William J. Smyth - Mound Builders
W >>
William J. Smyth >> Mound Builders
_Indefinite Mounds_.--Of this class there are many. Thousands of such
indefinite mounds and squares and circles are to be seen scattered
over the various States of the Union. Their structure, composition and
contents, give us no clue by which they may be assigned a place. It is
believed that many of the strange works that abound in Butler county,
Ohio, and which cannot be classified, are among the incomplete works,
that is, works left unfinished by the builders.
IMPLEMENTS.--The people of Ohio have appropriated the implements of
the Mound-builders to a large extent. Almost every homestead in Ohio
is ornamented with some of those ancient implements and relics, yet
tons have been taken away to grace private and public museums in all
parts of this country, and even the museums of Europe and Asia. Among
the implements are to be found spear heads, arrow heads; rimmers,
knives, axes, hatchets, hammers, chisels, pestles, mortars, pottery,
pipes, sculpture, gorgets, tubes, and articles of bone and clothing.
Fragments of coarse, but uniformly spun and woven cloth have been
found, of course not in preservation, but charred and in folds. One
piece, near Middletown, Ohio, was found connected with tassels or
ornaments, and may be seen at the Smithsonian Institute at Washington.
In Anderson township, Ohio, native gold has been found for the first
time. Several small ornaments of copper have been found covered with
thin sheets of gold. Earrings also, made of meteoric iron, have been
found, and a serpent cut out of mica. Some terra-cotta figures also,
which give us an idea of the way the hair was dressed in the days of
the Mound-builders. I cannot here name all the implements and
ornaments that have been discovered. Though most of them are of hard
stone, yet many have been found made of copper.
MINING, ETC.--That these people were miners, is evident from the
prevalence of various mineral fragments and implements. At Mound City,
near Chillicothe, has been found galena, none of which can be found in
Ohio. Obsidian also is found in the shape of instruments, which they
must have transported from the Rocky Mountains. Ancient mining shafts
are found in Minnesota, where the solid rock had been excavated to the
depth of 60 feet. On Isle Royal there are pits 60 feet deep, worked
through nine feet of solid rock, at the bottom of which is a rich vein
of copper, and in the two miles of excavations in the same straight
line have been found the mining implements in great numbers. Such
advancement in mining, sagacity in warfare, industrial pursuits, and
geometric skill, as their works display, prove their great superiority
of race over the modern Indian. Their implements, some of them most
elaborately made, their brick-making and various other ingenious
works, enable us to place them high as an industrial people, while
their sacred enclosures, and altars, and tablets, together with the
numerous evidences of their being an agricultural nation, enable us to
place them far above the modern Indian in the scale of civilization.
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.
We may with safety assert that the population about Newark, and Xenia,
and Mound City, was far above what it is now. 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.
ANTIQUITY OF THE MOUND-BUILDERS.--Upon this point there are many
theories, some regarding them as the earliest of the Indian tribes.
Others give them a very great age and claim them to belong to
preadamite man. By far the greater number of archaeologists, however,
place their existence at about 2,000 years ago.
In favor of the latter view we may call as evidence the present forest
trees, which, though of great age, still flourish on some of the
ancient remains. On one of the mounds at Marietta, Ohio, there stood a
gigantic tree, which, when cut down, displayed 800 rings of annual
growth. In many other places, trees of the age of 750 years have been
cut, and underneath them evidences of previous forests found. One tree
750 years old was found to have underneath it, on the walls of one of
the forts in Ohio, the cast of another tree of equal size, which would
carry us back at least 1,500 years since those trees began to grow on
those deserted walls of that ancient fortification.
We have some data in the vegetable accumulations in the ancient mining
shafts near Lake Superior, as well as in the vegetable and other
matter deposited in the numerous pits and trenches found among the
works. Though these evidences cannot give the exact time of their
accumulation, yet they give it approximately, by comparison with
similar recent deposits.
There is another still stronger argument in favor of their antiquity,
viz., the decayed condition of the skeletons. The skeletons of the
oldest Indian tribes are comparatively sound while those of the
Mound-builders are much decayed. If they are sound when brought out,
they at once begin to disintegrate in the atmosphere, which is a sure
sign of their antiquity. We know that some skeletons in Europe have
lately been exhumed, which, though buried more than 1,000 years, are
comparatively firm and well-preserved. We are, I think, bound to
ascribe a greater antiquity to the Mound-builders' skeletons than to
those found in the ancient barrows of Europe. Other considerations,
such as stream encroachment, and river-terrace formation, might also
be brought in as presumptive arguments in favor of their great
antiquity.
ORIGIN OF THE MOUND-BUILDERS.--This is a question not easily answered.
It brings me into no discredit before the educated world to
acknowledge ignorance on this mysterious point. The study of
Craniology and Philology, in connection with Ethnology, shall alone
throw light on this subject. Dr. Wilson says, in his "Prehistoric Man"
(p. 123), "The ethnical classification of this strange race is still
an unsettled question," and he declares without fear of contradiction,
"that especially concerning the Scioto Mound skull, the elevation and
breadth of the frontal bone, differs essentially from the Indian, and
that the cerebral development was more in accordance with the
character of that singular people, who without architecture have
perpetuated, in mere structures of earth, the evidences of geometric
skill, a definite means of determining angles, a fixed standard of
measurement, and the capacity as well as the practice of repeating
geometrically constructed works of large and uniform dimensions."
Undoubtedly they were skilled in agriculture, from the remains of
ancient garden-beds, which were cultivated in a methodical manner. The
modern Indians give no such evidence of labor. For wherever they are
found they love to roam in undisputed possession of the forest, and
lead an indolent life. Of course I do not assign this as a valid
reason for their not being identified with the Mound-builders. An
ancient race may have a degenerate offspring.
Nor shall I attempt to find in the various inscriptions any clue to
their Hebrew origin, or to identify that ancient people with the lost
tribes, as some have dared to do. Foster inclines to regard them as
emigrating from the tropics, rather than coming from the north.
This would involve us in investigating the antiquity of the Mexican
and Peruvian ruins, where vast works of high architecture and more
advanced civilization were found than among the Mound-builders. There
is little difficulty in concluding that the Aztecs, who occupied
Mexico during the Spanish invasion under Cortez, were the conquerors
of several races that preceded them. Among these conquered races, no
doubt, were the Toltecs, who were afterwards found in such great
numbers, and in an amazing state of advanced civilization. The crania
of the Mound-builders and the Toltecs correspond. Now, whether they
migrated to the north from the tropics, or journeyed south from the
north, I cannot say. I should incline to the latter theory. Industry
is sure to advance. The rude mounds of the United States are far
surpassed by those immense pyramids in Mexico and Peru, surpassing the
Egyptian in size. And those fine architectural palaces and temples,
whose history we cannot fully know, far eclipse anything in the
northern part of America.
Whoever they were and wherever they came from, they were doubtless
driven southward by the invading tribes of the north. They nobly
fought their way, contesting every foot, until superior numbers took
them by force. Thus these quiet and inoffensive creatures were finally
expelled from their home which doubtless their fathers had occupied
through centuries. If any escaped they, no doubt, found an asylum
southward, where there were other tribes equally civilized, and,
forming an union with them or conquered by them, they began a higher
and better civilization as seen in Mexico and Peru.
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Page 8: Octogon has been changed to octagon.
Page 15: Smithsonion has been changed to Smithsonian.