Ephraim George Squier

“ To Copan we may safely assign an antiquity higher than to any of the other monuments of Central America with which we are acquainted, except those rude works of earth and uncut stone which also exist there, and which seem to have been the early types after which, as civilization and the arts advanced, the more imposing monuments of which we have spoken were modelled. ”

“ Commencing with our own country, we find in the Mississippi valley a succession of earthworks, manifestly defensive in character, extending from the lakes southward to the gulf. They generally crown the summits of steep hills, and consist of an embankment and exterior ditch, of varying dimensions, with approaches often artfully covered. ”

“ Cortes in Mexico, Grijalva and Montejo in Yucatan, Alvarado in Guatemala, and Pizarro and his captains in Peru, all found vast and imposing structures, the work of the actual inhabitants, the ruins of which are almost universally confounded with those of more ancient monuments, the earlier works of the same hands or of unknown or extinct peoples. ”

“ There is another class of monuments also antedating the incas, the chulpas or burial towers, presumably of the ancient Aymaras. Some of these are round, others square, of varying proportions, from 15 to 40 feet high; sometimes constructed of elaborately cut stones, in other cases of high stones stuccoed over, and all containing inner chambers in which the dead were deposited, generally in niches in the walls, or in cists beneath the foundations. The remains of inca art are numerous and imposing. A considerable portion of the gorgeous temple of the sun in Cuzco is still extant ”

“ In the centre of this grand area arose the great temple, an immense pyramidal structure of five stages, faced with stone, 300 feet square at the base and 120 feet high, truncated, with a level summit, upon which were situated two towers, the shrines of the divinities to whom it was consecrated. ”

“ It is certain that Copan was a ruin, concerning which only the vaguest traditions existed, at the period of the Spanish conquest.—In New Granada, among many minor relics of antiquity, such as figures of divinities and objects worked in gold and stone, are found a few considerable monuments, consisting of structures which seem to have been supported by columns of large size and just proportions. In Peru we find a very large number of aboriginal monuments, consisting not alone of ruined temples, but of great works of public utility—aqueducts, bridges, and paved roads hundreds of miles in length. ”

“ The great temple of Mexico, which is described by all the early writers as nearly identical in form and structure with all the temples of Anahuac, consisted of an immense square area, "surrounded by a wall of stone and lime eight feet thick, with battlements ornamented with many stone figures in the form of serpents." The extent of this enclosure, which occupied the centre of the ancient city, may be inferred from the assertion of Cortes that it might contain a town of 500 houses. ”

“ The pyramid of Cholula also has four stages, and when measured by Humboldt was 160 feet high by 1,400 feet square at the base, covering an area of 45 acres.—The temples of Central America, of which so many ruins still exist, although possessing a general correspondence with those of Mexico, had nevertheless many features peculiar to themselves. The artificial terraces or pyramidal elevations seem to have been usually less in size, but crowned with more extensive buildings, upon which aboriginal art exhausted its utmost capabilities. ”

“ Throughout they sustain many and obvious resemblances, consisting of elevated platforms or truncated pyramids, ascended directly by broad flights of steps, or circuitously by winding paths; they scarcely differ except in the materials of which they are constructed, or the greater labor and skill displayed upon them. The builders of the temple mounds of the Mississippi valley seem to have been governed by the same principles which controlled the architects of the majestic teocallis of Mexico; their ruder structures being only the evidences of their ruder or earlier state. ”

“ Immense huacas or pyramidal structures, some of them half a mile in circuit; vast areas shut in by massive walls, each containing its water tank, its shops, municipal edifices, and the dwellings of its inhabitants, and each a branch of a larger organization; prisons, furnaces for smelting metals, and almost every concomitant of civilization, existed in the ancient Chimu capital. One of the great huacas, or pyramidal edifices, called "the temple of the sun," is 812 feet long by 470 wide at the base, and about 150 feet high. ”

“ With the remains of the dead in the sepulchral mounds, as also within those which are believed to have been connected with the religion of their builders, many relics of art have been discovered, displaying greater skill than was known to exist among the tribes found in occupation of the country at the time of the discovery. ”

“ Articles of comparatively recent date, some of them of undoubted European origin, have also been found among the later and secondary deposits in the mounds. Forged inscriptions, stones bearing mysterious characters, "Erse, ancient Greek, Phœnician, Celtiberic, and Runic," as evidences of every possible and impossible theory of American origin, have each found people credulous enough to accept and defend their authenticity, even after the authors of the various impostures have abandoned them to their fate. ”

“ By whom built, and whether their authors migrated to remote lands under the combined attractions of a more fertile soil and more genial climate, or whether they disappeared beneath the victorious arms of an alien race, or were swept out of existence oy some direful epidemic or universal famine, are questions probably beyond the power of human investigations to answer.—The principal remains of antiquity in Mexico are the ruins of temples and of structures dedicated to defensive purposes. ”

“ Squier was the first to make known the existence, in the great Andean plateau, of a class of rude lithic and megalithic monuments, generally regarded, throughout the world, as the earliest efforts of human art. ”

“ The Peruvian empire was a concretion of families, tribes, or nationalities, reduced by conquest, and their monuments, especially on the Pacific coast, as Europeans found them, have few resemblances and no identities with those of the elevated interior whence the inca race descended. ”

“ Fort Hill, on the banks of the Little Miami river in Ohio, has a line of circumvallation nearly four miles in extent, varying in height, according to the natural strength of the point protected, from 10 to 20 feet, and embracing an area of several hundred acres. When not erected near to streams, and in cases where springs are not included within their lines, we almost always find artificial reservoirs for holding water. ”

“ It is impossible that a population for whose protection such extensive military works were necessary, and which was able to defend them, should not have been eminently agricultural; and such monuments as the mounds at Grave Creek and Cahokia indicate not only a dense agricultural population, but a state of society essentially different from that of the existing race of Indians north of the tropic. ”

“ Such are many of the ruined temples and other edifices of Peru, Central America, and Mexico, as well as most of the ruder monuments of New Mexico, and probably all of those still ruder earthworks and rock sculptures which are found eastward of the Alleghanies. Cartier in Canada, and Smith in Virginia, as well as the pilgrims in New England and the French in western New York, all found the Indians constructing defences, consisting of ditches, embankments, and palisades, the remains of which are still numerous, and which have been variously ascribed to Celtic, Hebrew, and Tartar origins. ”

“ Another, "El Obispo," is nearly equal in size. These vast structures have been ruined for centuries; but the work of their excavation is still going on. From one of them, called that of Toledo, a Spanish explorer of that name in 1577 took $4,450,284 in gold and silver.—As already observed, most of the monuments of antiquity in America seem to be the ruins of temples, places of worship, or edifices in some way connected with the religion and superstitions of their builders. ”

“ Another fact bearing upon the question of the age of these works is the extremely decayed condition of the human remains found in the mounds. Considering that the earth around the skeletons is for the most part wonderfully compact and dry, and that the conditions for their preservation are exceedingly favorable, while they are in fact in the last stage of decomposition, we may form some approximate estimate of their remote antiquity. ”

“ None of these works occur on the lowest formed of the river terraces which mark the subsidence of the western streams; and as there is no good reason why their builders should have avoided erecting them on that terrace, while they raised them promiscuously upon all the others, it seems to follow that this terrace has been formed since these works were erected ”

“ They consist of earthworks with their ditches, when such exist, interior and not exterior to the walls, of regular outline, squares, circles, octagons, and other geometrical figures, often combined, and sometimes of great extent; as for instance at Newark, Ohio, where they cover an area of more than two miles square, and probably comprise upward of 12 miles of embankment from 2 to 20 feet in height. (See "Monuments of the Mississippi Valley," by Squier and Davis, forming the first volume of the "Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge.") ”

“ The facts connected with the monuments of the Mississippi valley "indicate that the ancient population was numerous and widely spread, as shown from the number and magnitude of their works, and the extensive range of their occurrence ”