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CHAPTER II.

THE MOUND-BUILDERS.

[BY JOHN B. JEWETT.]

INTRODUCTORY-THE TURNER GROUP-THE NEWTOWN GROUP-THE MADISONVILLE REMAINS -MOUND-BUILDERS AT RED BANK-THE CINCINNATI WORKS-FORT MIAMI-OTHER WORKS IN THE COUNTY---THE MOUND-BUILDERS AND THE ANCIENT NATIONS OF MEXICO.

NO land, which affords so many proofs of a wonderful antiquity as the United States, has so completely lost the story of its past. Italy, Greece, Persia and Egypt not only retain a distinct knowledge of their ancient peoples, and of the great national incidents connected with most of their ruins, but they are still inhabited

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by the children of those peoples, in whom is reflected something of the character which actuated the deeds of the former time; oven Mexico and Central America, our sister lands, are by no means destitute of those legends which

Soften down the hoar austerity

Of rugged desolation, and fill up,

As 't were anew, the gaps of centuries.

But what was the history of the regal barbarian whose bones were taken from the shapely and lofty tumulus of Grave Creek? Of the industrious communities that dwelt within the massive village-walls of the Ohio Valley? Of those more primeval tribes. the wild comrades of the mastodon, whose grotesque fetich altars rise from the prairies of Iowa and Wisconsin? Of those devotees of a more elaborate religion, whose stately temple-pyramids-their very proportions suggestive of the grandeur of civil power-overlook the lowlands of Louisiana and Mississippi? And who and where are the descendants of the beings who built, used, and tenanted these speechless ruins?

Such questions, which appeal almost as strongly to popular fancy as to philosophic contemplation, allow a wide range of speculation within the limits prescribed by the character of the ruins themselves.

Of recent years, the keen eye of science has discerned the fact that some of the simpler and ruder earthworks of this country, especially mounds, and many burial places, are those of tribes differing but little from the Indians of recent times. The discovery, however, has given no new name to that older and peculiarly distinct race that once occupied the southern half of Ohio; whose most remarkably typical works are seen at Marietta, Liberty, Newark, Hopeton and Fort Ancient, and to whom the world has long alluded as "the mysterious Mound-Builders." The void which separates them from the present is complete. Not even the faint echoes of language and tradition, which associate the stately temples of the Southern States with the Mexicans, survive in this region, or arise from distant quarters; and the partial record of their mode of life, which has been preserved for centuries in their monuments and less imposing relics, furnishes only a few doubtful clues to the relation borne by the nameless nations to other American peoples, to the date of their existence, or to the causes of their disappearance.

It is among their suggestive remains, nevertheless, that those secrets of the past lie buried, and time alone, which hid them there, can bring them forth.

The territory comprised within the present limits of Hamilton county was inhabited by several communities, which there is little doubt were of this ancient race, as their remains are of the same distinct and singular character as the most notable in the State. In fact, these works have, from the days of the first white pioneers, attracted wide and distinguished interest, and of late years have been examined and discussed by some of the most celebrated archaeologists and antiquarian scholars in the country.

The sites occupied by these communities are nearly all in the valleys of the two Miamis--which were peopled for miles upward by kindred communities-and in localities which must have been considered then, as now, the choicest in the land.

The Turner Group.-One of the most favored, in this respect, of the Mound Builder villages was situated just below the mouth of the East Fork of the Little Miami, upon a spot lying in the northeastern corner of Anderson township, which is well-known to students of archaeology throughout the land as the Turner place. About midway between the sweeping and picturesque hills, a considerable knoll rises from the broad, level, and fertile terrace of the valley. This isolated elevation, formed by nature for a strong defensive position. was skillfully fortified by the old villagers. The knoll is cut into three separate hillocks, by two transverse ditches, each from twenty to thirty feet in depth. The level summit of the middle

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hillock, insulated by these two formidable chasms, was crowned with a circular wall of earth, which, on the southeast side, opened into a gateway a hundred feet wide; from the portals of this opening a broad and commodious causeway descended by a gentle grade to an extensive group of mounds and enclosures upon the broad and level plain below, showing the destination to which the ancient processions were accustomed to march.

Prof. F. WV. Putnam, of Harvard College, one of the very ablest of American archaeologists, and Dr. C. L. Metz, of this county, who has won high rank in the same pursuit, explored a great part of this place in 1886. The group of mounds in the fields below the causeway proved to be the coverings of numerous altars, upon which lay loads of burnt ornaments-pearls, images in terra-cotta, and even gold and silver articles-all placed there as religious offerings during elaborate and imposing ceremonies. Not far from the mounds was found the cemetery of the people, containing a great number of skeletons incased in stone-boxed graves, and among the graves. several pits filled with ashes instead of skeletons. The same method of combining the rites of cremation and burial was practiced on a still larger scale by another community of the Hamilton county Mound-Builders.

The Newtown Group. -Upon the same extensive terrace, two miles farther down the valley, also in Anderson township, at the foot of the eastern range of bills, in a position well-chosen for an agricultural village, the Martin mound, one of the largest in this part of the State, rises to the majestic height of forty feet above 'the plain. Within easy view from its tall and solitary summit is an humbler tumulus, standing in the center of the principal cemetery of Newtown. Several other mounds, companions to this, were formerly scattered over the lowland, now covered by the streets of the village. A mile south of Newtown, in the deep and wooded valley of Jennie's run, is a lonely temple mound; from this point to the Ohio, a distance of several miles, the eastern hills of the Little Miami are crowned with scattered mounds of inferior size, but show none of the unmistakable geometrical earthworks of the Mound-Builders.

The Madisonville Remains. -One of their most populous communities, however, was located just across the valley from Newtown, on a branch of the Western terrace, within sight of the smoke of every village on the eastern side. The location is a mile south of Madisonville, on the Stites and Ferris estates. The earthworks, which consisted of two or three circular embankments, and several large mounds, were guarded on the river side by a precipitous bluff, a hundred feet in descent, During the course of investigation which the Scientific and Literary Society of Madisonville began here in 1879, and which the Peabody Museum completed, hundreds of skeletons and several long rows of ash pits, like the few found on the Turner place, were discovered in the cemetery of the village, which lay along the bluff west of the earthworks. From the great number of burials in the cemetery, it has been estimated that the village contained not less than five thousand inhabitants.

Mound-Builders at Red Bank.--Two miles farther down the Little Miami, upon a high ridge of gravel, which directly overhangs the river, stands a considerable tumulus. Dr. Metz. in his widely-known article, " The Prehistoric Monuments of the Little Miami Valley," refers to a great earthen circle, long since obliterated, and to a burial ground, several acres in area, which occupied the lower plain west of the ridge. Two miles below this point, the Little Miami empties into the Ohio, whose steep and rugged hills, for five or six miles westward, allow only a very narrow margin to the great stream,

The Cincinnati Works.-At that distance, however, they suddenly open to the northward, bending their way around a plain some two or three miles square, elevated safely above the tremendous freshets of the river, and which in its natural state offered every inducement, as a home, that a thrifty but simple-mannered people seek and demand from their mother nature.

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The local reader hardly needs to be reminded of the oft-quoted descriptions, by pioneer writers, of the earthworks which once stood upon the soil now completely covered by the great city of Cincinnati, and which suggest, if they do not prove, that here was one of the greatest Mound-Builders' towns which ever flourished in the valley of the Ohio. Upon the hill-enclosed plain, only a few hundred feet back from the high bluff which descended to the bottom-land, near the present line of Third street, lay an earthen wall in the form of a great ellipse, covering more space than two squares of the modern city. The gateway of this inclosure, like that of the Turner causeway, opened to the rising sun, and was guarded by two broad parapets. From one of these, a low embankment, about the height and breadth of an ordinary sidewalk, led, first south, then east, to a large mound near the edge of the bluff, at a point now marked by the northeast corner of Third and Main. Another low embankment extended clear from the river, between Broadway and Sycamore, curving from Third to Sixth, and another ran from the river in the same manner, " in the western part of the town." As these descriptions were written when Cincinnati was a small town, the quarter referred to was probably between Plum and Central avenue. On the western verge of the plain, half a mile from the ellipse, stood a lofty mound, which gave a view of Mill creek valley, the course of the Ohio and all the surrounding hillsides. North of the sentinel mound stood a small tumulus, and another yet beyond it. In the middle of Fifth street, near Broadway, was a small circular earthwork, and toward the northern part of the plain was a peculiar double-walled structure, extending seven hundred and sixty feet east and west.

Fort Miami.-Some eighteen miles below Cincinnati, the Great Miami empties into the Ohio, and at the junction of the two valleys, upon a very lofty hill, is a work which so far surpasses all others in the county as a fortification as to tell at once that its occupants, whether they were contemporary with the other communities of the Miami Country, or of a later race and date, held a post of extreme danger.

Prof. Warren K. Moorehead, whose brilliant archaeological discoveries have so greatly increased our knowledge of the ?found-Builders of Ohio, thus compares Fort Miami with Fort Ancient, the greatest prehistoric fortification in the United States: " The embankment is about the same average size as that of Fort Ancient. It is carried around the brow of the hill, probably the distance of over a mile. The gateways are similar to those of Fort Ancient. The area inclosed is about forty acres. The ditch in all places is on the interior of the wall; in some places it reaches a depth of three feet. * * * Like Fort Ancient, this structure was obviously built for defense."

Other Works in the County.-From the Ohio the Mound-Builders spread up the valley of the Great Miami, far beyond the limits of this county, and at New Baltimore, on the western side of the river, about sixteen miles above Fort Miami, another of their stopping places is marked by an irregular earthen wall along the stream. A few miles farther north, on the eastern bank, in Colerain township, is a walled inclosure which embraces nearly a hundred acres, the largest area, by far, comprised by any single work in the county. On the heights near Norwood is a mound rivalling in size the Martin mound of Anderson township. A great number of small mounds, and several cemeteries, scattered through the county, bear witness to the existence of other prehistoric communities, probably of later races than the Mound-Builders.

THE MOUND BUILDERS AND THE ANCIENT NATIONS OF MEXICO.

Distinct as the works of the Mound-Builders are in type, their characteristics do not seem sufficient, as yet, to settle beyond all dispute to what family of the North American aborigines the people belonged. The earliest theory which occurred to.

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antiquarians, and the one which remains most popular, because of the heroic history which it suggests, is that the true Mound-Builders of the north were the early ancestors of the Nahuas, or Mexicans; that during long ages of forgotten conflict with the advancing red men, they retreated slowly down the valley of the Mississippi, and finally to Mexico. As they went, their civilization grew more and more elaborate; they developed more magnificent institutions of government, a more luxurious state of society, and their arts multiplied to a degree suited to their advanced condition; a new people grew from the old; the rude northern villages were forgotten in the sumptuous cities of the south; instead of patriarchal chieftains, monarchs ruled the commonwealth; and meeting finally the greatest civilized race of America, the Mayas, in the valleys of Mexico, the progressive children of the North added the finishing touches to a culture which even in Montezuma's day, the last of its splendor, still retained some of the elements of its Mound-Builder origin.

It would be difficult to find in all the histories of the old world, even in those parts which are rendered most fascinating by poetic myth and fable, a grander theme for human interest than this imaginary career of the Mound-Builders; even the rise of the Grecian nations, from pastoral times to the glorious Athenian era, is a mere incident of the past in comparison with such a vast romance. Yet the theory, splendid as it may appear to some, is by no means without foundation. There are positive proofs that a race, which spoke the same language and bad the same arts and civilization as the Mexicans, once dwelt in the southeastern portion of the United States, whether they came to that region from the North, or from Mexico itself; and the early traditions of the Mexicans affirm that their forefathers entered Mexico from the direction of those very Gulf States.

A connection between these Nahua people of the Southern States and the MoundBuilders of the Ohio Valley is next shown in the 'design of their religious structures and their sepulchres, the northern circular mounds being sometimes found in the south, and the southern types of pyramids and platform-mounds occasionally appearing in the north. To fill out the story of the migration and progress from north to south, estimates, based upon facts more or less definite, are made to show that the earthworks of the Ohio, and those of the Upper Mississippi, are older by centuries than those along the Gulf of Mexico. As the Nahuas can he traced from the Gulf States to the Ohio Valley by means of the platform-mounds, so they can be followed from Ohio by the circular inclosures and a few "Animal mounds " to the northwest, where the great mastodon mound of Wisconsin tells of a period, compared with which the hoariest traditions of Mexico grow young.

Whether this dim track of likenesses is to be trusted, or not, in threading the wilderness of the American past, it is certain that the ancient Mound-Builders of Ohio-not least remarkably those of Hamilton county-were just such a people as the Mexicans might have been derived from. In their religious and burial customs, especially, are the rudiments of the same magnificent ceremonies with which the Mexicans worshiped their deities, and bade farewell to their dead. The great chiefs and heroes of the Mound-Builders were covered by the loftiest sepulchers; the sepulchers, rendered holy by the deep reverence of generations, became fit shrines for the worship of posterity, and many a temple rose upon the sacred tombs; often the bones of human beings, no doubt the relics of captives taken in war and sacrificed, are found lying around the skeleton to which the ghastly honors were paid; often the dead were cremated, and their ashes deposited, with solemn rites, in the thickly-planted cemetery of the village; and again, the body which was given back to nature by the tardier process of decay, was so placed in the mausoleum, or the lowlier grave, that the spirit might begin at once its journey to the sunny land of morning or the darker North. All these practices, and others, were as common to the Mexicans as to the Mound-Builders, and were merely enlarged by the grander civilization of the South. In the light of such facts the average observer may easily imagine that the

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Aztecs and other Nahua families descended from the Mound-Builders, or that both peoples descended alike from one original stock.

It is tantalizing to the eager inquirer into this remote mystery to be treated to the startling, yet elusive glimpses which open to his bewildered eye, as new discoveries flash athwart its depths. Ono of the most striking, but most baffling of these discoveries, was made by Prof. Moorehead and Dr. Cresson two years ago in the Scioto Valley, near Chillicothe. In exploring the monuments of that region, which seems to have been a central province of the Mound-Builders of Ohio, the two scientists unearthed a thick group of altars, piled with rich ornaments of the Mound Builder fashion, just as they were given to the flames of sacrifice in far-off days. But among the mass of rude and simple trinkets, among the skeletons of beings that had held the highest rank of their little day and place, the astonished archaeologists found a large number of copper articles, of a make and finish never before seen among relics of Mound-Builders' skill. Most of these curiosities were designed for personal ornaments; some were made apparently to represent figures of mystic meaning; several were cut in a style strangely like certain work of the artisans of Mexico and Central America, but the most remarkable of all were forms of the supreme religious symbol of the ancient Mexicans and Mayas-the cross.

There is nothing to prove that these royal decorations, deeply corroded with the green rust of centuries, were manufactured in this country by native MoundBuilders, and if not made by northern hands, the copper images of the cross must have been carried from the distant lands of the South, where the benign Quetzacoatl, the Divine Teacher of the New World, was worshiped under that emblem for unknown centuries before the Aztecs, the last immigrants of their race, wandered into the valley of Anahuac from some mysterious northern land. Here speculation grows bewildered. Copper crosses like these might have found their way to the Ohio Valley more than two thousand years ago, when the great Maya city of Nachan was in the prime of its glory; or when the empire of the Olmecs, the first Nahuas in Mexico, had succeeded the sway of the Mayas; or as late as the tenth century of our era, when the dominions of the Mexicans, then called Toltecs, extended far northward into lands that have no name in Mexican history.

And if the ornaments are specimens of one of these vague southern periods, in what manner were they transported hither? Some extraordinary expedition seems to have been the cause of their presence here, for no such articles were ever before found among the hundreds of Mound-Builder sepulchers which have been opened throughout the country. Were they brought in the coffer of some adventurous merchant from one of the opulent cities of the Xicolan or Chiapan coast, and bartered to the rude kings and priests of the Scioto? Did they come with the embassy of some ambitious ruler, who wished to learn if the distant barbarians who bowed before the symbol of his deity, and perhaps spoke his language, were worthy of conquest? Or were they despoiled from some band that came from afar upon a mission of discovery and never returned to tell what they had seen? Conjecture only adds to conjecture.

It may be, then, that the dark past of the Mound-Builders was blended with the shadowy ages of some of the grandest nations of the ancient American world. Perhaps some account of them was recorded in the national books of the Toltecs, or of the Mayas, as the people of the mysterious island of Atlantis were mentioned in the annals of Egypt; but since those records perished more than three centuries ago, despised and unread, in the ruthless fires of the Spanish conquerors, it may well be doubted whether anything of their actual history will ever be rescued from the depths of oblivion. American archaeologists and antiquarians, whose zeal and skill are constantly increasing, may at last succeed in tracing their progress from country to country, and from period to period, but the most sanguine investigator can hardly hope that Time will answer more than the two questions: Of what race were the Mound-Builders? In what era did they flourish?