OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - Know your Ohio: Ohio's American Natives [1] *********************************************************************** 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. *********************************************************************** File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Darlene E. Kelley http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374 April 19, 2000 *********************************************************************** Historical Collections of Ohio Diaries of S. J. Kelly Plains Dealer Know Your Ohio by Darlene E. Kelley *********************************************************************** Ohio's American Natives -- Part 1-- Mound Builders-- Southwestern Ohio was the land of the long past. People have lived among the shadows of its forests for thousnds of years. The first of these ancient peoples to inhabit the Miami Valley came during the ice age, and very likely lived in caves. After these people came the Mound Builders, a apt description of them as they left behind thousands of mounds rising skyward. Some of these have managed to have survived the ravages of time and man. Man being the most destructive of all. Butler County was said to have contained over 250 mounds and enclosures, and puts its county second in the state, next to Ross, for the number of earthworks discovered. The Great Butler Mound overlooks Middletown, rising some 45 feet on a 500-foot circular base. From its ancient people, communication could have been by smoke signals with other groups around the Kinder Mound, atop Pennyroyal Hill at Franklin, as well as with those around the great Miamisburg Mound in Montgomery County. The Adena Mound at Miamisburg reaches almost 70 feet into the sky, covering about 3 acres at the base and is considered the second most important example of the mound builders art in the nation. The largest of all the earthworks is in Warren County and called now Fort Ancient. Fort Ancient is now a State Park and has students from all over the world come to study there and try to unraval its mysteries. This has intrigued Archaeologists since it was first mapped in 1810. Located high above the east Bank of the Little Miami River, it commands a view of the entire surrounding area. It had besides a fort, a village site, and also served as a ceremonial center. While built by the Hopewell people it later became the home of the Fort Ancient Culture. Thousands of years ago these people worked without beasts of burden, building their mounds with their own hands and muscles. They communicated without a written language, drawing many pictures on stone, which have been found. They selected sites along the Miami River and its tributaries for the same reasons that the white man later made their settlements. Settling on the broad alluvial terraces ot the river bottoms, as they wanted to be near the river, for it was the one great natural highway. The river furnished these people with fish and in the valley they found game and fruits, usually building their largest works where the terraces were the widest. In the level bottomlands and on the terraces, they cultivated the fertile soil. To protect themselves and their lands against other tribes, they built fortifications upon the bluffs or hilltops. Little is known to what became of this primative race, although some speculate that they became the ancestors of the Indians. A study of the skulls found, shows them to be descended from the Mongolians. They probably came from Asia across the Bering Sea. Men who have studied the Mound Builders say they first came to Ohio 10,000 years ago and lived over 5,000 years. They made many things.They made tools of copper, and fine flint arrows. Pottery was carefully constructed with the addition of granulated stone and shells to the clay to prevent shrinking and cracking. They made matting by weaving or plaiting rushes and grass. They wove cloth from course plant fibers. Their cloth looked much like our burlap. They also used wood, pearls, and bones to make bracelets, necklaces, and beads. Serpent Mound at Peebles, Ohio-- The Serpent Mound is an embankment of earth resembling a snake nearly a quarter of a mile long, and is the largest and finest serpent mound in North America. Who built the mound, and why they constructed it, remains a mystery. The Mound represents a gigantic snake uncoiling in seven deep curves along a bluff overlooking Ohio Brush Creek; the oval embankment near the end of the bluff probably representing the open mouth of the serpent as it strikes. Serpents are prominent in the religious beliefs of many peoples as symbols of evil forces or benevolent deities. To some ancient societies, they represented eternity because their habit of shedding their skins seemed a renewal of life. The feathered serpent was important in the art and religion of the ancient Maya of Mexico. In eastern North America, snakes figured in American Indian mythology and religious beliefs. Traditionally, some Native Americans used snake teeth and flesh in rituals to cure illness, and they wore rattlesnakes to assume the power of the reptile and frighten their opponents in games. They also tattooed their bodies with serpent images and engraved them into their ornaments. The Hopi of Arizona still perform the snake dance as a rain prayer. The serpent undoubtedly symbolized a significant religious of mystical principal for the builders of the Serpent Mound because of the time and effort that must have been spent constructing it. However, the details of that belief are unknown, they carefully planned the effigy, by first outlining its form with stones or clay mixed with ashes and then covering it with basket loads of earth. It was not built over any burials or remnants of living areas, nor were there any artifacts found in it to identify which prehistoric culture constructed it. Nearby, however, there are several conical buriel mounds built by the prehistoric Adena Indians some time between 800 B.C. and A.D. 1. Later, around A.D. 1000, the Fort Ancient Indians established a small habitation site on the south side of the proximity of the conical mounds, the serpent possibly may be the handiwork of the Fort Ancient people. Continuing investigations should shed new light eventually on the Mound's origins. Recently researchers are studinging the possibility that the effigy may have been laid out in alignment with various astronomical observations. Serpent Mound has stirred the curiosity of many laymen and scientists for more than a century. Some people speculate that the serpent is shown in the process of swallowing an egg, the oval earthwork. Another interpretation has the snake striking at a frog that has leaped away as it ejects an egg, again the oval earthwork. Still other ideas suggests that the oval symbolizes the heart of the reptile or its conventional head and eye. Archaeologists now believe that the oval wall represents a snake's mouth, open to its fullest extent, as it strikes its prey. Among the people who were interested in keeping the Mound from destruction was Frederick Ward Putnam of the Peabody Museum at Harvard University. After visiting the site in 1885 and seeing that it was being gradually destroyed by plowing. Putnam raised funds to purchase the mound in the name of the University for use as a public park. Beginning in1886, Putnam spent three years excavating the effigy and nearby conical mounds, then restoring them to their original forms. In 1900, Harvard University turned the site over to the Ohio Historical Society, which has maintained it as a state memorial ever since. Serpent Mound is located within an unusual geological area known as the Serpent Mound cryptoexplosion structure. This is an area nearly five miles in diameter containing extremely faulted and folded bedrock. Such faulting is uncommon in the normally flat-layered rocks of Ohio. A meteorite strike or a volcanic explosion are among early theories used to explain the area's unusual geology, but the site contains no volcanic material or meteorite debris. Current thinking favors an origin caused by an explosion of gas generated deep within the earth that escaped along a zone of weakness in the rock layers--- What ever it was, still is a mystery . ****************************************************** Con't in part 2--