Dane County WI Archives History - Books .....Chapter XIII Mounds, Monuments, Caves And Relics 1877
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Book Title: Madison, Dane County And Surrounding Towns...

CHAPTER XIII.
MOUNDS, MONUMENTS, CAVES AND RELICS.

  WE live surrounded by monuments which point to the almost forgotten past,
telling of our remote predecessors, the mound builders. The site occupied by our
city was for a prolonged term, thousands of years ago, the abode of a people
whose semi-architectural remains connect them with the civilizations of Aztecs
and Toltecs, in Mexico and Central America. The Teocallis or temples, and the
Pueblos or village houses, preserved by the more enduring character of their
materials, in some cases, as at Palenque, Copan, Uxmal, long buried in
impassable forests, are the wonder of the explorer; our monuments are only less
complete. Where the central building of our State University stands, was a large
mound crowning the eminence, but necessity compelled its removal. In other
supremely beautiful positions, such mounds, all that remain of more extensive
erections, bespeak identity in taste and judgment between the aboriginal
occupants and ourselves. St. Louis was once called Mound City, because of the
large number of eminences standing where that city unfolds her vast proportions.
There are mound cities in many of the states. Cincinnati, Chicago, Milwaukee,
among other cities indicate like agreement with the building of this city upon a
spot on which the mound builders congregated. That fact is repeated in almost
every large town in the Mississippi valley. Napoleon told his soldiery that from
the pyramids, four thousand years looked down upon them; and not forgetting the
words of Fuller, that those structures, "doting with age, have forgotten the
names of their founders," it seems probable that this continent had an older
civilization than that of the Ptolemies. Possibly this was the first habitable
land then connected with Europe and Asia, and the home of a people who never
dreamed of submergence by the barbarism, which has omitted to preserve, where it
has not expunged their records. There are strange agreements, and variations no
less curious, between some of the Egyptian structures and our mounds. Should the
sands that flow on that land as the sea once rolled over Sahara, ebb back from
the works which they partially cover, more significant resemblances might
appear. "We find no traces to determine the relationship between the people,
unless the Ethiopians from Arabia Felix were the founders of both civilizations;
but the likeness and unlike-ness of their works afford evidences that similar
ideas prevailed in the same or succeeding cycles in widely distant quarters. The
discovery of America by Columbus, and by his predecessors, the Norsemen, are
affairs of yesterday, compared with the primitive occupation to which the mounds
bear testimony, dating from thousands of years before the Christian era.

  Settlements in this region must have been large, so great were the remains
that had defied "the tooth and razure of oblivion," until our civilization, with
buildings and cultivation of the soil, made demolition rapid. Animal shaped
mounds were here first noted. Dr. Lapham wrote on this subject to the papers in
1836; subsequently, Mr. Taylor communicated to the American Journal of Science,
describing eminences with outlines of man and the lower animals, at distances
ranging six, ten and twelve miles from the four lakes. So marked were the
differences between our mounds and those in other states, that many concluded
they were relics of a distinct race; but investigation showed agreements between
the structures that dot the country from the great lakes to Mexico and Central
America. Some of the curious mounds in this region that were in existence at
recent dates, or are now, may be mentioned; but a complete record will not be
attempted. Visitors coming to explore, will find no lack of indications to put
them on the track of discovery. Dr. Lapham, assisted by the resources of the
Antiquarian Society and the Smithsonian Institution, omitted surveys which would
have been as interesting as any in his "Antiquities of Wisconsin," and Messrs.
Squier and Davis, in the "Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley," were
similarly unable to complete the catalogue.

  A great mound on State street was used grading the hollows in that locality.
Near Lake Monona, adjoining Ex-G-overnor Fairchild's residence, was a lizard 318
feet long. The figure was rude, but not more so than was inevitable, considering
that the mound was formed of surface soil, nobody knows how many centuries ago.
It was removed in grading Wilson street and Wisconsin avenue. The mounds near
the Hospital for the Insane are too well known to require description, and
moreover, too numerous. North of Lake Wingra there were many mounds, embodying
specimens of almost every variety, except works for defense. Five of them were
oblong, twenty-seven circular, one circular with lateral projections, one a
bird, and two quadrupeds. Every writer on this subject is indebted to the
surveys made by Dr. Lapham, whose work adorns the shelves of the Historical
Society, with those of other authors who have made mounds their specialty. The
south angle of Third Lake has extensive and regular works, in rows parallel with
the ridges, occupying ground that slopes from the lake, like the seats in an
amphitheatre. Back of these mounds is another, uniting the forms of a bird and a
cross. At the foot is a sandy ridge having twenty-four elevations, on some of
which additional eminences appear, representing animals. The twenty-four
elevations may have been accidental, but they do not bear that appearance. The
animal-shaped mounds upon them are clearly artificial. Dr. Lapham noticed a
modern grave on one of the eminences, and on another the poles of an Indian
wigwam, but no Indian can give an idea as to the origin of the mounds. The third
volume of Bancroft's "United States" contains a suggestion from Prof. Hitchcock
that accident and natural action would account for many supposed antique works.
There are earthworks that will not admit of any such explanation, and numerous
circumstances connected with the majority are conclusive as to human ingenuity
aiding their construction. Probably some of the twenty-four mounds were natural
elevations, others having been added. All of them were covered with soil, and
forest trees were growing on some of them when Dr. Lapham wrote. A ridge of land
near the margin of a lake might be ascribed to the frosts of succeeding winters,
but no such action could produce a series of mounds. The First, Second and
Fourth Lakes have eminences that will repay inspection.

  The world-famous "ancient city of Aztalan" demands greater space for
description than can be afforded. The visitor cannot do better than spend a
portion of his time in the rooms of our Historical Society, consulting the
volumes mentioned and others yet to be specified, after which he will undertake
inspection more intelligently, with much increased pleasure. Nothing short of
actual examination can give an adequate idea of those earth-works. Between
Williams' Bay, on Lake Geneva, and the head of Duck Lake, overlooking both
waters, is a mound representing a bow and arrow, aimed at Lake Geneva. The span
of the bow is fifty feet, the work, finely outlined, is in proportion. Lake
Koshkonong skirts Dane county, miscalled Dade, in the "Ancient Monuments of the
Mississippi Valley," and the mounds in that locality have been visited by
President W. C. Whitford, of Milton College, and Mr. W. P. Clarke. The party cut
through some mounds, and were repaid by relics of great archiac [sic] value. A
skull of excellent type was removed by them, and many fragments of pottery
similar to the debris in the remains of the Pueblo Indians, besides tools,
ornaments and weapons, which will reward a visit to the college. Some of the
mounds have been used for sacrificial purposes, and others for burial, but
whether originally constructed for those purposes must be matter of conjecture.
Residence, fortification, burial and worship have been served by the mounds in
varying proportions.

  Assume a common origin for Mound builders, Aztecs and Toltecs, an affiliation
which becomes easy now that the mounds have been traced to Mexico, and we can
comprehend the purposes for which many of those elevations were prepared. In
Mexico, and along the line by which the Mississippi valley mound builders must
have migrated if they reached or departed from the magnificent cities of
Palenque and Uxmal, there are wrecks of dwellings in advanced stages of decay,
which illustrate the service rendered bv the founda-tion mound. The earthworks
were floors on which were erected the pueblos, supposed by the Spaniards to be
palaces of nobles, attended on by armies of dependents; but in reality, common
abodes, in which whole cities, towns or villages found lodgment, pursuing
customary avocations, living together in communistic equality. Some of those
buildings would accommodate five hundred, in others five thousand could find
room. The mound, sometimes faced and covered with stone, was itself a
fortification, difficult of access, unless the visitor was aided from within.
The platform being reached, the assailant, supposing war to be his object, found
himself confronted on three sides by buildings, each story receding from the
building line beneath, so that a stage remained available for defense. The
edifice could not be battered down, the enemy possessed no artillery; could not
be set on fire, it was faced, and to a great extent constructed with stone;
could not be stormed, there were no doorways and stairs, the upper floors being
reached by ladders and window entrances, which could be made unapproachable.
Within that fortification the Pueblo Indians found safety against aboriginal
war; and from windows and stages, as well as from occasional apertures for
defense, missiles could be propelled with deadly effect. We find the floors of
such buildings scattered through the valley of the Mississippi, but the vast
deltas not being prodigal of stone, wooden buildings or mud walls were
substituted. These materials decaying, the mounds alone remain. The Natchez
Indians lived in houses of wood erected on mounds, which may have been their own
handiwork, or that of long forgotten predecessors, when Tonti and La Salle
observed their worship of the sun, and other indications of Mexican fellowship.
The long house of the Iroquois, in which the tribe lived in common, with a
fireplace for each family, shows that there may have been a time when nearly all
were one brotherhood, acquiring customs since modified by circumstances, never
wholly changed. The Teocallis or Temple mounds, of which there are many
examples, had also crowning edifices. Features of resemblance remain where
compatible with the partial use of perishing materials. The truncated pyramids
approached by graded ways, and the final stages upon which sacrifices were
offered, continue, because their constituents are little subject to decay.
Professor C. G. Forshey followed those works with minute annotation through the
Mississippi valley, and the reader can find the results in "Foster's
Pre-Historic Paces." Many of the mounds support trees estimated at from four
hundred to a thousand years old. Capt. Jonathan Carver was first to invite
attention to the mounds in the great valley, having examined works of defense
near Mount Trempealeau. He also discovered the cave of Wakan Tebee, since
destroyed by railroads, which had hieroglyphs or pictographs on its walls. Much
that pertains to this subject is omitted. Our book can be little other than a
fingerpost, pointing to localities and monuments that wiii not permit of
enumeration. The undeciphered hieroglyphs on Gales Bluffs, near La Crosse, are
monuments that will not serve their purpose until the signs have delivered up
their meaning. Sun dried bricks, bearing impressions of the hands of workmen;
clay that served as a casing for a great man defunct, bearing similar
impressions of hands that shaped it over the corpse, preparatory to the burning
which gave the consistency of brick; the burnt clay that is found mixed with
charred straw, in the works at Aztalan; the ornaments of copper, silver,
obsidian, porphyry and green stone, the tools and weapons by which men sustained
themselves and little ones, are of the highest interest. The telescopic tube of
stone, with which the mound builders examined the heavenly bodies, as appears on
a Peruvian relic, showing a figure carved on silver, bespeaks high civilization.
The stone battle axes found at Kenosha; stone hatchets from Cottage Grove, from
Green Bay, and from our immediate surroundings, are replete with human interest,
because full of mystery from an age unknown. Some day we may master the problem
which, sphynx like, demands solution, as to the tumuli systematically raised,
enclosed in mathematical figures and lines of circumvallation, builded by men
who were conversant with mining operations, who could procure their own copper
from the matrix, as well as shape it into artistic forms; who wove cloth
probably when the lake villages of Switzerland were first settled; who could
prepare designs in stone and clay, expressing thoughts that approach the
sublime, and evince a comprehension of the beautiful; yet have fallen below the
realm of history, leaving to generations now remotely following them, the task
to discover "Whence came they?" "Whither did they go?"

  By the kindness of S. C. Griggs & Co., the well known publishers, we present
engravings of earthworks and other relics of the Mound Builders from "Foster's
Pre-Historic Races," a book which should be in the hands of every thoughtful
reader. The Mound Builders could not be omitted from our record, but a complete
statement within our limits is impossible, and it affords us pleasure to refer
the student to the fascinating pages of Foster. The works at Marietta were
examined by Lyell in 1842. On that spot Dr. Hildreth saw a tree which showed
eight hundred rings of annual growth. Prior to that time President Harrison had
written a memoir, which went to show, that thousands of years must have elapsed
from the first formation of the mound before such growths were possible. Every
circumstance connected with the mounds points to a remote antiquity.
Illustrations of utensils, weapons, tools and ornaments, might have been
indefinitely extended, but enough has been given to suggest the degrees of
civilization attained by the builders and occupants of the mounds in the
Mississippi valley. The times in which they flourished cannot be safely
computed, but Dr. Dowler found a skeleton at New Orleans, for which he claims an
antiquity of fifty thousand years; and Agassiz gives an estimate of ten thousand
years, at the least, as the age of human remains in Florida. The wondrous
transmutations witnessed by this continent cannot be better illustrated than by
the fact that the fossils of our rocks alone, reveal the form of the ancestors
of the horse and ass; although there were no horses on this continent when the
Spaniards landed in South America, save those which were brought by the invading
soldiery.

  Enough as to our predecessors, although enough has never yet been said. We
turn to other features of interest. Eleven miles a little to the south of west
of Madison, in the ridge dividing the valley of Sugar river from the lake
country, is a wonderful cave, which unlike the "cave of the Great Spirit,"
discovered by Captain Carver, has not been destroyed by railroads. The basin of
a lake covering an area of four thousand acres, discharged its volume ages since
into the bluff by which it was bounded, and has worn the channel into a series
of chambers and passages, which have been penetrated two thousand feet by
explorers, who do not know the extent of the cavern. There is no lake to fill
the basin, nor has it been ascertained where the waters found egress below. The
Four Lakes are five hundred feet beneath the level of the basin, and Sugar river
flows at a distance of about a mile and a half; but nothing indicates that the
riparian current is augmented from the old lake level. Explorers, with proper
appliances, will find within the cavern a field for romantic adventure and
curious observation. The grotto opens in the upper magnesian limestone, beneath
which a stratum of sandstone has been reached, and the action of the water
cannot have failed to shape vast halls, which imagination may people with
gnomes, fairies and dwarfs, sufficient for unnumbered nursery stories. The
entrance is obstructed by debris, but four narrow passages remain; within, is a
succession of chambers, ornamented by stalactite and stalagmite, that glisten in
fantastic shapes when torches are introduced. Voices of visitors can be heard
distinctly on the ground overhead, the roof is in some parts much attenuated.
After a storm, «when the waters have been dammed back from underground fissures,
the air escaping, roars like a steam whistle. It is probable that fossil remains
may be found in the many storied cavern, sufficient to fill our museums.


Additional Comments:
Extracted from:

History of Madison Section

MADISON, DANE COUNTY AND SURROUNDING TOWNS;
BEING A HISTORY AND GUIDE
TO PLACES OF SCENIC BEAUTY AND HISTORICAL NOTE FOUND IN THE TOWNS OF DANE COUNTY
AND SURROUNDINGS, INCLUDING THE ORGANIZATION OF THE TOWNS, AND EARLY INTERCOURSE
OF THE SETTLERS WITH THE INDIANS, THEIR CAMPS, TRAILS, MOUNDS, ETC.

WITH A COMPLETE LIST OF
COUNTY SUPERVISORS AND OFFICERS,
AND
LEGISLATIVE MEMBEES, MADISON VILLAGE AND CITY COUNCIL.

ILLUSTRATED,
MADISON, WIS.:
PUBLISHED BY WM. J. PARK & CO.,

BOOKSELLERS, STATIONERS AND BINDERS, 11 KING STREET.
1877.

COPYRIGHT.
WM. J. PARK & CO. 1877.

DAVID ATWOOD, STEREOTYPER AND PRINTER, MADISON, WIS.

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