Chapter I (2)

Colonies of Mound-builders seem to have passed the great natural barrier into North Carolina and left remains in Marion County, while still others penetrated into South Carolina and built on the Wateree River. In March, 1873, Mr. Jas. R. Page examined several mounds in Washington and Issaquena Counties in the State of Mississippi. One mound explored in Washington County on the old bank of the Mississippi River, was a truncated cone eighty feet in diameter by forty feet high. A mound in the neighborhood, only eleven feet high, yielded rich returns for the labors of excavation. A white oak on its summit measured thirty-six inches in diameter. This mound yielded twelve skeletons with their crania. The group was in a sitting posture around a circle, with their faces looking toward its centre. Directly in front of the mouth of each skeleton were placed two or three vessels of pottery, beautifully ornamented with etchings and graceful lines. The object of the vessels, placed in such near proximity to the mouths of the buried remains, can only be conjectured. We regret that no measurements of the crania are given, and what is more, we deplore the loss of most of the crania in the course of their transportation.[47] Mr. W. Marshall Anderson, of Circleville, Ohio, examined Mounds in Issaquena County, Miss., with interesting results; in one mound opened, not far from its outer edge, three skeletons were found buried in a standing position, as though they had acted as the guards of a more distinguished person deposited in the centre. Penetrating the mound still farther by means of a trench, Mr. Anderson reached a large deposit of ashes and burnt earth. Near the centre of the mound and five feet above the level of the earth, upwards of twenty-five unbroken specimens of fine pottery were discovered. At the very centre three individuals had been buried apparently in great state, with all the insignia of their important positions in life. These were ornaments, urns, vases, beads, and arrow-points; while adjoining the heads of each were food and drinking vessels. Not far removed from these, two skeletons were found with bowls placed upon their heads like helmets. Mr. Anderson is the possessor of a very remarkable stone disk obtained for him by Dr. Robinson from a Issaquena mound near Lake Washington, Miss. The disk is nearly eight and a half inches in diameter and three-quarters of an inch thick, of fine-grained sandstone. The device which it bears upon its face is composed of two entwined rattlesnakes. A trifling ornamental border is graven on the reverse side of the disk. When found it was broken in two pieces. Mr. Anderson, in comparing its strange device to the Aztec Calendar Stone, remarks: “Here are the eighteen pipes of the border corresponding to the eighteen months of the year, but the twenty days of the month and the five intercalaries are not to be found. The thirteen hieroglyphical figures, and the four zodiacal signs, which as multiples give the fifty-two years of the Aztec cycle, are also absent on the Mississippi stone.”[48] The serpent-symbol appears to have played its part among the Mound-builders, as well as in Mexico and Central America. The great serpent of Adams County, Ohio, is the most extensive delineation of the all-important symbol on the continent. Out of eighteen engraved circular plates made of the shell of the Pyrula and taken from Brakebill and Lick Creek Mounds in East Tennessee (and now deposited in the Peabody Museum of Archæology) thirteen bear the device of a rattlesnake. In one of the mounds of “Mound City,” Ross County, Ohio, several small tablets representing the rattlesnake were unearthed, while other mounds in the same locality yielded pipes bearing the same representation.[49]

(Prof. Putnam’s Exploration.)]

On the Southern Mississippi, in the area embraced between the termination of the Cumberland Mountains near Florence and Tuscumbia in Alabama and the mouth of Big Black River, this people left numerous works, many of which were of a remarkable character.[50] The whole region bordering on the tributaries of the Tombigbee, the country through which the Wolf River flows and that watered by the Yazoo River and its affluents, was densely populated by the same people who built mounds in the Ohio Valley. Mr. Fontaine describes the mounds of this region and of the Tennessee River Valley as being most frequently of the truncated pyramidal type, and refers to one (seen by him in 1847) seventy feet high, covering an acre of ground. It is remarkable that the entire valley of the great river from Cairo to the mouth of Pointe à la Hache, fifty miles below New Orleans, is thickly studded with mounds.[51] As at Cahokia the Monarch Mound occupied a space equal to six acres, so at Seltzertown, Mississippi, we have another immense mound covering nearly the same area. Its dimensions are: length, about six hundred feet; breadth, four hundred feet at the base; height, forty feet, with a summit nearly four acres in area, reached by means of a graded way. The structure lies with its greatest length nearly due east and west. Upon the platform summit are three conical mounds, one at each end and the third in the centre. The mound at the western extremity of the summit rises to a height of nearly forty feet, while the one at the opposite extreme does not fall far short of the same altitude. This would give a total height of eighty feet above the level of the base. Both of these mounds are truncated. Eight other mounds of minor proportions are observable. The most remarkable feature connected with this mound is a wall of sun-dried bricks, built two feet thick, as its support on the northern side. These were filled with grass rushes and leaves, while some of the bricks of great size used in angular tumuli which mark the corners of the mound, retain the impressions of human hands.[52] The Mound-builders were certainly numerous in the Gulf States east of the Mississippi. On the Etowah River in Alabama a mound seventy-five feet high and twelve hundred feet in diameter at the base, has a graded avenue leading to its flattened summit. It has close affinities to the Mexican and Yucatan mounds.[53] M. F. Stephenson describes a group of ten mounds near Cartersville, Georgia, on the Etowah River, the principal one of which is eighty feet high and one hundred and fifty feet square on the top. A stone idol, gold beads, mica mirrors, translucent quartz beautifully wrought, and many relics of interest were here discovered. He also describes three chambers hewn out of the solid rock at the falls of Little River, near the Alabama line; while at Nacooche the crest of a conical hill was cut off at fifty feet from its base, leaving a platform top with an area of an acre and a half. Two sides are quite precipitous, but the others are protected by a ditch and wall. Two other instances of the stone wall are mentioned. First at Yond Mountain, four thousand feet high of solid granite, and perpendicular on all sides except a small space which is protected by a stone wall of artificial construction. The second instance is quite similar, occurring at Stone Mountain, which reaches a height of 2360 feet.[54] These natural eminences no doubt were utilized for the purposes of worship or observation, just as many natural hills in Mexico were graded and shaped symmetrically to serve similar uses.

Wm. McKinley, Esq., has described and surveyed additional works in Georgia of quite a remarkable character, on Sapelio Island in McIntosh County and on Dry Creek in Sacred Grove, Early County. But the most lofty work of all, the giant of the mounds, is the pyramid of Kolee Mokee in the same county, reaching a height of ninety-five feet and having a circumference at its base of 1128 feet. Its form is that of a parallelogram, 350 feet long and 214 wide. The plane on the summit measures 181 feet in length by 82½ feet in width.[55] In Florida the works of the Mound-builders have been extensively examined by Prof. Jeffries Wyman, to whose labors we shall refer in the next chapter. Dr. A. Mitchell made some interesting explorations in 1848 on Amelia Island, and was rewarded by the recovery of some well-marked mound crania.[56]

Returning to the confluence of the Missouri with the Mississippi, the point at which we left the western boundary of the Mound-builder country in order to treat the characteristics of its central region, we find mounds, as we previously stated, in great numbers in the neighborhood of St. Louis. In the valley of the St. Francis River, mounds that have been explored have yielded many rich relics, artistic water vessels, vases and statuettes. In Green County, Missouri, N. Lat. 37° 20´ and 16° Long, west of Washington City, is a very remarkable truncated conical mound which has only been externally surveyed. This mound is 60 feet high, 350 feet in diameter at the base, and 130 feet in diameter on the top. It is surrounded by a trench (except about twenty feet at the north) about two hundred feet wide and four feet deep. On the north the excavation is seven or eight feet deep.[57] These trenches served a double purpose—that of furnishing material for the construction of the mound, and when completed, of providing an impassable moat filled with water, that neither enemies nor the rabble might approach the sacred mount.[58] In Phillips County, Prof. Cox discovered an ancient fortification near Helena, built like a part of the Seltzertown mound, of sun-dried bricks; stems and leaves of the cane were used instead of straw in making the bricks.[59]

Professor Swallow, in company with a number of scientific gentlemen, opened a large mound in Lewis’ Prairie, west of New Madrid, Missouri (in December, 1856), in which he found a great collection of earthen dishes and vases. The mound was elliptical in form, measuring 900 feet in periphery at the base, 570 feet at the top and twenty feet in height. The remarkable feature of the mound was that it contained a room formed of poles, lathed with split cane and plastered with clay both inside and out, forming a solid mass. “Over this room was built the earthwork of the mound, so that when it was completed the room was in its centre. The earthwork was then coated with the plaster, and over all nature formed a soil. This mud plastering was left rough on the outside of the room, but smooth on the inside, which was painted with red ochre.”[60] Some of the plastering was burned as red and hard as brick, while other parts were only sun-dried. Professor Swallow believes the mounds of the region to be very ancient. On mounds and neighboring embankments a sycamore tree twenty-eight feet in circumference, three feet above the ground, a black-walnut twenty-six feet in circumference, a white ash twelve feet and a chestnut oak eleven feet in circumference were observed. In addition to these evidences of age, the Professor states that six feet of stratified sands and clays have formed around the mounds since they were deserted. (See Eighth _Annual Report of Peabody Museum_, pp. 16 _et seq._ Cambridge, 1875.)

Mr. A. J. Conant, in a very able paper published in the _Transactions of the St. Louis Academy of Sciences_ for April 5, 1876, has more fully described the mound works near New Madrid. On the western bank of the Bayou St. John, partly in a cypress swamp covered with heavy timber and partly on adjacent prairie land, an earthwork encloses an area of about fifty acres. In this enclosure are three large mounds, one of which is pyramidal in form and still has traces of a graded way. An ancient well is discernible near it. A circular mound at the opposite end of the enclosure is estimated by Mr. Conant to have afforded a place of burial for a thousand individuals. The bodies were buried with their heads pointing toward the centre of the mound. A gourd-shaped vase, a small jug or drinking vessel, and an earthen pan or platter was found with each skeleton. The mouths of the vases were fashioned into the form of the head of some bird or the figure of some animal or of a human female. In depressions about three feet deep, within the enclosure, remains of burnt clay ovens were found. Fire-places were disclosed, as well as fragments of earthen vessels capable of holding ten or twelve gallons. The veritable kitchens of the Mound-builders, with their furniture, seem to have been brought to light. In front of the enclosure and projecting out into the bayou, are tongues of land about thirty feet long by ten or fifteen feet in width, and about the same distance apart, “resembling upon a small scale the wharves of a seaport town.” Mr. Conant pronounces them artificial, and that when employed by these builders, the present cypress swamp was the channel of a river. The multitude of mound works which are scattered over the entire south-eastern portion of Missouri indicate that the region “was once inhabited by a population so numerous, that in comparison its present occupants are only as the scattered pioneers of a newly-settled country.”[61]

Central figure, upper line, from Illinois Mound.]

Prof. C. G. Forshey in _Foster’s Pre-Historic Races_, presents most valuable information relative to the mounds in the south-west. His observations convince us that the State of Louisiana and the valleys of the Arkansas and Red Rivers were not only the most thickly populated wing of the Mound-builder domain, but also furnish us with remains presenting affinities with the great works of Mexico so striking that no doubt can longer exist that the same people were the architects of both. He describes works, some of them of immense proportions, on the Mississippi fifty miles above Vicksburg; on Walnut Bayou; the south-west bend of Lake St. Joseph, and at Trinity in the parish of Catahoula, Louisiana. On the east bank of the Little River, a couple of miles above its mouth, where it empties into Lake Ocalohoola, stands a bluff walled with roughly hewn stone. The same writer observed a mound near Natchez twenty-five feet high, standing isolated in a swamp. This mound is one among many in different parts of the lower Mississippi region surmounted by comparatively younger trees than are found on the remains farther north. Works occur in the Atchafalaya basin, in the rear of Baton Rouge, on the uplands of Lake Pontchartrain and on the banks of Bayou Gros Tête. A remarkable group of truncated pyramids, peculiarly Mexican in their style of architecture, exist in Madison Parish, Louisiana, and are figured in Squier and Davis and copied by Foster.[62] It is needless to discuss the fact that the works of the Mound-builders exist in considerable numbers in Texas, extending across the Rio Grande into Mexico, establishing an unmistakable relationship as well as actual union between the truncated pyramids of the Mississippi Valley and the Tocalli of Mexico and the countries further south.[63] There can be no doubt as to the unity of the origin of the works in both countries. There are evidences also that the most recent works of Louisiana and Texas do not compare in antiquity with any found in the Ohio Valley, showing it to be altogether probable that the Mound-builders occupied the Lower Mississippi Valley and Gulf coast for a considerable period after they were driven from the northern and central region by their enemies.[64] Several recent writers, with no more proof than that obsidian from Mexico has been found in the mounds, have confidently expressed the belief that the Mound-builders entered the Mississippi Valley and the Central Region from the South. This was based also on the assumption that no remains were found in the North-west. It, however, is proper to note here the marks of architectural progression observable in the geographical distribution of ancient works. Men all around the world have been mound or pyramid builders. To attempt to demonstrate this well-known fact to an intelligent reader by citing the customs of antiquity and the works of the present great Asiatic nations, would seem little less than pedantry rather than the work of serious investigation. The religious idea in man, whether observed in the darkest heathenism or partially enlightened civilization, has always associated a place of sanctuary with the conditions of elevation and separateness. It matters not whether you apply the rule to the practices of the most obscure antiquity, where a hill or natural eminence was the sanctuary of an idol, the residence of a god, or examine the motives which prompt the erection of the dome of a St. Paul or a St. Peter’s, or coming nearer home, analyze the reasons for the construction of the ordinary church spire, the same inexplicable intuition is found at the bottom of them all. The simple mound so common in the northern and central region of the United States, represents probably the first attempts at the imitation of nature in providing a place of worship. In the absence of hills and natural eminences on great plains like the prairies of the North-west (for instance in such cases as are cited on pages 28 and 29), nothing would be more natural than the construction of an artificial hillock, especially if the elements and nature were the objects of worship. The next step might have been again a copy or an imitation, but instead of choosing a subject from inanimate nature, an advance is made in the artistic scale, and the animal kingdom furnishes not only one but varied models for reproduction. The custom among savage tribes of personifying the deity, of dressing him up in some form, tangible and visible, was especially characteristic of the mythology of the Nahua nations of Mexico. It is not necessary to go to Egypt, or India, or China to find animals of various kinds dedicated to and associated with the national gods, for in the Maya and Nahua mythologies, as well as in the traditions of some of the wild tribes of the Pacific coast, the serpent, the coyote, the beaver and the buzzard play an active part. The erection of religious structures representing animals no doubt sacred to the Mound-builders, was carried on to a remarkable extent in Wisconsin. These strange works probably indicate the second step in their scale of architectural progression. In the Ohio Valley, while the ordinary mound is found in great numbers, and a few instances of animal mounds occur, three new architectural features present themselves in marked prominence, all of which are artistically in advance of those existing in the North and North-west. These are the enclosures, the truncated mounds, and principally the truncated pyramids, all of which are a departure from the strict imitation of nature, and exhibit the gradual growth of the architectural idea and the outcropping of the notion of utility. South of the Ohio Valley the animal mounds disappear altogether and the truncated mounds grow less common, while the truncated pyramid, the highest artistic form, with its complicated system of graded ways and its nice geometrical proportions, becomes the all predominant type of structure. In the Lower Mississippi Valley, in some cases, as we have observed, dried brick were used in the walls and angles of pyramids of the most perfect type. Stone was also employed in a few instances. Here we find the transition to Southern Mexico complete. No break exists in the architectural chain.

The left and central figures from an Alabama Mound.]

Squier and Davis (and Foster as well as most other writers have followed their example) classified the works of the Mound-builders as follows:

{_For Defence._
I. ENCLOSURES {_Sacred._
{_Miscellaneous._

{_Of Sacrifice._
II. MOUNDS {_For Temple-Sites._
{_Of Sepulture._
{_Of Observation._

To this some have added mounds for residence.

It does not fall within the scope of this work to treat of the specific character and uses of the works of the Mound-builders, but rather to note their extent and indications of age with relation to their bearing on the antiquity of man in this country. Some of the arts and manufactures of the Mound-builders are set forth in the illustrations interspersed throughout the chapter.[65] A few of the cuts figure objects found upon the surface. Yet it is not improbable that a due proportion of these objects were of Mound-builder origin.

The domestic arts appear the most advanced of any among this ancient people. Pottery of respectable quality and of varied patterns is abundant among their remains. Coarse cloth woven of vegetable fibre, and in some instances partly made of hair, has been discovered in mounds in several localities. Shell and copper beads for the purposes of ornamentation were made in great numbers. Copper axes of good quality have occasionally been exhumed. Copper and bone needles with well-drilled eyes were made by them. They wove baskets and coarse matting. They carved pipes in stone or moulded them in clay, sometimes in fantastic forms, while again they fashioned them with rare skill into the perfect effigies of animals and birds, or possibly ornamented them with likenesses of their own faces. With the exception of a few observations on the altar and sepulchral mounds, we refrain from a further treatment of the works above classified, as having no particular bearing on the question in hand, and refer the reader to the works of Squier and Davis, and also to that of Dr. Foster, already often quoted. Of the Altar or Sacrificial Mounds, the first-named authors remark: The general characteristics of this class of mounds are: 1. That they occur only within the vicinity of the enclosures or sacred places; 2. That they are stratified; 3. That they contain symmetrical altars of burned clay or stone, on which were deposited various remains which in all cases have been more or less subjected to the action of fire.[66] The same authors present the following section of a mound examined by them at Mound City, near Chillicothe, Ohio, which is a fair sample of the usual stratification observed in altar mounds.[67] The altar which this mound contained was a parallelogram measuring 8 × 10 feet at its base and 4 × 6 feet at its top. It was only eighteen inches in height, and contained a basin with a dip of nine inches. In this basin were found fine ashes, fragments of pottery and shell beads. A reference to the figure shows that the sand-stratum is semicircular, with its extremities resting on the outer sides of the altar. The skeleton shown in the figure designates a point three feet below the apex of the mound where two well-preserved skeletons were found. The strata were disturbed for their burial evidently at a considerable period after the construction of the mound. This is a fair example of the “intrusive burial” practised in the mounds by Red Indians. The same authors found some of these altars rich in relics; one especially in the vicinity of the above-described mound contained nearly two hundred pipes carved in stone. Also a considerable number of pearl and shell beads and copper ornaments covered with silver. It is quite probable that the copper was from their Lake Superior mines, as they alone are known to yield deposits of silver with copper. The same peculiarity was observed with reference to the copper ornaments and implements found in the Marietta works. The pipes secured in this mound were much calcined by heat, and considerable copper had been fused in the basin of the altar. In some of the mounds examined large collections were obtained, and in some instances, articles made of obsidian, which it is believed could be procured nowhere nearer than the Mexican mountains of Cerro Gordo, or the region west of the Rocky Mountains.[68]

The evidences are abundant that some mysterious rites were performed at the altar mounds; cremation only may have been practised, but we fear that even more awful and heart-sickening ceremonies took place upon these altars as well as upon the high temple sites in which human victims may have been offered to appease the elements or the sun or moon by their death agonies. What splendid ceremonial, what mystic rites administered by a national priesthood in the presence of a devout multitude may have accompanied these horrible sacrifices, are beyond even the limits of conjecture. Besides cremation, inhumation was also practised extensively. Multitudes of mounds were devoted either partly or exclusively to such uses. Mr. Tomlinson, the owner of the Grave Creek Mound, who sank a shaft from its original summit to its centre, and intercepted it by a tunnel along the surface of the ground, speaking of the latter excavation, remarks: “At the distance of one hundred and eleven feet we came to a vault, which had been excavated before the mound was commenced, eight by twelve feet and seven in depth. Along each side and across the ends, upright timbers had been placed, which supported timbers thrown across the vault as a ceiling. These timbers were covered with loose unhewn stone, common to the neighborhood. The timbers had rotted and tumbled into the vault. * * * In this vault were two human skeletons, one of which had no ornaments, the other was surrounded by six hundred and fifty ivory (shell) beads, and an ivory (bone) ornament six inches long.” Thirty-five feet above the bottom vault another was found containing a skeleton decorated with copper rings, plates of mica and shell disks. The number of disks cut from the shell known as the _Buscycon perversum_ and collected by the excavators was 2350; of mica 250 specimens, and of the little shell known as _Marginella apicina_, 500; all of which had been pierced and strung as beads. Ten skeletons were subsequently found together upon enlarging the horizontal tunnel. Ashes, charcoal and burnt bones were also discovered in large masses. Though this was the largest of this class of mounds, still the general characteristics of the contents are the same in all of them, and are usually disposed in the same relative position to each other.[69] One of the most interesting explorations of sepulchral mounds was that conducted in the autumn of 1865 by Professor O. C. Marsh, assisted by Mr. Geo. P. Russell, of Salem, Mass., in what is known as the “Taylor Mound,” situated two and a half miles south of Newark, Ohio. The mound was ten feet high and eighty feet in diameter, and was surmounted by a forest of oak trees ranging from two and a half to eight feet in thickness, while the decaying trunks of a former growth were lying upon the ground. The mound was excavated from the apex downward. Five feet from the surface a pipe and a tube of stone unknown in Ohio were found. Seven feet from the top, in a thin white layer of earth, a string of more than one hundred beads of native copper were found around the neck of a child about three years old. The salts of the copper had preserved the cord of vegetable fibre on which they were strung. The beads were about one-fourth of an inch in length and one-third in diameter. They evidently had been hammered out of the metal in its original state, and the workmanship displayed no inferior skill. One foot deeper the remains of two adults, male and female, were found carefully buried in layers of bark, their heads towards the east, and the body of the female resting upon that of the male skeleton. Immediately above these were found a considerable number of charred human bones and the evidences of cremation or human sacrifice in honor to the couple (probably man and wife) below. The Professor even expresses the fear that the wife—who appears to have been about thirty years of age—may have been put to death and buried above the remains of her deceased consort. A foot deeper the party found another layer of charcoal, ashes and charred bones, similar to the above, and immediately beneath it a carefully-buried skeleton, much decomposed, lying in a white layer of earth, and with its head toward the east. A few inches below this skeleton several carelessly-buried skeletons were found near the natural level of the earth. Below the natural surface a cist six feet long, three feet wide and two feet deep was found containing the remains of eight or more skeletons, which seem to have been imperfect when buried. The remains had been thrown into the grave in a careless and perhaps hasty manner. In the grave were found nine lance and arrow-heads of flint. Six small hand-axes, one of them of hematite and the others of compact greenstone or diorite, a small hatchet of hematite, a flint chisel and scraper, fine needles or bodkins made of the metatarsal bones of the common deer, a whistle made from the tooth of a young bear, and spoons cut from the shells of river mussels. A rude vessel of clay was found, but broken, while several bones of animals, all but two of existing species in Ohio at present, were discovered; though it is worthy of remark that the remains of the deer were of a size seldom attained by the species at the present day. All the skulls found in the mound were broken, and all but two so badly decayed that no effort was made to preserve them. These two were of small size showing the vertical occiput, prominent vertex and large inter-parietal diameter. There is abundant evidence that the mound had never been disturbed by Indians.[70]

One of the best evidences which we have of the systematic government and habits of the Mound-builders, together with the comparatively advanced state of the practical arts among them, is found in the ancient copper mines of the Lake Superior Region so extensively operated by them at quite a remote period.[71] These were first discovered by Mr. S. O. Knapp, agent of the Minnesota Mining Company, in 1848. One excavation explored by this gentleman was thirty feet deep, filled with clay and a mass of mouldering vegetable matter. Eighteen feet from the surface he found a mass of copper ten feet long, three feet wide and two feet thick, weighing over six tons. By digging around this great lump of metal, he observed that it was resting on “a cob-work of round logs or skids six or eight inches in diameter, the ends of which showed plainly the strokes of a small axe or cutting tool about two and a half inches in width”. The wood, from its exposure to moisture, had lost all its consistency, and opposed no more resistance to a knife-blade than would ordinary peat. After having raised the mass of copper over five feet along the foot wall of the lode on the timbers by means of wedges, the ancient miners had abandoned the task. The walls of the mine still show the marks of fire; charcoal and stone mauls were taken from this and similar excavations. The largest of these mauls weighed thirty-six pounds and was encircled by a double groove around its centre. Withes were probably wound in these grooves by which two men could wield the maul very effectively. The number of smaller hammers of greenstone and porphyry removed from these works by Mr. Knapp exceeded ten cart-loads. In one of the pits a rude oak ladder was found, made by trimming the branches of a tree at a distance from the trunk to leave a sufficient foothold. Wooden levers, preserved beneath the water, were also of frequent occurrence. A copper maul, shaped by pounding in a cold state, and weighing upwards of twenty pounds, was found in this locality, as well as many well-formed copper implements designed for various purposes. Upon a mound of rubbish near one of the excavations, Messrs. Foster and Whitney saw a pine stump ten feet in circumference—the trunk having been broken fifteen feet from the ground—which must have grown and died after the earth was thrown up. Mr. Knapp mentions a hemlock which he found growing on a heap of rubbish which had 395 rings of annual growth. Fallen and decayed trees of a previous generation were found lying across the pits. In front of the Waterbury mine are blocks of stone weighing two and three tons which had been removed by the ancient miners from the shaft, and when observed by Colonel Whittlesey, they were covered by a forest growth of the full size and kind common to the neighboring region. Under a pile of rubbish the remains of a trough of cedar bark was brought to light and had been used to carry off water baled from the mine by means of wooden bowls, some of which were preserved by water in the mines. Mr. S. W. Hill communicated to Dr. Foster in 1872 the discovery of mining pits in Isle Royal, measuring fifty feet in depth.[72] In the Ontonagon region for thirty miles traces of the ancient miners abound. The idea that the Indians formerly worked these mines was abandoned shortly after their discovery. They possess no tradition of copper mines, nor did their ancestors visited by the Jesuit Fathers in the early part of the seventeenth century obtain any intelligence of mines, though they penetrated this region in 1660. They often mention the occurrence of loose masses of copper found in the shape of boulders, but could learn nothing from the Indians as to their origin. It is quite certain that no traditions were current among them on the subject. “Instead,” says Col. Whittlesey, “of viewing copper as an object of every day use, they regarded it as a sacred Manitou, and carefully preserved pieces of it wrapped up in skin in their lodges for many years; and this custom has been continued to modern times.”[73] Father Allouez, in his _Relation_, has described this custom.[74] Father Dablon, who shortly afterward visited the Lake Superior tribes, has described their superstitions concerning an island where the missionaries first met with copper.[75] That the Mound-builders were these ancient miners, there is abundant evidence. Col. Whittlesey has described a collection of copper implements from Carp River containing pieces of native silver, such as have often been found in the Ohio mounds.[76] We have already referred to this peculiarity of the Lake Superior copper. The use of copper by the Mound-builders was very general all the way from Wisconsin to the Gulf, and the labor involved in a journey of a thousand miles from the Ohio Valley to the copper regions, the toil of the summer’s mining, and the tedious transportation of the metal to their homes upon their backs, and by means of an imperfect system of navigation, indicates either industry and resolution such as no savage Indian ever possessed, or a condition of servitude in which thousands occupied a position of abject slavery.

No permanent abodes were erected by the miners in this region, no mounds were constructed, but the indications all point to a summer’s residence only and a return to the south with the accumulation of their toil when the severities of winter approached. Frederick von Hellwald expresses it as his opinion that the Mexicans obtained all their copper from the Lake Superior mines, and adds that no evidences exist that copper was mined in Mexico or Central America prior to the Spanish Conquest.[77] Humboldt affirms that various metals were mined by the Mexicans, but does not specify copper.[78] Col. Whittlesey and Prof. Andrews estimate that in the ancient Lake Superior mines worked by the Mound-builders, the removed metal would aggregate a length of one hundred and fifty miles in veins of varying thickness. This fact certainly indicates that great supplies were transported southward.

This remarkable people was evidently possessed of the beginnings of science; at least if the Davenport and Cincinnati tablets are genuine, astronomy must have received considerable attention at their hands. In the former tablet we observe a cycle divided into twelve months (which, however, is so modern and coincides so strictly with our division as to excite suspicion of fraud), while in the latter we have the number 368 as the sum of the products of the longer and shorter lines, suggestive of an approximation to the number of days in a year. Other supposed astronomical instruments have been discovered in the mounds of Ohio, and several of these, _antique tubes, telescope devices_, were discovered in the course of excavations made in 1842 in the most easterly of the Elizabethtown group, West Virginia. Mr. Schoolcraft makes the following statement concerning them: “Several tubes of stone were disclosed, the precise object of which has been the subject of various opinions. The longest measured twelve inches, the shortest eight. Three of them were carved out of steatite, being skillfully cut and polished. The diameter of the tube externally was one inch and four-tenths; the bore eight-tenths of an inch. By placing the eye at the diminished end, the extraneous light is shut from the pupil, and distant objects are more clearly discerned.”[79] A silver figure found in Peru represents a man in the act of studying the heavens through one of these tubes, and Captain Dupaix saw a stone in Mexico bearing the figure of a man sculptured on its side in the act of using a similar tube.[80]

With reference to the civilization of the Mound-builders, however much writers may differ, we think the following conclusions may be safely accepted: That they came into the country in comparatively small numbers at first (if they were not Autochthones, and there is no substantial proof that the Mound-builders were such), and during their residence in the territory occupied by the United States they became extremely populous. Their settlements were widespread, as the extent of their remains indicate. The magnitude of their works, some of which approximate the proportions of Egyptian pyramids, testify to the architectural talent of the people and the fact that they had developed a system of government which controlled the labor of multitudes, whether of subjects or slaves. They were an agricultural people, as the extensive ancient garden-beds found in Wisconsin and Missouri indicate. Their manufactures afford proof that they had attained a respectable degree of advancement, and show that they understood the advantages of the division of labor.[81] Their domestic utensils, the cloth of which they made their clothing, and the artistic vessels met with everywhere in the mounds, point to the development of home culture and domestic industry. There is no reason for believing that the people who wrought stone and clay into perfect effigies of animals have not left us sculptures of their own faces in the images exhumed from the mounds.

They mined copper, which they wrought into implements of war, into ornaments and articles for domestic use. They quarried mica for mirrors and other purposes.[82] They furthermore worked flint and salt mines. They probably possessed some astronomical knowledge, though to what extent is unknown.

Their trade, as Dr. Rau has shown, was widespread, extending probably from Lake Superior to the Gulf, and possibly to Mexico.[83] They constructed canals by which lake systems were united, a fact which Mr. Conant has recently shown to be well established in Missouri.[84] Their defences were numerous and constructed with reference to strategic principles, while their system of signals placed on lofty summits, visible from their settlements and communicating with the great watercourses at immense distances, rival the signal systems in use at the beginning of the present century. Their religion seems to have been attended with the same ceremonies in all parts of their domain. That its rites were celebrated with great demonstrations is certain. The sun and moon probably were the all-important deities, to whom sacrifices (possibly human) were offered. We have already alluded to the development in architecture and art which marked the possible transition of this people from north to south. Here we see but the rude beginnings of a civilization which no doubt subsequently unfolded in its fuller glory in the valley of Anahuac, and spreading southward engrafted a new life upon the wreck of Xibalba. Though there is no evidence that the Mound-builders were indigenous, we must admit that their civilization was purely such—the natural product of climate and the conditions surrounding them.[85]

(From photos furnished by Prof. Butler.)]