OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - Know your Ohio: Tidbits of Ohio -- Part 68B

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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by
Darlene E. Kelley
http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374
August 19, 2005
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Historical Collections of Ohio
And Then They Went West
Know Your Ohio
Tid Bits - part 68 B
by Darlene E. Kelley
notes by
S. Kelly
Archaic Ohio
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Tid Bits- part 68 B
Archaic Ohio -con't

The explorations most helpful in bringing this lost life to light have
been chiefly made in the Scioto and Miami valleys, where they left the
larger hilltop fortifications, lowland enclosures or effigies. These
masterpieces arch to the east, north and west about old Clermont. As
yet, this condition has not been explained by the non-resident writers.
A theory based on the known migrations of other animal life presents a
philosophy easily understood if not admitted. The dispersion of man is a
question that deepens as the search broadens. No odds whence they came,
no considerable body of people has long enjoyed a peaceable possession
of any desirable land. Notwithstanding the width and fatness of the
continents, the vagrant ways of some and the busy schemes of others have
wonderfully accomplished the passage of the seas and brought the most
distant races into collison.

As fact follows fact into view, doubts cease and better informed
judgement admits that migrations by the Behring Strait or by the Kurile
and Aleutian Islands, even as now seen, were more possible and probable
than the well recorded voyages from Norway by Iceland and Greenland to
Newfoundland. But much geologic evidence is claimed in proof of a wide
and comparatively recent sinking of land in the Pacific, which would
have made the passage from Asia still less difficult. In this light and
among those growing familiar with other incidents in the relation, the
wonder is not at the discovery by Columbus in 1492, but that the event
so brilliant was so long delayed. Although doubtless occurring at the
top moment of Europe's supremest need of a miracle wrought for
despairing liberty, there is no adequate reason but mental inertia why
the veritable voyaging of the Norsemen to America should have been
ignored. When the Europeans came in earnest, their El Dorado was found
pre-empted by a people moving from instead of to the west. For, the most
proof points to Alaska as the port of some, perhaps, many missing bands
who fled by sea rather than face the ills they left on Asian plains.
Whatever may be supposed about the extremely antique race on a submerged
portion in the Pacific is a prettily ingenious hypothesis that involves
a difficult explanation. It seems enough to believe, with sufficient
ethnological reasons, that in man's present epoch, there were migrations
from Asia compelled, most likely, by ancient rather than design. It may
be assumed that such migrations were far apart and with little or no
connecting experience; because America then was a bourne from which no
traveler could or would return. Through these castaways the new world
was possessed by a people whose common origin was modified into at least
two general divisions. Those having what was the ancient extent of
Mexico have been called the Toltecan division. The other division is the
Appalachian or American, including the eastern Canadian and western
tribes. A naming less exact is more easily attained by calling them
Northern and Southern Indians.

They were collectively styled the Red Race, but the real color is brown
with course, straight, black hair and dark brown eyes. The Appalachians
have a large aquiline nose and a spare, straight, muscular form. They
were warlike, cruel, revengeful, and adverse to civilized restraint. The
Toltecans were lower and heavier, with thicker lips, flatter faces,
oblique eyes and a gloomy expression. They inclined to agriculture
rather than war, and, at the Discovery, had made much the most progress
toward a fixed mode of living. Otherwise it is easier to trace a
likeness than to define the difference, except that the man with a home
was envied and plundered by the less provident and more aggressive. Both
were masters of the same weapons, and both were restricted to the art of
the Stone Age. But the Toltecans excelled in the constructive designs
which can only flourish where labor has a more regular supply of food
than can be furnished by the most dextrous flint tipped arrow or spear.
That regular food for the artisans who constructed the halls that
dazzled the mail clad robbers with Cortes and Pizarro was obtained by
the tropical Indians through their discovery and cultivation of maize or
the corn plant, which has been so long and so thoroughly domesticated
that botanists are unable to find or idenitify its wild growth. With
this glorious conquest from nature unmarred by wrong, the Southern
Indians advanced their gentle sway northward into what is the modern "
Corn Belt," when their princely grain found its prolific home. Then the
fierce flesh eaters from beyond the Lakes, having tasted Ohio corn and
finding that it was good, came to devour the tender green or to ravage
the russet harvest. Thenceforth incessant war was waged until the Greek
should cease or Troy fall.

As the birds flew or the herds roamed between the cool of northern
summers and the warm of southern winters, so the lines of attack and
retreat must have been as they were in an age long to come, when our own
fathers sought to build happy homes in the pleasant land. In crossing
the otherwise forbidding barrier of the Great Lakes, the chasm or the
narrows we call Niagara or Detroit where the passes for the bands to
destroy all who dared to hinder the trails of the savage hunters from
the north. Of these or any other trail, the quickest approach and the
surest retreat was by Detroit. Through this natural gate from the north,
everything within reach to the east, west or south was liable to
invasion. Even with slight perception of the continuous danger
sufficient reason is found for the, to them, prodigious defense made by
those who wished to plant for plenty and live in peace.

Twenty-four towns in nearly as many states from Texas to Maine and
Oregon have the significant word " Mound " as a whole or part of their
names. Beside these, many others have a simular allusion, like
Circleville or Grave Creek and more of Indian form and equivalent
meaning. Wherever the artificial hillocks cluster, some trace of a
defensive work is not far away. A proof that danger prompting a defence
came from the north is the increasing percentage of ceremonial works and
the lighter fortifications or none southward in Kentucky and Tennessee.
All that was different on the north side of the Ohio, where safety was
sought through a series of forts made more obvious by longer study. A
reader delighting in the repetitions of history, while regretting the
consequent effacement, is pleased to learn that civilization in placing
our principal towns has largely approved the judgement which located the
busiest scenes of primeval life. St. Louis was once called the Mound
City. Cincinnati from Third street to the hills and from Deer Creek to
Mill Creek was a maze of earthworks rather centrally topped by a signal
height that gave name to Mound street. The extent and elegance of the
designs at Marietta indicate that it was a concourse or parade ground
for the region. The much wasted ruins by Newark were not exceeded by
anything of their kind. The Scioto from mouth to sources was a
succession of settlements rivaling the numbers of today, whose odd glory
made perfect and then destroyed at Circleville is still the regret of
archaeologists, however much the worth of a modern town, that might and
should have been elsewhere, far enough at least for a public park in
which the preserved square, circle and mounds restored to pristine
symmetry would attract visitors from all over the world.

But as there is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon, so
did the majesty of their plans along the Miami exceed them all. For
there, " in the imminent deadly breach " of their dominion, Fort Ancient
still stands preserved and restored for all ages to come and prove that
its contrivers were worthy heroes of the mythic time, and to refute the
declaration that would class them the wandering wild men of the northern
wilderness of over four hundred years ago. Whether or not the lowland
enclosures incuded a military purpose is still mooted. As first found or
restored, they seem as surely planned for senic effect as that their
ornaments were polished for artistic satisfaction. The necessity greater
than all law may have been the prevailing motive, and the piling of dirt
against both sides of an upright row of logs to hold them firm makes a
quick but not lasting defense. Yet a conflict in the larger settlements
narrowed to the extremity of fighting in their sanctuaries would soon be
decisive. A row or streak of black dirt found along the ridges of a
large enclosure near Oxford, in Butler county, and in some other places
has been deemed the result of a burnt palisade, but such a condition
generally passes before the experts have a chance for inspection. Only
very few have any candid doubt about the purpose of the hilltop works of
which the largest and in fact the pivot of the line was Fort Ancient.

There is no need to gild the gold of the many discriptions of this and
the associated masterpieces of the people who built with no help from
metal tools. But there is need to mention them as the environment that
once and long ago controlled the land of Clermont. Fort Ancient with
walls angling through a length of five miles to enclose a hundred and
twenty-six acres of lofty hill land on the eastern side of the Little
Miami, and, by its stream, about forty miles from the Ohio, was built
according to their ideas of greatest strength not only for the
protection of the immediate vicinity, but also for greater service on
the line of constant annoyance to all whose game was choicely fed on the
blue grass of the Silurian Island. This massive fortress was supported
twenty-five miles to the west by the shorter but very strong walls
around seventeen acres on the Great Miami about three miles below
Hamilton. Some call this the Butler County Fort, and others name it the
Fortified Hill. Thirty-five miles farther southwestward, Miami Fort
covered twelve acres commanding the junction of the Great Miami and the
Ohio. Between Miami Fort and Fortified Hill, ninety-five acres were
included in what is considered a fortified camp known as the Colerain
Works. The plan also included defenses at Dayton and Piqua.

As attack from the north was not favored by the crooked course of the
East Fork of the Miami, the eastern support of Fort Ancient was fixed in
Highland county, where a huge wall around thirty-five isolated acres
some five hundred feet above the adjacent lowlands by Brush Creek is
called Fort Hill. Of all, this fort is most remote from former extensive
population. Still, whoever visits these strictly military sites must be
prepared generally for the most inaccessible headlands in the vicinity.
Ten miles down the Brush Creek reaches the famous Serpent Mound in Adams
county, which the critical claim was located there, because the effigy
of the Serpent was begun by nature. Thus, through reverential awe, it
may have been that Fort Hill was fitly located to prevent insult to the
sacred ground. A trail of about twenty miles would have brought help to
or from Spruce Hill Fort enclosing a hundred and forty forbidding acres
on Paint Creek. This was the largest and strongest stone structure short
of Mexico.

Thus, roughly stated, on or near an arc with a cord of less than one
hundred miles, from Miami Fort to Spruce Hill Fort-- from the mouth of
the Great Miami to near Bainbridge in Ross county, the most famous
effigy in the world, one of their largest camp sights, and five out of
six of their strongest fortifications were located. Another great
camping ground at Newark, and the sixth great fortress. Glenwood Fort,
in Perry county, protected the Hocking and Muskingum valleys from
invasion, and so completed the Mound Builder's main line of defense.

With all that can be gleaned from comparative investigation, and for
those accustomed to notice the ways of war worn deep by the march and
countermarch of many armies contending through long divisions of time
for the possession of earth's fairest plains, there is much need for
patience with those who flout the suggestion of a strife centered in
Southwestern Ohio, between the roving hunters and the plodding grainmen.
The supposition of such strife is consistant with the experience of
other times and places. To the objection that the Northern Indians were
too few to occasion such extreme defense, it may be answered that from
Braddock's Defeat or before, to Wayne's Victory or since, it is not
probable that two thousand warriors were ever in one battle against our
forefathers. The raids were generally made by scores rather than
hundreds. Yet there was no lack in domestic interest inspired. Others
profess a doubt of value of the forts. The same remark was made at
Bunker Hill. It is true: their castle's strength might not long laugh a
modern seige to scorn. But arm and arm, whether with arrow or thrusting
spear or with repeating rifles, their restored parapets would be no easy
thing to storm. It is idle to deny the logic that requires belief. There
was strife elsewhere, but none like what is manifest between the Scioto
and Miamis, and none that happened with such cogent reason as that which
forced the Toltecan farther southward than the Appalachian cared to
follow.

With a comprehensive view of their ruins, fancy may conjure up many a
stirring day, when pitiless raids wasted the growing corn, desolated the
villages, and frightened the planters into ever narrowing limits; when
the swift runners with evil tidings ceased to dare the perilous race
with stealthy foes; when the signal fires failed to burn because the
watchers were few and fearful; when the dreamers of strange design were
driven from the matchless charm of the Muskingum; when the broken bands
came westward and brought a double confusion along the once beautiful
Scioto; when the northern war for southern plunder backed westward on
Fort Ancient and made the Valley of the Miamis the final battle ground
between an unrelenting savagery and a humble barbarism too peaceful to
live; when hungry guards weakly manned the walls against the ever coming
attacks along the trails from the Straits between the frigid fur country
and the pleasant corn lands; when dispairing defenders driven from the
farther forts at last huddled at Miami Fort; and, when, boating down the
Ohio forever away, the mourning exiles found consolation in believing
their dead beneath the beautiful mounds too deply buried to ever feel a
touch of cruel change.

Under the nearby protection of the great forts to the north the marks of
the Mound Builders southward to the Ohio, from the Miami to the Serpent
Mound belong mainly, perhaps entirely, to the ceremonial type. In this
region about four hundred earthworks have been noted; and of these over
two hundred are or were within the present limits of Clermont county.
Among these several enclosures could once but not now be clearly traced.
Much the greater extent of those enclosures was in Miami and Union
townships about what was once called the Forks of the Miami. The largest
was a square and circle on the north side terrace of the East Fork with
and near Greenlawn cemetery. About a century ago the ground was shaded
by ancient sugar trees and kept smoothly open by herds that grazed along
the firm edges then some eight feet in height and half as much in level
width across the top. Each of the gateways was fronted some twenty feet
away by a small mound that may have been palisaded at a deadly distance
for lancers and bowmen. The four walls with inside ditches and four
mounds were then kept as a part of the fine estate taken from the
original owner and transmitted by Phillip Gatch [ Kelley relation ] of
heroic pioneer fame, except that the eastern and western walls were
graded through for the Milford and Chillicothe Turnpike. And so this
noble and beautiful pre-historic scene might have remained and should
have become a proud part of the most beautiful buriel place within the
eastern reach of Cincinnati. But a furious storm wrecked the sacred
grove, and, like the forest of Salmygondin, the trees were burnt for the
sale of the ashes. Since then, the plow has left scarcely a trace for
observation of travelers flitting by on the Cincinnati and Columbus
traction cars through the once guarded space, without a suggestion of
the srangely busy throngs sometimes gathered there for patriotic
exhortation and priestly benediction before going to unavailing battle
for the lovely land.

A somewhat smaller square and circle stood a scant mile southward across
the river on a farm long owned by the Edwards family. Some two miles up
the south terrace on the lands of the pioneers, Ira Perin and William
Malott, were two small squares each with no circle. About five miles up
the river on the east side of Stonelick on the Patchell lands a fine
circle of about eight acres with no square was crossed by the Milford
and Chillicothe Pike, which also passes by a group of mounds near
Marathon, and also near Fayetteville. The far past is made to seem less
remote by noting that this great highway of Brown and Clermont counties
goes west by the noted pre-historic sites of Red Bank and Madisonville
near which the Colerain Works interlock with the western forts and with
what was great in front of the mouth of the Licking. Going east through
Highland county, that pike is good for much of the way to Fot Hill and
the Serpent Mound, while Spruce Hill Fort and the Paint Creek tepees are
directly on the road to the remarkable antiquities of the Scioto Valley
only some eighty miles fom Milford. By the mouth of the East Fork in
Anderson township, in Hamilton county, and two miles from the Gatch
enclosure is the noted Turner group of works that connect with the
Newtown mounds and the Red Bank chain of villages.

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To be continued in part 68 C.