Chapter 10

Two classes of burial-places have been the subject of special exploration and study by this museum, generally under the personal supervision of Professor Putnam, or of Mr. Lucien Carr, his assistant. One of these are the strange stone cysts of Tennessee, which occur in thousands in the Cumberland valley. They were from two to four feet below the surface, and were made of large slabs of stone, placed edgewise to form the sides and ends, on which other flat stones rested, forming the top of the grave. The bottoms of these cysts were sometimes lined with small stones, oftener with large potsherds, while in some instances the lining was probably of bark. While most of the cysts contained only a single body, two, three, and even five skeletons were found together in a few instances. Each grave held a greater or less quantity and variety of articles of native manufacture. Stone implements were rarer than is customary elsewhere, but those present were unusually fine. One of the skeletons had a stone arrow-head embedded in the spine. The pottery was more abundant, and consisted for the most part of well-made water-bottles and food-dishes, ornamented by incised lines or designs in color. Implements and ornaments of bone, stone, and shell, beads of terra-cotta and shell, small mollusks perforated for stringing, a few carved pipes of pottery, stone, etc., were also gathered and brought to Cambridge.

While cemeteries of this character are known to have extended over wide areas of lowland, stone graves were also built into low pyramids by placing one tier on top of another until from four to six had been laid. Each tier as completed--probably each grave as added--would be covered with earth, so that the whole formed a burial-mound fifty feet or more in diameter and eight or ten feet high (the bottom tier of graves being sunken), containing perhaps two hundred bodies. Not only within the cysts, but on and around the stones throughout the mound, were exhumed many relics, especially of pottery, showing that food and offerings had been laid upon the graves after they were closed. Nowhere was there the least indication of any contact with Europeans; and these cemeteries undoubtedly antedate the coming of the whites.

Among the most strikingly interesting discoveries made during the past few years is the burial-place in the Miami valley of Ohio, with its hundreds of singular pits dug in the hard clay below the leaf-mould in which the skeletons are found. This place was discovered by the members of the Madisonville Literary and Scientific Society, which, during three or four years, carried on an exploration under the personal direction of Dr. C. L. Metz. In 1880 the Peabody Museum was invited to join in the exploration, and Professor Putnam visited the locality soon afterward. The result of this co-operation is apparent in the large collections brought to the museum, where the contents of several of these strange pits are shown, as well as thousands of objects obtained from others or occurring with the skeletons in the leaf-mould. More than fifteen hundred pits and a thousand skeletons have now been uncovered and examined, several acres having been dug over, foot by foot, with painstaking completeness.

The pits, hollowed out of the underlying clay, are from two to seven feet in depth, and about four feet in diameter, hidden under a stratum of slowly-accumulated leaf-mould two feet thick. The majority of them, evidently, had been made previous to the burial of the bodies, though some were more recent than a few of the graves. The labor expended in digging them, and the peculiar character of their contents, render it not improbable that they were made in pursuance of some superstition or as part of a religious rite. This is an unsatisfactory generality, but more cannot yet be said with safety.

The average pit may be said to be filled with ashes in more or less well-defined layers. Near the top there may be a mixture of gravel, but underneath are found only fine gray ashes to the depth of one or two feet, in which often occur thin strata of charcoal or sand, while at the bottom burnt stones have often been found. Throughout the whole mass of ashes and sand, from top to bottom, are bones of fishes, reptiles, birds, and mammals. The larger bones, such as those of the elk, deer, and bear, are broken; and all, apparently, are those of animals used for food. With the bones are always many shells of fresh-water mussels (_Unionidae_), the more massive of which have a large circular piece cut out near the centre. Fragments of pottery (rarely a whole vessel) also abound in each pit, quantities of implements made of bones and antlers, some forms of which are unlike anything known elsewhere, implements of chipped and polished stone, pipes carved in various shapes from stone, and objects of copper. In some pits several bushels of charred corn, which had been covered with bark matting, lay underneath the ashes; and in three instances human skeletons, or parts of skeletons, have been found in the pits,--a fact which seems to have no special significance.

On the hill-side near this great cemetery is to be seen what doubtless is the site of the permanent village of the people who made the ash-pits. This site is indicated by several earth-circles, the explorations of which, prosecuted by means of trenches, revealed in the centre, upon the hard clay, beneath about two feet of accumulated leaf-mould, fireplaces made of large stones, enclosing beds of ashes mingled with potsherds, flint-flakes, burnt bones, and perforated shells like those in the pits. The few things disclosed within the circles, and the abundance of household-utensils and refuse found in the ashes in the pits, suggest the possibility that on special occasions all the articles in the house, with ornaments, weapons, and other personal property, were partly destroyed by fire, gathered up with the ashes, and deposited in a pit dug for the purpose, while the great number of broken bones of various animals indicates that at such times feasts were held. A custom like this, which is quite consistent with the Indian character as manifested within the historic period, would account for the character of the contents of the pits, while their great number would indicate a long-continued occupation of the village.

Another phase of American archaeology remains to be considered. It is represented in the museum by a unique and most interesting series of specimens illustrating every detail with the greatest particularity and exactness, so that future students need lose no essential feature of the picture that lay before the original explorers and describers. In the northeastern part of Anderson township, near the Little Miami River, a group of earth-works exist which are among the most remarkable of all the thousands scattered throughout the Ohio valley. The owner gave to the museum the exclusive right of exploration, and the locality was mapped and investigated with that scientific care which alone can give the results entire credibility and value. Several of the thirteen mounds within one of the encircling walls contained basins or "altars" of burned clay, on two of which were literally thousands of objects of interest, embracing forms unlike anything known before, and exhibiting an unsuspected degree of cultivation in their makers,--cultivation which, it is fair to suppose, could have been arrived at only after a long period of peaceful and prosperous life in the community. I have space to mention only a few of these articles.

One altar contained about two bushels of ornaments made of stone, mica, shells, pearls, and the teeth of bears and other animals. Pearls were so plentiful, indeed, that as many as sixty thousand are in the possession of the museum. They seem to have been derived mainly, if not wholly, from the fresh-water mussels, and are of all shapes and sizes, out of which might be selected hundreds of perfect spheres, from the size of bird-shot to that of a cherry. What splendid necklaces must the latter have made! But, alas for the mercenary collector, all are ruined by fire,--a fact advantageous to science. Like nearly all the other objects, every pearl is perforated for suspension.

Articles of copper are none too common anywhere, and the collection of relics hammered from that native metal (which must have been obtained, through barter, from the tribes that mined it on Lake Superior, showing how extensive were the tradings of those days) has not only thrown much light on this branch of ancient art and craftsmanship in America generally, but added some peculiar forms to the museum's stock, chiefly in the line of pendent ornaments. One of the forms procured, represented by many specimens, was a spool-shaped ear-ring: something like it had been seen heretofore, but its purpose had been a mystery. Several of the ornaments of copper were covered with native silver, which had been hammered out into thin sheets and folded over the copper. A few were similarly covered with gold; and this is the first time this metal has been found in the mounds.

This would show that beauty was highly appreciated by the natives of the Little Miami valley, say, a thousand years ago. That they had a real regard for art, in advance of what has usually been accorded to the red men of the Northern States, is evident from other contents of these two altar-mounds. One altar contained several sheets of mica and thin plates of copper out of which had been cut some designs in scroll-work which for symmetry and elegance of curve merit a high place; also heads of animals and a grotesque human profile, which are of less worth, but notable in the dearth heretofore of things of that sort among _relicta_ from the mounds.

Far in advance of these, however, are the figurines of terra-cotta found on another altar. They had all been badly burnt, and many of them seemed to have been broken purposely before being placed upon the altar; but it has been found possible to unite many pieces, and enough remains to show at a glance the great importance these small and graceful human images will have in the study of early American art. They are from four to six inches in height, partly nude, and carefully moulded in regard to anatomy. The method of wearing the hair, the use of the button-like or spool-shaped ear-rings, the expression of the features, etc., are all in the highest degree instructive, while the whole effect is pleasing and artistic. Associated with them were two remarkable dishes carved from stone, in the shape of animals, showing an unusual degree of skill and taste.

A discovery in the same mounds which interests scientific men even more than this, or than anything else has done for a long time, is the finding in these mounds of quantities of meteoric iron. It was said by Hildreth ("Archaeologia Americana," i., 1820, page 163) that traces of iron-work had been found in a mound at Marietta, Ohio; but a re-examination of the specimens preserved at Worcester showed that they were of oxidized copper. The present discovery was therefore the first of its kind, and excited so much interest that chemists and mineralogists have been called into council with the archaeologists on the subject. This is the only kind of crude iron that is malleable; and that the people who built the mounds, or any other of the native races of the United States, had any knowledge of working iron-ore, yet remains to be shown. Some of the iron was in its original shape,--unworked nodules; a part in solid bars, etc.; but much of it had been treated like silver,--that is, hammered into sheets and used in thin plates as an ornamental covering for ear-rings and pendants. The mixture of nickel in this meteoric iron has not only preserved it, but caused a polished surface to gleam white, as though plated with silver, while tarnishing less easily than that metal. No doubt it was among the most highly prized of all the treasures of those old days, and nothing more precious than this could have been offered as a sacrifice, when, with lavish hand, pearls and silver and gold, weapons and tools, household furniture and products of the chase and the farm, were heaped upon the funeral pyre or contributed to the sacrificial flame.

In materials illustrating the life and crafts of the Indians during the last century and at present, this museum is not yet so well supplied as some others,--that at Washington, for example, which has been constituted the depository for the collections of scores of government expeditions into the West and North. Nevertheless, some things of great value and completeness in this way are already owned. Thus, in the South American room may be seen a series of specimens illustrating the whole operation of pottery-making among the Caribs of British Guiana. This was obtained several years ago by Professor H. A. Ward, who bought the entire stock of materials of a woman of that tribe whom he found at work. These consisted of a mass of clay ready for the potter, a number of vessels ready for the fire, others which had been burned, and several ornamented in colors. The gourd scrapers of several shapes, with which she smoothed the vessels, small, smooth stones used in polishing the raw colors, and other appurtenances, are included, together with toy vessels which the woman hastily pinched into shape and gave to her children as playthings to amuse them while she worked, the forms of which help to explain many similar articles found in ancient graves.

With like completeness, when Dr. E. Palmer was exploring for the museum the nitre-caves in Northern Mexico, anciently occupied as places of human sepulture, he sent with the "mummies" extracted from them a full series of such natural products of the vicinity as would enable the museum to exhibit the leaves, fibres, and other vegetable productions from which the cloth, baskets, and so forth were constructed by the people who placed their dead in the caves. Dr. Palmer also sent a full set of the rude apparatus by which the present Indians of Mexico make their cactus-cakes and syrup, from the thorn-tipped pole with which the prickly fruit is gathered to the great earthen colanders through which it is strained; also all the implements and utensils, the native still, etc., used in making _pulque_ and in preparing and weaving the fibre of the agave.

To go with greater detail into the treasures of this remarkable collection, whose value is so great, not only historically, but in an educational aspect (since it is readily accessible throughout and instructively presented), is forbidden by the limits of space; but the temptation to transgress is strong. I have said nothing, for example, of the great series of crania, now many times larger than when Wyman printed his papers in the early reports. A portion of this collection has more recently been described by Mr. Lucien Carr, whose voluntary services as an assistant at the museum have been of inestimable advantage to it. I have alluded only incidentally to the department of ceramics, which contains what is unquestionably the most important lot of material ever brought together for the investigation of the history and progress of the potter's art on the Western continent, from the "cord-marked" potsherds of the shell-heaps to the fanciful creations of Mexico and Peru.

It will be seen, then, to summarize briefly what this essay has said, that the trustees of the Peabody Museum have secured to the public a fire-proof building containing nearly four hundred thousand specimens illustrating human progress in the "childhood of the world;" and these have been placed under proper care and arranged in accordance with the demands of modern anthropological science. An instructive and attractive museum has been formed in this way, where, from time to time, free descriptive lectures are given by the curator, and whither students may go for special investigations with the assurance that, so far as America is concerned, they have access to the most important collections that have been brought together, while material for comparison with the antiquities of other parts of the globe is not wanting.

ERNEST INGERSOLL.

A NORTH-RIVER FERRY.

Did the reader ever realize how important a part the ferry and the ford have played in human affairs? How differently would history read without its Caesar crossing the Rubicon, its Xerxes crossing the Hellespont, and its Washington crossing the Delaware, its Paul Revere wherried across the Charles, and its Burr and Hamilton ferried over to Weehawken,--not to speak of the Hebrews going over Jordan, Jacob at the brook Jabbok, and John the Baptist at the fords of Bethabara! The ancients conceived of death under the figure of a ferry, and transmitted it to us with such vividness that we are still half pagan in our imagination. And I can easily believe that the battle of life may be essentially influenced by having a river to cross each day. The change from land to water, from narrow and stony streets to the wide, free outlook and uplook of a great river, the varied life of a crowded ferry-boat and of a busy harbor, the magnetic sympathies of a multitude let loose from toil and perforce at a stand-still for the time,--all this insures a transition of mind as well as transfer of body. I could appreciate the exclamation of an impulsive English girl while waiting one sultry day on a North-River pier, as she spread open her arms and rushed to the edge of the dock: "I feel as if I'd like to take a barth!" It was not the dirty scum under the piles that set her longing, but the general sense of refreshment which the broad and breezy river suggested to her imagination. Why should not those tides wash out some of the lines which a day in the city has left to deepen on a man's mind and brow?--especially if he pushes on to "sweet fields beyond the swelling flood" and enters "that dear hut," his home, under a vine-wreathed porch and along a gravel walk through a grassy lawn, and not down "area steps," or even through the ponderous and marble jaws of some city "palace." Therefore it is that the suburban hath the promise, above his mewed-up fellow-citizen, that his days shall be long in the land which the Lord God giveth him. And hence even the narrow-neckedness of land which distinguishes New York and pushes most of its population over the sides may have its compensations.

The ferry makes itself felt long before one gets there. There is a sort of undertow in the city tides far up from the river-front. There is a greater tangle of travel as you approach the streets leading to the ferry. There is a perceptible assimilation of trade to the supposed demands of householders living out of town. The retail Mammon dethrones his proud wholesale rival. The sidewalk- or gutter-stand thrusts itself out in advance of the store. The peripatetic dealer in small wares, the newsboy, the apple-woman, the bootblack, and the mendicant marshal you the way. The whole vicinity acquires the look and stir of a bazaar. Baskets and paper parcels and travelling-bags are conspicuous and general. Perhaps you find yourself on the greasy edge of some huge market. The hacks accumulate like croton-bugs about a kitchen sink. You feel as if you were being sucked into some valve or vortex.

There is a test of character in the mode of going to the ferry. It is almost impossible not to be in a hurry, such is the swirl of the tide in which you find yourself. In my three years of almost daily transit I never ceased to revere the moral superiority of the admirable few who day after day could proceed with leisurely step and serene brow amid the heated, breathless, tugging, anxious multitude. It seemed to indicate a steadiness of nerve, a systematic habit, a wise and deliberate forecast, a self-control and self-confidence, and a belief in their watches, to which I never hope to attain this side of Old Charon's ferry itself. And yet somebody is nearly always late. Quite as likely, however, it is somebody who is too early,--because he really belongs to the next boat, and not to the one which is just leaving the dock as he tears into the ferry-house.

There is a good deal of condensed life and human nature to be found at a ferry by one who himself is in no hurry to cross. Take your stand just where you can see up the street and at the same time can command the whole interior. The waiting-room is deserted, except by some such lounger as yourself, or a passenger left by the last boat or "too previous" for the next. Well for you if you are sufficiently respectable to pass muster with the official whose duty it is to see that no one secures a day's lodging for two cents. There is a slow dribble of wayfarers, who seldom spend their time in the dismal and dingy waiting-room unless in very cold weather or to stand guard over their parcels which they have piled upon the seats. But all at once (especially if the next boat is to connect with some train on the other side) you observe a thickening of the living current far up the sidewalk, as when the gutters are swollen by the turning on of a hydrant. Down comes the hurrying mass, fretting at the manifold obstructions, its component parts struggling together and almost seeming to go over each other's heads. No time now for the small courtesies, or even charities, of life. The sturdy and malodorous beggar knows too well to run alongside with his "Help a poor boy; I'm a stranger in the city." And the man whose abridged and distorted legs are his stock in trade waits for the return-tide to enact his shrewd and pantomimic morality-play by a hurried shuffle up and down the pavement. The news-dealers--even the enterprising female who summons mercy to the aid of commerce by her absurdly lugubrious visage--have the paper and the change all ready to thrust into their customer's hand. The scene at the crossing of the street baffles description. Talk of the day of miracles being past! One who can watch this scene of scare and scamper and hair-breadth escape and not believe in a particular Providence must be incorrigibly heterodox.

The tide reaches the outer gate in a state of lively congestion. The person in front of you as you pass the toll-taker's booth is quite sure to have forgotten his ticket, and has to set down his parcels while he fumbles through all his pockets for it. You are sure you hear the inner gate closing. You dash through the ferry-house in the most undignified manner and unphilosophic mood--to find that you have five minutes to spare! And you take your stand beside your double, who has been all this time enjoying the little woes and absurdities of others,--including yourself.