STRANGE STORIES OFTHE GREAT VALLEY
A Mound-Builder's Treasure-trove
"O—YI—O! O—yi—o!" sang fifteen-year-old Obadiah Holman—called Doby for short—as he tried to skip a flat stone across the big river. "O—yi—o! O—yi—o!"
Dark clouds were tumbling up from the southwest, but March sunshine still dimpled and danced and sparkled with the current.
"Itispretty water. That's what the Indian name means, O—yi—o, beautiful. A river beautiful," and he hopped about joyously, kicking out another hatchet-shaped stone or two on the stream's edge of one of the choice town lots of the O—hi—o river-port of Marietta in the newfarthest northwest State of Ohio, beyond whose small beginnings of civilization lay the wilderness of the great Northwest Territory in this year of 1816.
A flatboat made of green-oak planks, which held a family's household goods and farming tools, was anchored 'longshore in a bayou that promised safety from the coming storm.
The boxes and bales on it, made shipshape against wind and water, were stacked in the form of a hollow square. They stood as walls to this tiny floating fort. They protected the people and animals traveling on it. The walls, in turn, were covered with branches of trees.
The boy's father was one of many pioneers, some from stony New England, some from sandy eastern coasts, who had joined the crowds of emigrants floating westward down the Ohio. Like most of the others, he was searching for a place where he could afford to buy rich land on which to build a homestead.
"I couldn't see our boat, 'though I was looking straight at it," the boy said, proudly. "It is exactly like a piece of the river-bank."
"If the Indians cannot see it, or if they fail to shoot through the barriers if theydonotice us as we drift down-stream, I, too, Doby, will be pleased with our work on it," answered his father, as theyhurried up a hill before the wind toward Marietta's great stockade of Campus Martius.
This fort was a hundred and eighty feet square and twenty feet high. It was made of logs, each one flattened at the sides to fit snugly to the next one, planted in the earth at the lower end and sharpened to a point at the upper, like a huge picket fence without a crack in it, big enough for a giant's dooryard. There were boxes for lookouts atop the wall, blockhouses on its corners, and cabins inside its strong defenses.
Parson Cutler, at the head of the Ohio land company's New England shareholders, had ceremoniously blessed this fort when it was completed and ready to stand guard over the million and a half of their fertile acres.
As he neared it Doby said, "Ma has already gone inside to the schoolma'am's house."
"She means to get a book so she can give you a lesson every day as we move. This town isn't quite thirty years old, yet it has had an academy for twenty. 'Tis probably your ma's last chance to talk with scholars."
"I'll study the book," promised Doby. "I don't want to be a dunce like the boys who can't spell their own names. Some cannot even cut their initials on trees in the towns where westop." And Doby sniffed with scorn. "If I had a really good knife—a strong one—I could carve better than I do now," he sighed, as he thought of his one great need.
"Piff! Puff!" the wind echoed his sigh. "Piff! Puff! Puff!"
Rain was close on their heels.
Mr. Holman pulled his 'coonskin cap down tight over his long hair, girded up his fringed buckskin breeches, and ran for the fort, his heavy boots clumping out a path through last year's weed-stalks.
Doby tucked his cap under his arm and let his tow thatch take the breeze and, light as a ball in his moccasins, bounded along behind his father.
They were not swift enough to gain the fort. As the downpour overtook them they ducked underneath the branches of a gnarled and broken oak and found good shelter.
"Much obliged, old tree," laughed Doby. "You've saved us a drenching." He tried to girdle it with his arms. "I can't reach half-way. It's thebiggesttrunk!"
"Thisisan old fellow. His crown has been twisted off by some hurricane. There are lightning marks upon him. He feels his age. The storm makes him shiver." And Mr. Holman placed an uneasy foot upon the quaking roots.
"It's a big tree for such a little hill," was Doby's comment. "I never did see so many funny little hills as are in this valley. Wasn't it lucky there happened to be one over where the Muskingum River comes into the Ohio? It is at the very best spot for Parson Cutler's settlers to build their stockade."
Mr. Holman shook his head as they looked from their own small oak-capped hill to the big one on which stood the fort defying the lightning and wind of the storm quite as boldly as it had often done the burning arrows and the wild rushes of Indian foes.
"That knoll did nothappento be at the point of vantage," he said. "It was built on purpose ages ago as a fort of earthwork to defend this valley."
"Who did it?" asked Doby.
"I don't know. The folks who threw up that earthwork and the one over there—and there—and there," and his father pointed out through the broken curtain of the rain and sleet to a long rampart of earth, then to another circle of low-lying, grass-grown walls, and afterward to several small knobs, some with trees, some without. "The race who did it could not have been whitepeople, for they were all dead and gone centuries before white men came to this continent."
"Maybe they were Indians," ventured Doby.
"Not like any Indians we know. For Indians roam over the country and live by hunting and fishing. Indians never get to be as numerous as these builders of mounds must have been. Only a great nation, somewhat civilized, could put up the immense defenses they did. Each Indian needs more acres than you can imagine to live on—"
"Savages don't work together. They quarrel and kill one another and keep their numbers small," interrupted Doby.
"There may not be as many Indians in the State of Ohio now as there are white people in the town of Pittsburg where we started our boat down the river," his father continued.
Doby considered. "Wigwams and canoes are all that Indians build. These people raised regular forts. Look at that plain! Even a storm like this can't break those heavy banks. See the hail slide down them! It must have taken lots of men with muscle to pile such heaps of dirt." Doby spoke as one who knew what spading meant.
"Back from the river wherever settlers go they find these strange earthworks in the valleys;huge masses for forts, fancy curves for altars, and small piles for tombs. Walls surround what must have been good-sized hamlets." As his father raised his voice to be heard against the swish of the sleet Doby stared out over the plain with round eyes. "Those walls where the trees are swaying so are as high as Cutler's stockade. There is some timber-work, but no masonry in any of them. They inclose half a hundred acres."
"What are those long ditches?" queried Doby, catching sleet on his eyebrows as he leaned forward to look.
"They must have been canals full of water leading from one walled town to another. 'Tis trade and commerce on short cuts that made it possible to keep up such thickly populated villages as the Mound-Builders must have had." Gusts of wind were fanning his words away, but Mr. Holman was determined to tell Doby all he could, so he added: "Rivers are big highways. Canals are smaller ones. A country thrives when its citizens can trade with one another by easy routes. The new towns that settlers are building in Ohio need just such waterways to make the bartering good." Here he became emphatic. "If these old canals are mended or new ones built—as the State is planning to do—then the countryside will again be full of rich towns." Suddenly they both had to hang on to the tree for safety.
"Whew! What a blast!" cried Doby. "See the trees go down!"
"Watch out!" yelled his father. Leaping to one side, he caught Doby's hand and fled down the hill with the boy like a living kite on short tether waving behind him.
There was roaring—grinding—snapping—crashing. Then came showers of branches—leaves—bark—clods.
Doby had done a series of flipflaps. He was dizzy and confused, but he lent a hand to his father, who was flat on the ground.
The uproar deepened. Then it shrilled away. In another moment the sleet was gone, the sun was bright, the storm had passed.
The oak was standing on its head, kicking its heels in the air. The mound was a lopsided dirt-pile.
Already dozens of excited men were pouring out of the stockade. They ran with shovels and rakes and sticks to poke about in the cavity which the capsized oak's roots had torn through the mound.
The genial parson came with them and looked on laughingly, to see fair play at the digging.This Dr. Mannassah Cutler was one of the big men of his time. He held the standard of his town so high that each of the other Ohio settlements had to set its best foot forward to keep up with Marietta's march of progress. He had a scholar's interest in mounds. He ordered them preserved. He had an explorer's interest in their treasures. He examined them scientifically. He had a leader's interest in his people. He made them play fair. He was their court of last resort.
In spite of the desperate curiosity driving him, Doby had not the weight to hold his own at the front of this line of human gophers. He was forced back to a spot where he could use nothing but his ears. For two or three hours all he got out of the hole was some scraps of conversation like this:
"Any gold?"
"Neverisany gold."
"Any money?"
"Neverisany money."
"Any jewelry?"
"Copper bracelets. Who wants copper bracelets?"
"Pearl beads, gone dull."
"Fine cloth wrappings—coarse cloth—all rotted through."
"Clay pots, every one broken."
"Bones, bones, bones. Ashes, ashes, ashes."
"The oak must be five or six, perhaps seven or eight hundred years old."
"Stuff buried when it was an acorn isn't much account now."
Not until after dark did the greedy crowd give up searching or cease to hope for hidden treasure where so much else was buried.
"No luck in this mound. Nothing but boys buried here."
Curled in his sleeping-blanket within the fort walls, Doby gave himself up to thoughts of the boys whose bones were once clothed with plumpness like his own. "I wonder if those boys started the fires in the earthwork watch-towers on the highest hills, where deep ashes show that countless fires have flashed in signal warning to other far-away towers."
In his dreams, he found himself running with the horde of young barbarians into a walled town. With them slamming shut great gates, heaving the bars in place, racing across the moat, hoisting aloft the drawbridge, barricading the second set of gates, covering stores of corn, herding women and children in huts of sod, catching blazing arrows. In scant fur garments, wild of hair, jingling his copper anklets, armedwith spears and shouting an uncouth language, he pranced along the top of mountain mounds and defied a besieging enemy.
After such activity further sleep was impossible. Doby sat up, tied a knot in the corner of his blanket, and just before dawn mounted the sentry's ladder, wedged the knot in the slot between pickets, and lowered himself to the outside world.
Still under the spell of his fancies, he declared to himself, "Those boys would not vanish without leaving me something. They liked me first rate, even if they did all have to turn to bones. I'll go back where they are and do some digging."
He ran to the mound, seized one of the abandoned shovels, and dug and dug. The spectral light o' day gave him a chill sensation. The six or eight hundred years of weird memories grinning at him from the skulls in this desecrated tomb filled him with awe. But he was more inquisitive than he was nervous, so he made the shovel fly. In the loosened dirt, he used his fingers as a rake and dragged out funny old tobacco-pipes well worth the trouble of burrowing.
As the light grew stronger his fingers struck something different—the promise of a big find.He could not pull it out. He dared not use the clumsy shovel. He went through his pockets and found one of the hatchet-shaped stones he had picked up at the river's brink. He used it as a lever and gently pried out a knife. It was long and sharp and just the right weight for his hand.
Here was treasure indeed. Beautifully shaped, double-edged, an ancient poniard, a knife of flint!
"Good luck! Good luck!" shouted Doby, not at all surprised to see that his father and the parson had followed him and were now near enough to ask, "What are you up to?"
"I've found the thing I most need—a really good knife. Bring on a pie! I can cut it. Or I can skin a rabbit. I can whittle anything." He looked at the parson. "Do you suppose that it will be right for me to keep this knife?"
The parson reassured him. "Although the laws of treasure-trove are complicated, I am glad to be able to tell you that in this case—in most cases like yours—finding is keeping."
"I suppose that is because there are no Mound-Builders left," reasoned Doby, trying the edge of his knife on his thumb. "What became of them?"
Doctor Cutler answered: "Perhaps somepowerful enemy came along and killed them all. Perhaps some dreadful disease overtook them and they perished. Perhaps they were akin to the southern people—Aztecs and others—whom the Spaniards discovered in the tropics. They may have heard about their own kin far away. And then they may in time have gathered their goods together and floated down the river."
"Ha!" cried Doby, "that was sensible. If they were clever enough to build all those fine mounds, I know they were adventurous and emigrated down the river beautiful. I hope that is what they did. I'm glad they left this knife for me." Then he turned over his digging-stone. "This little hatchet they might have made also."
The parson shook his head. "No; you must have pried that out of the river mouth. Those stone hatchets were made by prehistoric men who lived ages before the Mound-Builders' time."
"O—oh!" gasped Doby, "o—oh! the stone-hatchet men lived a long, long time before the Mound-Builders came. The Mound-Builders lived a long, long time before the Indians came. The Indians were here a long, long time before we came. Everything is so old—old—old—that I can't thinkhowold. If this country is so old—old—old, why do we call it the new West?"
"Because it is new to us. The West is new in the same way that this day is new. It is full of fresh promise for you and for me and for our race. Some day this will be the very heart of America!"