CHAPTER IX.
Introductory Facts—Ruins of Yucatan and other parts of Mexico—Ruins of North America—Mississippi and Missouri—Look-Out Mountain—Ohio River—Mount Joliet and others—Indian Races—Ledyard—Bradford—Dr. Morton—Diversity of Opinions—Pyramids of Egypt—Speculations—Vassalage—Comparison—Traditions—Embalming—Priesthood—Siamese—Japanese—Astronomy and Mythology.
There are three questions which will very naturally occur to those of my readers who have done me the honor to follow me through the preceding details and statistics:—1st. By whom were these ruins built? 2d. When were they built? And 3d. For what purpose? Before answering the first question it is proper to state, that all the ruins of which mention has been made in the preceding pages, and by Mr. Stephens and by Waldeck, are not a tithe of those still remaining uninvestigated on the American continent, and, perhaps I may add, in the single province of Yucatan. Mounds, tumuli, pyramidal structures, and ruins of cities, have been seen from the southern extremity of South America even to the western side of the Rocky mountains—from Florida to the western lakes. There is every reason to presume that the interior of Yucatan, and other portions of Mexico, contain remains of even a more striking characterthan those it has been my province to describe. The Ohio valley and its vicinage are supposed to have been covered with more than five thousand villages, the largest of which stood near the junction of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers.[10]Regular and scientifically constructed works of a defensive character, between the Ohio river and the great lakes, are still to be traced; some of which occupied, it is thought, more than one hundred acres of ground.
Look-Out Mountain, which stands a thousand feet above the surrounding country, between the Tennessee and Coos rivers, is one of the Alleghanies. Although the top is nearly level, it gives rise to a river which, after winding some distance, plunges abruptly over a precipice. Immediately below this fall, on each side, are bluffs two hundred feet high; one of which, by the turn of the stream, forms a kind of isolated peninsula. On the summit of this are the remains of a fortification, that follows the curve of the river below for more than thirty-seven rods, and extends to the very brow of the rock. The only descent and access is by a kind of fissure, which reaches to the shore beneath. Thirty feet from the top, intersecting this passage, is a ledge or platform ninety feet long by two to five wide. At this landing are five rooms, cut out of the solid rock. The entrance is small; but within they communicate with each other by doors or apertures. This wonderful excavation has the appearance of being intended as
a place of the last resort for the inmates. From its peculiar position, twenty resolute men might successfully contend against the assault of a numerous army, as not more than one at a time can approach, and the slightest push would hurl an assailant over a precipice of a hundred and fifty feet to certain and instant death. That this is a remnant of antiquity there can be little doubt; and that it has escaped the attention of the curious, is owing, probably, to its retired and almost unknown situation.
On the Ohio river, twenty miles below the mouth of the Wabash, is a remarkable cave, consisting of two rooms, one immediately over the other. The uppermost is accessible by a square opening; and the lowest is twelve rods in length and five in breadth. The interior walls are smooth. The floor is level through the centre, but the sides rise in stony grades, resembling the seats in the pit of a theatre; and leaving little doubt that it had been so arranged to accommodate an audience attending performances or deliberations of some nature. The engravings and hieroglyphics upon the walls are numerous and well executed. Many animals are represented, among which are eight that are now unknown.
There are conical mounds in Ohio of various altitudes and dimensions, some being only four or five feet, and ten or twelve in diameter at the base; while others, farther south, rise even to a hundred feet, and cover many acres of ground. They are generally in the form of a cone. These structures seem to havebeen built at various periods; and it would be no matter of surprise if some of them were in existence during the deluge. The materials which compose them appear to be suited to their locations. In those positions where stone was not to be had, they are formed of earth.
At Mount Joliet, near the town of Juliet, on the Illinois river, is probably the largest mound within the limits of the United States. It is raised on a horizontal limestone stratum of the secondary formation, and is sixty feet high; and measures, at the summit, eighty-four rods in length and fourteen in width; and, at the base, it is much larger. In the neighborhood of Rock river (Illinois) the mounds are numerous, and give evidence that there once existed in that vicinity a dense population.
Southeast of the city of Cuernavaca, on the west declivity of Anahuac, there is an isolated hill, upon the top of which is a pyramid. The whole height is upwards of six hundred feet, and it is five times as large as the tower of Babel. It has five terraces, each of nearly sixty feet in height, covered with solid masonry, upon the top of which rest the artificial works; and the whole is surrounded with a broad deep ditch.
In Peru, on the Cordilleras, at a surprising height, are works still more considerable. From a general resemblance of these structures throughout the whole American continent in their apparent purpose, age, and style of architecture, it is generally presumed that the architects belonged to the same races of nativeIndians. I say races, for there are reasons for believing that the American continent has witnessed the growth and extinction of more than one race of men which had advanced to a high state of civilization.
Wirt’s impressions are, that three distinct races of men have occupied this country previous to the arrival of the existing white settlers. The monuments of the first or primitive race are regular stone walls, brick hearths, (found in digging the Louisville canal,) medals of copper, silver swords, and implements of iron. These relics, he thinks, belonged to a race of civilized men who must have disappeared many centuries ago. To them he attributes the hieroglyphic characters found on the limestone bluffs; the remains of cities and fortifications of Florida; the regular banks of ancient live oaks near them; and the hard and regular bricks found at Louisville, that were longer in proportion to the width than those of the present day.
To the second race he attributes those vast mounds of earth found throughout the whole western regions, from Lake Erie and Western Pennsylvania to Florida and the Rocky mountains. Some of them contain the skeletons of human beings, and display immense labor. Many of them are regular mathematical figures—parallelograms and sections of circles; showing the remains of gateways and subterraneous passages. Some of them are eighty feet high, and have trees growing on them apparently five hundred years old. The soil upon them differs, generally,from that which surrounds them; and they are most common in situations where it since has been found convenient to build towns and cities. Many fragments of earthenware, of curious workmanship, have been dug up throughout this vast region; some representing drinking vessels, some human heads, and some idols. They all appeared to be made by the hand, and hardened in the sun. These mounds and earthen implements indicate a race inferior to the first, which were acquainted with the use of iron.
The third race are the Indians now existing in the western territories. In the profound silence and solitude of these western regions, and above the bones of a buried world, how must a philosophic traveller meditate upon the transitory state of human existence, when the only traces of two races of men are these strange memorials! On this very spot generation after generation has stood, has lived, has warred, grown old, and passed away; and not only their names, but their nation, their language has perished, and utter oblivion has closed over their once populous abodes! We call this country the new world. It is old! Age after age, and one physical revolution after another, has passed over it, but who shall tell its history?
Priest has concluded that the Carthaginians, Phœnicians, Persians, Hindoos, Chinese, Japanese, Roman, and Greek nations of antiquity, and others, as well as Europeans after their civilization, had more to do with the peopling of the wilds of America than is generally supposed.
Ledyard, in a letter to Mr. Jefferson, from Siberia, says, “I never shall be able, without seeing you in person, and perhaps not then, to inform you how universally and circumstantially the Tartars resemble the aborigines of America. They are the same people—the most ancient and the most numerous of any other; and, had they not a small sea to divide them, they would all have still been known by the same name. * * * With respect to national or genealogical connexion, which the remarkable affinity of person and manners bespeaks between the Indians on this and the American continent, I declare my opinion to be, without the least scruple, and with the most absolute conviction,that the Indians on the one and on the other are the same people.”[11]
“It appears,” says Bradford, “that the red race may be traced, by physical analogies, into Siberia, China, Japan, Polynesia, Indo-China, the Malayan Islands, Hindostan, Madagascar, Egypt, and Etruria. In some of these nations the pure type of the race may be perceived existing at present, in others many of its characters have been changed and modified, apparently by intermarriage; and, in others, its ancient existence is only to be discovered by the records preserved on their monuments.”
“We are constrained to believe,” says the learned Dr. Morton, “that there is no more resemblance between the Indian and Mongol in respect to arts, architecture, mental features, and social usages, than exists between any other two distinct races of mankind.”
“I maintain that the organic characters of the people themselves, through all their endless ramifications of tribes and nations, prove them to belong to one and the same race, and that this race is distinct from all others. * * * The evidences of history and the Egyptian monuments go to prove that the same races were as distinctly marked three thousand years ago as they are now; and, in fact, that they are coeval with the primitive dispersion of our species.”
Whatever diversity of origin may have existed among the races of Indians whose remains are the burden of our speculations, one thing is certain, that the builders of the ruins of the city of Chi-Chen and Uxmal excelled in the mechanic and the fine arts. It is obvious that they were a cultivated, and doubtless a very numerous people. It is difficult to suppose that any great advance in mechanico-dynamic science could have been made by these people, without some evidence besides their works remaining. Yet it is almost impossible to suppose that those vast erections could have been made by the mere aggregation of men, unaided by science. Herodotus tells us that a hundred thousand men, relieved every three months, were employed in building the pyramid of Cheops in Egypt. Ten years were spent in preparing the road whereon the stones were to be transported, and twenty years more in erecting the edifice. Yet though Cheops had a nation of slaves to do his bidding, and though he employed such multitudes upon this stupendous work, it is generally supposed that he must have been aided by some kind of machinerymore powerful than any thing known at the present day.
It is also pretty obvious that Chi-Chen, and the other cities of Yucatan, were built by a nation of slaves. All the buildings whose remains are now visible, were evidently constructed to gratify the pride of a single man or set of men. They were monuments raised to the glory of the few at the expense of the thousands. They are not the kind of works that the people join in building of their own freewill. They answer no public purpose or convenience. No nation of freemen would spend their money or their labor in that way. We may safely conclude that the doctrines of free government were quite unknown among this ancient people—that they were governed by a despotism, and that they were taxed contrary to their will, for these, the only works which were to memorialize their servitude to posterity.
So much for the builders of these ruins. The next question which occurs, when were they built? is, if possible, more difficult of solution than the one to which I have been speaking.
The only way to get any idea of the age of these ruins is, by comparison with the remains of other cities of whose age we have some knowledge. Measuring their age by such a scale, the mind is startled at their probable antiquity. The pyramids and temples of Yucatan seem to have been old in the days of Pharaoh. Before the eye of the imagination—
“Their lonely columns stand sublime,Flinging their shadows from on high,Like dials, which the wizard TimeHad raised to count his ages by.”
“Their lonely columns stand sublime,Flinging their shadows from on high,Like dials, which the wizard TimeHad raised to count his ages by.”
“Their lonely columns stand sublime,Flinging their shadows from on high,Like dials, which the wizard TimeHad raised to count his ages by.”
“Their lonely columns stand sublime,
Flinging their shadows from on high,
Like dials, which the wizard Time
Had raised to count his ages by.”
The reader is already sufficiently familiar with the general structure of the buildings which we have attempted to describe, and the present condition of their ruins. He will remember that there are walls there now standing, fifteen feet thick and more, built with an art and strength which defy both competition and decay; that there is one pyramid upwards of a hundred feet in height, with a building upon its summit, which supports trees that are planted in soil deposited from the atmosphere for the last thousand years or more. Let the reader compare these ruins, in their present condition, with the Cloaca Maxima of Rome. More than twenty-five hundred years have elapsed since this work was constructed, to drain off the waters of the Forum and the adjacent hollows to the Tiber, and there it stands to this day without a stone displaced, still performing its destined service. How many years before it will present the ruinous aspect of the “Temple” of Chi-Chen? Evidently the city of Chi-Chen was an antiquity when the foundations of the Parthenon at Athens, and the Cloaca Maxima at Rome, were being laid. Compare with the ruins of Central America the conspicuous remains of Balbeck, of Antioch, of Carthage—shall I not add, of Tadmor, of Thebes, of Memphis, and of Gizeh, their Pyramids, their Labyrinths, their Obelisks, and Sepulchres. Who shall say that whilethe servile workmen of Cheops or Cephrinus were sacrificing the lives of countless multitudes of men, to prove that the gods were not alone immortal, and to rear for themselves imperishable burial-places, that at the same time, on another continent, thousands of miles from the Egyptian house of bondage, a people of a different race, unknowing and unknown to history, were not laying the foundations of cities and of palaces and of temples, less stupendous perhaps, but no less a wonder and a mystery to succeeding nations? It is not for any man now to place a limit to the age of the American ruins; but one thing will be evident to every one who shall look at the more ancient of those in Yucatan, that they belong to the remotest antiquity. Their age is not to be measured by hundreds, but by thousands of years.
With regard to the purpose of these ruins, I can add little to the suggestions which have already been made during the progress of my narrative. They were, without a doubt, built primarily for the honor and glory of the rulers of the country. They are, as Pliny very justly says, when speaking of the similar achievements of the Eastern tyrants, “Regum pecuniœ otiosa ac stulta ostentatio.” Their secondary purposes, doubtless, were to be used as palatial residences, imperishable sepulchres for the dead, and temples for religious worship. It is impossible to suppose that any of the ruined buildings of which I have given a description could have been intended for private abodes, or could have been constructed by private enterprise. On the contrary, not a vestige ofthe ordinary houses in which the masses might have been supposed to reside, remain. Every memorial of the people is gone, save the splendid structures which they erected to gratify the pride of their kings and their priests.
In this connexion it may not be impertinent to allude to some of the religious opinions and ceremonies of the South American nations, which may throw light upon the topic under consideration.
Almost all the Indian tribes, even to the Charibs, have a traditionary account of the deluge and of the creation; and, what is more singular, relate it as occurring in or near their present locations upon this continent—leading to the supposition of an antediluvian existence in America. They also have their great supernatural benefactors. The Brazilians have the Payzome, the Tamanac race their Amalivaca, the Chileans their Them, the Muyscas their Bochica, the Peruvians their Manco Capac, the Mexicans their Quetzalcoatl, and the Chiapasans their Votan. This latter people represent Noah under the name of Coxox.
The art of embalming seems to have been perfectly well known to the people who once inhabited the west, which shows that they were not the same with the roving Indians of later date.[12]The practice of burning the dead, which prevailed to a great extent in Asia and other parts of the world, was customary among all the more civilized tribes. Their usual method of burial was in the sitting posture.[13]Dr.Morton says, that “no offence excites greater exasperation in the breast of the Indian than the violation of the graves of his people; and he has been known to disinter the bones of his ancestors, and bear them with him to a great distance, when circumstances have compelled him to make a permanent change of residence. The practice of inhumation is so different from that practised by the rest of mankind, and at the same time so prevalent among the American natives, as to constitute another means of identifying them as parts of a single and peculiar race. This practice consists in burying the dead in a sitting posture; the legs being flexed against the abdomen, the arms also bent, and the chin supported on the palms of the hands.”
All the civilized Americans had a priesthood, and circumcision was practised by the Mayas of Yucatan, the Calchaquis of Caho.[14]and Mexicans,[15]who worshipped the sun and stars, believing that departed souls became stars. Water was held to be sacred for religious ablution—and the mounds are generally found near it, or have the means of being well supplied. Adair assures us that the Choctaws called the old mounds “Nanne-Yah,” “The Hills or Mounts of God;” a name almost identical with the Mexican pyramids. In Mexico, the Teocalli, or “Houses of God,” or Houses of the Sun, (for the word “Teolt,” the appellation of the Supreme Being, was also used to denote that luminary,) were regular terraced pyramids,supporting chapels, which contained the images of their idolatry. The temples of the sun and moon, in Mexico, resemble similar temples among the ancient Romans. The sun was worshipped at Emesa, says Gibbon, under the name of Elagabalus, under the form of a black conical stone, which, it was universally believed, had fallen from heaven on that sacred spot.
The Siamese and Javanese divide their weeks similar to the Mexicans, the first, like theirs, being market-day; and their cycles, like the Maya age, consisted of twenty years. This was a custom with them previous to any connexion with the Hindoos.[16]The belief of the Mayas and Mexicans, that the world would be destroyed at the end of one of their ages, coincides singularly with the same impression among the Egyptians, according to Herodotus, when they saw the sun descend from the Crab toward Capricorn. In the festival of Isis, when the orb began to re-appear, and the days grew longer, they robed themselves in white garments, and crowned themselves with flowers.
The movements of the Pleiades were observed by most of the primitive nations, says Pritchard, and not less so by the southern and central Indians. It is an Egyptian legend that the body of Osiris (the moon) was cut to pieces by Typhon (the sun.) So, likewise, in the Mexican mythology, the woman serpent (the moon) is said to be devoured by the sun; a fabulous allusion to the changes of the moon. In Mexico thewoman serpent, or moon, was styled the “mother of our flesh;” so, in Egypt, that luminary was called the “mother of the world.” The Mexicans, Peruvians, Araucanians, the Canadian and Huron Indians; as, also, the Chinese, Malays, and Hindoos, in cases of eclipses of the sun or moon, shot off arrows at them, made hideous noises, caused dogs to bark and howl, and in every possible way struggled to separate the two antagonists.
Thus much with regard to the impressions left upon my mind respecting the origin and purpose of these ruins. I make no apology for their vagueness. It would be presumptuous to attempt to have any definite ideas upon the subject. But in order to afford the reader every facility for forming clearer views, if possible, than myself, I have collected and subjoin in another chapter, a mass of historical information connected with the subject before me, selected from the writings of the most recent, sagacious, and faithful travellers, who have left us any record of their studies. These extracts present all the most important facts known of the early inhabitants of Mexico. How far history can assist the antiquary in his investigations of this subject, may be pretty satisfactorily judged by consulting the following chapter.