HAMILTON COUNTY OHIO - History (published 1881) Ch.3 The Aboriginal American - pgs 21-28 *********************************************************************** OHGENWEB NOTICE: All distribution rights to this electronic data are reserved by the submitter. Reproduction or re-presentation of copyrighted material will require the permission of the copyright owner. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. http://www.usgwarchives.net/oh/ *********************************************************************** File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Tina Hursh frog158@juno.com April 15, 2000 Transcribed by Linda Boorom *********************************************************************** Ch.3 The Aboriginal American - pgs 21-28 *********************************************************************** History of Hamilton County Ohio with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches. Compiled by Henry A. Ford, A.M. and Mrs. Kate B. Ford, L.A. William & Co., Publishers; 1881. pages 21-29 part 1 ~pg 21~ CHAPTER III. THE ABORIGINAL AMERICAN. Are they here- The dead of other days?- and did the dust Of these fair solitudes once stir with life And burn with passion? let the mighty mounds That overlook the rivers, or that rise In the dim forest crowded with old oaks, Answer. A race that long has passed away, Built them; - a disciplined and populous race Heaped, with long toil, the earth, while yet the Greek Was hewing the Pentelicus to forms Of symmetry, and rearing on its rock The glittering Parthenon. These ample fields Nourished their harvests; here their herds were fed, When haply by their stalls the bison lowed And bowed his maned shoulder to the yoke. The red man came, The roaming hunter-tribes, warlike and fierce, And the Mound Builders vanished from the earth. -W. C. BRYANT, "The Prairies." THE AMERICAN ABORIGINE. The red men whom Columbus found upon this continent, and whom he mistakenly calls Indians, were not its aborigines. The Western, not the Eastern hemisphere is the Old World. AGASSIZ finely said: First-born among the continents, though so much later in culture and civilization than some of more recent birth, America, so far as her physical history is concerned, has been falsely denominated the New World. Hers was the first dry land lifted out of the waters, hers the first shore washed by the ocean that enveloped all the earth beside; and while Europe was represented only by islands rising here and there above the sea, America already stretched an unbroken line from Nova Scotia to the Far West. Great, learned, and eloquent as was AGASSIZ, however, his doctrine of the separate creation of the races of humanity - that men must have originated in nations, as the bees have originated in swarms, and as the different social plants have covered the extensive tracts over which they have naturally spread - has failed to obtain general acceptance among the scientists. Later investigations tend to return anthropology and ethnology to their ancient basis, upon the principle sounded forth by Paul in the scholarly air of Mars Hill: "God hath made of one blood all nations of men." America, old world as it is, is not a cradle-land. Her native physiognomies, the manners and customs of the races found by Europeans upon her soil, their traditions, and something in their architecture, point toward the historic regions of the far east. The travellers who see Kalmuck Tartars upon the Asiatic steppes, with almost the precise face and figure of the American Indian, catch thus a hint of the far-away past of emigration to and colonization of this continent. Not only across the tract now occupied by Behring's Straits, - very likely dry land in the period of exodus from Asia, - but also across the Atlantic sea, storm-driven or pushed by adventurous souls who never returned to tell their tale, the wave of immigration may have come. Quite certain it is now, the time of man's appearance upon American soil dates long back among the ages previous to the advent of Christ. Before the Indians were, as dwellers here; before the Mound Builders; before Aztec and Nahuan and Mayan civilizations, was still, in all probability, the prehistoric man of millenniums ago. So long since, in the study of our antiquities, as 1839, Dr. McGUIRE, in the Transactions of the Boston Society of Natural History, brought forward evidence, from discoveries recently made in the improvement of the High Rock spring at Saratoga, to show the presence of human beings there fifty-five hundred years before. The find of a human bone near Natchez. in association with the remains of the mastodon and the megalonyx; the human skeleton dug from an excavation at New Orleans, at a depth of sixteen feet, and beneath four successive buried forests of cypress; the matting and pottery found on Petit Anse Island, Louisiana, fifteen to twenty feet below the surface, underneath the fossil bones of the elephant and the mastodon; the mastodon found in his miry grave on the bottom lands of the Bourbense river, in Missouri, with every token about his remains that he had been hunted and killed by savages there; the skeletons found under some depth of soil and accumulations of bones in caves at Louisville, Kentucky, and Elyria, Ohio; - all, with other facts developing from time to time, seem to point a high antiquity for the aboriginal American. Colonel WHITTLESEY, of Cleveland, in his Evidences of the Antiquity of Man in the United States, argues from the find in the Elyria cave, that, "judging from the appearance of the bones and the depth of accumulations over them, two thousand years may have elapsed since the human skeletons were laid on the floor of this cave." The arguments from other finds multiply this number to several scores of centuries. In a later and very recent pamphlet Colonel WHITTLESEY says: Man may have existed in Ohio with the mastodon, elephant, rhinoceros, musk ox, horse, beaver, and tapir of the drift period, as he did in Europe; but to decide such a question the proof should he indisputable.... There is some reason to conclude that there were people on this territory prior to the builders of the mounds. Our cave shelters have not been much explored, but as far as they have been examined the relies lying at the bottom of the accumulations indicate a very rude people. I anticipate that we shall find here, as in other countries, that the most ancient race were the rudest and were cave-dwellers. I have seen at Portsmouth, Ohio, on the banks of the Ohio river, fire-hearths more ancient than the earthworks at that place. Whoever the people were who, made these fires, they must have had arrow-points, war-clubs, and stone axes or mauls. But we have at this time no evidence to connect such a primeval race with the human effigies scattered profusely throughout Ohio. These effigies present no uniformity of type, and, therefore, cannot represent race features. They approach nearer to the North American savage than any other people, but are so uncouth that they are of little or no ethnological value. There was no school of art among either the cave-dwellers, the builders of the mounds, or the more recent Northern Indians, which was capable of a correct representation of the human face. These effigies must have been the result of the fancies of idle hours, produced under no system and with no uniformity of purpose. They thus have no meaning which the historian or antiquarian can lay hold of to advance his knowledge of the pre-historic races. THE PRIMITIVE OHIOAN We are thus brought to consider the peoples who, possibly later, but still anciently, dwelt in the valley of the Ohio. They left no literature, no inscriptions as yet decipherable, if any, no monuments except the long forest-covered earth- and stone-works. No traditions of them, by common consent of all the tribes, were left to the North American Indian. As races, they have vanished utterly in the darkness of the past. But the comparatively slight traces they have left tend to conclusions of deep interest and importance, not only highly probable, ~pg 22~ but rapidly approaching certainty. Correspondences in the manufacture of pottery and in the rude sculptures found, the common use of the serpent-symbol, the likelihood that all were sun-worshippers and practiced the horrid rite of human sacrifice, and the tokens of commercial intercourse manifest by the presence of Mexican porphyry and obsidian in the Ohio Valley mounds, together with certain statements of the Mexican annalists, satisfactorily demonstrate, in the judgment of many antiquaries, the racial alliance, if not the identity, of our Mound Builders with the ancient Mexicans, whose descendants, with their remarkable civilization, were found in the country when CORTES entered it in the second decade of the sixteenth century. THE MAYAS It is not improbable that the first marks of Mayan civilization upon the continent are to be found among the relics of the Mound Builders, particularly in the Southern States. The great Maya race, the first of which Mexican story bears record, inhabited Yucatan and the adjacent districts as early as 1000 B. C., when Nachan, the "city of the serpents," afterwards Palenque, the seat of remarkable ruins to this day, was founded as their capital. It is accounted to have been among the most civilized of the American aboriginal nations. It possessed an alphabet and so a literature, engaged in manufactures and trade, cultivated the ground, sailed the waters, built great temples and other edifices, and executed sculptures, which remain, the wonder of antiquaries, at Palenque, Copan, Uxmal, and other ancient capitals and centers of population. It was, undoubtedly, the oldest civilization in the Western Hemisphere; and so permanent was its influence, and so numerous did the race enjoying it become, that no less than fifteen languages or dialects of Central America, north and south of the Tehauntepee sthmus, are found related to the Mayan tongue. It was already ancient and perhaps decaying when the Nahuas pressed upon it from the northward, partially adopted it, carried it on, and gave it fresh life and vigor. The legends of the Maya people indicate an origin in the Mediterranean countries of Europe or Asia. It is supposed, accordingly, that their home here was upon the Atlantic coast, and that thence they emigrated to Cuba, and in due time into Yucatan and the-region south of the Tehauntepec isthmus, whence they spread in both directions, reaching finally as high as Vera Cruz at the northward. Their story, as still found in the manuscripts, is that their ancestors went into the country from the direction of Florida, which was long afterwards the general name of the country traversed by DE SOTO (who gave the name), from the present Florida coast to the Mississippi. It seems quite within the limits of probability, then, that some of the more ancient of the remains in the east and south of the United States, particularly the immense shell-heaps on the Atlantic seaboard, found all the way from Nova Scotia to the Floridian peninsula, along the Gulf shores, and up the southern river valleys, were left by the Mayas in their advance on the final home in Central America. It is hardly probable, however, though not at all impossible, that their habitations extended so far north, on any line west of the Alleghanies, as the Ohio valley. THE NAHUAS - THE TOLTECS. The, conclusion is different, however, concerning the race which, many ages after the settlement of the Mayas at their ultimate destination, confronted them there - the Nahuas, notably that tribe or nation of them known as the Toltecs - neighbored, probably, somewhere in the valley of the Mississippi by the conquerors of the latter in the eleventh century of our era. The Chichimecs are believed to be racially., if not identically, the same with our Mound Builders. The Mexican traditions name the Olmecs as the first of Nahua blood to colonize the regions north of the Tehuantepec isthmus, where they overcame a race of giants, and found also the Miztecs and Zapotecs, not of Nahua stock, who had built up, in what is now the Mexican State of Oajaca , a civilization rivaling the subsequent splendor of the Aztecs. The Olmecs came in ships or barks from the east, as did their relatives some time after, the Xicalancas. The former tribe settled mainly in the present State of Pueblo, and built the tower or pyramid of Cholula, as a memorial , tradition says, of the tower of Babel, whose building the progenitors of the Olmec chiefs witnessed. Other of the Nahua tribes, as the Toltecs, possessed a tradition of the deluge coming close to the Scriptural account. Both of these look to the other side of the continent as affording the points of ingress for the later immigration, which was doubtless originally from Asia, and many think was of Jewish descent. Long before entering Mexico, however, as the story runs, the seven families of similar language who were the ancestors of the Toltec nation, wandered in many lands and across the seas, living in caves and enduring many hardships, through a period of one hundred and four years, when, five hundred and twenty years after the flood, twenty centuries or more before the Christian era, they arrived at and settled in "Hue hue Tlapalan," which has -been identified with reasonable probability as the valley of the Mississippi. Here their families grew and multiplied, extending their boundaries far and wide, until about the middle of the sixth century after Christ, when two families of the land revolted, but unsuccessfully, and were driven out, with their numerous followers, and took their way by devious wanderings to Mexico. Here they fixed their capital at Tulancingo, and eighteen years afterward more permanently at Tolean, on the present site of the village of Tula, thirty miles northwest of the city of Mexico. The character and dates of subsequent Toltec or Mound Builder immigrations, with slight exceptions, has not even the dim light of Mexican tradition to reveal them. The last irruption of the Nahuan tribes is fixed at about 1100 A. D. One of them, and the best known, the famous Aztecs, did not reach Anahuac with their unique and magnificent civilization until near the close of the twelfth century. Previously however (1062 A. D.), the Toltec capital had been taken and its empire had fallen by the hands of the martial Chichimecs, their former neighbors in the far north, who had followed them ~pg 23~ to their new home, and upon a son of whom, three and a half centuries before, as a peace offering, they had bestowed the throne of the Toltec monarchy. The Toltecs now disappear from history, except as amalgamated with their conquerors, and as founding, by many of its fugitive noble families and in conjunction with Mayan elements, the Quiche-Cakchiqual monarchy in Guatemala, which was flourishing with some grandeur and power so late as the time of CORTES. The migrations of the Toltecs from parts of the territory now covered by the United States, are believed to have reached through about a thousand years. Apart from the exile of the princes and their allies and very likely an exodus now and then compelled by their enemies and ultimate conquerors, the Chichimecs, who, as we have seen, at last followed them to Mexico, the Mound Builders were undoubtedly, in the course of the ages, pressed upon, and finally the last of them - unless the Natchez and Mandan tribes, as some suppose, are to be considered connecting links between the Toltecs and the American Indians - driven out by the red men. The usual opening of the gateways in their works of defence, looking to the east and northeastward, indicates the direction from which these enemies were expected. They were, not improbably, the terrible Iroquois and their allies, the first really formidable Indians encountered by the French discoverers and explorers in "New France" in the seventeenth century. A silence as of the grave is upon the history of their wars, doubtless long and bloody, the savages meeting with skilled and determined resistance, but their ferocious and repeated attacks, continued, mayhap, through several centuries, at last expelling, the more civilized people- "And the Mound Builders vanished from the earth," unless, indeed, as the works of learned antiquaries assume1 and as is assumed above, they afterwards appear in the Mexican story. Many of the remains of the defensive works at the South and across the land toward Mexico are of an unfinished type and pretty plainly indicate that the retreat of the Mound Builders was in that direction, and that it was hastened by the renewed onslaughts of their fierce pursuers or by the discovery of a fair and distant land, to which they determined to emigrate in the hope of secure and untroubled homes.2 Professor SHORT, however, arguing from the lesser age of trees found upon the southern works, is "led to think the Gulf coast may have been occupied by the Mound Builders for a couple of centuries after they were driven by their enemies from the country north of the mouths of the Missouri and Ohio rivers." He believes two thousand years is time enough to allow for their total occupation of the country north of the Gulf of Mexico, "though after all it is but conjecture." He adds: "It seems to us, however, that the time of abandonment of their works may be more closely approximated. A thousand or two years may have elapsed since they vacated the Ohio valley, and a period embracing seven or eight centuries may have passed since they retired from the Gulf coast." The date to which the latter period carries us back, it will be observed, approximates somewhat closely to that fixed by the Mexican annalists as the time of the last emigration of a people of Nahua stock from the northward. THE MOUND BUILDERS' EMPIRE Here we base upon firmer ground. The extent and something of the character of this are known. They are tangible and practical realities. We stand upon the mounds, pace off the long lines of the enclosures, collect and handle and muse upon the long-buried relies now in our public and private museums. The domain of the Mound Builders is well-nigh coterminous with that of the Great Republic. Few States of the Union are wholly without the ancient monuments. Singular to say, however, in view of the huge heaps and barrows of shells left by the aboriginal man along the Atlantic shore, there are no earth or stone mounds or enclosures of the older construction on that, coast. Says Professor SHORT: No authentic remains of the Mound Builders are found in the New England States.... In the former we have an isolated mound in the valley of the Kennebec, in Maine, and dim outlines of enclosures near Sanborn and Concord, in New Hampshire; but there is no certainty of their being the work of this people.... Mr. SQUIER pronounces them to be purely the work of Red Indians.... Colonel WHITTLESEY would assign these fort-like structures the enclosures of western New York, and common upon the rivers discharging themselves into Lakes Erie and Ontario from the south, differing from the more southern enclosures, in that they were surrounded by trenches on their outside, while the latter uniformly have the trench on the inside of the enclosure, to a people anterior to the red Indian and perhaps contemporaneous with the Mound Builders, but distinct from either. The more reasonable view is that of Dr. FOSTER, that they are the frontier works of the Mound Builders, adapted to the purposes of defence against the sudden irruptions of hostile tribes.... It is probable that these defences belong to the last period of the Mound Builders' residence on the lakes, and were erected when the more warlike peoples of the north, who drove them from their cities, first made their appearance. The Builders quarried flint in many places, soapstone in Rhode Island and North Carolina, and in the latter State also the translucent mica found so widely dispersed in their burial mounds in association with the bones of the dead. They mined or made salt, and in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan they got out, with infinite labor, the copper, which was doubtless their most useful and valued metal. The Lower Peninsula of that State is rich in ancient remains, particularly in mounds of sepulture; and. there are "garden beds" in the valleys of the St. Joseph and the Kalamazoo, in southwestern Michigan; but, "excepting ancient copper mines, no known works extend as far north as lake Superior anywhere in the central region. Farther to the northwest, however, the works of the same people are comparatively numerous. Dr. Foster quotes a British Columbia newspaper, without giving either name or date, as authority for the discovery of a large number of mounds, seemingly the ~pg 24~ works of the same people who built further east and south. On the Butte prairies of Oregon, WILKES and his exploring expedition discovered thousands of similar mounds." We condense further from SHORT: All the way up the Yellowstone region and on the upper tributaries of the Missouri, mounds are found in profusion. The Missouri valley seems to have been one of the most populous branches of the widespread Mound Builder country. The valleys of its affluents, the Platte and Kansas rivers, also furnish evidence that these streams served as the channels into which flowed a part of the tide of population which either descended or ascended the Missouri. The Mississippi and Ohio River valleys, however, formed the great central arteries of the Mound Builder domain. In Wisconsin we find the northern central limit of their works; occasionally on the western shores of Lake Michigan, but in great numbers in the southern counties of the State; and especially an the lower Wisconsin river. The remarkable similarity of one group of works, on a branch of Rock river in the south of this State, to some of the Mexican antiquities led to the christening of the adjacent village as Aztalain - which (or Aztlan), meaning whiteness, was a name of the "most attractive land" somewhere north of Mexico and the sometime home of the Aztec and other Nahua nations. If rightly conjectured as the Mississippi valley, or some part of it, that country may well have included the site of the modern Aztalan. Across the Mississippi, in Minnesota and Iowa, the predominant type of circular. tumuli prevails, extending throughout the latter State to Missouri. There are evidences that the Upper Missouri region was connected with that of the Upper Mississippi by settlements occupying the intervening country. Mounds are found even in the valley of the Red river of the north. Descending to the interior, we find the heart of the Mound Builder country in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. It is uncertain whether its vital center was in southern Illinois or Ohio - probably the former, because of its geographical situation with reference to the mouths of the Missouri and Ohio rivers. The site of St. Louis was formerly covered with mounds, one of which was thirty-five feet high, while in the American Bottom, on the Illinois side of the river, their number approximates two hundred. It is pretty well known, we believe, that St. Louis takes its fanciful title of "Mound City" from the former fact. The multitude of mound works which are scattered over the entire northeastern portion of Missouri indicate that the region was once inhabited by a population so numerous that in comparison its present occupants are only as the scattered pioneers of a new-settled country. The same sagacity which chose the neighborhood of St. Louis for these works, covered the site of Cincinnati with an extensive system of circumvallations and mounds. Almost the entire space now occupied by the city was utilized by the mysterious Builders in the construction of embankments and tumuli, built upon the most accurate geometrical principles, and evincing keen military, foresight. The vast number as well as magnitude of the works found in the State of Ohio, have surprised the most care- less and indifferent observers. It is estimated by the most conservative, and Messrs. SQUIER and DAVIS among them, that the number of tumuli in Ohio equals ten thousand, and the number of enclosures one thousand or one thousand five hundred. In Ross county alone one hundred enclosures and upwards of five hundred mounds have been examined. The Alleghany mountains, the natural limit of the great Mississippi basin, appear to have served as the eastern and southeastern boundary of the Mound Builder country. In western New York, western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and in all of Kentucky and Tennessee, their remains are numerous and in some instances imposing. In Tennessee, especially, the works of the Mound Builders are of the most interesting character. Colonies of Mound Builders seem to have passed the great natural barrier into North Carolina and left remains in Marion county, while still others penetrated into South Carolina, and built on the Wateree river. Mounds in Mississippi also have been examined, with interesting results. On the southern Mississippi, in the area embraced between the termination of the Cumberland mountains, near Florence and Tuseumbia, in Alabama, and the mouth of Big Black river, this people left numerous works, many of which were of a remarkable character. The whole region bordering on the tributaries of the Tombigbee, the country through which the Wolf river flows, and that watered by the Yazoo river and its affluents, was densely populated by the same people who built mounds in the Ohio valley. The State of Louisiana and the valleys of the Arkansas and Red rivers were not only the most thickly populated wing of the Mound Builder domain, but also furnish us with remains presenting affinities with the great works of Mexico so striking that no doubt can longer exist that the same people were the architects of both. It is needless to discuss the fact that the works of the Mound Builders exist in considerable numbers in Texas, extending across the Rio Grande into Mexico, establishing an unmistakable relationship as well as actual union between the truncated pyramids of the Mississippi valley and the Tocalli of Mexico, and the countries further south Such, in a general way, was the geographical distribution of the Mound Builders within and near the territory now occupied by the United States. pages 21-29 part 2 THE WORKS. They are - such of them as are left to our day - generally of earth, occasionally of stone, and more rarely of earth and stone intermixed. Dried bricks, in some instances, are found in the walls and angles of the best pyramids of the Lower Mississippi valley. Often, especially for the works devoted to religious purposes, the earth has not been taken from the surrounding soil, but has been transported from a distance, probably from some locality regarded as sacred. They are further divided into enclosures and mounds or tumuli. The classification of these by SQUIER & DAVIS, in their great work on "The Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley," published by the Smithsonian Institution thirty-two years ago, - has not yet been superseded. It is as follows: I. Enclosures - For Defence, Sacred, Miscellaneous. II. Mounds - Of Sacrifice, or Temple-Sites, of Sepulture, of Observation. To these may properly be added the Animal or Effigy (emblematic or, symbolical) Mounds, and some would add Mounds for Residence. The Garden-Beds, if true remains of the Builders, may also be considered a separate class; likewise mines and roads, and there is some reason to believe that canals may be added. In the treatment of these classes, briefly, we shall follow in places the chapter on this subject in our History of Franklin and Pickaway counties, Ohio. I. ENCLOSURES FOR DEFENCE. A large and interesting class of the works is of such a nature that the object for which they were thrown up is unmistakable. The "forts," as they are popularly called, are found throughout the length and breadth of the Mississippi valley, from the Alleghanies to the Rocky mountains. The rivers of this vast basin have worn their valleys deep in the original plain, leaving broad terraces leading like gigantic steps up to the general level of the country. The sides of the terraces are often steep and difficult of access, and sometimes quite inaccessible. Such locations would naturally be selected as the site of defensive works, and there, as a matter of fact, the strong and complicated embankments of the Mound Builders are found. The points have evidently been chosen with great care, and are such as would, in most cases, be approved by ~pg 25~ modern military engineers. They are usually on the higher ground, and are seldom commanded from positions sufficiently near to make them untenable through the use of the short-range weapons of the Builders, and, while rugged and steep on some of their sides, have one or more points of easy approach, in the protection of which great skill and labor seem to have been expended. They are never found, nor, in general, any other remains of the Builders, upon the lowest or latest-formed river terraces or bottoms. They are of irregular shape, conforming, to the nature of the ground, and are often strengthened by extensive ditches. The usual defence is a simple embankment thrown up along and a little below the brow of the hill, varying in height and thickness according to the defensive advantage given by the natural declivity. "The walls generally wind around the borders of the elevations they occupy, and when the nature of the ground renders some points more accessible than others, the height of the wall and the depth of the ditch at those weak points are proportionally increased. The gateways are narrow and few in number, and well guarded by embankments of earth placed a few yards inside of the openings or gateways and parallel with them, and projecting somewhat beyond them at each end, thus fully covering the entrances, which, in some cases, are still further protected by projecting walls on either side of them. These works are somewhat numerous, and indicate a clear appreciation of the elements, at least, of fortification, and unmistakably point out the purpose for which they were constructed. A large number of these defensive works consist of a line of ditch and embankments, or several lines carried across the neck of peninsulas or bluff headlands, formed within the bends of streams-an easy and obvious mode of fortification, common to all rude peoples."3 Upon the side where a peninsula or promontory merges into the mainland of the terrace or plateau, the enclosure is usually guarded by double or overlapping walls, or a series of them, having sometimes an accompanying mound, probably designed, like many of the mounds apart from the enclosures, as a lookout station, corresponding in this respect to the barbican of our British ancestors in the Middle Ages. As natural strongholds the positions they occupy could hardly be excelled, and the labor and skill expended to strengthen them artificially rarely fail to awake the admiration and surprise the student of our antiquities. Some of the works are enclosed by miles of embankment still ten to fifteen feet high, as measured from the bottom of the ditch. In some cases the number of openings in the walls is so large as to lead to the conclusion that certain of them were not used as gateways, but were occupied by bastions or block-houses long ago decayed. This is a marked peculiarity of the great work known as "Fort Ancient," on the Little Miami river and railroad, in Warren county. Some of the forts have very large or smaller "dug-holes" inside, seemingly designed as reservoirs for use in a state of siege. Occasionally parallel earth-walls, of lower height than the embankments of the main work, called "covered ways," are found adjacent to enclosures, and at times connecting separate works, and seeming to be intended for the protection of those passing to and fro within them. These are considered by some antiquaries, however, as belonging to the sacred enclosures. This class of works abound in Ohio. SQUIER and DAVIS express the opinion that ''there seems to have been a system of defences extending from the sources of the Susquehanna and Alleghany, in western New York, diagonally across the country through central and northern Ohio to the Wabash. Within this range the works that are regarded as defensive are largest and most numerous." The most notable, however, of the works usually assigned to this class in this State is in southern Ohio, and not very far from the boundaries of Hamilton county, being only forty-two miles northeast of Cincinnati It is the "Fort Ancient" already mentioned. This is situated upon a terrace on the left bank of the river, two hundred and thirty feet above the Little Miami, and occupies a peninsula defended by two ravines, while the y river itself, with a high, precipitous bank, defends the western side. The walls are between four and five miles long, and ten to twenty feet high, according to the natural strength of the line to be protected. A resemblance has been traced in the walls of the lower enclosure "to the form of two massive serpents, which are apparently con- tending with one another. Their heads are the mounds, which are separated from the bodies by the opening, which resembles a ring around the neck. They bend in and out, and rise and fall and appear like two massive green serpents rolling along the summit of this high hill. Their appearance under the overhanging forest trees is very impressive.4 Others have found a resemblance in the form of the whole work to a rude outline of the continent of North and South America. Another fortified eminence, enclosing sixteen and three- tenths acres, is found in the present Butler county, once within the old county of Hamilton. The entrance to .this enclosure is guarded by a complicated system of covered ways. Another, and a very remarkable work, as having walls of stone, constructed in their place at the top of a steep and lofty hill with infinite toil and difficulty, is near the village of Bourneville, Ross county, on Spruce hill, a height commanding the beautiful valley of Paint creek. The wall is two and a quarter miles long, and encloses one hundred and forty acres, in the center of which was a artificial lake. Many enclosures of the kind have been surveyed and described in other counties of the State. II. SACRED ENCLOSURES. - Regularity of form is the characteristic of these. They are not, however, of invariable shape, but are found in various geometrical figures, as circles, squares, hexagons, octagons, ellipses, parallelograms, and others, either singly or in combination. However large, they were laid out with astounding accuracy, and show that the Builders had some scientific knowledge, a scale of measurement, and the means of computing areas and determining angles. They are often in ~pg 26~ groups, but also often isolated. Most of them are of small size, two hundred and fifty to three hundred feet in diameter, with one gateway usually opening to the east, as if for the worship of the sun, and the ditch invariably on the inside. These are frequently inside enclosures of a different character, particularly military works. A sacrificial mound was commonly erected in the center of them. The larger circles are oftenest found in connection with squares; some of them embrace as many as fifty acres. They seldom have a ditch, but when they do, it is inside the wall. The rectangular works with which they are combined are believed never to have a ditch. In this State a combined work of a square with two circles is often found, usually agreeing in this remarkable fact, that each side of the rectangle measures exactly one thousand and eighty feet, and the circles respectively are seventeen hundred and eight hundred feet in diameter. The frequency and wide prevalence of this uniformity demonstrate that it could not have been accidental. The square enclosures almost invariably have eight gateways at the angles and midway between, upon each side, all of which are covered or defended by small mounds. The parallels before mentioned are sometimes found in connection with this class of works. From the Hopetown work, near Chillicothe, a "covered way" led to the Scioto river, many hundred feet distant. More of the enclosures left by the Mound Builders are believed to belong to this class than to the class of defensive works. They especially abound in Ohio. The finest ancient works in the State - those near Newark, Licking county-are undoubtedly of this kind. They are - rather were - twelve miles in total length of wall, and enclose a tract of two miles square. The system of embankment is intricate as well as extensive, and encloses a number of singular mounds - one of them in the shape of an enormous bird track, the middle toe one hundred and fifty-five feet, and each of the other toes one hundred and ten feet in length. A superb work, representing the combination of a square with two circles, of the dimensions previously stated, exists in Liberty township, Ross county, a few miles from Chillicothe. A work in Pike county- consists of a circle enclosing a square, each of the four corners of which touches the circle, the gateway of the circle being opposite the opening in the square. Several combinations of the square and the circle appear in the Hopetown works, four miles north of Chillicothe. Circleville derives its name from the principal ancient work - a circle and a square - which formerly stood upon its site. Many other remains of the kind are familiarly known in Ross and Pike, Franklin, Athens, Licking, Montgomery, Butler, and other counties. III. MISCELLANEOUS ENCLOSURES. - The difficulty of referring many of the smaller circular works, thirty to fifty feet in diameter, found in close proximity to large works, to previous classes, has prompted the suggestion that they were the foundations of lodges or habitations of chiefs, priests, or other prominent personages among, the Builders. In one case within the writer's observation, a rough stone foundation about four rods square was found isolated from any other work, near the Scioto river, in the south part of Ross county. At the other extreme of size, the largest and most complex of the works, as those at Newark, are thought to have served, in part at least, other than religious purposes - that they may, besides furnishing spaces for sacrifice and worship, have included also arenas for games and marriage celebrations and other festivals, the places of general assembly for the tribe or village, the encampment or more permanent residences of the priesthood and chiefs. Mr. Isaac SMUCKER, a learned antiquary of Newark, to whom we are indebted for important facts presented in this chapter, says: Some archaeologists maintain that many works called Sacred Enclosures were erected for and used as places of amusement, where our predecessors of pre-historic times practiced their national games and celebrated their great national events; where they held their national festivals and indulged in their national jubilees, as well as performed the ceremonials of their religion. And it may be that those (and there are many such) within which no central elevation or altar occurs, were erected for the purposes last named, and not exclusively (if at all) for purposes connected with their religion, and are therefore erroneously called Sacred Enclosures. Other ancient peoples, if indeed not all the nations of antiquity, have had their national games, amusements, festivals, and jubilees; and why not the Mound Builders, too? Notably in this regard the ancient Greeks may be named, with whom, during the period known as the "lyrical age of Greece," the Olympic, the Pythian, the Nemean, and the Isthmian games became national festivals. And without doubt the Mound Builders, too, had their national games, amusements, festivals, and jubilees, and congregated within their enclosures to practice, celebrate, and enjoy them. IV. MOUNDS OF SACRIFICE. - These have several distinct characteristics. In height they seldom exceed eight feet. They occur only within or near the enclosures, commonly considered as the sacred places of the Builders, and are usually stratified in convex layers of clay or loam - alternating above a layer of fine sand. Beneath the strata, and upon the original surface of the earth at the center of the mound, are usually symmetricaly formed altars of stone or burnt clay, evidently brought from a distance. Upon them are found various remains, all of which exhibit signs of the action of fire, and some which have excited the suspicion that the Builders practiced the horrid rite of human sacrifice. Not only calcined bones, but naturally ashes, charcoal, and igneous stones are found with them; also beads, stone implements, simple sculptures, and pottery. The remains are often in such a condition as to indicate that the altars had been covered before the fires upon them were fully extinguished. Skeletons are occasionally found in this class 6f mounds; though these may have been "intrusive burials" made after the construction of the works and contrary to their original intention. Though symmetrical, the altars are by no means uniform in shape or size. Some are round, some elliptical, others square or parallelograms. In size they vary from two to fifty feet in length, and are of proportional width and height, the commoner dimensions being five to eight feet. V. TEMPLE MOUNDS are not so numerous. In this State - it is believed they were only at Marietta, Newark, Portsmouth, and about Chillicothe. They are generally larger than the altar and burial mounds, and are more frequently circular or oval, though sometimes found in other shapes. The commonest shape is that of a truncated cone; and, in whatever form a mound of this class ~pg 27~ may be, it always has a flattened or level top, giving it an unfinished look. Some are called platforms, from their large area and slight elevation. They are, indeed, almost always of large base and comparatively small height. Often, as might reasonably be expected, they are within a sacred enclosure, and some are terraced or have spiral ascents or graded inclines to their summits. They take their name from the probable fact that upon their flat tops were reared structures of wood, the temples or "high places" of this people, which decayed and disappeared ages ago. In many cases in the northern States these must have been small, from the smallness of their sites upon the mounds; but as they are followed southward they are seen, as might be expected, to increase gradually and approximate more closely to perfect construction, until they end in the great teocallis ("houses of God"). One remarkable platform of this kind in Whitley county, Kentucky, is three hundred and sixty feet long by one hundred and fifty wide and twelve high, with graded ascents; and another, at Hopkinsville, is so large that the county court house is built upon it. The great mound at Cahokia, Missouri, is of this class. Its truncated top measured two hundred by four hundred and fifty-two feet. VI. BURIAL MOUNDS furnish by far the most numerous class of tumuli. The largest mounds in the country are generally of this kind. The greatest of all, the famous mound at Grave creek, Virginia, is seventy-five feet high, and has a circumference at the base of about one thousand. In solid contents it is nearly equal to the third pyramid of Mykerinus, in Egypt. The huge mound on the banks of the Great Miami, twelve miles below Dayton, has a hight of sixty-eight feet. Many of the burial mounds are six feet or less in height, but the average height as deduced from wide observation of them, is stated as about twenty feet. They are usually of conical form. It is conjectured that the size of these mounds has an immediate relation to the former importance of the personage or family buried in them. Only three skeletons have so far been found in the mighty Grave Creek mound. Except in rare cases, they contain but one skeleton, unless by "intrusive" or later burial, as by Indians, who frequently used the ancient mounds for purposes of sepulture. One Ohio mound, however - that opened by Professor MARSH, of Yale college, in Licking county - contained seventeen skeletons; and another, in Hardin county, included three hundred. But these are exceptional instances. Calcined human bones in some burial mounds at the North with charcoal and ashes in close proximity, show that cremation was occasionally practiced, or that fire was used in the funeral ceremonies; and "urn burial" prevailed considerably in the southren States. At times a rude chamber or cist of stone or timber contained the remains. In the latter case the more fragile material has generally disappeared, but casts of it in the earth are still observable. The stone cists furnish some of the most interesting relies found in the mounds. They are, in rare cases, very large, and contain several bodies, with various relics. They are like large stone boxes, made of several flat stones, joined without cement or fastening. Similar, but much smaller, are the stone coffins found in large number in Illinois and near Nashville, Tennessee. They are generally occupied by single bodies. In other cases, as in recent discoveries near Portsmouth and elsewhere in Ohio, the slabs are arranged slanting upon each other in the shape of a triangle, and having, of course, a triangular vault in the interior. In the Cumberland mountains heaps of loose stones are found over skeletons, but these stone 'mounds are probably of Indian origin, and so comparatively. modern. Implements, weapons, ornaments, and various remains of art, as in the later Indian custom, were buried with the dead. Mica is often found with the skeletons, with precisely what meaning is not yet ascertained; also pottery, beads of bone, copper, and even glass - indicating, some think, commercial intercourse with Europe - and other articles in great variety, are present. There is also, probably, a sub-class of mounds that may be mentioned in this connection - the Memorial or Monumental mounds, thrown up, it is conjectured, to perpetuate the celebrity of some important event or in honor of some eminent personage. They are usually of earth, but occasionally, in this State at least, of stone. VII. SIGNAL MOUNDS, OR MOUNDS OF OBSERVATION. This is a numerous and very interesting and important class of the works. Colonel ANDERSON, of Circleville, thinks he has demonstrated by actual survey, made at his own expense, the existence of a regular chain or system of these lookouts through the Scioto valley, from which, by signal fires, intelligence might be rapidly flashed over long distances. About twenty such mounds occur between Columbus and Chillicothe,. on the eastern side of the Scioto. In Hamilton county a chain of mounds, doubtless devoted to such purpose, can be traced from the primitive site of Cincinnati to the "old fort," near the mouth of the Great Miami. Along both the Miamis numbers of small mounds - on the projecting headlands and on heights in the interior are indubitably signal mounds. Judge FORCE says: "By the mound at Norwood signals could be passed from the valley of Mill creek to the Little Miami valley, near Newtown, and I believe to the valley of the Great Miami near Hamilton." Like the defensive works already described as part of the military system of the Builders, the positions of these works were chosen with excellent judgment. They vary in size, according to the height-of the natural eminence upon which they are placed. Many still bear the marks of intense heat upon their summits, results of the long-extinct beacon fires. Sometimes they are found in connection with the embankments and enclosures, as an enlarged and elevated part of the walls. One of these, near Newark, though considerably reduced, retains a height of twenty-five feet. The huge mound at Miamisburgh, mentioned as a burial mound, very likely was used also as a part of the chain of signal mounds from above Dayton to the Cincinnati plain and the Kentucky bluff beyond. VIII. EFFIGY OR ANIMAL MOUNDS appear principally in Wisconsin, on the level surface of the prairie. They are of very low height-one to six feet - but are other ~pg 28~ wise often very large, extended figures of men, beasts, birds, or reptiles, and in a very few cases of inanimate things. In this State there are three enormous, remark- able earthwork effigies - the "Eagle mound" in the center of a thirty-acre enclosure near Newark, and supposed to represent an eagle on the wing; the "Alligator mound," also in Licking county, two hundred and five feet long; and the famous "Great Serpent," on Brush creek, in Adams county, which has a length of seven hundred feet, the tail in a triple coil, with a large mound, supposed to represent an egg, between the jaws of the figure. By some writers these mounds are held to be symbolical, and connected with the religion of the Builders. Mr. SCHOOLCRAFT, however, calls them "emblematic," and says they represent the totems or heraldic symbols of the Builder tribes. IX. GARDEN BEDS. - In Wisconsin, in Missouri, and in parts of Michigan, and to some extent elsewhere, is found a class of simple works presumed to be ancient. They are merely ridges or beds left by the cultivation of the soil, about six inches high and four feet wide, regularly arranged in parallel rows, at times rectangular, otherwise of various but regular and symmetrical curves, and in fields of ten to a hundred acres. Where they occur near the animal mounds, they are in some cases carried across the latter, which would seem to indicate, if the same people executed both works, that no sacred character attached to the effigies. X. MINES. - These, as worked by the Builders, have not yet been found in many different regions; but in the Lake Superior copper region their works of this kind are numerous and extensive. In the Ontonagon country their mining traces abound for thirty miles. Colonel WHITTLESEY estimates that they removed metal from this region equivalent to a length of one hundred and fifty feet in veins of varying thickness. Some of their opera-ions approached the stupendous. No other remains of theirs are found in the Upper Peninsula; and there is no probability that they occupied the region for other than temporary purposes. THE CONTENTS OF THE MOUNDS. Besides the human remains which have received sufficient treatment for this article under the head of Burial mounds, and the altars noticed under Mounds of Sacrifice, the contents of the work of the Mound Builders are mostly small, and many of them unimportant. They have been classified by Dr. RAU, the archaeologist of the Smithsonian Institution, according to the material of which they are wrought, as follows: 1. STONE - This is the most numerous class of relics They were fashioned by chipping, grinding, or polishing and include rude pieces, flakes, and cores, as well as finished and more or less nearly finished articles. In the first list are arrow and spear-beads, perforators, scrapers, cutting and sawing tools, dagger-shaped implements, large implements supposed to have been used in digging the ground, and wedge or celt-shaped tools and weapons. The ground and polished specimens, more defined in form, comprise wedges or celts, chisels, gouges, adzes, and grooved axes, hammers, drilled ceremonial weapons, cutting tools, scraper and spade-like implements, pendants and sinkers, discoidal stones and kindred objects, pierced tablets and boat-shaped articles, stones used in grinding and polishing, vessels, mortars, pestles, tubes, pipes, ornaments, sculptures, and engraved stones or tablets. Fragmentary plates of mica or isinglass may be included under this head. 2. COPPER. - These are either weapons and tools or ornaments, produced, it would seem, by hammering pieces of native copper into the required shape. 3. BONE AND HORN. - Perforators, harpoon-heads, fishhooks, cups, whistles, drilled teeth, etc. 4. SHELL. - Either utensils and tools, as drinking-cups, spoons, fish-hooks, celts, etc., or ornaments, comprising various kinds of gorgets, pendants, and beads. 5. CERAMIC FABRICS. - Pottery, pipes, human and animal figures, and vessels in great variety. 6. WOOD. - The objects of early date formed of this material are now very few, owing to its perishable character. To these may be added- 7. GOLD AND SILVER. - In a recent find in a stonecist at Warrensburgh, Missouri, a pottery vase or jar was found, which had a silver as well as a copper band about it. Other. instances of the kind are on record, and a gold ornament in the shape of a woodpecker's head has been taken from a mound in Florida. 8. TEXTILE: FABRICS. - A few fragments of coarse cloth or matting have survived the destroying tooth of time, and some specimens, so far as the texture is concerned, have been very well preserved by the salts of copper, when used to enwrap articles shaped from that metal. THE MOUND BUILDERS' CIVILIZATION. This theme has furnished vast field for speculation, and the theorists have pushed into a wilderness of visionary conjectures. Some inferences, however, may be regarded as tolerably certain. The number and magnitude of their works, and their extensive range and uniformity, says the American Cyclopaedia, prove that the Mound Builders were essentially homogeneous in customs, habits, religion, and government. The general features common to all their remains identify them as appertaining to a single grand system, owing its origin to men moving in the same direction, acting under common impulses, and influenced by similar causes. Professor SHORT, in his invaluable work, thinks that, however writers may differ,. these conclusions may be safely accepted: That they came into the country in comparatively small numbers at first (if they were not Autochthones, and there is no substantial proof that the Mound Builders were such), and, during their residence in the territory occupied b the United States, they became extremely populous. Their settlements were widespread, as the extent of their remains indicates. The magnitude of their works, some of which approximate the proportions of Egyptian pyramids, testify to the architectural talent of the people and the fact that they developed a system of government controlling the labor of multitudes, ~pg 29~ whether of subjects or slaves. They were an agricultural people, as the extensive ancient garden-beds found in Wisconsin and Missouri indicate. Their manufactures offer proof that they had attained a respectable degree of advancement and show that they understood the advantages of the division of labor. Their domestic utentils, the cloth of which they made their clothing, and the artistic vessels met with everywhere in the mounds, point to the development of home culture and domestic industry. There is no reason for believing that the people who wrought stone and clay into perfect effigies of animals have not left us sculptures of their own faces in the images exhumed from the mounds. They mined copper, which they wrought into implements of war, into ornaments and articles for domestic use. They quarried mica for mirrors and other purposes. - They furthermore worked flint and salt mines. They probably possessed some astronomical knowledge, though to what extent is unknown. Their trade, as Dr. RAU has shown, was widespread, extending probably from Lake Superior to the Gulf, and possibly to Mexico. They constructed canals, by which lake systems were united, a fact which Mr. CONANT has recently shown to be well established in Missouri. Their defences were numerous and constructed with reference to strategic principles, while their system of signals placed on lofty their settlements, and communicating with the great water courses at immense summits, visible from distances, rivaled the signal systems in use at the beginning of the present century. Their religion seems to have been attended with the same ceremonies in all parts of their domain. That its rites were celebrated with great demonstrations is certain. The sun and moon were probably the all-important deities to which sacrifices (possibly human) were offered. We have already alluded to the development in architecture and art which marked the possible transition of this people from north to south. Here we see but the rude beginnings of a civilization which no doubt subsequently unfolded in its fuller glory in the valley of Anahuac and, spreading southward, engrafted new life upon the wreck of Xibalba. Though there is no evidence that the Mound Builders were indigenous, we must admit that their civilization was purely such, the natural product of climate and the condition surrounding them.5 THE BUILDERS IN HAMILTON COUNTY. Very brief notice of them will be made here, anything like detailed description being reserved for the special histories to come later in this work. Reference has been made above to the extensive signal system in the Miami country, and to numerous works upon the present site of Cincinnati. Elsewhere in the county the Builders have left frequent remains. They abound in Columbia, Anderson, and Spencer townships, and are found all along the Little Miami valley from below Newtown to points above Milford. On the other side of the county, in the valley of the Great Miami, they are found numerously at the mouth of the stream, about Cleves, and for miles along the banks above and below Colerain. Near this place, about one mile south of the county line, is the celebrated enclosure known as "the Colerain works," surrounding a tract of about ninety-five acres. Judge FORCE .thinks there was a strong line of fortifications along the Great Miami, from the mouth to Piqua, with advanced works near Oxford and Eaton, and with a massive work in rear of this line, at Fort Ancient. In the interior of Hamilton they appear at Norwood, Sharon, in Springfield township, and elsewhere to some extent. This region was undoubtedly one of the densest centers of population. We shall view some of their works more closely before this volume is closed. 1 pg 23: We have so far relied chiefly upon the very excellent and recent work from the pen of Professor John T. SHORT, of the State university at Columbus, Ohio, the latest and probably the best authority on "The North Americans of Antiquity" yet in print. Harper & Brothers, 1880. Professor SHORT must not, however, be held responsible for all the statements, inferences, and conclusions set out in the foregoing paragraphs. 2 pg 23: See, further, Judge M. F. FORCE's interesting paper on the Builders, Cincinnati, 1872 and 1874. 3 pg 25 American Cyclopaedia, article "American Antiquities." 4 pg 25: Rev. S, D. PEET, in the American Antiquarian for April, 1878. 5 Pg 29: The Americans of Antiquity, pp. 96-100.