way of marking the development of opinion on this question than to follow the series of the Annual Reports of the Smithsonian Institution, as hardly a year has passed since 1861 but these Reports have had in them contributions on the subject.[1739] Among periodicals, the more constant attention to the mounds is conspicuous in the American Antiquarian.[1740]
The basis for estimating the age of the mounds is threefold. In the first place, there are very few found on the last of the river terraces to be reclaimed from the stream. In the second place, the decay of the skeletons found in them can be taken as of some indication, if due regard be had to the kind of earth in which they are buried. Third, the age of trees upon them has been accepted as carrying them back a certain period, at least, though this may widely vary, if you assume their growth to be subsequent to the abandonment of the mounds, or if, as Brinton holds,[1741] the trees were planted immediately upon the building. The dependence upon counting the rings is by no means a settled opinion as to all climes; but in the temperate zone the best authorities place dependence upon it. Unfortunately it cannot carry us back much over 600 years.[1742]
The early attempts to disclose the ethnological relations of the moundbuilders on cranial evidence were embarrassed by the fewness of the skulls then known. Morton (Crania Americana) called the four examined by him identical with those of the red Indian.[1743] At present, considerable numbers are available; but still Wilson (Prehistoric Man, ii. 128) holds that “we lack sufficient data,” and in the consideration of them sufficient care has not always been taken to distinguish intrusive burials of a later date.[1744]