Chapter 4

The attempt to establish this hypothesis of identity in race has given rise to a tendency to underrate the development of the ancient people of Mexico and Central America, and to lower the estimate of their attainments sufficiently to bring them within reach of close relationship to the wild Indians. The difficulty being reduced in this way, there follows an attempt to get rid of it entirely, and establish connection between these unlike peoples, by talking of "Semi-Village Indians." But the hypothesis used in this case is not well warranted by facts. Such "Semi-Village Indians" as are supposed, really standing half way between the savages and the Pueblos, and being actually savages half developed into Pueblos, have never had a clearly defined and unquestionable existence here since the continent became known to Europeans. In the border region between the northern wild Indians and the old Mexican race there are exceptional communities formed by association or mixture, but we can not reasonably give them the significance claimed for the supposed "Semi-Village Indians." Moreover, these exceptional communities are usually Pueblos whose habits have been changed and their civilization lessened by association with wild Indians, or in some other way. The Navajos began their present condition by fleeing to the mountains from the Spaniards. The Mound-Builders, who must have been, still more than the Pueblos, unlike the barbarous Indians, can not be explained by any reference whatever to such communities. If they were of the same race, they were far from being the same people.

Some ethnologists, whose suggestions are entitled to respectful attention whether accepted or rejected, specify considerations which they believe forbid us to regard the ancient Mexicans and the northern wild Indians as identical in race. They point to the well known fact that the fauna of the American continent below the northern frontier of Mexico is remarkably different from that between this line and the Arctic Sea. At the north, America abounds in species similar to those of Europe and Asia, with some admixture of forms wholly American, while at the south the old-world forms disappear, and the fauna of the whole region between Mexico and Cape Horn becomes "as peculiar as that of Australia."

The explanation given is, that during the glacial period the larger part of North America, like Northern Asia and Europe, was covered with ice and partly submerged, and that the fauna found in this part of North America was introduced after the glacial period by immigration from Asia and Europe over connecting lands or islands at the northwest and the northeast, and perhaps by some migration from the south; the fauna at the south meanwhile remaining very much as it was before, with very little change through later migrations from the north.

Professor Huxley called attention to this subject in a brief address to the London Ethnological Society in 1869. After stating the case, he presented the following queries and suggestions: "The Austro-Columbian fauna, as a whole, therefore, existed antecedently to the glacial epoch. Did man form part of that fauna? To this profoundly interesting question no positive answer can be given; but the discovery of human remains associated with extinct animals in the caves of Brazil, by Lund, lends some color to the supposition. Assuming this supposition to be correct, we should have to look in the human population of America, as in the fauna generally, for an indigenous or Austro-Columbian element, and an immigrant or 'Arctogeal' element." He then suggests that the Esquimaux may now represent the immigrant element, and the old Mexican and South American race that which was indigenous, and that the "Red Indians of North America" may have appeared originally as a mixture of these two races. He adds, very reasonably, "It is easy to suggest such problems as these, but quite impossible, in the present state of our knowledge, to solve them."

WHO WERE THE MOUND-BUILDERS?

They were unquestionably American aborigines, and not immigrants from another continent. That appears to me the most reasonable suggestion which assumes that the Mound-Builders came originally from Mexico and Central America. It explains many facts connected with their remains. In the Great Valley their most populous settlements were at the south. Coming from Mexico and Central America, they would begin their settlements on the Gulf coast, and afterward advance gradually up the river to the Ohio Valley. It seems evident that they came by this route; and their remains show that their only connection with the coast was at the south. Their settlements did not reach the coast at any other point.

Their constructions were similar in design and arrangement to those found in Mexico and Central America. Like the Mexicans and Central Americans, they had many of the smaller structures known as _teocallis_, and also large high mounds, with level summits, reached by great flights of steps. Pyramidal platforms or foundations for important edifices appear in both regions, and are very much alike. In Central America important edifices were built of hewn stone, and can still be examined in their ruins. The Mound-Builders, like some of the ancient people of Mexico and Yucatan, used wood, sun-dried brick, or some other material that could not resist decay. There is evidence that they used timber for building purposes. In one of the mounds opened in the Ohio Valley two chambers were found with remains of the timber of which the walls were made, and with arched ceilings precisely like those in Central America, even to the overlapping stones. Chambers have been found in some of the Central American and Mexican mounds, but there hewn stones were used for the walls. In both regions the elevated and terraced foundations remain, and can be compared. I have already called attention to the close resemblance between them, but the fact is so important in any endeavor to explain the Mound-Builders that I must bring it to view here.

Consider, then, that elevated and terraced foundations for important buildings are peculiar to the ancient Mexicans and Central Americans; that this method of construction, which, with them, was the rule, is found nowhere else, save that terraced elevations, carefully constructed, and precisely like theirs in form and appearance, occupy a chief place among the remaining works of the Mound-Builders. The use made of these foundations at Palenque, Uxmal, and Chichen-Itza, shows the purpose for which they were constructed in the Mississippi Valley. The resemblance is not due to chance. The explanation appears to me very manifest. This method of construction was brought to the Mississippi Valley from Mexico and Central America, the ancient inhabitants of that region and the Mound-Builders being the same people in race, and also in civilization, when it was brought here.

A very large proportion of the old structures in Ohio and farther south called "mounds," namely, those which are low in proportion to their horizontal extent, are terraced foundations for buildings, and if they were situated in Yucatan, Guatemala, and Southern Mexico, they would never be mistaken for any thing else. The high mounds also in the two regions are remarkably alike. In both cases they are pyramidal in shape, and have level summits of considerable extent, which were reached by means of stairways on the outside. The great mound at Chichen-Itza is 75 feet high, and has on its summit a ruined stone edifice; that at Uxmal is 60 feet high, and has a similar ruin on its summit; that at Mayapan is 60 feet high; the edifice placed on its summit has disappeared. The great mound at Miamisburg, Ohio, is 68 feet high; and that at Grave Creek, West Virginia, is 75 feet high. Both had level summits, and stairways on the outside, but no trace of any structure remains on them. All these mounds were constructed for religious uses, and they are, in their way, as much alike as any five Gothic churches.

Could these works of the Mound-Builders be restored to the condition in which they were when the country was filled with their busy communities, we should doubtless see great edifices, similar in style to those in Yucatan, standing on the upper terraces of all the low and extended "mounds," and smaller structures on the high mounds, such as those above named. There would seem to be an extension of ancient Mexico and Central America through Texas into the Mississippi and Ohio valleys; and so, if there were no massive stone-work in the old ruins of those countries, it might seem that the Mound-Builders' works were anciently extended into them by way of Texas.

The fact that the settlements and works of the Mound-Builders extended through Texas and across the Rio Grande indicates very plainly their connection with the people of Mexico, and goes far to explain their origin. We have other evidence of intercourse between the two peoples; for the obsidian dug from the mounds, and perhaps the porphyry also, can be explained only by supposing commercial relations between them.

We can not suppose the Mound-Builders to have come from any other part of North America, for nowhere else north of the Isthmus was there any other people capable of producing such works as they left in the places where they dwelt. Beyond the relics of the Mound-Builders themselves, no traces of the former existence of such a people have been discovered in any part of North America save Mexico, and Central America, and districts immediately connected with them. At the same time, it is not unreasonable to suppose the civilized people of these regions extended their settlements through Texas, and also migrated across the Gulf into the Mississippi Valley. In fact, the connection of settlements by way of Texas appears to have been unbroken from Ohio to Mexico.

This colonizing extension of the old Mexican race must have taken place at a remote period in the past; for what has been said of the antiquity of the Mound-Builders shows that a very long period, far more than two thousand years, it may be, must have elapsed since they left the Valley of the Ohio. Perhaps they found the country mostly unoccupied, and saw there but little of any other people until an irruption of warlike barbarians came upon them from the Northwest.

In speculating on the causes of their withdrawal after centuries of occupation, absolute certainty is impossible, and we have no means of going much beyond mere conjecture. We may suppose as most probable that an influx of barbarians destroyed their border settlements, interrupted their mining operations, and caused them to retire gradually toward the Gulf. Fragments of their communities may have become incorporated with the barbarous tribes. This conjecture has been used to explain certain exceptional peculiarities noticed in some of the wild Indian tribes. For instance, it has been suggested that the Mandan Indians were a separated and lost fragment of the mound-building people, they being noticeably unlike other Indians in many respects, lighter in color, and peculiar in manners and customs. What is conjectured may be true, but we have no means of proving its truth. That the Mandans were like what a lost community of Mound-Builders might have become by degeneration through mixture and association with barbarians may be supposed, but the actual history of that remarkable tribe might give its peculiarities a very different explanation. The Mandans were supposed to be a branch of the Dacotahs. They may have been, like the Navajos, a changed community of Pueblos, but any attempt to explain them by means of conjecture is useless.

The supposition that the Toltecs and the Mound-Builders were the same people seems to me not improbable. The reasons for it will be stated when we come to a discussion of the antiquities, books, and traditions of Central America. I will only say here that, according to dates given in the Central American books, the Toltecs came from "Huehue-Tlapalan," a distant country in the northeast, long previous to the Christian era. They played a great part and had a long career in Mexico previous to the rise of their successors in power, the Aztecs, who were overthrown by the Spaniards.

IV.

MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA.

Ruins and other vestiges revealing an ancient civilization are found throughout the whole southern section of North America, extending as far north as New Mexico and Arizona. But here the antiquities do not all belong to the same period in the past, nor exhibit unvarying likeness and unity of civilized life. They are somewhat less homogeneous, and do not constantly represent the same degree of civilization. In this region, the monuments suggest successive and varying periods in the civilized condition of the old inhabitants, some of the oldest and most mysterious monuments seeming to indicate the highest development.

In the northern part of this region we find ruins of great buildings similar in plan and arrangement to those still used by the Pueblos, but far superior as monuments of architecture, science, and skill, and much more unlike those farther south than is apparent in the principal structures of the Mound-Builders. They show that the old settlers in the Mississippi Valley did not belong to the Pueblo branch of the Mexican race. Farther south, in the central part of the region specified, development was more advanced. Here, in the last ages of American ancient history, was the seat of the Mexican or Aztec civilization, but the monuments in this part of the country are mostly older than the Aztec period. The most astonishing remains are found still farther south, in Chiapa, Tabasco, Oxaca, Yucatan, Honduras, Tehuantepec, Guatemala, and other parts of Central America. In this southern region, mostly buried in heavy forests, are wonderful ruins of great cities and temples. Only a small part of modern Mexico is included in the region where these ruins are situated, and most of them, probably, were not much better understood by the ancient Mexicans than they are by us. Many of those explored in later times were unknown to that people, just as others, more in number, doubtless, than those already described, still remain unvisited and unknown in the great and almost impenetrable forests of the country.

THE NORTHERN REMAINS.

The ruins in Northern Mexico, including New Mexico and Arizona, consist chiefly, as already stated, of the remains of structures similar in general design and purpose to those of the Village Indians, the Pueblos. In the more ancient times, doubtless, as at present, a large proportion of the dwellings and other edifices, like those in the Mississippi Valley, were built of perishable materials which have left no trace. Many of them, however, were built of stone, and have left ruins which show their character. Stone ruins are common in this northern region, although wood and adobe seems to have been more commonly used as building material. Some of the ruined stone edifices were inhabited when the country was conquered by the Spaniards. The remains present every where the same characteristics. They represent a people who built always in the same way, with some variations in the forms of their structures, and had substantially the same condition of life; but the ruins are not all of the same age. Their character can be sufficiently shown by describing a few of them.

In New Mexico, west of the Rio Grande, between the head waters of the San Jose and Zuni rivers, a bluff or ridge rises in a valley two hundred feet high. The Spaniards named it "El Moro." One side of this bluff is vertical, and shows yellowish-white sandstone rock, on the face of which are inscriptions; "Spanish inscriptions and Indian hieroglyphics." It was carefully described in 1849 by Lieutenant Simpson, and was explored again four or five years later by Lieutenant A. W. Whipple, who described it in his report to the government, published in the third volume of "Explorations and Surveys for a Railroad Route to the Pacific." On the summit of this height, which Lieutenant Simpson named "Inscription Rock," are the ruins of an extensive Pueblo edifice built of stone. The walls were built "with considerable skill." In some places they are still "perfect to the height of six or eight feet, vertical, straight, and smooth; and the masonry is well executed, the stones being of uniform size--about fourteen inches long and six wide." The layers are horizontal, each successive layer breaking joints with that below it. Remains of cedar beams were discovered, and also obsidian arrow-heads, painted pottery, and other relics. Another ruin was seen on a height across the gorge. It was found to be similar to this, both in character and condition of decay.

Lieutenant Whipple went westward along the thirty-fifth parallel. We can not do better than follow the report of what he saw.

His next stopping-place, after leaving "El Moro," was in the beautiful valley of Ojo Pescado. Here, close by a spring that showed artificial stone-work of ancient date, were two old Pueblo buildings in ruins, "so ancient that the traditions of present races do not reach them." Not far away is a deserted town of later date. The two ancient structures were circular in form and equal in size, each being about eight hundred feet in circumference. They were built of stone, but the walls have crumbled and become chiefly heaps of rubbish. The pottery found here, like that at "El Moro," is "painted with bright colors, in checks, bands, and wavy stripes; many fragments show a beautiful polish. A few pieces were discovered larger in size, inferior in color and quality, but indicating a more fanciful taste. United, they formed an urn with a curious handle; a frog painted on the outside and a butterfly within." In the same neighborhood, on the summit of a cliff twenty feet high, was another old ruin "strongly walled around." In the centre was a mound on which were traces of a circular edifice.

The next place of encampment was at Zuni, where, as shown in Figure 21, can be seen one of these great Pueblo buildings inhabited by two thousand people (Lieutenant Whipple's estimate). It has five stories, the walls of each receding from those below it. Looking from the top, he says it reminded him of a busy ant-hill, turkeys and tamed eagles constituting a portion of its inhabitants. Not more than a league away is an "old Zuni" which shows nothing but ruins. Its crumbling walls, worn away until they are only from two to twelve feet high, are "crowded together in confused heaps over several acres of ground." This old town became a ruin in ancient times. After remaining long in a ruined condition it was again rebuilt, and again deserted after a considerable period of occupation. It is still easy to distinguish the differences in construction between the two periods. "The standing walls rest upon ruins of greater antiquity;" and while the primitive masonry is about six feet thick, that of the later period is only from a foot to a foot and a half thick. Small blocks of sandstone were used for the latter. Heaps of debris cover a considerable space, in which, among other things, are relics of pottery and of ornaments made of sea-shells. Pieces of quaintly-carved cedar posts were found here, and their condition of decay, compared with that of the cedar beams at "El Moro," "indicated great antiquity." The place of this ruin is now one of the consecrated places of the Village Indians; it has "a Zuni altar" which is constantly used and greatly venerated. On leaving the place, their guide blew a white powder toward the altar three times, and muttered a prayer. This, he explained, was "asking a blessing of Montezuma and the sun." This altar seems to represent recollections of the ancient sun-worship.

At a place west of Zuni ancient relics were found, indicating that an extensive Pueblo town had formerly stood there, but "the structures were probably of adobes," as there was no debris of stone walls, and only very faint traces of foundations. Near the Colorado Chiquito is an extensive ruin, on the summit of an isolated hill of sandstone, the faces of its walls being here and there visible above heaps of debris. It appears to be very old. As near as could be ascertained, the great rectangular Pueblo building was three hundred and sixty feet in extent on one side, and one hundred and twenty on the other. In some places the walls are ten feet thick, "with small rooms inserted in them." Stone axes, painted pottery, and other articles are found in the debris: "The indented pottery, said to be so very ancient, is found here in many patterns." On a ridge overlooking the valley of Pueblo Creek are traces of an old settlement of large extent, supposed to have been that heard of in 1539 by the friar Marco de Nica as "the kingdom of Totonteac." Adobe seems to have been used here for building. Traces of other ruins were seen in various places, and springs along the route showing ancient stone-work are mentioned.

Ruins are abundant in the Rio Verde Valley down to the confluence of that river with the Rio Salinas. It is manifest that this whole region was anciently far more populous than it is now. Lieutenant Whipple says, "Large fields in the valley of the Rio Gila, and many spots among the Pinal Lena Mountains, are marked with the foundations of adobe houses." Figure 22 represents a Pueblo ruin in the Valley of the Gila. "In Canyon Chelly, near San Francisco Mountain, and upon Rio Verde, there are ruins of more permanent structures of stone, which in their day must have excelled the famed Pueblos of New Mexico." There was a higher degree of civilization in the ancient times, so far as relates to architecture and skill in the arts and appliances of life, than has been shown by people of the same race dwelling there in our time; but the ancient condition of life seems to have been maintained from age to age without material change.

THE "SEVEN CITIES OF CEVOLA."

In the New Mexican valley of the Chaco, one degree or more north of Zuni, are ruins of what some suppose to have been the famous "Seven Cities of Cevola." In 1540, Spanish cupidity having been strongly incited by tales of the greatness and vast wealth of Cevola, Coronado, then governor of New Galicia, set out with an army to conquer and rob its cities. The report in which he tells the story of this conquest and of his disappointment is still in existence. The Cevolans defended themselves with arrows and spears, and hurled stones upon his army from the tops of their buildings. But resistance was of no avail; Cevola was conquered by Coronado, and immediately deserted by all its inhabitants who escaped death. The conquering buccaneer, however, did not find the treasures of gold and silver he expected. Three hundred and thirty years or more have passed away since this expedition of the Spanish marauders was undertaken, but the "Seven Cities of Cevola" (if they really were the "cities" whose remains are found in the Chaco Valley), although much dilapidated, are still sufficiently well preserved to show us what they were.