Mound Builder

“ Everywhere the explorer wanders, and the agriculturist follows, turning up the soil, or digging deeper as he drains and builds; but only to disturb the grave of the savage hunter. The Mound-Builders of its great river-valleys have indeed left there their enduring earthworks, wrought at times in regular geometrical configuration on a gigantic scale, strangely suggestive of some overruling and informing mind guiding the hand of the earthworker. But their mounds and earthworks disclose only implements of bone and flint or stone, with here and there an equally rude tool of hammered native copper. ”

“ The country about Dayton, Miamisburg, Oxford, Hamilton and Marietta was, undoubtedly, in the days of the Mound-builders moving with a greater mass of human beings than it can boast of to-day.
And if those peaceable and industrious inhabitants were as numerous as their remains indicate, what must have been the strength of those invading hordes who caused their downfall and perhaps wiped out forever every living representative of that ancient race, who could leave no more lasting memorial of their existence and struggles than those mysterious mounds which have given them their name. ”

“ The term mound-builders is distinctively applied to the race that constructed the remarkable earthworks of the valley of the Ohio, and of the interior of the United States in general, but it is true that in nearly all parts of the world the practice of mound-building has prevailed, sometimes among nations that come within historical epochs. ”

“ We copy the representation of this mound on page 168.
On a farm in Louisa County, Iowa, a pipe was ploughed up which also represents an elephant. We are indebted to the valuable work of John T. Short ("The North Americans of Antiquity," p. 530) for a picture of this singular object. It was found in a section where the ancient mounds were very abundant and rich in relics. The pipe is of sandstone, of the ordinary Mound-Builder's type, and has every appearance of age and usage. There can be no doubt of its genuineness. ”

“ The lower mounds, or most of them, must have been constructed as foundations of the more important edifices of the mound-building people. Many of the great buildings erected on such pyramidal foundations, at Palenque, Uxmal, and elsewhere in that region, have not disappeared, because they were built of hewn stone laid in mortar. For reasons not difficult to understand, the Mound-Builders, beginning their works on the lower Mississippi, constructed such edifices of wood or some other perishable material; therefore not a trace of them remains. ”

“ Though hundreds of groups of mounds marking the sites of ancient villages are to be seen scattered over the Mississippi Valley and Gulf States yet nowhere can there be found an ancient house. The inference is therefore irresistible that the houses of the mound- builders were constructed of perishable materials; consequently that the builders were not sufficiently advanced in art to use stone or brick in building, or else that they lived a roving, restless life that would not justify the time and trouble necessary to erect such permanent structures. ”

“ For centuries we know that the Lake Superior mine in which are found tools and timber constructions, have been buried, filled in for ten feet with debris, and have rank vegetation and trees growing upon them. It is certain that the Indian races, even when shown the example, cannot when left alone follow the mining pursuit. Not only then by the ethnological, and other data cited do we conclude that the mound builders belong to a different race from the present Indians, but the tradition of the Indians is to the same effect. ”

“ As this mound is so odd, it has been inclosed in a park, where it is to be kept just as it is, to remind people of the mound builders who lived here so long ago.
No one now knows exactly why these queer mounds were made, but learned men have dug into about two thousand of them, and as they have generally found bones, stone arrowheads and axes, beads, mortars, hammers, tools for spinning and weaving, pottery, baskets, and coarse cloth, they think the mounds must have been intended principally as burying places. ”

“ Both Red and Rainy River easily connect with the head waters of the Mississippi. Our region then may be regarded as a self-contained district including the most northerly settlements of the strange race who built the mounds. I shall try to connect them with other branches of the same stock, lying further to the east and south. For convenience I shall speak of the extinct people who inhabited our special region as the Takawgamis, or farthest north mound builders. ”

“ They very seldom built them on undulating or broken ground. Often have the very places where civilized man has laid the foundation of his towns proved to be the sites of these ancient works of the Mound Builders, and thus it has happened that many of the most interesting works of antiquity have been ruthlessly removed to make way for the crowded streets and busy marts of our own times.
The larger number of inclosures are circular, often of a small size. Where they occur separately they either have no gateway, or but one. Sometimes the circles are of very large size, surrounding many acres. ”

“ From what we have seen during the exploration of this Mound we try to form a picture of how the builders of it must have lived. In this the archæologist assists by telling us that many other things besides those which we have seen here are found with burials. The Mound-builders 20 made artistic pottery; from grasses, plants and trees they collected fibers which they wove into fabrics; from stone, flint, bone, shell, wood, copper and silver they made their implements, cooking utensils and ornaments. ”

“ The necessity of a careful discrimination between the various remains found in the mounds, resulting from the fact that the races succeeding the builders in the occupation of the country often buried their dead in them, has probably been dwelt upon with sufficient force, in another connection. Attention to the conditions under which they are discovered, and to the simple rules which seem to have governed the mound-builders in making their deposits, can hardly fail to fix with great certainty their date and origin. ”

“ The people of the United States, though much to be commended because of their prudence and forethought in laying out their modern towns and cities along the various water courses, which serve as the different highways of commerce, have by no means shown a superior sagacity in that respect to the Mound-builders, whose great centres of population are now mostly occupied, or are encroached upon by the modern cities. ”

“ The works they built have lived after them, and from these silent memorials the people have been called Mound Builders. Beyond the bounds of memory, into the land of mystery we go when we strive to learn of them. They have left their imprint in the valleys of the Licking, the Kentucky, the Ohio, and the Cumberland. Their many mounds vary in size, shape, structure, location, contents, and use. Some cover only a small area, while others have a diameter of over [14] one hundred feet and one covers fifteen acres. They display a considerable knowledge of geometry, engineering, and military skill. ”

“ What probabilities there are suggestive of a connection between the Mound-Builders and the ancient Miners will be discussed in a later chapter, along with other and allied questions; but to just such a race, with their imperfect mechanical skill, their partially developed arts, and their aptitude for continuous combined operations, may be ascribed, à priori, such mining works as are still traceable on the shores of Lake Superior, overshadowed with the forest growth of centuries. The mounds constructed by the ancient race are in like manner overgrown with the evidences of their long desertion ”

“ The men in two parties went industriously to work on the opposite sides, working toward each other, making a tunnel about eight feet in diameter. The earth though originally soft soil had become so hard that it was necessary to use a pick axe to loosen it for the spade. A number of skeletons were found on the south side, but all I should say within ten feet from the original surface of the mound. As we penetrated the interior fewer remains were continually found. The earth gave many indications of having been burnt. At one point the pick-axe sank ten inches into the hard wall. ”

“ Dense populations, an expression sometimes applied to the Mound-Builders, have never existed without either flocks and herds, or field agriculture with the use of the plow. In some favored areas, where the facilities for irrigation were unusual, a considerable population has been developed upon horticulture; but no traces of irrigating canals have been found in connection with the works of the Mound-Builders. Furthermore, it was unnecessary in their areas. Transplanted from a comparatively mild to a cold climate, they must have found the struggle for existence intensified. ”

“ That the Mound-Builders were a far more civilized race than the Indians is clearly revealed by the relics found in and about the mounds. They have left behind them thousands of flint arrow-heads, many of beautiful workmanship. They used spades, rimmers, borers, celts, axes, fleshers, scrapers, pestles, and other implements whose use cannot now be determined, made of various stones, such as porphyry, greenstone, and feldspar. ”

“ We then observe the block transferred to land, and carved into the rough semblance of a bull, in which form it is placed on a rude sledge and conveyed along level land by gangs of laborers, arranged nearly as before, to the foot of the mound at whose top it has to be placed. The construction of the mound is elaborately represented. Brickmakers are seen moulding the bricks at its base, while workmen with baskets at their backs, full of earth, brick, stone, or rubbish toil up the ascent—for the mound is already half raised—and empty their burdens out upon the summit. ”

“ Although several centuries earlier in time, the Mound-Builders, with habits of life similar to those of the Cibolans, in 1540, would understand, besides horticulture, the use of adobe bricks, and the art of constructing long joint-tenement houses, closed up in the first story for defensive reasons, and built in the terraced form two, three, and four stories high, the ascent to the roof of the first story being made by ladders. ”

“ There is a place three miles north of Chillicothe, where an extensive enclosure—now called "Mound City"—contains 26 well formed and regularly disposed mounds, covering an area of 13 acres. Many of those mounds contained altars at their base, but have been subsequently converted into ordinary mounds. One mound, which is 90 feet in diameter at the base and 7-1/2 feet in height, contained an altar, within the basin of which was found a layer of solid ashes three inches thick, in which were numerous pieces of pottery and shell-beads. ”

“ Is it any wonder that we hover about the dark mystery, and find in our researches room for absorbing study, even though we cannot reach absolute certainty? Could you have seen the excitement which prevailed among the half-dozen settlers, I had employed in digging the mound on Rainy River, in August last, when the perfect pottery cup figured below was found, and the wild enthusiasm with which they prosecuted their further work, you would have said it requires no previous training, but simply a successful discovery or two to make any one a zealous mound explorer. ”

“ I have examined a small quantity of the dust taken from one of the shells found in the grand mound, with the microscope, and though I am not perfectly certain, yet I believe there are traces of some farinaceous substance to be seen. On skirting the shores of the Lake of the Woods into which Rainy River runs, at the present time, you are struck by the fact that there are no Canadian farmers there, and likewise that there are no mounds to be seen, while along the banks of Rainy River both the agriculturist is found cultivating the soil and the mounds abound. ”

“ Then this type of structure comes to be regarded as the normal for house-building everywhere. "Through this natural series of changes in type there is a tendency to the development of mounds as sites for habitations and for the council-house of the clan or tribe, the sites being either separate mounds or single large mounds, according to circumstances. Thus the study of the living Seminole Indians and of the shell-mounds in the same [Pg 382] vicinity ... suggests a possible origin for a custom of mound-building at one time so prevalent among the North American Indians [858] ." ”

“ For purposes of fire control the area had previously been bulldozed, obliterating the exact limits of the deposit. Mound soil appears to extend 110 feet east-west and 70 feet north-south, and is 36 inches at its deepest point, some 15 feet southwest of the center of the site. The midden thins out on the periphery more rapidly toward the west than to the east. The deposit is loose, dark, and sandy. ”

“ It was quite large originally, perhaps 8 or 10 feet high and 35 to 50 feet in diameter. At present it is from 4 to 6 feet above the level of the bottom land and is spread over a considerable space. When the first settlers came, there was an earthwork running a little southwest from the mound for some 20 rods, then back eastward to the river. The place has been under cultivation for forty or fifty years and the work is now obliterated. The mound was encased with a wall of sandstone bowlders as large as a man can lift. ”