Hideous, therefore, as were the human sacrifices, with their annual thousands of victims; the offerings of infants to propitiate Tlaloc, their rain-god; and the loathsome banquets on the bodies of their sacrificed victims:—if indeed this be not an exaggeration of Spanish credulity and fanaticism;—it is nevertheless difficult to concur in the verdict of the gifted historian ofThe Conquest of Mexico, that “it was beneficently ordered by Providence that the land should be delivered over to another race who would rescue it from the brutish superstitions that daily extended wider and wider, with extent of empire.” The rule of the conquerors, with their Dominican ministers of religion, was no beneficent sway; and its fruits in later times have not proved of such value as to reconcile the student of that strange old native civilisation of the votaries of Quetzalcoatl, to its abrupt arrestment, at a stage which can only be paralleled by the earlier centuries of Egyptian progress.
Metallurgic arts were carried in some respects further by the Mexicans than by the Peruvians. Silver, lead, and tin were obtained from the mines of Tasco and Pachuca; copper was wrought in the mountains of Zacotollan, by means of galleries and shafts opened with persevering toil where the metallic veins were imbedded in the solid rock; and there, as at the Lake Superior copper regions, the traces of such ancient mining have proved the best guides to modern searchers for the ores. The arts of casting, engraving, chasing, and carving in metal, were all practised with great skill. Vessels both of gold and silver were wrought of enormous size: so large, it is said, that a man could not encircle them with his arms; and the abundant gold was as lavishly employed in Mexico as in Peru, in the gorgeous adornment of temples and palaces. Ingenious toys, birds and beasts with moveable wings and limbs, fish with alternate scales of silver and gold, and personal ornaments in great variety, were wrought by the Mexican goldsmiths of the precious metals, with such curious art, that the Spaniards acknowledged the superiority of the native workmanship over anything they could achieve. When Cortes first entered the capital of Montezuma in 1513, the Mexican ruler received him in the palace built by his father Axayacatl, and hung round his neck a decoration of the finest native workmanship. The shell of a species of craw-fish, set in gold, formed the centre, and massive links of gold completed the collar, from which depended eight ornaments of the same metal, delicately-wrought in imitation of the prized shell-fish.
The arts thus practised on the great plateau extended to the most southern limits of the North American continent. The ancient graves of the Isthmus of Panama have been ransacked by thousands in recent years, from the temptation which the gold relics they contain hold out to their explorers. Those include representations of beasts, birds, and fishes, frogs, and other objects, imitated from nature, often with great skill and ingenuity. One gold frog which I examined had the eyes hollow, with an oval slit in front, and within each a detached ball of gold, which appeared to have been executed in a single casting. This insertion of detached balls is frequently met with in the pottery, as well as in the goldsmith’s work of the Isthmus, and is singularly characteristic of a peculiar phase of local art. Human figures, and monstrous or grotesque hybrids wrought in gold, with the head of the cayman, the eagle, and other animals, attached to the human form, are also found in the same graves; but, so far as my own opportunities of observation enable me to judge, the human figure generally exhibits inferior imitative skill and execution to the representations of other animate subjects. But all alike display abundant metallurgic art. Soldering as well as casting was known to the ancient goldsmith, and the finer specimens have been finished with the hammer and graving-tool. Judging from the condition of the human remains found in those huacas of the peninsula, they are probably of a much higher antiquity than the era of Mexican civilisation; and lying as they do in the narrow isthmus between the twin continents, they suggest the probability of a common source for the origin of Peruvian and Aztec arts.
But while the Mexicans wrought their ingenious toys, lavished their inexhaustible resources of gold and silver in personal decoration, and adorned their public edifices with scarcely less boundless profusion than the Peruvians, they had learned to some extent the practical value of gold and other metals as a convenient currency. By means of this equivalent for the gold and silver coinage of Europe, the interchange of commodities in the great markets of Mexico was facilitated, and an important step in the progress towards a higher stage of civilisation secured. This metallic currency consisted of pieces of tin cut in the form of aTor stamped with a similar character, and of transparent quills filled with gold dust. These were apparently regulated to a common standard by their size: for the use of scales and weights, with which the Peruvians were familiar, appears to have been unknown in Mexico.
The nature of the Mexican currency accords with the knowledge and experience of a people among whom metallurgic arts were of comparatively recent origin. The easily fused tin, and the attractive and accessible gold-dust, supplied ready materials for schooling the ingenious metallurgist in the use of the metals. Copper was probably first employed when found in a pure metallic state, as among the old miners of Lake Superior; while the art of fusing, taught by the Aztec Tubal-Cain, was tried only on the readily-yielding tin. By this means the arts of smelting and moulding the ores would be acquired, and applied to copper, silver, and gold, as well as to tin. Accident might suggest the next important stage, that of metallic alloys; but under the circumstances alike of Peruvian and Mexican civilisation, progressing in regions abounding with the most attractive and easily-wrought metals, it is not difficult to conceive of the independent discovery of the useful bronze alloy. Yet by the standard composition of their bronze, far more than by the ingenious intricacy of their personal ornaments, utensils, and architectural decorations, the actual progress of the Incas or of the Aztecs may fairly be tested. The delight of the savage in personal adornment precedes even the needful covering of his nakedness, and the same propensity long monopolises the whole inventive ingenuity of a semi-barbarous people; while the useful bronze tools embody the true germs of incipient civilisation. Tested by such a standard, the metallurgic arts of Peru furnish evidence of very partial development.
The alloy of copper and tin, when destined for practical use in manufacture, is found to possess the most serviceable qualities when composed of about ninety per cent. of copper to ten of tin; and so near is the approximation to this theoretical standard among the bronze relics of the ancient world, that the archæologists of Europe have been divided in opinion as to whether they should assume a Phœnician or other common origin for the weapons, implements, and personal ornaments of that metal found over the whole continent; or that the mixed metal, derived from a common centre, was manufactured in various countries of Europe into the objects of diverse form and pattern abounding in their soil, or deposited among their sepulchral offerings.
But the approximation to a uniform alloy is no more than would inevitably result from the experience of the extreme brittleness resulting from any undue excess of the tin. Accident, or the natural proximity of the metals or ores, as they occur in the mineral regions of England, may have furnished the first disclosure of the important secret. But that once discovered, the subsequent steps were inevitable. Having ascertained that he could produce a harder and more useful compound than the pure copper by alloying it with tin, the native metallurgist would not fail to vary the proportions of the latter till he had obtained a sufficiently near approximation to the best bronze, to answer the purposes for which it was designed. No interchange of experience was necessary to lead the metallurgists of remote regions to similar results; nor would a closer correspondence between the proportionate ingredients of the native American and European bronze than has yet been detected, indicate more than common aims, and the inevitable experience, consequent on the properties of the varying alloy, leading to corresponding results.
The following table of analyses of ancient European bronze relics will suffice to show how little foundation there is for the assumption of any common origin for the alloy of which they were made; and the corresponding evidence of proportionate ingredients disclosed by analyses of native American bronzes, disproves the theory of any European or other foreign source for the metallurgic arts of the New World.
ANALYSES OF ANCIENT BRONZES.
In No. 31 is also Cobalt, ·09; in No. 37, Antimony, ·04; and in No. 41, Arsenic, ·03.
In No. 31 is also Cobalt, ·09; in No. 37, Antimony, ·04; and in No. 41, Arsenic, ·03.
From the varied results which so many analyses disclose, ranging as they do from 79 to 98 per cent. of copper; as well as from the diversity of the ingredients: it is abundantly obvious that no greater uniformity is traceable, than might be expected to result from the operations of isolated metallurgists, very partially acquainted with the chemical properties of the standard alloy, and guided for the most part by the experience derived from successive results of their manufacture. It is thus apparent that the various exigencies of the metallurgist, under the control of a very ordinary amount of practical skill, would lead to the determination of the best proportions for this useful alloy; though it would only be after the accumulated fruits of isolated experiment had been combined, that anything more than some crude approximation to the best composition of bronze would be determined. Hence the value of analytical evidence in determining the degree of civilisation of Mexico and Peru, as indicated by their metallurgic arts. For the general requirements of a tool, or weapon of war, where a sufficient hardness must be obtained without any great liability to fracture, the best proportions proved to be about 90 per cent. of copper to 10 of tin; or with a small proportion of lead in lieu of part of the tin: which, as further experience taught the primitive worker in bronze, communicates to the cutting instrument a greater degree of toughness, and consequently diminishes its liability to fracture. But where great hardness is the chief requisite, as in certain engraving, carving, and gem-cutting tools, the mere increase of tin in the alloy supplies the requisite quality: until the excessive brittleness of the product gives warning that the true limit has been exceeded. In this, I doubt not, lies the whole secret of Mexican and Peruvian metallurgy, which has seemed so mysterious, and therefore so marvellous to the most sagacious inquirers.
The following table furnishes the results of analyses of various ancient American bronzes. Few as the examples are, they afford definite illustration of the subject under review, and supply some means of comparison with the data already furnished relative to the ancient bronzes of Europe.
ANALYSES OF ANCIENT AMERICAN BRONZES.
The comparison of this with the previous table indicates a smaller amount of tin in the American bronze than in that of ancient Europe. For some Egyptian spear-heads Gmelin gives, copper 77·60, tin 22·02; and the composition of ancient weapons, armour, vessels, and coins, seems to indicate such a systematic variation of proportions as implies the result of experience in adapting the alloy for the specific purpose in view. A much larger number of analyses would be desirable as data from which to generalise on the metallurgic skill developed independently by native American civilisation; but the examples adduced seem to show that there is no lost secret for Europe to discover.
The native metallurgist had learned the art of alloying his ductile copper with the still softer tin, and producing by their chemical admixture a harder, tougher metal than either. But he does not appear to have carried his observation so far as to ascertain the most efficient proportions of the combining metals; or even to have made any very definite approximation to a fixed rule, further than to use with great moderation the alloying tin. He had discovered, but not entirely mastered, a wonderful secret, such as in the ancient world had proved to lie at the threshold of all higher truths in mechanical arts. He was undoubtedly advancing, slowly but surely, on the direct course of national elevation; and the centuries which have followed since the conquests of Cortes and Pizarro might have witnessed in the New World triumphs not less marvellous in the progress of civilisation than those which distinguish the England of Victoria from that of the first Tudor. But native science and art were abruptly arrested in their progress by the Spanish conquistadors; and it is difficult to realise the conviction that either Mexico or Peru has gained any adequate equivalent for the loss which thus debars us from the solution of some of the most interesting problems connected with the progress of the human race. Amid all the exclusiveness of China, and the isolation of Japan, there is still an unknown quantity among the elements of their civilisation derived from the same sources as our own. But the America of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was literally another world, securely guarded from external influences. Nevertheless while all appears to have been self-originated, we meet everywhere with affinities to the arts of man elsewhere, and trace out the processes by which he has been guided, from the first promptings of a rational instinct to the intelligent development of many later steps of reason and experience.
[78]Méms. Chemical Society, vol. iv. p. 288.
[78]
Méms. Chemical Society, vol. iv. p. 288.
[79]Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, vol. vi. p. 357.
[79]
Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, vol. vi. p. 357.
[80]Prehistoric Annals of Scotland(2d ed.), vol. i. p. 319.
[80]
Prehistoric Annals of Scotland(2d ed.), vol. i. p. 319.
[81]Proceedings,B. N. H. S., vol. v., p. 63.
[81]
Proceedings,B. N. H. S., vol. v., p. 63.
[82]Anahuac, p. 153.
[82]
Anahuac, p. 153.
CHAPTER X.THE MOUND-BUILDERS.
EARTH-PYRAMIDS—MONUMENTS OF THE MOUND-BUILDERS—SEATS OF ANCIENT POPULATION—DIFFERENT CLASSES OF WORKS—ANCIENT STRONGHOLDS—NATURAL SITES—FORT HILL, OHIO—IROQUOIS STRONGHOLDS—ANALOGOUS STRONGHOLDS—FORTIFIED CIVIC SITES—SACRED ENCLOSURES—NEWARK EAGLE MOUND—GEOMETRICAL EARTHWORKS—PLAN OF NEWARK EARTHWORKS, OHIO—A STANDARD OF MEASUREMENT—DIVERSITY OF WORKS—THE CINCINNATI TABLET—A GEOMETRICAL INSTRUMENT—TRACES OF EXTINCT ARTS.
The progress hitherto noted has related chiefly to the tools of the workman. In Mexico, and still more in Central America and Peru, those were applied both to sculpture and architecture on a grand scale. But some of the most singular memorials of the primitive architecture of the New World survive in the form of gigantic earthworks, perpetuating in their construction remarkable evidence of geometrical skill.
Along the broad levels drained by the Mississippi and its numerous tributaries traces of America’s allophylian population abound; and the Ohio valley is pre-eminently remarkable for the number and magnitude of such works. The Ohio and its tributary streams flow through a fine undulating, fertile country, which now forms one of the great centres of population; and the evidence of modern enterprise and skill which abounds there gives additional interest to traces which disclose to us proof that this vast area is not now rescued for the first time from the primeval forest, with its wild fauna, and still wilder savage man.
In a region such as this, attracting population to the broad alluvial terraces overlooking its smoothly-flowiug rivers, it was natural that the building instinct of man should first employ itself on earthworks; and that the monuments should assume a pyramidal form. The great mound of Miamisburg, Ohio, is sixty-eight feet high, and eight hundred and fifty-two feet in circumference at its base. The more famous Grave Creek Mound of Virginia rises to a height of seventy feet, and measures at its base one thousand feet in circumference. Other and still larger earthworks have been noted, such as the truncated pyramid at Cahokia, Illinois, which, while it remained intact, occupied an area upwards of two thousand feet in circumference, and reared its level summit, of several acres in extent, to a height of ninety feet. But this last belongs to a different class from the sepulchral mounds which appear to be unsurpassed by any known works of their kind. “We have seen mounds,” remarks Flint, an American topographer, with a just appreciation of the relation of these earthworks to the features of the surrounding landscape, “which would require the labour of a thousand men employed on our canals, with all their mechanical aids, and the improved implements of their labour, for months. We have more than once hesitated in view of one of those prodigious mounds, whether it were not really a natural hill. But they are uniformly so placed, in reference to the adjacent country, and their conformation is so unique and similar, that no eye hesitates long in referring them to the class of artificial erections.” The exploration of these huge earth pyramids has set at rest any doubts as to their artificial origin; and has, moreover, established the fact that they are structures erected to perpetuate the memory of the honoured dead in ages utterly forgotten, and by a race of which they preserve almost the sole remaining vestiges.
The works of the Mound-Builders extend over a wide area, and include many other structures besides those of a sepulchral character. The people by whom they were executed must have been in a condition very different from the forest tribes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Nevertheless, though congregated at many favourite points in large communities, they may have been isolated by extensive tracts of forest from the regions beyond the river-systems on which they were settled. The country lying remote from the larger tributaries of the Mississippi was probably in the era of the Mound-Builders, as in later times, covered with forest; while perchance on outlying regions, or beyond the great Lakes and the Rocky Mountains, the progenitors of modern Indian tribes lurked: like the barbarians of ante-Christian Europe, beyond the Rhine and the Baltic.
The fertile valley of the Scioto appears to have been one of the seats of densest population, as indicated by the numerous works which diversify its surface. Corresponding evidence preserves the traces of an equally numerous population in the Miami Valley; and the mounds and earthworks of various kinds throughout the state of Ohio are estimated at between eleven and twelve thousand. They are stated to be scarcely less numerous on the Kenhawas in Virginia than on the Scioto and Miamis, and are abundant on the White River and Wabash, as also upon the Kentucky, Cumberland, Tennessee, and numerous other tributaries of the Ohio and Mississippi. Works accumulated in such numbers, and, including many of great magnitude and elaborateness of design, executed by the combined labour of large bodies of workmen, afford indisputable evidence of a settled and industrious population. Beyond those carefully explored regions, traces of other ancient structures have been observed at widely separated points; though caution must be exercised in generalising from data furnished by casual and inexperienced observers. All primitive earthworks, whether for defence, sepulchral memorials, or religious rites, have certain features in common; and the tendency of the popular mind is rather to exaggerate chance resemblances into forced analogies and parallels, than to exercise any critical discrimination. Including, however, all large earthworks essentially dissimilar from the slight structures of the modern Indian, they appear to stretch from the upper waters of the Ohio to the westward of Lake Erie, and thence along Lake Michigan, nearly to the Copper Regions of Lake Superior. Examples of a like character have been traced through Wisconsin, Iowa, and the Nebraska Territory; while in the south their area is bounded by the shores of the Gulf of Florida and the Mexican territory, where they seem gradually to lose their distinctive character, and pass into the great teocallis of a higher developed Mexican architecture. Their affinities are indeed more southern than northern. They are scarcely, if at all, to be found to the eastward of the water-shed between the Mississippi and the Atlantic, in the States of Pennsylvania, New York, or Virginia; and they have been rightly designated, from their chief site, the Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, including those of its tributaries, and especially of the valley of the Ohio. There their localities fully accord with those which, in the primitive history of the Old World, reveal the most abundant traces of an aboriginal population, in their occupation of the broad alluvial terraces, or “river bottoms,” as they are styled. To the north the memorials of an ancient population are of a different character; and the earthworks in the vicinity of the Great Lakes must be classed by themselves, as indicating distinct customs and rites.
The remarkable works thus traceable over so large an extent of the North American continent admit of being primarily arranged into the two subdivisions of Enclosures and Mounds, and those again embrace a variety of works evidently designed for very different uses. Under the first of these heads are included the fortifications or strongholds; the sacred enclosures, destined, as is assumed, for religious rites; and numerous miscellaneous works of the same class, generally symmetrical in structure, but the probable use of which it is difficult to determine. The second subdivision embraces the true mound-buildings, including what have been specially designated sacrificial, sepulchral, temple, and animal-mounds. All partake of characteristics pertaining to a broad level country; but this is nowhere so strikingly apparent as where mounds seem to have been purposely erected as observatories or points of sight from whence to survey the works elaborated on a gigantic scale on the level plain. In addition to the striking features which their external aspect exhibits: wherever they have been excavated interesting relics of the ancient builders have been disclosed, adding many graphic illustrations of their social condition, and of the artistic and industrial arts of the period to which they pertain.
The British hill-forts, the remarkable vitrified forts of Scotland, and the larger strongholds of the British aborigines, such as the ingenious circumvallations of the White Caterthun overlooking the valley of Strathmore, all derive their peculiar character from the mountainous features of the country; while on the low ground, under the shadow of the Ochils, the elaborate earthworks of the Camp of Ardoch show the strikingly contrasting castrametation of the Roman invaders. The ancient raths of Ireland, which abound in the level districts of that country, as well as on heights where stone is not readily accessible, also furnish highly interesting illustrations of earthworks with a special character derived from the features of their localities. An earthenduneorrath, as in the celebrated Rath Keltair at Downpatrick, occupies a commanding site, where it is strongly entrenched, with a considerable space of ground enclosed within its outworks. The celebrated Hill of Tara, in the county of Meath, ceased, according to tradition, to be the chief seat of the Irish kings, since its desertion in the latter part of the sixth century, shortly after the death of Dermot, the son of Fergus. It appears to have been a fortified city; and now, after the devastations of thirteen centuries, its dunes, circumvallations and trenches, present many interesting points of comparison with the more extensive earthworks of the Mississippi valley. But neither the Scottish White Caterthun, nor the Irish Bath Keltair, or even the Rath Righ of Tara Hill, can compare with the remarkable American stronghold of Fort Hill, Ohio, or Fort Ancient on the Little Miami River, in the same State.
The valley of the Mississippi is a vast sedimentary basin extending from the Alleghanies to the Rocky Mountains. Through this the great river and its numerous tributaries have made their way for countless ages, working out shallow depressions in the plain, on which are recorded successive epochs of change in the terraces that mark the deserted levels of ancient channels. The edges of these table-lands bordering on the valleys are indented by numerous ravines; and the junctions of many lesser streams with the rivers have formed nearly detached peninsulas, or in some cases tracts of considerable elevation insulated from the original table-land. Many of those bluff headlands, peninsulas, and isolated hills presented all the requisite adaptations for native strongholds. They have, accordingly, been fortified with great labour and skill. Embankments and ditches enclose the whole space, varying in strength according to the natural resources of the ground. The approaches are guarded by trenches and overlapping walls, more or less numerous in different forts; and have occasionally a mound alongside of the other defences of the approach, but rising above the rest of the works, as if designed both for out-look and additional defence. In some few cases the walls of these enclosures are of stone, but if they were ever characterised by any attempt at regular masonry all traces of it have disappeared, and there seems little reason for supposing that such walls differed in essential character from the earthworks. No cement was used, and in all probability we have in them only the substitution of stone-heaps instead of earth-banks, owing to special local facilities.
One of the simplest, but most extensive of those primitive strongholds, is Fort Hill, Ohio. The defences occupy the summit of a height, elevated about five hundred feet above the bed of Bush Creek, which flows round two sides of the hill, close to their precipitous slope. Along the edge of this hill a deep ditch has been cut, and the materials taken from it have been piled up into an embankment, rising from six to fifteen feet above the bottom of the ditch. In its whole extent the wall measures eight thousand two hundred and twenty-four feet, or upwards of a mile and a half in length; and encloses an area of forty-eight acres, now covered with gigantic forest-trees. One of them, a chestnut, measured twenty-one feet, and an oak, though greatly decayed, twenty-three feet in circumference, while the trunks of immense trees lay around in every stage of decay. Such was the aspect of Fort Hill, Ohio, a few years ago, and it is probably in no way changed now. Dr. Hildreth counted eight hundred rings of annual growth in a tree which grew on one of the mounds at Marietta, Ohio; and Messrs. Squier and Davis, from the age and condition of the forest, ascribed an antiquity to its deserted site of considerably more than a thousand years. In their present condition, therefore, the walls of “Fort Hill” are ruins of an older date than the most venerable stronghold of the Normans of England; and we see as little of their original completeness, as in the crumbling Norman keep we are able to trace all the complex system of bastions, curtains, baileys, buttress-towers, and posterns, of the military architecture of the twelfth century. Openings occur in the walls, in some places on the steepest points of the hill, where access is impossible; and where, therefore, we must rather suppose that platforms may have been projected to defend more accessible points. The ditch has in many places been cut through sandstone rock as well as soil; and at one point the rock is quarried out so as to leave a mural front about twenty feet high. Large ponds or artificial reservoirs for water have been made within the enclosure; and at the southern point, where the natural area of this stronghold contracts into a narrow and nearly insulated projection terminating in a bold bluff, it rises to a height of thirty feet above the bottom of the ditch, and has its own special reservoirs, as if here were the keep and citadel of the fortress: doubtless originally strengthened with palisades and military works, of which every trace had disappeared before the ancient forest asserted its claim to the deserted fortalice. Here then, it is obvious we look on no temporary retreat of some nomadic horde, but on a military work of great magnitude; which, even with all the appliances of modern engineering skill, would involve the protracted operations of a numerous body of labourers, and when completed must have required a no less numerous garrison for its defence. The contrast is very striking between such elaborate works and the most extensive of those still traceable in Western New York the origin of which appears to be correctly assigned to Iroquois and other tribes known to have been in occupation of their sites in comparatively recent times.
Among the native Indian tribes who have come under direct observation of Europeans, none played a more prominent part than the Iroquois. At the period of Dutch discovery in the beginning of the seventeenth century, they occupied the territory between the Hudson and the Genesee rivers, of which they continued to maintain possession for nearly two centuries, in defiance of warlike native foes, and the more formidable aggression of the French invaders. Their numbers, at the period of their greatest prosperity, about the middle of the seventeenth century, have been variously estimated from 70,000, which La Hontan assigned to them, to the more probable estimate of 25,000 given by the historian of their League. Very exaggerated pictures have been drawn by some modern writers of the Iroquois confederacy. It was a union of tribes of savage hunters, among whom only the germs of incipient civilisation are traceable. They had indeed acquired settled habits, and devoted themselves to some extent to agriculture. But with all the matured arts resulting from combined action in the maintenance of their territory for successive generations against fierce hostile tribes, and the defence of an extensive frontier constantly exposed to invasion, the traces of the Iroquois strongholds are of so slight a description that many of them have already been obliterated by the plough.
From the facts thus presented to our consideration, it is obvious that the highest estimate we can entertain of the powers of combination indicated by the famous League of the Iroquois, furnishes no evidence of a capacity for the construction and maintenance of works akin to the strongholds of the Mound-Builders in the Ohio valley. Striking as is the contrast which the Iroquois present to more ephemeral savage tribes, the remains of their earthworks present in some respects a greater contrast to those of the Mound-Builders than the latter do to the elaborate architecture of Mexico and Yucatan. There are indeed points of resemblance between the strongholds of the two, as there are between them and the British hill-forts, or any other earthworks erected on similar sites; but beyond such general elements of comparison,—equally interesting, but as little indicative of any community of origin as the correspondence traceable between the flint and stone weapons in use by the builders of both,—there is nothing in such resemblances calculated to throw any light on the origin of those remarkable monuments of the New World. It is rather from the contrast between the two that we may turn the remains of Iroquois defences to account, as suggestive of a greatly more advanced condition of social life and the arts of a settled population among the Mound-Builders of the Mississippi and its tributaries.
Further proofs of the settled character of this ancient population are furnished by another class of defensive works, supposed to mark the sites of fortified towns. One of these, called “Clark’s Work,” on the north fork of Point Creek, in the Scioto valley, embraces an area of one hundred and twenty-seven acres; and encloses within its circumvallations sacrificial mounds, and symmetrical earthworks assumed with every probability to have been designed for religious or civic purposes. A stream has been turned into an entirely new channel, in order to admit of the completed circuit of the walls. “The embankments measure together nearly three miles in length; and a careful computation shows that, including mounds, not less than three million cubic feet of earth were used in their composition.”[83]Within the enclosures thus laboriously executed, many of the most interesting relics of ancient art have been dug up, including several coiled serpents of carved stone, carefully enveloped in sheet mica and copper; pottery, fragments of carved ivory, discoidal stones, and numerous fine sculptures.
It is obvious that the population capable of furnishing the requisite labour for works of so extensive a nature must have been numerous, and its resources for the maintenance of such a phalanx of workers proportionally abundant. The garrisons of the great strongholds, and the population that found shelter within such mural defences as “Clark’s Work,” must also have been very large, requiring for their subsistence the contributions of an extensive district. But this only accords with other proofs of the condition of the Mound-Builders as a settled people. When we turn from the consideration of single large fortifications crowning the insulated heights, and estimate the number and extent of mounds, symmetrical enclosures, and works of various kinds connected with the arts of peace and the rites of religious worship, which give so striking a character to the river-valleys and terraces, it is no longer possible to doubt that many sections of this fertile region were once before filled by an industrious, settled population.
The Sacred Enclosures have been separated from the military works of the Mound-Builders on very obvious grounds. Their elaborate fortifications occupy isolated heights specially adapted for defence; whereas the broad river-terraces have been selected for their religious works. There, on the great unbroken levels, they form groups of symmetrical enclosures, square, circular, elliptical, and octagonal, with long connecting avenues, suggesting comparisons with the British Avebury, or the Hebridean Callernish; with the Breton Carnac; or even with the temples and Sphinx-avenues of the Egyptian Karnak and Luxor.
The predominant impression suggested by the great military earthworks of the Mound-Builders is that of the action of a numerous population, co-operating under the guidance and authority of approved leaders, with a view to the defence of large communities. Elaborate fortifications such as that of “Clark’s Work” in the Scioto Valley, or “Fort Ancient” on the Little Miami River, are constructed on well-chosen hills or bluffs, and strengthened by ditches, mounds, and complicated approaches; but the lines of earthwork, like those of the great Scottish hill-forts, are everywhere adapted to the natural features of the site. With the sacred enclosures it is wholly different. Some of these also do, indeed, impress the mind with the imposing scale of their embankments. On first entering the great circle at Newark, and looking across its broad trench at the lofty embankment overshadowed with full-grown forest-trees, my thoughts reverted to the Antonine vallum, which by like evidence still records the presence of the Roman masters of the world in North Britain. But after driving over a circuit of several miles embracing the remarkable group of earthworks of which this is only a single feature, and satisfying myself by personal observation of the existence of parallel avenues which have been traced for nearly two miles; and of the grand central oval, circle, and octagon, the smallest of which measures upwards of half-a-mile in circumference: all idea of mere combined labour is lost in the higher conviction of manifest skill, and even science. The angles of the octagon are not coincident, but the sides are very nearly equal; and the enclosure approaches so closely to a perfect figure that its error is only demonstrated by actual survey. Connected with it by parallel embankments 350 feet long, is a true circle, measuring 2880 feet in circumference; and distant nearly a mile from this, but connected with it by an elaborate series of earthworks, is the circular structure above referred to. Its actual form is an ellipse, the respective diameters of which are 1250 feet, and 1150 feet, respectively; and it encloses an area of upwards of 30 acres.
At the entrance of this great circle the enclosing embankment curves outward on either side for a distance of 100 feet, leaving a level way between the ditches, 80 feet wide. The earthen mound, which is here higher than at any other point, measures about 30 feet from the bottom of the ditch to the summit. The area of the enclosure is so nearly a perfect level that Mr. J. M. Dennis, to whose intimate local knowledge I was indebted for a thorough survey of the works, informed me that he had observed during the rains of the previous spring the water stood at a uniform level nearly to the edge of the ditch. In the centre of this enclosure is an earthen mound, still called “The Eagle.” Mr. Squier says of it: “It much resembles some of the animal-shaped mounds of Wisconsin, and was probably designed to represent a bird with expanded wings.” It has been opened and found to contain a hearth, or “altar.” The fact is important; as it distinguishes it in this respect essentially from the emblematic mounds of Wisconsin, and tends to confirm the idea that the great circle and its related groups of earthworks all bore some reference to sacred games, or other strange rites of religion, once practised within their circumvallations. But successive excavations have greatly marred the original contour of the mound; and now that, with a view to the preservation of the principla earthwork, it has been secured as the Licking County fair ground, the erection of a grand stand on the summit of the Eagle Mound has contributed still further to obscure the traces of its primary form.
From the elliptical enclosure a wide avenue of two dissimilar parts, seemingly constructed without relation to each other, leads to a square of twenty acres, with seven mounds disposed symmetrically within the enclosing walls, and numerous other works occupy hundreds of acres with their geometrical configurations. But in spite of the intelligent interest which prevails in reference to those remarkable monuments of an ancient people, the industrial operations of the modern occupants of their sites are fast obliterating all but the most prominent works. In the great octagon I noticed a difference of nearly five feet between the height of the embankments still standing on uncleared land, and those portions which have been long under the plough. But for the aid of my intelligent guide I should have found it impossible to trace out the indications of the parallel ways; and already many of the smaller mounds and enclosures have entirely disappeared. Roads, railways, and a canal, have successively invaded the sacred enclosures, and wrought more changes in a single generation than had been effected in all the previous interval since the discovery of America. But the accompanying plan (Fig. 70), derived from surveys executed while the chief earthworks could still be traced in all their integrity, will enable the reader to comprehend their character; and if he clearly realises the scale on which these geometrical figures are constructed, he can be at no loss in recognising their essential difference from the ephemeral earthworks which mark the sites of Indian stockades or sepulchral mounds. While they present certain analogies to mound-groups and enclosures both of Europe and Asia, in many other respects they are totally dissimilar: and illustrate rites and customs of an ancient American people without a parallel among the monumental memorials of the Old World.