Cyrus Thomas

“ I have been and am still disposed to connect the mound-builders of the Kanawha valley with those of western North Carolina, but our explorations in the two sections have convinced me of their close relation to the people whose mysterious monuments dot the hills and valleys of Ohio. That they were related in some way to the mound-builders of North Carolina and East Tennessee is more than probable, but the key to unlock this mystery, if it exists anywhere, is most likely to be found in the history, traditions, and works of the Cherokees, and the traditions relating to the Tallegwi. ”

“ Although we can find numerous figures of winged individuals in Mexican designs (they are unknown in Central American) , they always carry with them the idea that the individual is partly or completely clothed in the skin of the bird. This is partially carried out in our copper plate, as we see by the bird-bill over the head, the eye being that of the bird and not of the man. But when we come to the wings we at once see that the artist had in mind the angel figure, with wings arising from the back of the shoulders, an idea wholly foreign to Mexican art. ”

“ If it can be shown that some of the mounds and other works of all the different types and classes found in the Mississippi Valley and Gulf States were built by Indians, or even that they were built by people in the same stage of culture and art and having the same customs and habits as the Indians of this region in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, we shall be justified in concluding that the rest are the work of the same race and of the same tribes, or those, closely allied in habits, customs, art, and culture. ”

“ There is generally only one festival in each nation. All the bodies are placed in the same grave. I say generally, for this year when the fête des Morts took place the kettle-boiling was divided and five villages at this point where we are stationed made a separate band and placed their dead in a separate grave. He who had been captain of the preceding feast, and who is like the chief at this point, made the excuse that his kettle and his feast had been spoiled and that he was obliged to make another. ”

“ That here and there a single mound-building tribe may have become extinct or absorbed into other tribes in pre-Columbian times, as has been the fate of some since the discovery of the continent, does not alter the case, unless it be claimed that such tribes belonged to different "American stocks" and had reached a higher degree of culture than those found in this part of the continent at the time of the arrival of the Europeans.
No one believes that we will ever be able to ascertain the history of the construction of each mound and earthwork ”

“ The amount of earth adhering to the roots of a tree when prostrated by the wind is, under favorable circumstances, very considerable, and upon their decay forms an oblong mound of greater or less magnitude, and a slight depression is left where the tree stood. These little hillocks are often by the inexperienced mistaken for Indian graves. From the paucity of these little "tree-mounds" we infer that no very great antiquity can be assigned to the dense forests of Wisconsin ”

“ The different periods to which the various mounds and burial places belong can only be made out by such a series of explorations as the museum is now conducting in the Little Miami Valley, and when they are completed we shall be better able to answer the question, "Who were the mound-builders?" than we are now. That more than one of the several American stocks or nations or groups of tribes built mounds seems to me to be established. ”

“ Here was found a layer of rough stones covering a mass of charcoal and ashes with bones intermixed. In fact the indications leave the impression that one or more persons (or their bones) had been burned in a fire on the natural surface of the earth near the center of the mound, the coals and brands of which were then covered with rough stones thrown in, without any system, to the depth of 3 feet, over a space 10 or 12 feet in diameter, and then covered with earth. Only fragments of charred human bones, pieces of rude pottery, and stone chips were found commingled with the charcoal and ashes. ”

“ All the people follow in silence to the cemetery.
There is in the cemetery a tomb made of bark and raised on four stakes of from 8 to 10 feet in height. While the body is placed in this, and the bark is trimmed, the captain makes known the presents that have been given by the friends. In this country, as well as in others, the most agreeable consolations for the loss of relations are always accompanied by presents, which consist of kettles, hatchets, beaver skins, and necklaces of shell beads. ”

“ What is still more important, the modes of burial and vestiges of art found with the dead furnish us undoubted evidences of tribal distinctions among the authors of these works, and, together with the differences in external form, enable us to determine in a general way the respective areas occupied by the different tribes or peoples during the mound-building age. ”

“ Passing to the northeastern portion of Missouri, which, as heretofore stated, we include in the North Mississippi or Illinois district, we find a material change in the character of the burial mounds, so marked, in fact, that it is very doubtful whether they should be embraced in the district named. Although differing in minor particulars, the custom of inclosing the remains of the dead in some kind of a receptacle of stone, over which was heaped the earth forming the mound, appears to have prevailed very generally. ”

“ Nearly all the bones had been cast in when we arrived, for it was done almost in a moment, each one being in haste for fear that there was not room for all these skeletons; nevertheless we saw enough of it to judge of the rest. There were five or six men in the grave, with poles, to arrange the bones. It was filled up within 2 feet of the top with bones, after which they turned over upon them the robes that bordered the grave all around, and covered the whole with mats and bark. The pit was then filled up with sand, rods, and stakes of wood which were thrown in promiscuously. ”

“ From my knowledge of anatomy, the sutures of the skull would indicate the subject to have been twenty-five or twenty-eight years of age. The top of the skull was about 12 inches below the mark of the plow.
I made a further excavation in the west part of this mound and found another skeleton similar to the first, in a sitting posture, facing the last. A stone was on the right, on which the right hand had been resting, and on this was a tomahawk which had been about 7 inches in length, broken into two pieces, and much better finished than the first. ”

“ The larger and more imposing works, as the pyramidal mounds, the enclosures, canals, etc., furnish indications of their character, condition, strength, and culture-status as a people or tribe, but the burial mounds and their contents, besides the evidences they furnish in regard to the religious belief and art of the builders, tell us something of individual traits, something of their social life, their tastes, their personal regard for each other, and even something of the diseases to which they were subject. ”

“ It is by considerations of this nature that we are led to the conclusion that the mound-builders of Wisconsin were none others than the ancestors of the present tribes of Indians.
There is some evidence of a greater prevalence than at present of prairie or cultivated land in this State at no very remote age. The largest trees are probably not more than five hundred years old, and large tracts of land are now covered with forests of young trees where there are no traces of an antecedent growth. ”

“ They assert that "these mounds invariably cover a single skeleton (in very rare instances more than one, as in the case of the Grave Creek mound) , which, at the time of its interment, was enveloped in bark or coarse matting or enclosed in a rude sarcophagus of timber, the traces, in some instances the very casts, of which remain. Occasionally the chamber of the dead is built of stone rudely laid up, without cement of any kind." ”

“ If they have relatives buried in any part of the country whatever they spare no trouble to go and bring them. They take them from the cemeteries, carry them on their own shoulders, and cover them with the finest robes they have in their possession. In each village a good day is chosen, and they repair to the cemetery, where those called Aiheonde, who have had the care of the sepulcher, take the bodies from the tomb in the presence of the relatives, who renew their tears and repeat the mourning of the day of the funeral. ”

“ Having reached this conclusion it is impossible for us to halt here; we are compelled to take one step farther in the same direction and ascribe the singular structures known as "effigy mounds" to the same people. The two classes of work are too intimately connected to admit of the supposition that the effigy mounds were built by one race or people, and the conical tumuli by another. We might as well assume that the enclosures of Ohio were the work of one people, but the mounds accompanying them of another. ”

“ On this dirt a fire was built, but by some misplacement of the dirt the fire reached the timbers below, and at such points as the air could penetrate there was an active combustion, but at others, where the dirt still remained, there was only a smothered fire, like that in a charcoal pit. It is difficult to explain the existence of the charred timbers in any other way. There must have been other fires than that immediately around and above the body, and many of them, because on one side of the mound the clay is burned even to the top of the mound. ”

“ Lapham at Waukesha, Wisconsin, before referred to. In that the remains of a single individual were discovered, but in this it would seem that the skeletons of an entire family, gathered from their temporary resting places, had been carefully buried side by side, a silent testimonial to parental love and affection of friends among the mound-builders.
No. 1, 6 feet high and 45 feet in diameter, was found to be an ossuary. Beneath the top layer was an arched stratum of clay and ashes mixed, so firm and hard as to retain its form unsupported over a space of several feet. ”

“ The fact that the effigy mounds were not used as places of sepulture, and that no cemeteries save the burial mounds are found in connection with them, is almost conclusive proof that the two, as a rule, must be attributed to the same people, that they belong to one system. ”

“ Lapham is fully justified in asserting that the evidence connects the mound-builders with the modern Indians. The stratified mounds in which the hard clay or mortar covering over the remains is found, and which we shall [Pg 22] again meet with in the adjoining district, may be the work of different tribes from those which constructed the small unstratified tumuli, but the distinctions between the two classes are not such as to justify the belief that they are to be attributed to a different race or to a people occupying a higher or widely different culture-status. ”

“ They usually inter the dead on the third day; in the morning the captain gives an order that kettles shall be boiled for the deceased throughout the village. No one spares his best efforts. They do this, in my opinion, for three reasons: First, to console each other, for they exchange dishes among themselves, and scarcely any one eats out of the kettle that he has prepared; secondly, on account of the arrival of those of other villages, who often come in large numbers, lastly and principally, to gratify the soul of the deceased, who, they think, takes pleasure in eating his share. ”

“ Although additional data will hereafter be obtained and many new and important facts be brought to light, yet, as I believe, sufficient evidence has been collected (though much of it remains unpublished) to indicate what will be the final result so far as this general question is concerned.
We see that already the theory that these remains scattered over the face of our country from Dakota to Florida and from New York to Louisiana were the work of one people, one great nation, is fast breaking down before the evidence that is being produced. ”