CHAPTER XIII.

SYMBOLIC MOUNDS.

THE WISCONSIN REGION—ANIMAL MOUNDS—SYMBOLIC MOUNDS—BIG ELEPHANT MOUND—DADE COUNTY MOUNDS—MAGNITUDE OF EARTHWORKS—ENCLOSED WORKS OF ART—ROCK RIVER WORKS—THE NORTHERN AZTALAN—ANCIENT GARDEN BEDS—THE WISCONSIN PLAINS—A SACRED NEUTRAL LAND—THE ALLIGATOR MOUND—THE GREAT SERPENT, OHIO—SERPENT SYMBOLS— INTAGLIO EARTHWORKS—SUGGESTIVE INFERENCES—THE ANCIENT RACE—A SACERDOTAL CASTE—ANTIQUITY OF THE RACE—INFERIORITY OF THE INDIAN TRIBES.

The well-watered region which stretches westward from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi, was occupied until recently by a comparatively dense Indian population; and even now affords shelter to the remnants of native tribes. But besides the traces of their ephemeral dwellings and graves, it abounds with earthworks of a distinctive character, peculiar to the New World. But of this as of other partially explored regions of the west, the earlier accounts were vague and contradictory; and it is only very recently that the characteristics of its monuments have been accurately defined. Mr. J. A. Lapham, to whose _Antiquities of Wisconsin surveyed and described_, the minute knowledge of these remarkable earthworks is chiefly due, claims to have first described the Turtle Mound at Waukesha and other animal effigies of the same territory, so early as 1836. These notices, however, only appeared in local newspapers; and general attention was for the first time directed to them by Mr. R. C. Taylor in the _American Journal of Arts and Sciences_, in 1838. Their peculiar character was thereby perceived, and such general interest awakened, that the American Antiquarian Society was induced to place funds at Mr. Lapham’s disposal for carrying out the elaborate surveys since published.

The occurrence of “Animal Mounds” is by no means exclusively confined to the State of Wisconsin. Some examples are specially worthy of notice among the varied earthworks of the Ohio and Scioto Valleys. But the important fact connected with the aboriginal traces of Wisconsin is that its Animal Mounds do not occur interspersed, as in the Ohio Valley, with civic and sacred enclosures, sepulchral mounds, and works of defence; but within its well-defined limits, thousands of gigantic basso-relievos of men, beasts, birds, and reptiles, all wrought with persevering labour on the surface of the soil, constitute its distinguishing characteristic; and disclose no evidence of their construction with any other object in view than that of perpetuating their external forms. The vast levels or slightly undulating surfaces of prairie land present peculiarly favourable conditions for the colossal relievos of the native artist: yet not more so than are to be met with in other localities where no such mounds occur. It is important therefore to bear in remembrance that defensive or military structures, and such as are apparently designed for sacrificial rites or religious ceremonies, are scarcely to be met with in the territory marked by those singular groups of imitative earthworks. The country, moreover, is well adapted for maintaining a large population, in very diverse stages of social progress. Through its gently undulating surface numerous rivers and streams flow in sluggish, yet limpid current, eastward and westward, to empty themselves into Lake Michigan or the Mississippi. The pools and groups of lakes into which they expand, furnish abundance of wild rice, which is at once a means of sustenance to numerous aquatic birds, and also constituted an important source of supply to the aborigines, so long as they held possession of the territory. The rivers and lakes also abound with excellent fish; and where the soil remains uninvaded by the ploughshare of the intruding settler, numerous traces of older agricultural labour show where the Indians cultivated the maize, and developed some of the industrial arts of a settled people. Indian grave-mounds diversify the surface, and enclose ornaments and weapons of the rude nomads that still linger on the outskirts of that western state. But such slight and inartificial mounds are readily distinguishable from the remarkable structures of a remoter era which constitute the archæological characteristic of the region. Here, indeed, as elsewhere, the Indians have habitually selected the ancient earthworks as places of sepulture; and as a rule have given the preference to the larger and more conspicuous mounds. On some of these the surveyors recognised recent graves of the Potowattomies. But their irregular position shows that they bear no relation to the original design. In their superficial character they correspond to the slight grave-mounds made with the imperfect implements of the modern Indians; and they contrast in all other respects with the laborious construction of the gigantic animal-mounds.

The symbolic earthworks of the Wisconsin plains are not confined to the representation of animals, though the predominance of animal-mounds has suggested that name for the whole. Embankments occur in the form of crosses, crescents, angles, and straight lines; and also seemingly as gigantic representations of the war-club, tobacco-pipe, and other familiar implements or weapons. Some of the crosses and other simpler forms probably originally represented animals, birds, or fishes, with extended wings or fins. But in those, as in the better-defined animal-mounds, time has obliterated the minuter touches of the ancient modeller, and effaced indications of his meaning. Yet fancy still recognises among the best preserved relievos the elk, buffalo, bear, fox, otter, and racoon. The lizard is of frequent occurrence; the turtle and frog also appear; birds and fishes are repeatedly represented; and man himself figures among the ancient relievos. Of one form of mound which Mr. Lapham identifies as the otter, seven examples occur. Sixteen cruciform earthworks are described, and the ordinary examples, of all sizes, are counted by hundreds.

It is not without reason that some of the larger mounds in the midst of those emblematic earthworks have been designated observatory mounds, and assumed to have been constructed in order to afford a view of the laborious devices. Ordinarily the mound builder is tempted to give greater prominence to his tumulus by erecting it on the summit of a hill or bluff; but on the prairie land of Wisconsin, such natural elevations are wanting; and hence the construction of a class of works for which the lowest levels were preferred. The “Big Elephant Mound,” which measures 135 feet in length, is constructed in a valley gently sloping to the Mississippi, a few miles below the junction of the Wisconsin River. The ridges on both sides offered a choice of elevated sites; but the bottom land nearly on a level with the Mississippi at high water, has been purposely chosen, so that the device might be surveyed from the neighbouring heights. Fancy is prompt to assign a meaning to the old modellers’ works. In this example, the prolonged snout, or proboscis, has led to its designation as the “Big Elephant Mound”; and the delineator of it, in the Smithsonian Report for 1872, so confidently relies on its purposed significance that he asks: “Is not the existence of such a mound good evidence of the contemporaneous existence of the mastodon and the Mound-Builders?” The figure, though comparatively large, is surpassed by many. Some indeed are on a gigantic scale. One mound of peculiar, but indeterminate form, tapers for a length of five hundred and seventy feet. At its smaller extremity or tail, it slightly curves to the east. At the opposite extremity are a large cross, and one of the largest circular mounds. Its device can no longer be recognised; but much ingenuity and still more labour, have been expended on its construction. Another remarkable group in Dade County, includes six quadrupeds of indeterminate species, six parallelograms, a large tumulus, a circle, and a human figure. The animals are grouped in two rows; and the tumulus seems as though it had been erected as an observatory from which to view the elaborate design. An ingenious English critic recognises in it the possible memorial of a triumph like that of the ancient Greek charioteer in the national games, with the appropriate substitution of a sledge for the chariot, and a train of dogs for the fleet racers of the hippodrome. “Taking,” he says, “the rudeness of the age and workmanship into account, the impracticability of the material, and the scale and material, the whole is really not a bad representation of the dog-drawn sledges of the Kamschatdales of the present day. Supposing their horns to have been omitted, from the impracticability of raising earthworks that would stand well, and in proportion to represent them, they might have signified the elk or the reindeer. Whatever animal, however, be taken, it is perhaps a legitimate inference that we have here the colossal trophy of a super-Atlantic charioteer at some American race; why not the curious hippodrome, or, more correctly here, cynodrome, with its starting-cells (carceres), its course, its meta, and road of triumph to the town?”[89]

It was not necessary for the fanciful interpreter to resort to remote Kamschatka for the model of his dog-drawn sledge, for such are common enough among the Indians of the North-west. But a general survey of the earthworks of Wisconsin in no degree tends to confirm this interpretation, unless in so far as such animal-mounds may have been monumental memorials, and trophies of achievements in wars and the chase. As such they are executed on a scale which gives evidence of the systematic expenditure of an enormous amount of labour; and as the opinion has latterly found favour with some that the great mounds are simply the result of many successive interments; and the marks of regular stratification in some of them have been adduced in confirmation of this idea: the corresponding proportions of the animal-mounds are significant. In them at least a preconceived design has guided the builders from the outset; and some adequate idea of the magnitude of the Dade County group will be formed from a correct estimate of the proportions of the supposed charioteer. He is figured, as is usual in similar mounds, with his limbs extended, and with arms of disproportionate length; possibly owing to the design originally representing some implement in each hand. From head to foot he measures one hundred and twenty-five feet, and one hundred and forty feet from the extremity of one arm to that of the other. The head alone is a mound twenty-five feet in diameter, and nearly six feet in highest elevation from the surrounding soil. Measuring the whole by this scale, it is abundantly apparent that a group, including altogether fifteen mound-figures, must have been a work of immense time and labour, and doubtless owed its origin to some motive or purpose of corresponding magnitude in the estimation of its constructors.

Mr. Schoolcraft attempted to solve the mystery of the emblematic mounds by assuming them to be the Totems, or heraldic symbols, in use among the Indian tribes, thus reproduced in earthworks on a gigantic scale. The fox, the bear, the eagle, turtle, or other animal, is selected among them as the sign of the tribe or family. This usage prevailed among the Iroquois, Hurons, Algonquins, Cherokees, and other nations occupying very extensive areas; and, accordingly, guided by the superficial resemblance of the Animal Mounds to such totemic signs, Mr. Schoolcraft says: “A tribe could leave no more permanent trace of an esteemed sachem, or honoured individual, than by the erection of one of these monuments. They are clearly sepulchral, and have no other object but to preserve the names of distinguished actors in their history.”[90] But exploration seems to prove that the emblematical mounds of Wisconsin are not sepulchral; while any correspondence that may be traced between them and the totemic symbols of tribes once so widely spread as the Algonquins, Iroquois, and Cherokees, only increases the mystery of symbols constructed on this colossal scale, and confined to a territory so limited. So far indeed is a careful survey from confirming any such convenient and summary fancy, that Mr. Lapham states, as the result of elaborate explorations, that he conceives four epochs are traceable in the history of the locality, two of which at least preceded the era of occupation by the Indian tribes. The period of the animal-mound builders strikingly contrasts with that of the earthworks previously described, in the rarity of enclosed works of art. But the few implements discovered are full of interest from their obvious resemblance to those of the Mound-Builders. Several of the large hornstone discs which I have seen are of the same type as those found in immense numbers in the Ohio Mounds; and Mr. Albert H. Hoy of Racine, Wisconsin, describes in a letter to me the discovery of about thirty of the same relics, in that vicinity, under circumstances suggestive of great antiquity. They lay at a depth of eight feet in undisturbed soil, under a thin bed of peat, in what appeared to have been the ancient bed of the Rock River.

The sites of the symbolic earthworks of Wisconsin correspond to those adopted by the Mound-Builders for their sacred enclosures; though others of their works, and especially the most remarkable of their animal-mounds, were constructed on prominent heights. Within the fertile region bounded by the great lakes and the Mississippi, a numerous population may have long dwelt undisturbed, in the enjoyment of the profusion which wood and water and the easily cultivated soil supplied. On the bluffs and terraces surmounting the rivers and lakes by which facilities of communication with the surrounding territory, and with more distant regions, were commanded, the earthworks are found in extensive and evidently dependent groups. But, unlike the rich memorial mounds of the Scioto Valley, they reveal few enclosed relics to chronicle the history of their erection, and throw light on the race of artists who laboriously diversified the natural landscape with such devices. In a few cases, human remains have been found in them, under circumstances which did not clearly point to a modern date; but in summing up the results of his explorations, Mr. Lapham remarks:—“So far as I have had opportunity to observe, there are no original remains in the mounds of imitative form, beyond a few scattered fragments that may have gained a place there by accident. Many of the mounds have been entirely removed, including the earth beneath for a considerable depth, in the process of grading streets in Milwaukee; and it is usually found that the natural surface had not been disturbed at the time of the erection, but that the several layers or strata of mould, clay, gravel, etc., are continuous below the structure, as on the contiguous grounds. Great numbers of the smaller conical tumuli are also destitute of any remains; and if human bodies were ever buried under them, they are now so entirely ‘returned to dust’ that no apparent traces of them are left.”[91]

The extensive works at Aztalan, on the west branch of Rock River, present analogies of a different kind from the sacred and civic enclosures of the Mound-Builders. They constitute, it is believed, the only ancient enclosure, properly so called, throughout the whole region of the emblematic mounds; and, under the name of the “ancient city of Aztalan,” were long regarded as one of the wonders of the western world. Early explorers were on the look-out for the mother city of the Aztecs, and the first surveyor of the earthworks on Rock River named them Aztalan, in the full belief that the long-sought city of Mexican tradition had at length been found. The name was a stimulus to credulity and wonder; and proved the source of much extravagant exaggeration. Walls of brick still sustained by their solid buttresses; a subterranean vault and stairway discovered within one of its square mounds; a subterranean passage, arched with stone; bastions of solid masonry, and other features of the like kind: were all made to correspond with the supposed mother-city of the Aztecs, and the cradle-land of America’s native civilisation. On being subjected to accurate survey, those wondrous features vanish. Freed, however, from exaggeration and falsehood, the Aztalan works still present remarkable characteristics. An area of seventeen acres on the banks of the Rock River is enclosed on three sides by a vallum with regular “bastions,” as they have been termed; although both the construction of the walls, and the site of the enclosure—commanded as it is by elevated land on nearly every side,—preclude the idea of its having been a place of defence. Large, square, terraced mounds occupy the northern and southern angles. In one of them a human skeleton was found; and in others of the mounds coarse pottery occurs; but both may have been deposited long subsequent to the completion of the earthworks of Aztalan. With these exceptions, nothing has yet rewarded the careful and elaborate excavations of its explorers tending to throw light on the original builders. Its bastions have been tunnelled in vain; and cuttings made in some of the largest of a remarkable range of tumuli outside the enclosures revealed only ashes, mingled with charcoal and fragments of human bones, unaccompanied by a single work of art, like those which confer so graphic an interest on the mounds of the Ohio Valley.

Assuming the works of Aztalan and the animal-mounds of Wisconsin to belong to the same period: Mr. Lapham assigns the conical mounds to a later era. These he regards as built for sepulchral purposes, and exhibiting, both in construction and materials, the workmanship of a greatly inferior race of builders. Next come what are designated by the modern settlers “ancient garden beds,” consisting of low, broad, parallel ridges, as if corn had been planted in drills. They average four feet in width, and the depth of the space between them is six inches. These appearances indicate a more perfect system of agricultural operations than anything known to have been practised by the modern Indian tribes; but, at the same time, they are no less distinctly disconnected with the construction of the ancient mounds. Where these occur within a cultivated area, the parallel ridges of the old cultivators are carried across them in the same manner as over any other undulation of the ground. It is obvious, therefore, not only that the emblematic earthworks preceded them, but that they had neither sacredness nor any special significance in the eyes of the cultivators of the soil. Probably, indeed, such traces of agricultural operations belong to a greatly more modern period.

What, then, are the inferences to be drawn from the ancient monuments peculiar to the territory lying immediately to the south of the great copper region of Lake Superior? They are mostly of a negative character, yet not on that account without significance. If we assume the existence of contemporary nations in Wisconsin and the Ohio Valley in the period of the Mound-Builders, the chronicles of that era exhibit them to us in striking contrast. In the one region every convenient height is crowned with the elaborate fortifications of a numerous and warlike people; while, on the broad levels of the river-terraces, ingenious geometrical structures prove their skill and intellectual development as applied to the formation of civic and temple enclosures. Their sacred and sepulchral mounds, in like manner, reveal considerable artistic skill, and a singular variety in the rites and customs exacted in the performance of their national worship. Turning to the northern area, all is changed. Along the river-terraces we look in vain for military structures. The mounds disclose no altars rich with the metallurgic or mimetic workmanship of their builders; but, on the contrary, the sole traces of imitative art occur in the external forms of earthworks, the exploration of which confutes the idea of their having been erected over either grave or altar, and reveals no other purpose of their construction.

When it is considered that, along with the mica of the Alleghanies, the shells of the Gulf of Mexico, and obsidian from the ancient centre of American civilisation, the copper of Lake Superior is one of the most abundant materials found in the Mississippi mounds: we are tempted to trace some intimate relation between the warlike occupants of the Ohio and Scioto valleys and the singular race who dwelt in peaceful industry on the well-watered and plentifully stocked plains to the south of the copper region, and there constructed their strange colossal memorials of imitative art. The country seems peculiarly adapted by nature as a central neutral land for the continent to the east of the Rocky Mountains. On the east it is guarded by Lake Michigan, and on the north by the great inland sea which constitutes the fountain of the whole lake and river chain that sweeps away on its course of twenty-five hundred miles, over Niagara, and through the islands and rapids of the St. Lawrence, to the Atlantic. On the west, with its infant streamlets originating almost from the same source, the Mississippi rolls onward in its majestic course, receiving as its tributaries the great rivers which rise alike on the western slope of the Alleghanies and the eastern declivities of the Rocky Mountains, and loses itself at length in the Gulf of Mexico. This wonderful river system, and the great level contour of the regions which it drains, exercised a remarkable influence on the extinct civilisation of America, as well as on later Indian nomad life, making its primitive eras so different from any phase of Europe’s history. The Indians who traded with Cartier at Tadousac, on the lower St. Lawrence, and those whom Raleigh met with on the coast of Carolina, obtained their copper from the same northern region towards which the head-waters of the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence converge; while the world of Europe between the Rhine and the Baltic remained, even in its late Roman era, almost as much apart from that on its Mediterranean shores as the America of centuries before Columbus. It seems, therefore, not inconceivable that the prairie land of Wisconsin derives some of its archæological characteristics from its relation to the physical geography of the region between the Rocky Mountains and the Atlantic, possibly as a sacred neutral ground attached to the metallurgic region of Lake Superior, like the famous pipe-stone quarry of the Couteau des Prairies.

This idea of some peculiar relations connecting the symbolic architects of Wisconsin with the Mound-Builders of the Ohio, derives confirmation from the few but remarkable animal-mounds of the latter, in which their connection with the religious rites of the ancient race is borne out. One example of an animal-mound, upwards of 250 feet in length, and probably designed to represent a bear, occupies a high level terrace on the west bank of the Scioto river. Unlike any of the symbolic mounds of Wisconsin, it is surrounded by an oval embankment measuring four hundred and eighty feet in greatest diameter. On the south side a space of about ninety feet wide breaking the continuity of the embankment, is covered by a long exterior mound, leaving two avenues of approach where it overlaps the inner oval. This mound has not been opened; but in the process of excavating the Ohio canal, large quantities of mica, similar to what occurs so abundantly in the sacrificial mounds, were found in its immediate vicinity.

The same canal intersects Newark earthworks; and there, within another elliptic vallum, is the Eagle Mound, measuring 155 feet in length of body, and 200 feet between the tips of the wings. It is only a minor feature of the remarkable group, already described, which includes geometrical enclosures, mounds, and avenues; but it is distinguished from all the others, by the great scale of its enclosing walls, and interior ditch. Unfortunately it was opened by a former proprietor in search of treasure; and no further record of its contents has been preserved, except that it covered a hearth of a similar character to the altars already described as characteristic of the sacrificial mounds. The fact, however, illustrates the contrast between works bearing so much external resemblance to each other as the symbolic mounds of the Mississippi Valleys and those of Wisconsin. In the absence of all included relics of worship or inhumation, the latter seem but as symbols of the rites practised by the southern Mound-Builders.

About six miles higher up the same valley, the “Alligator,” of Licking County, attracts attention as another remarkable colossal animal-mound. It occupies the summit of a lofty hill or spur, which projects into the Racoon Creek Valley. The outline and general contour of this huge lizard-mound are still clearly defined, though agricultural operations have obliterated some of the minuter traces noted by early visitors. The average height is four feet; but the head, shoulders, and rump, are elevated in parts to a height of fully six feet. The tail curls off to the left side, and is now so indefinite, as it tapers towards a point, that the precise measurement is uncertain; but the total length of the “Alligator” may be stated at about 220 feet. Excavations made at various points have only shown that the figure has been modelled in fine clay upon a framework of stones of considerable size. But when I visited it, a rain gully had exposed part of the side of the hill, showing this to consist to a large extent of loose stones; so that the mound is no doubt constructed with materials obtained on the spot. A raised circular structure, designated the altar, and covered with stones which had been much exposed to the action of fire, is described by former observers as standing on the right side, and connected with the summit of the mound by a graded way ten feet broad; but the traces of this feature are now very slight.

The site of this remarkable monument commands a view of the entire valley for eight or ten miles, and is by far the most conspicuous point within that limit. An ancient fortified hill stands about three-fourths of a mile distant on a spur of the same range of heights; and another entrenched hill nearly faces it on the opposite side of the valley. Numerous mounds occupy both the hill-tops and the levels in surrounding valleys; and it is only the luxuriant growth of the forest which conceals the great Newark group, with its geometrical enclosures, parallels, and mounds. The Alligator Mound may, therefore, be assumed to symbolise some object of special awe or veneration, thus reared on one of the chief high-places of the nation, where the ancient people of the valley could witness the celebration of rites of their unknown worship. Its site was obviously selected as the most prominent natural feature in a populous district abounding with military, civic, and religious structures. Yet its imposing proportions are surpassed by another symbolic work constructed on a height remote from any traces of ancient settlement.

The Great Serpent of Adam’s County, Ohio, occupies the extreme point of a crescent-formed spur of land formed at the junction of two tributary streams of the Ohio. This elevated site has been cut to a conformity with an oval circumvallation on its summit, leaving a smooth external platform ten feet wide, with an inclination towards the embankment on every side. Immediately outside the inner point of this oval is the serpent’s head, with distended jaws, as if in the act of swallowing what, in comparison with its huge dimensions, is spoken of as an egg, though it measures 160 feet in length. Conforming to the summit of the hill, the body of the serpent winds back, in graceful undulations, terminating with a triple coil at the tail. The figure is boldly defined, the earth-wrought relievo being upwards of five feet in height by thirty feet in base at the centre of the body; and the entire length, following its convolutions, cannot measure less than a thousand feet.

This singular monument stands alone, and though classed here with the symbolic animal-mounds of Wisconsin, it has no analogue among the numerous basso-relievos wrought on the broad prairie-lands of that region. It is indeed altogether unique among the earthworks of the New World, and without a parallel in the Old; though it has not unnaturally furnished the starting-point for a host of speculations relative to serpent-worship. Among the miniature sculptures of the Mound-Builders, repeated examples of the serpent occur. On one of the altars of “Mound City” was a pipe of the form peculiar to the mounds, with a rattlesnake coiled round the bowl. From another mound of the same earthwork several sculptured tablets were recovered, representing the rattlesnake, delicately carved in fine cinnamon-coloured sandstone; and one of them carefully enveloped in sheets of copper. The character of these sculptures, and the circumstances under which they were discovered, suggested to the explorers that they were not designed for ornaments; but had some relation to superstitious rites. Other serpents are represented by the Mound-Sculptors; but the rattlesnake is the favourite type. I recently examined, in the Peabody Museum of Archæology at Cambridge, Mass., a series of eighteen engraved circular plates made from the shell of the _Pyrula_, which were obtained from the Brakebill and Lick Creek Mounds, in East Tennessee. Thirteen of them bear the same device of a rattlesnake. Among the Mexicans it was the symbol of royalty; and this helps to give a special interest to a remarkable tablet figured here, in the same style of art, so suggestive of Mexican affinities. It is a disk of fine-grained sandstone, nearly 8½ inches in diameter, and three-quarters of an inch, thick, on which is graven the elaborate device of two intertwined rattlesnakes, as shown in Fig. 73. On the back a slight ornament runs round the border; and a fractured mortice-hole, somewhat out of the true centre, shows where a handle has been attached to it. It was found in two pieces, near Lake Washington, Issaquina County, Mississippi; and is now in the possession of Mr. W. Marshall Anderson, of Circleville, Ohio.

The imitative mounds of Wisconsin hitherto described are in bold relief; but on the Indian Prairie, a few miles from the city of Milwaukee, there occur five designs, wrought—to use a term of European art,—in intaglio. Instead of the representations of animals being executed in relief, the process has been reversed, and the outline has been completed by piling the excavated earth round the edge. A few similar examples have been noted at other points; but such a process is more liable to effacement in the progress of time, unless renewed like the famous “White Horse” of Berkshire, by a periodical “scouring.” The chalk hills of southern England present peculiar facilities for effective colossal intaglio work. Another White Horse, ascribed to Saxon victors of the Danes, accompanies a group of British earthworks on Braddon Hill, Wiltshire; and the colossal human figure, armed with a club, at Cerne, in Dorsetshire, preserves a still closer counterpart to those scattered over the prairie lands beyond the western shores of Lake Michigan.

But for our present purpose the comparison of these ancient earthworks with others clearly traceable to modern Indian tribes, is more important than any analogies between the antiquities of the two hemispheres. One fact of obvious significance is the great scale on which the prehistoric races of America wrought, and the consequent evidences of numbers, and of combined labour perseveringly applied to the accomplishment of their aim. It is difficult to convey any definite conception of this by mere description, even though accompanied with minute measurements. A single cruciform mound measures four hundred and twenty feet between the extreme points of its limbs. Lizard and other animal-mounds ranging from eighty to a hundred and fifty feet in length occur in extensive groups; and by their systematic arrangement, impress the mind with the idea of protracted toil carried on under the control of some supreme rule, or stimulated by motives of paramount influence. The Indian tribes that have come under observation are as diverse in habits, arts, and religious rites as in language; but none of them have manifested any capacity for the combination involved in the construction of monuments which more nearly resemble the great embankments and viaducts of modern railway engineering. The extent of such works indicates a settled condition of society, and industry far beyond that of the Iroquois Confederacy. In all this there may be nothing absolutely incompatible with the idea of the Indians being degenerate descendants of such a people, yet it is unsupported by proof. No modern tribe preserves any traces of such ancestral constructive habits; and while the animal-mounds appear to be regarded with superstitious reverence by the Indians, and are rarely disturbed except for purposes of sepulture, they lay no claim to them as the work of their fathers. The only theory of their origin is, that they are the work of the great Manitou, and were made by him to reveal to his red children the plentiful supply of game that awaits them in the world of spirits. The idea is a consoling one to tribes whose hunting-grounds have been invaded and laid desolate; and it is fully as philosophical as a theory gravely propounded to the American Scientific Association, that the cruciform and curvilinear earthworks intermingled with the animal-mounds include characters of the Phœnician alphabet, and are half-obliterated inscriptions commemorative of explorations by the great voyagers of antiquity.

What then are the inferences thus far deducible as to the races of Northern America in ante-Columbian centuries? Assuming a community of arts, and certain intimate relations in race and social condition, among the ancient people who worked the mines on Lake Superior, and constructed the varied earthworks that reach southward into Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky: there is no reason to suppose that they were united as one nation. While coincidences of a remarkable kind in the construction, and still more in the dimensions of their great earthworks, point to a common knowledge of geometrical configuration, and a standard of measurement: no two earthworks so entirely correspond as to show an absolute identity of purpose. The marked diversity between the truncated, pyramidal mounds of the states on the Gulf, the geometrical enclosures of Ohio, and the symbolic earthworks of Wisconsin, indicate varied usages of distinct communities. A dense population must have centred in certain favourite localities, still marked by evidence of the combined labours of a numerous people; and some supreme rule, like that of the Incas of Peru, must have regulated the operations requisite for the execution of works planned on so comprehensive a scale.

The Scioto and the Ohio valleys, it may be presumed, were the seats of separate states, with frontier populations living in part on the produce of the chase; but depending largely on agricultural industry for the sustenance of the communities crowded on the flats and river-valleys where their monuments abound, and for the supply of the workmen by whose combined labour they were constructed. The religious character and uses ascribed to one important class of their earthworks, in which scientific skill is most clearly manifested, points to the probable existence of a sacerdotal order, such as played an important part in the polity both of Mexico and Peru. There is indeed so great a discrepancy between the remarkable combination of science and skill in the execution of the Ohio earthworks, and the crude state of the arts otherwise associated with them, as to suggest the idea of a sacerdotal caste, like the Brahmins of India, distinct in race, and superior in intellectual acquirements to the great mass of the people.

Of the physical characteristics of the Mound-Builders, notwithstanding the ransacking of many sepulchral mounds, we possess as yet very partial evidence. This department of the subject will come under review in a subsequent chapter; and it will then be seen that while the accepted Mound-Builders’ type of head has been largely based on the very specimen selected by Dr. Morton, as “the perfect type of Indian conformation,” with its undoubted traces of compression, and of the use of the cradle-board, so characteristic of the Indian hunter: it seems not improbable that a systematic exploration of the mounds may disclose evidence of a ruling class differing physically as well as intellectually from the mass of the community by whose toil the enduring monuments of their singular rites and customs have been perpetuated.

But, while the Mound-Builders are essentially prehistoric, according to all New World chronology, there is nothing in the disclosures hitherto made calculated to suggest for them an extremely remote era. The marvellous traces of geometrical skill in their great earthworks, more than anything else, separate them from every known race north of Mexico. The indications of antiquity in the mines of Lake Superior, and the mounds of Ohio, suggest no such enormous intervals of time as perplex us in attempting to deal with the relics of the caves and river-valleys of Europe. The refilled trenches on the barren rocks of Isle Royale manifestly demand centuries for the slow accumulation of sufficient soil and vegetable matter to refill the excavations. Dr. Hildreth ascribes eight hundred years of growth to a tree felled on one of the mounds at Marietta; and other trustworthy authorities, including Messrs. Squier and Davis, furnish similar evidence for lesser periods of four, five, and six centuries. The longest term thus indicated would be little enough for the filling up of the deserted trenches of Isle Royal. But however far back we carry the era of the Mound-Builders, the chief change which the regions occupied by them have since undergone, is the clothing of their valleys, and the earthworks erected there, with the forests which help us to some partial guess at the intervening centuries since their disappearance. The animal remains hitherto found in their mounds are those of the existing species of deer, bears, wolves, and other fauna, not even now wholly extirpated from Ohio; and while their ingenious sculptures prove that they were familiar with a more southern, and even a South-American tropical fauna: nothing has yet been discovered to connect them with an extinct, much less a fossil mammalia, such as the mastodon. The probability rather is that the ruins of Clark’s Work, or Fort Ancient, may match in antiquity with those of England’s Norman keeps, and even that their builders may have lingered on into centuries nearer the age of Columbus.

The Zuñi, Moquis, Pimos, and other tribes of New Mexico, have left curious evidences of a people of gentle skill in agriculture, in ceramic art, and above all, in architecture, beyond anything pertaining to the northern Indians, or even in some respects to the Mound-Builders. But there still remains the distinct and perplexing element of a people so partially civilised, and comparatively rude; yet able to construct squares, circles, ellipses, and other geometrical figures on a seale which would tax the skill of many a well-trained civil engineer of the present day.

Other characteristic traits of the Mound-Builders, especially as shown in their ingenious sculptures, and illustrated by their mimetic art, have yet to be considered. But this at least is apparent, that the most advanced among the Indian tribes of North America within its historical period represent a phase of life essentially inferior to that which had preceded it. Before the great river-valleys were overshadowed with their ancient forests, nations dwelt there practising arts and rites which involved many germs of civilisation. Their defensive military skill, their agricultural industry, and even their ideas of the relations of man to some supreme spiritual power, are suggested by evidence, which, though inadequate for any detailed chronicle, discloses glimpses of an unwritten history full of interest even in this tantalising form. We have still to consider other characteristics of the ancient race, including their geographical and ethnical relations. But before doing so, it is desirable to review the history of other ancient American races among whom civilisation attained a higher development, and of whom we have historical evidence, as well as the chronicles which archæology supplies.

[89] _Journ. Brit. Archæol. Ass._ vol. v. p. 411.

[90] _History of Indian Tribes_, vol. i. p. 52.

[91] _Antiquities of Wisconsin_, p. 80.