Court and Tower of the Palace, Palenque. (After Waldeck.)
THE
NORTH AMERICANS
OF
ANTIQUITY
THEIR ORIGIN, MIGRATIONS, AND TYPE OF
CIVILIZATION CONSIDERED
By JOHN T. SHORT
THIRD EDITION
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS
FRANKLIN SQUARE
1882
Copyright, 1879, by John T. Short.
PREFACE.
THE growing interest in the origin, migrations and life of the races of American Antiquity has led me to believe that the subjects considered in these pages would meet with the favorable attention of the public and of the specialist in this field. With such a conviction I present this volume, realizing the difficulties which attend any efforts to elucidate such dark problems. Yet I cannot conceal my satisfaction that the age of North American Antiquity is not all darkness, but on the contrary is rapidly growing radiant with light, while a host of patient searchers for its truths roll up the obscuring curtain. The recent discoveries by Geo. Smith, Cesnola, and Schliemann naturally cause us to turn with national pride to the rich antiquarian fields in our own land. Very satisfactory results have been obtained within a few years in the exploration of Mound-works and the Cliff-dwellings of the West. A just view of the civilization of the builders of these remains, however, requires that it be considered in connection with the traditional history and civilization of the ancient races of Mexico and Central America, so marked was the influence of the ancient peoples of this continent upon each other.
Regarding this to be important, I have endeavored to present a comprehensive view of the civilization of the Mound-builders, Cliff-dwellers, and Pueblos, and to bring to the attention of the reader the traditional history and architectural remains of the Mayas of Yucatan and the Nahuas of Mexico. Only the probable origin and the most remote period of the growth of these latter peoples could receive attention within the limits prescribed for this work, since it is my design that this volume shall serve as a manual of information relating to the earliest period of North-American Antiquity, and as an introduction to Ancient American History. My material relating to the Mound-builders has been drawn almost entirely from the Smithsonian Reports, the Proceedings of scientific societies, and private memoirs. Still it is but justice to one honored co-laborer in the same field, Col. J. W. Foster, to say that his excellent work, The Pre-Historic Races of the U. S., has been of great service in our investigation of this subject. Although his sources of information have been, with few exceptions, before me, my appreciation of his work is attested by my constant reference to it. Nevertheless, the wonderful advances which have been made in Mound-exploration since the issue of the Pre-Historic Races, called for a fresh treatment of the subject.
On the Mayas and Nahuas the following manuscript works in the possession of the Congressional Library at Washington were consulted, and yielded valuable material:
Las Casas: Historia Apologética de las Indias occidentals, 4 vols. folio.
Las Casas: Historia de Indias, 4 vols. folio.
Panes (D. Diego): Fragmentos de Historia de Nueva España, folio.
Echevarria y Veitia: Historia del origen de gentes que poblaron la America Septentrional, 1755, 3 vols. folio (about one-fourth of the work is published in Kingsborough’s Mex. Antiq., vol. viii).
Escalante in Teniente (Jose Cortes): Memoria sobre las Provincias del Norte de Nueva España 1799, folio.
Duran (Diego): Historia Antigua de la Nueva España 1585, 3 vols. folio (part of the work has been published in Mexico).
These, together with the large number of printed books relating to America in the Congressional Library added to works in my possession, afforded an ample field for research.
I must express my appreciation of the courteous attentions of the accomplished Librarian of Congress, the Hon. A. R. Spofford, who together with his assistants did everything possible to facilitate my investigations. To the uniform and friendly interest which Mr. Spofford has manifested in my work, its successful completion is largely due. The substantial assistance which I received from the lamented Professor Joseph Henry—the record of whose kindly offices to his fellowmen can never be written—was invaluable to me. Besides placing the latest material at my disposal, he generously furnished most of the engravings in this work relating to the Mound-builders. Dr. Charles Rau, also of the Smithsonian Institution, has placed me under obligations for valued services. To Professor F. V. Hayden and to the painstaking offices of Mr. James Stevenson of the U. S. Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories, I am indebted for the engravings as well as the sources of information relating to the Cliff-dwellers. The Hon. J. R. Bartlett, of Providence, R. I., with equal generosity has conferred like favors. Prof. F. W. Putnam, of the Peabody Museum of American Archæology and Ethnology at Cambridge, Mass., and his courteous assistants, Mr. Carr and Miss Smith, have provided me with valuable engravings and reports. Robert Clarke, Esq., and Mr. E. Gest, of Cincinnati, have also sent me engravings, and the former in particular has conferred frequent favors. Professor Ph. Valentini, of Albion, N. Y., with rare liberality, contributed interesting material relating to the Nahua Calendar. To Mr. Stephen Salisbury, Jr., of Worcester, Mass., Dr. R. J. Farquharson, of the Davenport Academy of Sciences, Rev. S. D. Peet, editor of the American Antiquarian, Cleveland, O., and to A. J. Conant, Esq., of St. Louis, Mo., I am indebted for the interest they have manifested, and for the material which they have brought to my attention.
Señor Orozco y Berra, of the City of Mexico, the distinguished author of the Geografía de las lenguas Mexicanas, has from time to time freely made important suggestions concerning some of the problems under consideration. To my friend the Rev. John W. Butler, of the City of Mexico, whose intelligent efforts in my behalf have been unremitting, I have special reason to be thankful. To all these generous friends I must be permitted here to express my deep sense of gratitude for their favors.
However, this pleasant task would be but half performed were I to omit the recognition of the unselfish friendship of the justly eminent author of the Native Races of the Pacific States. Mr. Hubert Howe Bancroft, whose rare erudition and breadth of thought are only surpassed by his magnanimity of nature and manliness of spirit, with a liberality which has scarce a parallel in authorship, sent me the majority of the engravings illustrative of the Maya and Nahua architecture and sculpture, used in the fourth volume of the Native Races. To this I may add the no less valuable encouragement which he so heartily gave during the progress of my work. Although some of my investigations were prosecuted before the publication of the Native Races, and though all of Mr. Bancroft’s sources relating to subjects which have received our mutual attention were before me and underwent a critical examination at my hands, it is but fair to state that the assistance which I derived from the Native Races has been of incalculable service in the preparation of this volume. If in any place I have omitted to render full credit to Mr. Bancroft, and to that imperishable monument of learning and industry, his great work, the omission has been due to inadvertence rather than intention. My obligations to Mr. Bancroft can never be discharged, nor can the kind attentions of Mr. Henry L. Oak, of the Bancroft Library, San Francisco, be forgotten.
Still my examination of the sources has not always led me to the same conclusions as were reached by the author of the Native Races. This may be owing to our different standpoints of observation, or possibly to an inappreciable bias in my own mind. It is, however, but justice to myself to say that this work has been prosecuted to its completion with the spirit of inquiry rather than of advocacy, and is the embodiment of an honest search for the truth.
THE AUTHOR.
Columbus, O., November, 1879.
PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION.
THIS, the third edition of “The North Americans of Antiquity,” has been carefully revised and new facts incorporated. In this connection I take the opportunity of thankfully acknowledging the kindly reception and marked consideration which this work has enjoyed at the hands of specialists, of learned Societies in both America and Europe, and from the University of Leipzig.
J. T. S.
Columbus, Ohio, September, 1881.
CONTENTS.
Ancient Inhabitants of the United States.
The Aborigines—Antiquity of the Red Indian—The Mound-builders—Geographical Distribution of Mound-works—Frontier Defences of the Mound-builders—Michigan Mounds—Mounds in the North-west—On the Upper Missouri—In Dakota—Animal Mounds of Wisconsin—Elephant Mound—Discoveries at Davenport, Iowa—Davenport Tablet—Heart of the Mound-builder Country—Cahokia—Resemblances to Mexico—St. Louis and Cincinnati Works—Cincinnati Tablet—Works in Ohio—Fortified Places—Fort Ancient—Signal Systems—Works at Newark—The Ohio Valley—Explorations in Tennessee—Burial in Stone Coffins—Mound Colonies in the South-east—Mr. Anderson’s Calendar Stone—Mounds of the Lower Mississippi Valley—Seltzertown Mound—Alabama and Georgia Mounds—Pyramid of Kolee-Mokee—Explorations in Missouri—Sun-dried Bricks—Remains in the South-west—Direction of the Migration—Architectural Progress—Altar Mounds—Mounds of Sepulture—Ancient Copper Mines—Astronomical Knowledge.
Antiquity of Man on the Western Continent.
Antiquity of the Mounds—No Tradition of the Mound-builders—Vegetation Covering the Mounds—Age of Mound Crania—Probable Date of the Abandonment of the Mounds—Ancient Shell-heaps—Man’s Influence on Nature—Supposed Testimony of Geology—Agassiz on the Floridian Jaw-bone—Remains on Santos River—The Natchez Bone—Remains on Petit Anse Island—Brazilian Bone caves—Dr. Koch’s Pretended Discoveries—Ancient Hearths—Age of the Mississippi Delta—Dr. Dowler’s Discovery at New Orleans—Dr. Abbott’s Discoveries in New Jersey—Discoveries in California—Inter-Glacial Relics in Ohio—Crania from Mounds in the North-west—No Evidences as yet Discovered Proving Man’s Great Antiquity in America.
Diversity of Opinion as to the Origin of the Ancient Americans.
Conflict of Discovery and Dogmatism—Arabic Learning in the VIIIth Century—Spirit of the Early Writers on America—Common Opinion as to the Origin of the Americans—Father Duran—Lost Tribes of Israel—Garcia—Lascarbot—Villagutierre—Torquemada—Pineda, etc.—Abbé Domenech—Modern Views—Pre-Columbian Colonization—Plato’s Atlantis—Kingsborough—The “Book of Mormon”—Phœnicians—George Jones—Greek and Egyptian Theories—The Tartars—Japanese and Chinese Theories—Fusang—The Mongol Theory—Traces of Buddhism—White-Man’s Land—The Northmen—The Welsh Claim.
Origin of the Americans as Viewed from the Standpoint of Science.
Origin Theories—Indigenous Origin—Separate Creation Theory—Dr. Morton’s Theory—Agassiz’s Views—Dr. Morton’s Cranial Measurements—Dr. Morton’s Theory of Ethnic Unity Groundless—Ethnic Relationships—Typical Mound-skull—Crania from the River Rouge—Dr. Farquharson’s Measurements—Crania from Kentucky—Researches in Tennessee by Prof. Jones—Measurements—Prof. Putnam’s Collection of Crania from Tennessee Mounds—Low Type Crania from the Mounds—Development Observable in Mound Crania—Head-Flattening Derived from Asia—Diseases of the Mound-builders—Physiognomy of the Ancient Americans—Languages—Evolution and its Bearing on the Origin of the Americans—Darwin and Hæckel on the Indigenous American—The Autochthonic Hypothesis Groundless—Unity of the Human Family—Accepted Chronology Faulty.
Traditional History of the Origin of the Maya Nations.
Ancient Civilization of Tabasco and Chiapas—The Tradition of Votan—The First Immigrants to America—The City of Nachan—The Votanic Document—Ordoñez—Brasseur and Cabrera on the Tzendal Document—The Empire of the Chanes—The Oldest Civilization—The Earliest Home of the Mayas—The Quichés—Their Origin Tradition—The Quiché Cosmogony—The Creation of Man—The Quiché Migration—Tulan—Mt. Hacavitz—Human Sacrifices Instituted—Four Tulans—Association of the Mayas and Nahuas—Heroic Period of the Quichés—Xibalba and its Downfall—Exploits of the Quiché Chieftains—War of the Sects—Xibalba and Palenque the Same—Mayas of Yucatan and their Traditions—Culture-heroes—Zamna and Cukulcan—Christ Myth.
Traditional History of the Origin of the Nahua Nations.
The Early Inhabitants of Mexico—Quinames—Miztecs and Zapotecs—Totonacs and Huastecs—Olmecs and Xicalancas—The Nahuas—The Cholula Pyramid—Its Origin Explained by Duran—No Relation to a Flood—Ixtlilxochitl’s Deluge Tradition—The first Toltecs—The Codex Chimalpopoca Account—The Discovery of Maize—Sahagun’s Origin of the Nahuas—They came from Florida—Their Settlement in Tamoanchan—Their Migrations—Hue Hue Tlapalan—Its location, according to the Sources—Not Identical with Tlapallan de Cortés—Not in Central America—Probably in the Mississippi Valley—Beginning of the Toltec Annals—The Chichimecs not Nahuas—The Nahuatlacas—The Aztecs—Aztlan—As Described by Early Writers—Aztec Migration—Aztec Maps—Señor Ramirez on Migration Maps—The seven Caves—Three Claims for the Location of Aztlan—The culture Hero, Quetzalcoatl.
The Ancient Pueblos and Cliff-Dwellers.
The Casas Grandes of Chihuahua—Ruins in the Casas Grandes and Janos Valleys—Casa Grande of the Rio Gila—Ruins in the Gila Valley—Also in the Valley of the Rio Salado—Ruins in the Cañon of the Colorado—In the Valley of the Colorado Chiquito—Pueblos of the Zuñi River—Zuñi and the “Seven Cities of Cibola”—“El Moro”—Pueblos of the Chaco Valley—Cliff-dwellers—Mr. Jackson’s Discoveries in the Valley of the Rio San Juan—Cliff-houses of the Rio Mancos—Cliff-dwellings on the McElmo—Traditional Origin and Fate of the Cliff-dwellers—Ancestors of the Moquis—Remarkable Discoveries by Mr. Holmes—The Seven Moqui Towns—The Montezuma Legend.
Ancient American Civilization and Supposed Old World Analogies.—Architecture, Sculpture, and Hieroglyphics.
Analogies, Real and Fancied—Maya Architecture—The American Pyramid—The Palace of Palenque—The French Roof at Palenque—The Trefoil Arch—Yucatanic Architecture—Uxmal—The Casa de Monjas—Kabah—Casa Grande of Zayi—Quiché Architecture—Copan—Circus of Copan—Description by Fuentes—Utatlan—Nahua Architecture—Remains in Oajaca—Mitla—Grecques at Mitla—Remains in the State of Vera Cruz—Cholula—Pyramid of Xochicalco—The Temple of Mexico—Teotihuacan—Los Edificios of Quemada—Maya and Nahua Architecture Compared—Old World Analogies—Sculpture—Of the Mounds—At Palenque—At Uxmal—Of the Nahuas—Ancient American Art and its Old World Analogies—Egyptian Tau at Palenque—Serpent Sculpture—Nahua Symbolism probably Asiatic—Hieroglyphics—Maya MSS. and Books—Landa’s Alphabet—Attempts at the Interpretation of Maya MSS. by Bollaert, Charencey, and Rosny—Rosny’s Classification of the Hieroglyphics—Hopes that a Key has been Discovered—The Mexican Picture-writing—Aztec Migration Maps.
Chronology, Calendar Systems, and Religious Analogies.
No Mound-builder Chronology Known—Maya Calendar—Landa on the Calendar—Maya Days—Maya Months—The Katun—The Ahau Katun or Great Cycle—The Maya System Adjusted to our Chronology—The Adjustment by Perez—Intercalary Days—The Nahua Calendar—The Sources—Divisions of the Mexican Calendar—The Aztec Year—The Nemontemi—Aztec Months—Aztec Days—Nahua Ritual Calendar—Mexican Calendar Stone—Sources of Interpretation—History of the Stone—Its Interpretation—Date of the Origin of the Calendar Stone—Date of the Nahua Migration—Analogies with the Nahua Calendar—Religious Analogies—Jewish Analogies—Deluge Traditions—Supposed Parallels in Jewish and Mexican History—Analogies of Doctrine—Analogies of Ceremonial Law—Yucatanic Trinity Myth—Mexican and Asiatic Analogies—Buddhism in the New World—Scandinavian Analogies—Mexican and Greek Analogies—Brasseur de Bourbourg’s Comparisons.
Language and its Relation to North American Migrations.
Diversity of Languages in America—Causes of Diversity—Richness of American Languages—Polysynthesis—Grimm’s Law—The Maya-Quiché Languages—Stability of the Maya—Oldest American Language—The Maya compared to the Greek, the Hebrew, the North European, the Basque, West African, and the Quichua Languages—Epitome of Maya Grammar—The Mizteco-Zapotec Languages—The Nahua or Aztec—The Classic Tongue—Ancient and Modern Nahua—Epitome of Aztec Grammar—Geographical Extension of the Aztec—In the South—In the North-west—Buschmann’s Researches—The Sonora Family—Opata-Tarahumar-Pima Family—Moqui and Aztec Elements—Aztec in the Shoshone and in the Languages of Oregon and the Columbian Region—Line of Aztec Elements—The Nahua probably the Language of the Mound-builders—The Otomi—Supposed Chinese Analogies—Japanese Analogies—Geographical Names.
Probabilities that America was Peopled from the Old World Considered Geographically and Physically.
Legends of Atlantis—Brasseur de Bourbourg’s Theory—The Subject Examined in the Light of Science—Retzius’ View—Le Plongeon’s Observations—Identity of European and American Plant Types—Revelations of the Dolphin and Challenger Expeditions—The Atlantic Floor—Challenger and Dolphin Ridges—“Challenger Plateau” probably once Dry Land—Identity of European and South American Fauna—Elevation and Depression of Coast Level—Of Greenland, the United States, and South America—The Gulf Stream—Equatorial Current—The Trade-Winds—Accidental Discovery of Brazil—America Probably Reached by Ancient Navigators—The Caras—Atolls of the Pacific Ocean—A Pacific Continent—Contiguity of the Continents at the North—Aleutian Islands—The Kuro-Suvo—Behring’s Straits—Inviting Appearance of the American Shore—Remoteness of the Migration—Prof. Grote’s View—Prof. Asa Gray’s Observations—Conditions Favorable to a Migration—Mr. John H. Becker’s Observations.
Conclusion.
APPENDIX.
- [MADISONVILLE EXPLORATIONS].
- [ELEPHANT PIPE].
- [CHARNAY EXPLORATION].
- [HOUSE ARCHITECTURE OF THE MOUND-BUILDERS AND PUEBLOS].
THE
NORTH-AMERICANS
OF
ANTIQUITY.
CHAPTER I.
ANCIENT INHABITANTS OF THE UNITED STATES.
The Aborigines—Antiquity of the Red Indian—The Mound-builders—Geographical Distribution of Mound-works—Frontier Defences of the Mound-builders—Michigan Mounds—Mounds in the North-west—On the Upper Missouri—In Dakota—Animal Mounds of Wisconsin—Elephant Mound—Discoveries at Davenport, Iowa—Davenport Tablet—Heart of the Mound-builder Country—Cahokia—Resemblances to Mexico—St. Louis and Cincinnati Works—Cincinnati Tablet—Works in Ohio—Fortified Places—Fort Ancient—Signal Systems—Works at Newark—The Ohio Valley—Explorations in Tennessee—Burial in Stone Coffins—Mound Colonies in the South-east—Mr. Anderson’s Calendar Stone—Mounds of the Lower Mississippi Valley—Seltzertown Mound—Alabama and Georgia Mounds—Pyramid of Kolee-Mokee—Explorations in Missouri—Sun-dried Bricks—Remains in the South-west—Direction of the Migration—Architectural Progress—Altar Mounds—Mounds of Sepulture—Ancient Copper Mines—Astronomical Knowledge.
ON that eventful morning nearly four centuries ago, when the spell of uncertainty and mystery which enshrouded the Atlantic was broken, and the darkness of the deep vanished with the darkness of the night, the illustrious admiral discovered a world populated with beings like himself. They were male and female, with all the physical characteristics common to the rest of mankind, and differed from the Spaniards only in that their skin was of a copper hue, and their cheek bones more prominent. They were tattooed and wore their straight black hair, cut short above the ears, with a few unshorn locks falling upon their shoulders.[1] These naked uncivilized men and women were the same in their physical type with those discovered subsequently on the islands and the main land by the Cabots, Vespucius, Verrezano, and Cartier. To rehearse their descriptions of the natives whom they first met would be but to repeat the experience and observations of Columbus. Nearly five centuries earlier the Norse adventurer Thorwald Ericson (1002 A.D.) encountered natives on the New England coast, corresponding in appearance, habits, and condition to those who occupied the country when colonized by the first settlers. To these natives they gave the name of Skrellings, from skraekja, a name which they had previously applied to the Eskimo, meaning to cry out.[2] Thorfin Karlsefne, who also reached the New England coast four years later than Thorwald, describes the natives as sallow-colored and ill-looking, having ugly heads of hair, large eyes and broad cheeks. They came in canoes to his ships for the purposes of trade, and though peaceable at first, soon exhibited hostility and treachery.[3] It is probable that these Skrellings were North American Indians, who had interbred with the Atlantic Coast Eskimo. How long the red man’s occupation of the country antedated its discovery by the Scandinavians is uncertain. His traditions are worthless on that subject. His chronology of moons and cycles is an incoherent and contradictory jumble. Nor does he know any more certainly from whence he came. It would seem that his race came by installments, if it came at all, and that he was just as far advanced in the arts of hunting and war and domestic life on the day in which he first possessed himself of the soil, as on that in which he was driven from it by the European. Only under the fostering care of the white man has he shown any improvement, and that has been of such an uncertain character as to amount to proof of his incapacity for self-civilization. The Indian, measured by his low condition in the scale of progress from the extremest barbarism towards semi-civilization, belongs to what is known as the flint age (old-stone or Palæolithic) in Europe, in which the rudest flint implements seem to have been the chief auxiliaries which he possessed with which to supplement and assist his hands in securing a livelihood or to protect his person and family from ferocious beasts. Perhaps we may more properly place him in a position midway between the flint and the stone ages (new-stone or Neolithic), for he no doubt was possessed of polished stone implements of a limited number and variety. Whether made by his own hands or by those of his predecessors is uncertain.[4] In thus assigning the Indian his place in the scale by which man’s state of barbarism or degree of civilization has been measured by scholars in Europe, we do not pretend to claim for him the antiquity of the man of the flint age in any other part of the globe.[5]
Arrow Heads in the National Museum (Washington).
Methods Employed by Indians of Hafting Stone Weapons.
Indian and Mound-builder Spear-heads.
Dr. Abbott, of New Jersey, in an extended treatment of the Stone Age in his own State, has shown many evidences of the protracted occupancy of the Atlantic States by a people whose weapons resemble those of ancient man in Europe. Col. Charles Whittlesey has called attention to the discovery of Indian remains in the “Shelter Cave,” near Elyria, Ohio, and also in a cave near Louisville, Kentucky, where the conditions seemed to point to an interment as long ago as two thousand years, but the evidences both as to the remains having been those of the red man and the period of burial are too uncertain to be of any service in the construction of a theory.[6]
The eras or ages which have been observed to mark the different stages of the development of pre-historic man in Europe (in the manufacture of implements and the construction of places of abode), are apparently reversed in America.
The Neolithic and Bronze ages preceded the Palæolithic at least in the Mississippi Basin—not that the last inhabitants deteriorated and lost the higher arts which are well known to have been cultivated upon the same soil occupied by them, but that they were preceded by a race possessed of no inferior civilization, who were not their ancestors, but a distinct people with a capacity for progress, for the exercise of government, for the erection of magnificent architectural monuments, and possessed of a respectable knowledge of geometrical principles. The remains of this mysterious people known as the mound-builders are spread over thousands of square miles of the United States, and it is a question whether the antiquarian is more surprised at the greatness of their number than in many instances at the immensity of their proportions. The entire valley region of the Missouri, Mississippi and Ohio rivers with that of their affluents was occupied by this remarkable people—presenting us with a parallel to the ancient civilization which flourished in the earliest times on the watercourses of the old world. The geographical distribution of these mounds may be described in general terms with a view to the territory occupied by them in the United States, as central, western, and southern.
The publication of the valuable works of Squier and Davis, of Dr. Lapham and those of Mr. Squier alone, in which the remains of these regions are described, was like a revelation which brought to light the wonders of an entombed civilization.[7] In treating of the mounds geographically, we find no evidences of this people having reached the Atlantic seaboard, unless we except the great shell-heaps found in various localities on the coast, and of which we will speak further on. It is true that in South Carolina a few vestiges of their residence are found on the Wateree River near Camden, and in the mountainous regions of North Carolina,[8] where they wrought mica mines for the mineral which they prized as precious, and which so often accompanies the remains of their dead. No authentic remains of the Mound-Builders are found in the New England States, nor even in the State of New York. In the former, we have an isolated mound in the valley of the Kennebec in Maine, and dim outlines of enclosures near Sanborn and Concord in New Hampshire, but there is no certainty of their being the work of this people.[9] In the latter, it was at first supposed that the remains found in the western portion of the State were uniform in their plan of construction with the works of the Ohio valley; but Mr. Squier pronounces them to be purely the work of Red Indians. This conclusion should not be viewed as final, even though Cusick’s vague statement (in Schoolcraft, vol. v) that the Iroquois “were compelled to build fortifications in order to save themselves from the devouring monsters” lends it an air of plausibility. Either people may have been their builders. Col. Whittlesey would assign these fort-like structures, differing from the more southern enclosures in that they were surrounded by trenches on their outside, while the latter uniformly have the trench on the inside of the enclosure, to a people anterior to the Red Indian and perhaps contemporaneous with the Mound-builders, but distinct from either.[10] A quite reasonable view is that of Dr. Foster, that they are the frontier works of the Mound-builders, adapted to the purposes of defence against the sudden irruptions of hostile tribes. He remarks, “If our country were to become a desolation, the future antiquary would find the sea-coast studded with fortifications of a complex form, and as he penetrated to the interior they would disappear altogether.”[11] It is probable that these defences belong to the last period of the Mound-builders’ residence on the lakes, and were erected when the more warlike peoples of the North who drove them from their cities first made their appearance. Passing along the boundary of the Mound-builders’ territory towards the west, we find the great lakes in all cases to have served as its limit on the north. Mr. Henry Gillman has described in several publications[12] his exploration of mounds in Michigan and the lakes. One of the richest mounds in relics and human remains is known as “the Great Mound of the River Rouge,” situated on the stream from which it takes its name, near the Detroit River and about four and a half miles from the centre of the city of Detroit. The mound now measures twenty feet in height, and must originally have measured 300 feet in length by 200 in width, though the removal of large quantities of sand from it has greatly reduced its proportions and destroyed many valuable relics. Many other mounds surrounding it have also been removed. The most remarkable result of the exploration was the discovery of tibiæ flattened to an extreme degree, such as is peculiar to platycnemic man. A circular mound in the vicinity yielded even more remarkable specimens of this singular flattening or compression. Two specimens presented unprecedented proportions; the transverse diameter of one shaft being 0.42 and the other 0.40 of the antero-posterior diameter. The circular mound yielded eleven skeletons besides a large number of burial vases and stone implements of all descriptions peculiar to the mounds. Of the crania from this mound we shall speak in Chapter IV. In 1872, Mr. Gillman examined a remarkable group of tumuli situated at the head of St. Clair River. These mostly stand on the shores of Lake Huron. The relics, besides human remains, consisted of pieces of mica, and necklaces of beads of the teeth of the moose alternating with well-wrought beads of copper. The same peculiarity of flattened tibiæ was markedly prominent in the remains.[13] The same investigator has examined mounds at Ottawa Point, Michigan, near the mouth of the Oqueoc River, at Point La Barbe in the Straits of Mackinac, and at Beaver Harbor on Beaver Island in Lake Michigan. Excepting ancient copper mines, no known works extend as far north as Lake Superior anywhere in the central region. Farther to the North-west, however, the works of the same people are comparatively numerous. Dr. Foster quotes a British Columbia newspaper, without giving either name or date, as authority for the discovery of a large number of mounds, seemingly the works of the same people who built farther east and south.[14] On the Butte Prairies of Oregon Wilkes and his exploring expedition discovered thousands of similar mounds.[15]
Great Serpent, Adams Co., O.
Lewis and Clarke, in the Journal of their expedition up the Missouri River, describe the remains of fortifications on Bonhomme Islands at as early a date as 1804–5–6, but until recently their statements have been received with a degree of doubt.[16] This doubt has, however, been fully set at rest by the members of the United States Geological Surveying Expedition of 1872. Not only has it been shown that works exist at Bonhomme’s Island, but all the way up through the Yellowstone region and on the upper tributaries of the Missouri mounds are found in profusion.[17] Dr. C. Thomas, of the above-named expedition, made interesting discoveries in Dakota Territory, near the Northern Pacific Railroad crossing of the James River. Mounds were examined giving evidence of perhaps greater antiquity than those common in the interior of the country, if their contents be depended upon as furnishing a means of test.[18] The Missouri valley seems to have been one of the most populous branches of the wide-spread Mound-builder country. The valleys of its affluents, the Platte and Kansas rivers, also furnish evidence that these streams served as the channels into which flowed a part of the tide of population which either descended or ascended the Missouri. The Mississippi and Ohio river valleys, however, formed the great central arteries of the Mound-builder domain. In Wisconsin we find the northern central limit of their works; occasionally on the western shores of Lake Michigan, but in great numbers in the southern counties of the State, and especially on the lower Wisconsin River. The peculiar and fantastic forms of most of these mounds have led some writers to suppose that they belonged to a different race from that which occupied the valleys to the south. Instead of the usual type of the pyramid and circle, these remains mostly represent animals, or birds, or men. Still Dr. Lapham, who has described them fully in his admirable work[19] on the Antiquities of Wisconsin, concluded that sufficient resemblances between these remains and those of the south exist to ascribe to them a common origin. A few instances of the circle and square are found in association with the animal mounds, while in Ohio, on Brush Creek in Adams County, the “Great Serpent,” and the “Alligator” in Licking County furnish proof that either the same people built them or at least the same impulses, religious or otherwise, actuated the people of both districts. The former of the above figures is well described by its name, “with its head conforming to the crest of a hill, and its body winding back for 700 feet in graceful undulations, terminating in a triple coil at the tail.” The length of the latter “from the point of the nose following the curves of the tail to the tip, is about 250 feet, the breadth of the body forty feet and the length of the legs or paws each thirty-six feet.”[20] Until recently no effigy mounds were believed exist further south than Ohio; however, Mr. C. C. Jones, Jr., in the Smithsonian Report for 1877 has shown this to be a mistake. Mr. Jones describes an eagle-shaped stone mound north of Eatonton, in Putnam Co., Georgia, of the following dimensions: Height of tumulus at the breast of the bird, seven or eight feet; length from the top of the head to the extremity of the tail, 102 feet; distance from tip to tip of the wings, 120 feet; greatest expanse of tail, 38 feet. A careful regard to the proportions of the bird are shown. A similar stone mound, of nearly the same proportions, was found near Lawrence Ferry on the Oconee River in Putnam County. In this instance a circle of stones encloses the effigy. At Trenton, Wisconsin, and in many other places examined by Dr. Lapham, cruciform works were found, some of which were constructed with the arms extending toward the cardinal points.[21] Instances of extinct or unknown animal forms occur occasionally: one instance is that of an animal somewhat resembling a monkey, having a body of about 160 feet in length, while the tail describes a semicircle and measures alone 320 feet.[22] The most remarkable instance of the kind, however, is that of the big elephant mound found a few miles below the mouth of the Wisconsin River, so perfect in its proportions and complete in its representations of an elephant that its builders must have been well acquainted with all the physical characteristics of the animal which they delineated.[23] This fact suggests the inquiry whether these people were Asiatic in origin and penetrated to the interior of the country before their recollections of the elephant were forgotten, or whether they were contemporaneous with the mastodon of North America? In the remarkable works at Aztlan, Dr. Lapham finds not only resemblances to the Ohio antiquities, but striking analogies with those of Mexico.[24]
Elephant Mound, Wisconsin.
Across the Mississippi in Minnesota and Iowa, the predominant type of circular tumuli prevail, extending throughout the latter State to the Missouri. There are evidences that the Upper Missouri region was connected with that of the Upper Mississippi by settlements occupying the intervening country. Mounds are found even in the valley of the Red River of the North.[25]
Eastern Iowa, especially in the neighborhood of Davenport, has furnished some of the most interesting mounds that have yet been examined. Several gentlemen—especially Rev. Mr. Gass—of the Davenport Academy of Sciences have within a couple of years recovered a number of fine specimens of copper axes, nearly all wrapped in Mound-builder’s cloth. This cloth had been “preserved by the antiseptic action of the salts of copper, in all probability of the carbonates. In all specimens one thread of the warp is double or twisted, and there are about four to the one-fourth of an inch.”[26] Stone pipes of excellent workmanship carved to represent various animals were found. Pottery, copper beads in considerable numbers, mica and sea-shells (Pyrula and Cassis), one which had an internal capacity of 152 cubic inches, or five and one-half pints, were among the relics recovered. Most of the human remains were much decayed; although some, among them a skull, were preserved. The character of the Altar mound in this group is rather unusual. Within the mound hewn rectangular stones were laid upon one another with perfect regularity, so as to break joints, forming something resembling the exterior appearance of a chimney. We are not aware of any similarly shaped altar ever having been discovered in the mounds. The most remarkable discovery of all, however, was made January 10, 1877, by Rev. Mr. Gass and his assistants in one of the mounds which previously had been examined in part. Two tablets of coal slate covered with a variety of figures and hieroglyphics were found.[27] One of these, the larger, is of a most interesting character. On one side, as will be seen in the accompanying cut, a number of persons with hands joined have formed a semicircle around a mound, upon which a fire has been kindled, probably for the purpose of sacrifice, or for converting into a hardened and water-proof covering the layer of clay which may have been spread over the remains of some distinguished personage beneath. The presence of a layer of baked clay above human remains in so many Ohio mounds leads to this conjecture. The three prostrate human figures may be those of wives or servants of the deceased, to be sacrificed upon his grave, as has been the custom from the remotest times in India and among many savage tribes. The conspicuousness of the sun, moon, and stars, suggest even a sadder thought, that perhaps it may be purely a religious ceremony in which human victims are being offered to the heavenly bodies. Sabine worship, which spread throughout the entire length of the continent, is known to have been accompanied with the most horrid rites. Above the arch of the firmament are hieroglyphics which if deciphered no doubt would tell of the nature of this and other similar scenes. On the reverse side of the tablet is a rude representation of a hunting scene in which various animals, such as the buffalo cow, deer, bear, etc., etc., are figured. It has been conjectured that a large animal in the upper left-hand corner may be a mammoth, but there is little ground for the supposition. The scene is probably a representation of the exploits of the person buried in the mound. The smaller tablet is evidently a calendar stone with signs of the zodiac regularly marked upon it; of this calendar we shall speak in a future chapter. The above conjectures as to the significance of the representations on these tablets are based upon the supposition that they are genuine and not the work of an impostor, of which we cannot refrain from expressing a slight suspicion. That Rev. Mr. Gass has given a true account of his discovery there cannot be the slightest doubt—that he and his co-laborers in the work of excavation believe them to be genuine is equally certain.
The Davenport Tablet.
Descending to the interior, we find the heart of the Mound-builder country in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. It is uncertain whether its vital centre was in Southern Illinois or in Ohio—probably the former because of its geographical situation with reference to the mouths of the Missouri and Ohio Rivers. To enter upon a detailed description of the antiquities of this remarkable region would alone more than occupy the entire limits which we have prescribed for this work. This undertaking has already been well performed by Atwater, Squier and Davis, Foster, Baldwin, and many others. We shall therefore confine our remarks to notices of the most conspicuous remains and the general peculiarities of Mound-builder architecture. This people possessed a due appreciation of the physical advantages of certain localities for their cities. The site of St. Louis was formerly covered with mounds, one of which was thirty-five feet high, while in the American bottom on the Illinois side of the river their number approximates two hundred. In a group of sixty or more, lying between Alton and East St. Louis, stands the most magnificent of all the Mound-builders’ works, the great Mound of Cahokia, which rises to a height of ninety-seven feet and extends its huge mass in the form of a parallelogram, with sides measuring 700 and 500 feet respectively. On the south-west there was a terrace 160 by 300 feet, reached by means of a graded way. The summit of the pyramid is truncated, affording a platform of 200 by 450 feet. Upon this platform stands a conical mound ten feet high. Dr. Foster remarks: “It is probable that upon this platform was reared a capacious temple, within whose walls the high-priests gathered from different quarters at stated seasons, celebrating their mystic rites, whilst the swarming multitude below looked up with mute adoration.”[28] When we consider the analogy between the general features of this pyramid and that on which the temple of Mexico was situated, it is not unnatural to reflect that Cahokia may have served as the prototype of the more magnificent structure which was so often deluged with the blood of its thousands of human victims. The temple of Mexico and many others of its type may have been the embodiment of the same principles of architecture employed at Cahokia, but carried to greater perfection under the more favorable conditions afforded in the valley of Anahuac, or precisely the reverse may be true. Such speculations are, however, more easily set forth than sustained. Dr. Foster, through a mistake, states that the monster mound has been removed. This, we are happy to say, is not the case.[29]
Drilled Ceremonial Weapons. (Nat. Mus.)
Numerous interesting explorations have been conducted recently in Illinois with rich results. Among the most notable of these are the discoveries of Mr. Henry R. Howland, reported in a paper read before the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences, March, 1877 (Bulletin of the Buffalo Soc. of Nat. Sc., vol. iii., p. 204 et seq.). In January, 1876, Mr. Howland witnessed the removal of a mound near Mitchell Station in the American Bottom. In a stratum four or five feet from the base, composed chiefly of human bones, a large quantity of matting and a number of copper relics were disclosed to view. The matting was a coarse vegetable cane-like fibre simply woven, without twisting. Among the articles wrapped in the matting were several miniature tortoise shells formed of copper. They were of beaten copper of one sixty-fourth of an inch in thickness, the largest being but two and one-eighth inches in length. “A narrow flange or rim, about five thirty-secondths of an inch in width, is neatly turned at the base, and over the entire outer surface the curious markings peculiar to the tortoise shell are carefully produced by indentation—the entire workmanship evincing a delicate skill of which we have never before found traces in any discovered remains of the arts of the Mound-builders.” These shells were covered with several wrappings, the first and nearest to the shell proving to be of vegetable fibre, the second of a dark-brown color; when placed under the microscope and examined by Dr. G. J. Engleman and Sir Joseph Hooker, proved to be a very fine cloth woven from animal hair—of the rabbit and possibly of the deer. The third envelope was made from the intestine of some animal. The lower jaws of deer were discovered in which the forward part containing the teeth were encased in thin copper and wrapped in the fine hair-cloth just described. From holes bored in the back of each jaw, it is inferred that the articles were suspended from the neck as totems or badges of authority. Three wooden spool-like objects were found in the same place, partially plated with thin copper. Copper rods or needles from fourteen to eighteen inches in length, a beautiful shell necklace, and a spear head of chert a foot long, were also discovered. Among the rest were several sea-shells (Busycon Perversum), evidently brought from the Gulf a thousand miles distant. In the summer of 1874, Mr. H. R. Enoch, of Rockford, Ill., discovered a tablet in a mound situated on the bank of Rock River, five miles south of Rockford. The “Rockford Tablet” created quite a sensation at first because it was thought to bear upon its face several symbols found upon the Mexican Calendar stone. However, a thorough investigation of its claims prove it to be a fraud, no doubt placed in the mound where discovered for the purpose of deception. Mr. J. Moody of Mendota, Ill., in referring to the twelve symbols of the tablet said to be Mexican, remarks: “Six are nearly exact counterparts of that number of Lybian characters which I find represented in Priest’s American Antiquities. * * * From a comparison of the Rockford Tablet with the plates in the work referred to above, the inference is almost irresistible that the engraver had a copy of Priest’s American Antiquities before him while doing his work.” (See Congrès International des Américanistes, Luxembourg, 1877. Tome ii, p. 160.)
The same sagacity which chose the neighborhood of St. Louis for these works, covered the site of Cincinnati with an extensive system of circumvallations and mounds. Almost the entire space now occupied by the city was utilized by the mysterious builders in the construction of embankments and tumuli built upon the most accurate geometrical principles, and evincing keen military foresight.[30] Dr. Daniel Drake described these works in 1815, and many others subsequently.[31] The most important discovery made among these remains was that of the “Cincinnati Tablet” in 1841. This singular relic was taken from a large mound formerly thirty-five feet high, removed at the above date from the extension of Mound Street across Fifth Street. When found, it was lying on a level with the original surface under the skull of a much decayed skeleton, with two polished, pointed bones about seven inches long, and a bed of charcoal and ashes. This stone in all probability served the double purpose of a record of the calendar and a scale for measurement.[32] Mr. E. Gest, the courteous owner of the tablet, provided the accompanying cuts expressly for this work, regarding them as the first correct representations of the stone.
Cincinnati Tablet. (Front.)
Cincinnati Tablet. (Back.)
Dagger ½ Size. (Nat. Mus.)
The vast number as well as the magnitude of the works found in the State of Ohio, have surprised the most careless and indifferent observers. It is estimated by the most conservative, and Messrs. Squier and Davis among them, that the number of tumuli in Ohio equals 10,000, and the number of enclosures 1000 or 1500. In Ross County alone, 100 enclosures and upwards of 500 mounds have been examined. Some of the works exhibit fine engineering skill; such, for instance, are those near Liberty, Ohio, where two embankments, each forming a perfect circle, are found in conjunction with a perfect square. The larger circle measures 1700 feet in diameter and contains forty acres, while the smaller has a diameter of 800 feet. The square contains twenty-seven acres and measures 1080 feet on each side. One set of works in Pike County consists of a circle enclosing a square, the four corners of which each touch the circular embankment. The opening or doorway through the circle is opposite the opening in the square. Prof. E. B. Andrews found a conical mound enclosed by a circle, the base of the mound reaching to the edge of the ditch outside of which is the circular wall. The mound was located on the Hocking River, nine miles northward of Lancaster, Ohio (see Tenth Ann. Rep. of Peabody Mus. of Arch. and Eth., p. 51). The works at Hopetown, near Chillicothe, present several combinations of the square and circle. The two principal figures of these works are a square and circle—each containing exactly twenty acres. The discovery of these geometrical combinations—executed with such precision—in many parts of the country, lead to the belief that the Mound-builders were one people spread over a large territory, possessed of the same institutions, religion, and perhaps one government. These facts are highly important as shedding light upon the degree of their civilization. The evidence is ample that they were possessed of regular scales of measurement, of the means of determining angles and of computing the area to be enclosed by a square and circle, so that the space enclosed by these figures standing side by side might exactly correspond. In a word, their scientific and mathematical knowledge was of a very respectable order.
Works in Liberty Township, Ross County, Ohio.
Celts. (Nat. Mus.)
The large celt, upper line, from a mound (Tenn.). The others Surface Finds.
Aboriginal Chisels, Gouges and Adzes. (Nat. Mus.) Surface Finds.
The military works of the Mound-builders, other than those previously mentioned as existing on the Lakes and in Western New York State, are of a twofold character, consisting first of fortified eminences, of which an instance is found in Butler County, Ohio, where 16³⁄₁₀ acres are walled in on the summit of a hill, and the entrance to the enclosure guarded by a complicated system of covered ways. On Paint Creek, Ross County, a remarkable stone work encloses 140 acres, in the centre of which was an artificial lake, probably to supply water in case of a siege. Perhaps the most remarkable fortification left by the Mound-builders is that known as Fort Ancient, Ohio, on the Little Miami River, forty-two miles north-east of Cincinnati. The specialist is already familiar with the oft-quoted description of the Survey by Prof. Locke, made in 1843. We will therefore only refer to a few of the measurements contained in that description. “The work occupies a terrace on the left bank of the river, two hundred and thirty feet above its waters. The place is naturally a strong one, being a peninsula defended by two ravines, which, originating on the east side, near to each other, diverging and sweeping around, enter the Miami, the one above, the other below the work. The Miami itself, with its precipitous bank of two hundred feet, defends the western side.” * * * “The whole circuit of this work is between four and five miles. The number of cubic yards of excavation may be approximately estimated at 628,800”. The embankment stands in many places twenty feet in perpendicular height. The most interesting and valuable paper on this work is that by Mr. L. M. Hosea, of Cincinnati, in the Quarterly Journal of Science (Cincinnati), October, 1874, p. 289 et seq. This writer observes that it has often been remarked that the form of Fort Ancient resembles a rude outline of the continent of North and South America. None of the mounds contained in the enclosure have yielded any relics of special interest. The greatest possible diversity of opinion exists concerning the antiquity of the abandonment of the works. Judges Dunlevy and Force, the latter in his memoir on the Mound-builders,[33] estimate the period as a thousand years, while Mr. Hosea thinks several thousand years would be required to produce the numerous little hillocks and depressions which mark the spot where trees have grown, fallen and decayed. Reasoning from other data, we are inclined to the more conservative opinion of Judge Force as altogether the safer. Fort Ancient, which could have held a garrison of 60,000 men with their families and provisions, was one of a line of fortifications which extend across the State and served to check the incursion of the savages of the North in their descent upon the Mound-builder country.
The second class of military works, which are exceedingly numerous on all the watercourses—existing not only on the Ohio and Mississippi, but on all their tributaries, especially on the Muskingum, Scioto, Miami, Wabash, Illinois, Kentucky, and minor streams—are mounds which served as outlooks. These were always placed in positions to command extended views, and from which signals could be given to still others of the same character, or probably to settlements remote from the watercourses.
Square Mound, Marietta.
A system of these works no doubt formerly existed on the Great Miami River extending north of Dayton, Ohio, southward to the Ohio River, and connected with the great settlement on the site of Cincinnati and with the high bluffs on the Kentucky shore. The great Mound at Miamisburgh, ten miles south of Dayton, formed a part of this chain. This monster mound is sixty-eight feet high and 852 feet in circumference, and may have served the double purpose of a signal station and the base of a small edifice devoted to astronomical or religious purposes. There is little doubt that the Mound-builders in the latter period of their occupancy of this region, when apprehensive of danger from their enemies, employed a system of signal telegraph by which communication was had, through means of the watch-fire or the torch, between localities as distant as those now occupied by Cincinnati and Dayton. Only a few minutes were necessary by means of such a perfected system in which to transmit a signal fifty or one hundred miles. Squier and Davis remark on this subject: “There seems to have existed a system of defences extending from the sources of the Alleghany and Susquehanna in New York, diagonally across the country, through Central and Northern Ohio to the Wabash. Within this range the works which are regarded as defensive are largest and most numerous.” The signal system we have reason to believe was employed throughout the entire extent of this range of works. The majority of the enclosures found in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys are presumed not to have been designed for military purposes, since the trench is usually inside of the embankment. However, instances of the trench being outside of the parapet occur in Southern Ohio.[34] The most magnificent Mound-builder remains in Ohio are the extensive and intricate works near Newark in Licking County. The survey made by Col. Whittlesey and published in the Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, is the most reliable as well as the fullest source of our information concerning their magnitude, though the plan has been corrected considerably by more recent surveys. These works occupy an area of two miles square, and formerly consisted of twelve miles of embankment. The spacious gateways—one of which has embankments on both sides measuring thirty-five feet in height from the bottom of the interior trench—the labyrinthine system of avenues, the strangely-shaped mounds, one of which resembles a huge bird-track with a middle toe 155 feet in length and the remaining two each 110 feet in length—together with the solitude of the ancient forest which entombed this buried city, we confess impressed us with a sense of wonderment and that strange perplexity which an insoluble mystery exercises over the mind. We can appreciate the remark of Mr. Squier in his description: “Here covered with the gigantic trees of a primitive forest, the work truly presents a grand and impressive appearance; and in entering the ancient avenue for the first time, the visitor does not fail to experience a sensation of awe, such as he might feel in passing the portals of an Egyptian temple, or in gazing upon the ruins of Petra of the Desert.” It is estimated that a force of thousands of men assisted by modern appliances and implements as well as horse-power, which the Mound-builder did not possess, would require several months in which to construct these works.[35] At Marietta a most interesting system of works exist, covering an area three-fourths of a mile long and half a mile broad. These occupy the river terrace or second bottom at the confluence of the Muskingum River with the Ohio, and present analogies with the works further south and with those of Mexico.[36] Two irregular squares inclose fifty and twenty-seven acres respectively. The walls of the larger are between five and six feet high and from twenty to thirty feet wide at the base. Within an enclosure are four truncated pyramids or platforms, one of which, the largest, is 188 feet long, 132 feet wide, and only 10 feet high, with a graded way reaching to its summit, as have also two of the other pyramids. No one can look at these structures without seeing the force of Lewis H. Morgan’s Pueblo theory,[37] which makes these mounds or flattened pyramidal elevations the foundation for edifices of a perishable nature; constructed perhaps of hewn wood, but not of a combination of the adobe and wood as he supposes, since no material for such a combination is found in the Ohio valley.[38] The most elevated of the Marietta works is an elliptical mound thirty feet high, enclosed by an embankment.
Graded Way near Piketon, Ohio.
The most recent and satisfactory exploration of mounds in Ohio, was that conducted by Prof. E. B. Andrews for the Peabody Museum of American Archæology and Ethnology, and published in the Tenth Annual Report of the Trustees (Cambridge, 1877). The mounds examined are in Fairfield, Perry, Athens, and Hocking Counties. In Fairfield County they were all located upon hills and commanded extensive views. Their contents indicated great age, being much decayed. At New Lexington in Perry County, ancient flint diggings, unquestionably worked by the Mound-builders, were examined, many of the pits being six to eight feet deep. In Athens County, on Wolf Plain, situated in Athens and Dover Townships, several circles and nineteen conical mounds are found. One of the latter measures forty feet high, with a diameter of 170 feet, and contains 437.742 cubic feet. Another, known as the Beard Mound, was excavated, and the interesting fact discovered that in its construction the dirt had been “thrown down in small quantities—averaging about a peck—as if from a basket.” Prof. Andrews is of the opinion that the mound was a long time in building, “for we find,” he remarks, “at many different levels, the proof that grasses and other vegetation grew rankly upon the earth heap and were buried by the dirt.” In a neighboring mound known as the George Connett Mound, under a bed of charcoal five feet below the summit, a skeleton was found in a box or coffin, enclosed by timbers. The upper part of the coffin and middle of the body had been destroyed by fire. A circle of five hundred copper beads was found around the body. A copper instrument resembling a calker’s chisel, measuring 141 mm. in length, width at flattened end, 52 mm., diameter of cylindrical part, 20 mm. The instrument was formed from sheet copper, beaten with such care that no traces of the hammer are visible. “The edges are brought together and united very closely by a slight overlap.” Professor Andrews describes and figures a piece of leather ornamented with oval copper beads taken from a point eight feet below the surface of a mound designated as the “school-house mound.” The original piece measured eight or ten inches square, but unfortunately fell into the hands of bystanders, who tore it in pieces for relics. The Professor regards the curiosity as of Mound-builder origin, and thinks it belonged to an ornamented dress. We cannot detail these interesting explorations here, and must dismiss them with the deduction that in certain cases the cremation of the bodies found in mounds was accidental, caused by the heat penetrating through a layer of earth on which a fire had been kindled. In other instances, the body seems to have been burned intentionally, and the ashes and charred bones heaped together in the centre of the mound. Some clay and stone tubes of fine workmanship were obtained. The same document above cited contains a valuable paper by Mr. Lucian Carr on his interesting exploration of a mound in Lee County, Virginia.
Grave Creek Mound, situated twelve miles below Wheeling in West Virginia, is the Monster work of the Ohio Valley. It measures seventy feet in height and nine hundred feet in circumference. Its form is that of a truncated cone, the flattened area on the top being fifty feet in diameter.[39] The States of Indiana[40] and Illinois formed with Ohio a portion of the great centre of the Mound-builder country, as the remains found on the watercourses of both States testify. The valleys of the Wabash, Kankakee, Illinois and Saline Rivers were the once populous dwelling-places of a thrifty and industrious people who have left thousands of structures behind them.[41] The Alleghany Mountains, the natural limit of the great Mississippi basin, appears to have served as the eastern and south-eastern boundary of the Mound-builder country. In Western New York, Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and in all of Kentucky and Tennessee, their remains are numerous and in some instances imposing. In Tennessee especially, the works of the Mound-builders are of the most interesting character. Prof. Joseph Jones, of the University of New Orleans, has by his thorough and recent explorations under the patronage of the Smithsonian Institution, brought to light very interesting materials for the study of the history of this people. The works of defence in the shape of stone forts, by some thought to be peculiar to New York and the lake boundaries, with occasional exceptions in the Ohio Valley, have been found to abound in Coffee and other counties. One very perfect example of this kind of fortification, but very imperfectly described and figured by Haywood,[42] is that known as the stone fort near Manchester, Tenn. This enclosure, containing over fifty-four acres, has been minutely described by Prof. Jones.[43] In the accompanying cut the reader will obtain a pretty clear idea of the form of this fort. The wall, which varies from four to ten feet in height, is composed of loose rocks gathered apparently from the bed of the streams below, and the vicinity. The ditch shown in the cut at the rear of the works was probably designed to convey water from one creek to the other. The entrance is quite complicated and constitutes the most remarkable feature of the fortification.
Pendants and Sinkers. (Nat. Mus.) Surface Finds.
STONE FORT.
One peculiarity of burial noticeable in this locality, and one which evidently indicates progression when we come to compare these people with those farther north, is the fact that the ancient race of Tennessee buried their dead in rude stone coffins or cists, constructed of flat pieces of limestone or slaty sandstone which abound in the central portions of the State. In most of the mounds this mode of burial prevailed, but was not confined to them, for outside of the mounds in many enclosures a large number of stone graves occur. Of the class of “Stone-grave Burial Mounds”, one situated twelve miles from Nashville, near Brentwood, is worthy of mention. This mound was about forty-five feet in diameter by twelve feet high, and contained one hundred skeletons. These were mostly in stone graves, which were constructed in ranges one above another, three or four deep. The lower graves were short and square, containing bones that had apparently been deposited after the flesh had been removed. The upper graves were full length and contained remains in which the bones occupied their natural relation to each other. The workmanship both of the mound and stone cists was of the most perfect character. The lids of the upper stone cists were so arranged as to present a perfectly rounded, sloping rock surface. The mound was situated on the eastern slope of a beautiful hill, covered with a heavy growth of the native forest. In a large and carefully constructed stone tomb, Prof. Jones discovered the skeleton of an aged individual of immense length, having toothless jaw bones. In a grave occupied by a skeleton of a female, a small compartment or stone box was found near the head, separated from the main coffin by stone slabs, in which was the skeleton of an infant. It should be added that in the square or short graves so often met with, the skull was placed in the centre and the other bones arranged around it.[44] Numerous stone graves not covered by mounds were found on the Cumberland River opposite the mouth of Lick Branch, surrounding a chain of four mounds. A similar graveyard was found on the same bank of the Cumberland, a mile and a half farther down. Others were met with on White Creek, nine miles from Nashville, at Sycamore in Cheatham County; at Brentwood, in White County near Sparta, and along the tributaries of the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers at short intervals. At Oldtown on the Big Harpeth, is an extensive and remarkable collection of stone graves. All these burial grounds seem to be those of the people who constructed the mounds, for most of the mounds examined contained stone graves, not in their upper strata, but on the level of the surrounding land. A mound opposite Nashville, on the east bank of the Cumberland River, of great interest, was examined. Prof. Jones is convinced that it formerly served as the site or base of a temple. Its dimensions were one hundred feet in diameter by only ten feet high. In the centre of the mound and only three feet from its surface the Professor uncovered a large sacrificial vase or altar, forty-three inches in diameter, composed of a mixture of clay and river-shells. The rim of this flat earthen vessel or sacrificial altar was three inches in height and appeared mathematically circular. The surface of the “altar” was covered by a layer of ashes about one inch in thickness. The antlers and jaw-bone of a deer were found resting on the surface of the altar, and it is probable that part of the animal had been consumed as a sacrifice. The whole had been carefully covered with three feet of earth and the ashes preserved. In this mound rude sarcophagi were ranged around this sacred centre with the heads toward the altar and the feet toward the circumference of the circle, while the directions of the bodies were those of radii. Those bodies near the altar were ornamented with numerous beads of sea-shell and bone. In a carefully constructed stone sarcophagus, in which the face of the skeleton was turned toward the setting sun, the beautiful shell ornament shown in the cut, measuring 4.4 inches in diameter, was found lying on the breast-bone of the skeleton. It was made from some large shell derived from the sea-coast. Of the numerous interesting places examined by Prof. Jones, the site of Oldtown, on the Big Harpeth River, about six miles south-west of Franklyn, Tennessee, is worthy of special attention. The plan of the works and their general dimensions will be seen in the cut. At present, the crescent-shaped wall of 2470 feet in extent is but from two to six feet in height, having been reduced to its present condition by the plowshare. Thirty years ago it is said to have been so steep that it was impossible to ride a horse over it. Within the enclosure are two pyramidal mounds; the larger is one hundred and twelve by sixty-five feet and eleven feet high, and the smaller, seventy by sixty feet by nine feet high; also a small burial mound measuring thirty by twenty feet and 2.5 feet high. Another burial mound is covered by the residence of the owner, Mr. Thomas Brown. Many curiously-shaped clay vessels were obtained at these works by the explorers. Some of the vases were fashioned into effigies of frogs and various animals, and one vase obtained by Mr. Brown in excavating for the foundation for his residence, had a neck terminating in two human heads. Some of the vessels from Oldtown are figured in the cut.
Clay Image from a Stone Grave in Burial Mound near Brentwood, Tennessee.
“Stone Sword” from Ancient Earthwork on Big Harpeth River, Tennessee. ¼ Natural Size.
Shell Ornament from the Breast of a Skeleton found in a carefully constructed Stone Coffin in a Mound near Nashville, Tenn.
Plan of Oldtown Works.
Stone Pipe, Murfreesboro, Tenn. ¼ Natural Size.
Pottery from Oldtown, Tenn.
The art of painting seems to have been extensively practised by the mound people of Tennessee, not only in the decoration of pottery, but in representing ideal conceptions, which they spread out in extensive pictures upon the smooth faces of rocky walls overhanging the rivers. The material generally used was red ochre. Prof. Jones says: “The painting representing the sun on the rocks overhanging the Big Harpeth River, about three miles below the road which crosses this stream and connects Nashville and Charlotte, can be seen for a distance of four miles, and it is probable that the worshippers of the sun assembled before this high place for the performance of their sacred rites.”[45] The Professor’s vast collection of relics in stone and clay, including several images, we cannot here describe. We refer the reader to the Memoir itself. The Professor has clearly shown that the Mound-builder people and the Indians were distinct, and has set at rest a question upon which some few doubts were still entertained by a certain school of Archæologists, which has really never been very strong. The connection with or identity of the Mound-builders and the Toltics or the same family of people is also shown satisfactorily. We will add that the Professor is disposed to consider the Natchez as the connecting link between the Mound-builders and the Nahuas. We regard the Memoir one of the most important which has ever appeared on the subject of mound exploration. The rich collection of crania will be referred to in a future chapter.
Black Vase from an Aboriginal Cemetery, Nine Miles from Nashville.
In September, 1877, Prof. F. W. Putnam and Mr. Edwin Curtiss, also a party under Major Powell excavated a large number of mounds and stone graves, mostly in the neighborhood of Nashville, Tennessee. The results were substantially the same as those obtained by Prof. Jones. Prof. Putnam found within an earthwork near Lebanon, in Wilson County, sixty miles east of Nashville, what he considers to be the remains of dwellings of the Mound-builders. There were circular ridges of earth varying from a few inches to a little over three feet in height, with diameters ranging from ten to fifty feet. Within these enclosures, a few inches below the surface, hard floors, upon which fires had been made, were discovered. Under these floors, in many instances, infants and children had been buried, while the adults had been interred in a neighboring mound. Accompanying the skeletons of the children, many beautiful vessels of strange and artistic forms were found (cuts of three of these were kindly furnished by Prof. Putnam for this work), all evincing the tenderness with which the offspring of this people were regarded. Prof. Putnam examined nineteen of the earth-circles, which he adds, “proved to my satisfaction that the ridges were formed by the decay of the walls of a circular dwelling. * * * These houses had probably consisted of a frail circular structure, the decay of which would only leave a slight elevation, the formation of the ridge being assisted by the refuse from the house.”[46]
Painted Jar from Child’s Grave (Tennessee).
(Prof. Putnam’s Exploration.)
Dish from Child’s Grave (Tennessee).
(Prof. Putnam’s Exploration.)
Colonies of Mound-builders seem to have passed the great natural barrier into North Carolina and left remains in Marion County, while still others penetrated into South Carolina and built on the Wateree River. In March, 1873, Mr. Jas. R. Page examined several mounds in Washington and Issaquena Counties in the State of Mississippi. One mound explored in Washington County on the old bank of the Mississippi River, was a truncated cone eighty feet in diameter by forty feet high. A mound in the neighborhood, only eleven feet high, yielded rich returns for the labors of excavation. A white oak on its summit measured thirty-six inches in diameter. This mound yielded twelve skeletons with their crania. The group was in a sitting posture around a circle, with their faces looking toward its centre. Directly in front of the mouth of each skeleton were placed two or three vessels of pottery, beautifully ornamented with etchings and graceful lines. The object of the vessels, placed in such near proximity to the mouths of the buried remains, can only be conjectured. We regret that no measurements of the crania are given, and what is more, we deplore the loss of most of the crania in the course of their transportation.[47] Mr. W. Marshall Anderson, of Circleville, Ohio, examined Mounds in Issaquena County, Miss., with interesting results; in one mound opened, not far from its outer edge, three skeletons were found buried in a standing position, as though they had acted as the guards of a more distinguished person deposited in the centre. Penetrating the mound still farther by means of a trench, Mr. Anderson reached a large deposit of ashes and burnt earth. Near the centre of the mound and five feet above the level of the earth, upwards of twenty-five unbroken specimens of fine pottery were discovered. At the very centre three individuals had been buried apparently in great state, with all the insignia of their important positions in life. These were ornaments, urns, vases, beads, and arrow-points; while adjoining the heads of each were food and drinking vessels. Not far removed from these, two skeletons were found with bowls placed upon their heads like helmets. Mr. Anderson is the possessor of a very remarkable stone disk obtained for him by Dr. Robinson from a Issaquena mound near Lake Washington, Miss. The disk is nearly eight and a half inches in diameter and three-quarters of an inch thick, of fine-grained sandstone. The device which it bears upon its face is composed of two entwined rattlesnakes. A trifling ornamental border is graven on the reverse side of the disk. When found it was broken in two pieces. Mr. Anderson, in comparing its strange device to the Aztec Calendar Stone, remarks: “Here are the eighteen pipes of the border corresponding to the eighteen months of the year, but the twenty days of the month and the five intercalaries are not to be found. The thirteen hieroglyphical figures, and the four zodiacal signs, which as multiples give the fifty-two years of the Aztec cycle, are also absent on the Mississippi stone.”[48] The serpent-symbol appears to have played its part among the Mound-builders, as well as in Mexico and Central America. The great serpent of Adams County, Ohio, is the most extensive delineation of the all-important symbol on the continent. Out of eighteen engraved circular plates made of the shell of the Pyrula and taken from Brakebill and Lick Creek Mounds in East Tennessee (and now deposited in the Peabody Museum of Archæology) thirteen bear the device of a rattlesnake. In one of the mounds of “Mound City,” Ross County, Ohio, several small tablets representing the rattlesnake were unearthed, while other mounds in the same locality yielded pipes bearing the same representation.[49]
Jar from Child’s Grave (Tennessee).
(Prof. Putnam’s Exploration.)
Works in Washington County, Miss.
Aboriginal Shuttle-like Tablets. (Nat. Mus.) Surface Finds.
On the Southern Mississippi, in the area embraced between the termination of the Cumberland Mountains near Florence and Tuscumbia in Alabama and the mouth of Big Black River, this people left numerous works, many of which were of a remarkable character.[50] The whole region bordering on the tributaries of the Tombigbee, the country through which the Wolf River flows and that watered by the Yazoo River and its affluents, was densely populated by the same people who built mounds in the Ohio Valley. Mr. Fontaine describes the mounds of this region and of the Tennessee River Valley as being most frequently of the truncated pyramidal type, and refers to one (seen by him in 1847) seventy feet high, covering an acre of ground. It is remarkable that the entire valley of the great river from Cairo to the mouth of Pointe à la Hache, fifty miles below New Orleans, is thickly studded with mounds.[51] As at Cahokia the Monarch Mound occupied a space equal to six acres, so at Seltzertown, Mississippi, we have another immense mound covering nearly the same area. Its dimensions are: length, about six hundred feet; breadth, four hundred feet at the base; height, forty feet, with a summit nearly four acres in area, reached by means of a graded way. The structure lies with its greatest length nearly due east and west. Upon the platform summit are three conical mounds, one at each end and the third in the centre. The mound at the western extremity of the summit rises to a height of nearly forty feet, while the one at the opposite extreme does not fall far short of the same altitude. This would give a total height of eighty feet above the level of the base. Both of these mounds are truncated. Eight other mounds of minor proportions are observable. The most remarkable feature connected with this mound is a wall of sun-dried bricks, built two feet thick, as its support on the northern side. These were filled with grass rushes and leaves, while some of the bricks of great size used in angular tumuli which mark the corners of the mound, retain the impressions of human hands.[52] The Mound-builders were certainly numerous in the Gulf States east of the Mississippi. On the Etowah River in Alabama a mound seventy-five feet high and twelve hundred feet in diameter at the base, has a graded avenue leading to its flattened summit. It has close affinities to the Mexican and Yucatan mounds.[53] M. F. Stephenson describes a group of ten mounds near Cartersville, Georgia, on the Etowah River, the principal one of which is eighty feet high and one hundred and fifty feet square on the top. A stone idol, gold beads, mica mirrors, translucent quartz beautifully wrought, and many relics of interest were here discovered. He also describes three chambers hewn out of the solid rock at the falls of Little River, near the Alabama line; while at Nacooche the crest of a conical hill was cut off at fifty feet from its base, leaving a platform top with an area of an acre and a half. Two sides are quite precipitous, but the others are protected by a ditch and wall. Two other instances of the stone wall are mentioned. First at Yond Mountain, four thousand feet high of solid granite, and perpendicular on all sides except a small space which is protected by a stone wall of artificial construction. The second instance is quite similar, occurring at Stone Mountain, which reaches a height of 2360 feet.[54] These natural eminences no doubt were utilized for the purposes of worship or observation, just as many natural hills in Mexico were graded and shaped symmetrically to serve similar uses.
Wm. McKinley, Esq., has described and surveyed additional works in Georgia of quite a remarkable character, on Sapelio Island in McIntosh County and on Dry Creek in Sacred Grove, Early County. But the most lofty work of all, the giant of the mounds, is the pyramid of Kolee Mokee in the same county, reaching a height of ninety-five feet and having a circumference at its base of 1128 feet. Its form is that of a parallelogram, 350 feet long and 214 wide. The plane on the summit measures 181 feet in length by 82½ feet in width.[55] In Florida the works of the Mound-builders have been extensively examined by Prof. Jeffries Wyman, to whose labors we shall refer in the next chapter. Dr. A. Mitchell made some interesting explorations in 1848 on Amelia Island, and was rewarded by the recovery of some well-marked mound crania.[56]
Returning to the confluence of the Missouri with the Mississippi, the point at which we left the western boundary of the Mound-builder country in order to treat the characteristics of its central region, we find mounds, as we previously stated, in great numbers in the neighborhood of St. Louis. In the valley of the St. Francis River, mounds that have been explored have yielded many rich relics, artistic water vessels, vases and statuettes. In Green County, Missouri, N. Lat. 37° 20´ and 16° Long, west of Washington City, is a very remarkable truncated conical mound which has only been externally surveyed. This mound is 60 feet high, 350 feet in diameter at the base, and 130 feet in diameter on the top. It is surrounded by a trench (except about twenty feet at the north) about two hundred feet wide and four feet deep. On the north the excavation is seven or eight feet deep.[57] These trenches served a double purpose—that of furnishing material for the construction of the mound, and when completed, of providing an impassable moat filled with water, that neither enemies nor the rabble might approach the sacred mount.[58] In Phillips County, Prof. Cox discovered an ancient fortification near Helena, built like a part of the Seltzertown mound, of sun-dried bricks; stems and leaves of the cane were used instead of straw in making the bricks.[59]
Professor Swallow, in company with a number of scientific gentlemen, opened a large mound in Lewis’ Prairie, west of New Madrid, Missouri (in December, 1856), in which he found a great collection of earthen dishes and vases. The mound was elliptical in form, measuring 900 feet in periphery at the base, 570 feet at the top and twenty feet in height. The remarkable feature of the mound was that it contained a room formed of poles, lathed with split cane and plastered with clay both inside and out, forming a solid mass. “Over this room was built the earthwork of the mound, so that when it was completed the room was in its centre. The earthwork was then coated with the plaster, and over all nature formed a soil. This mud plastering was left rough on the outside of the room, but smooth on the inside, which was painted with red ochre.”[60] Some of the plastering was burned as red and hard as brick, while other parts were only sun-dried. Professor Swallow believes the mounds of the region to be very ancient. On mounds and neighboring embankments a sycamore tree twenty-eight feet in circumference, three feet above the ground, a black-walnut twenty-six feet in circumference, a white ash twelve feet and a chestnut oak eleven feet in circumference were observed. In addition to these evidences of age, the Professor states that six feet of stratified sands and clays have formed around the mounds since they were deserted. (See Eighth Annual Report of Peabody Museum, pp. 16 et seq. Cambridge, 1875.)
Mr. A. J. Conant, in a very able paper published in the Transactions of the St. Louis Academy of Sciences for April 5, 1876, has more fully described the mound works near New Madrid. On the western bank of the Bayou St. John, partly in a cypress swamp covered with heavy timber and partly on adjacent prairie land, an earthwork encloses an area of about fifty acres. In this enclosure are three large mounds, one of which is pyramidal in form and still has traces of a graded way. An ancient well is discernible near it. A circular mound at the opposite end of the enclosure is estimated by Mr. Conant to have afforded a place of burial for a thousand individuals. The bodies were buried with their heads pointing toward the centre of the mound. A gourd-shaped vase, a small jug or drinking vessel, and an earthen pan or platter was found with each skeleton. The mouths of the vases were fashioned into the form of the head of some bird or the figure of some animal or of a human female. In depressions about three feet deep, within the enclosure, remains of burnt clay ovens were found. Fire-places were disclosed, as well as fragments of earthen vessels capable of holding ten or twelve gallons. The veritable kitchens of the Mound-builders, with their furniture, seem to have been brought to light. In front of the enclosure and projecting out into the bayou, are tongues of land about thirty feet long by ten or fifteen feet in width, and about the same distance apart, “resembling upon a small scale the wharves of a seaport town.” Mr. Conant pronounces them artificial, and that when employed by these builders, the present cypress swamp was the channel of a river. The multitude of mound works which are scattered over the entire south-eastern portion of Missouri indicate that the region “was once inhabited by a population so numerous, that in comparison its present occupants are only as the scattered pioneers of a newly-settled country.”[61]
Discoidal Stones. (Nat. Mus.)
Central figure, upper line, from Illinois Mound.
Prof. C. G. Forshey in Foster’s Pre-Historic Races, presents most valuable information relative to the mounds in the south-west. His observations convince us that the State of Louisiana and the valleys of the Arkansas and Red Rivers were not only the most thickly populated wing of the Mound-builder domain, but also furnish us with remains presenting affinities with the great works of Mexico so striking that no doubt can longer exist that the same people were the architects of both. He describes works, some of them of immense proportions, on the Mississippi fifty miles above Vicksburg; on Walnut Bayou; the south-west bend of Lake St. Joseph, and at Trinity in the parish of Catahoula, Louisiana. On the east bank of the Little River, a couple of miles above its mouth, where it empties into Lake Ocalohoola, stands a bluff walled with roughly hewn stone. The same writer observed a mound near Natchez twenty-five feet high, standing isolated in a swamp. This mound is one among many in different parts of the lower Mississippi region surmounted by comparatively younger trees than are found on the remains farther north. Works occur in the Atchafalaya basin, in the rear of Baton Rouge, on the uplands of Lake Pontchartrain and on the banks of Bayou Gros Tête. A remarkable group of truncated pyramids, peculiarly Mexican in their style of architecture, exist in Madison Parish, Louisiana, and are figured in Squier and Davis and copied by Foster.[62] It is needless to discuss the fact that the works of the Mound-builders exist in considerable numbers in Texas, extending across the Rio Grande into Mexico, establishing an unmistakable relationship as well as actual union between the truncated pyramids of the Mississippi Valley and the Tocalli of Mexico and the countries further south.[63] There can be no doubt as to the unity of the origin of the works in both countries. There are evidences also that the most recent works of Louisiana and Texas do not compare in antiquity with any found in the Ohio Valley, showing it to be altogether probable that the Mound-builders occupied the Lower Mississippi Valley and Gulf coast for a considerable period after they were driven from the northern and central region by their enemies.[64] Several recent writers, with no more proof than that obsidian from Mexico has been found in the mounds, have confidently expressed the belief that the Mound-builders entered the Mississippi Valley and the Central Region from the South. This was based also on the assumption that no remains were found in the North-west. It, however, is proper to note here the marks of architectural progression observable in the geographical distribution of ancient works. Men all around the world have been mound or pyramid builders. To attempt to demonstrate this well-known fact to an intelligent reader by citing the customs of antiquity and the works of the present great Asiatic nations, would seem little less than pedantry rather than the work of serious investigation. The religious idea in man, whether observed in the darkest heathenism or partially enlightened civilization, has always associated a place of sanctuary with the conditions of elevation and separateness. It matters not whether you apply the rule to the practices of the most obscure antiquity, where a hill or natural eminence was the sanctuary of an idol, the residence of a god, or examine the motives which prompt the erection of the dome of a St. Paul or a St. Peter’s, or coming nearer home, analyze the reasons for the construction of the ordinary church spire, the same inexplicable intuition is found at the bottom of them all. The simple mound so common in the northern and central region of the United States, represents probably the first attempts at the imitation of nature in providing a place of worship. In the absence of hills and natural eminences on great plains like the prairies of the North-west (for instance in such cases as are cited on [pages 28 and 29]), nothing would be more natural than the construction of an artificial hillock, especially if the elements and nature were the objects of worship. The next step might have been again a copy or an imitation, but instead of choosing a subject from inanimate nature, an advance is made in the artistic scale, and the animal kingdom furnishes not only one but varied models for reproduction. The custom among savage tribes of personifying the deity, of dressing him up in some form, tangible and visible, was especially characteristic of the mythology of the Nahua nations of Mexico. It is not necessary to go to Egypt, or India, or China to find animals of various kinds dedicated to and associated with the national gods, for in the Maya and Nahua mythologies, as well as in the traditions of some of the wild tribes of the Pacific coast, the serpent, the coyote, the beaver and the buzzard play an active part. The erection of religious structures representing animals no doubt sacred to the Mound-builders, was carried on to a remarkable extent in Wisconsin. These strange works probably indicate the second step in their scale of architectural progression. In the Ohio Valley, while the ordinary mound is found in great numbers, and a few instances of animal mounds occur, three new architectural features present themselves in marked prominence, all of which are artistically in advance of those existing in the North and North-west. These are the enclosures, the truncated mounds, and principally the truncated pyramids, all of which are a departure from the strict imitation of nature, and exhibit the gradual growth of the architectural idea and the outcropping of the notion of utility. South of the Ohio Valley the animal mounds disappear altogether and the truncated mounds grow less common, while the truncated pyramid, the highest artistic form, with its complicated system of graded ways and its nice geometrical proportions, becomes the all predominant type of structure. In the Lower Mississippi Valley, in some cases, as we have observed, dried brick were used in the walls and angles of pyramids of the most perfect type. Stone was also employed in a few instances. Here we find the transition to Southern Mexico complete. No break exists in the architectural chain.
Stone Plates. ⅙ Natural Size. (Nat. Mus.)
The left and central figures from an Alabama Mound.
Squier and Davis (and Foster as well as most other writers have followed their example) classified the works of the Mound-builders as follows:
I. | Enclosures | For Defence. Sacred. Miscellaneous. | |
II. | Mounds | Of Sacrifice. For Temple-Sites. Of Sepulture. Of Observation. |
To this some have added mounds for residence.
It does not fall within the scope of this work to treat of the specific character and uses of the works of the Mound-builders, but rather to note their extent and indications of age with relation to their bearing on the antiquity of man in this country. Some of the arts and manufactures of the Mound-builders are set forth in the illustrations interspersed throughout the chapter.[65] A few of the cuts figure objects found upon the surface. Yet it is not improbable that a due proportion of these objects were of Mound-builder origin.
The domestic arts appear the most advanced of any among this ancient people. Pottery of respectable quality and of varied patterns is abundant among their remains. Coarse cloth woven of vegetable fibre, and in some instances partly made of hair, has been discovered in mounds in several localities. Shell and copper beads for the purposes of ornamentation were made in great numbers. Copper axes of good quality have occasionally been exhumed. Copper and bone needles with well-drilled eyes were made by them. They wove baskets and coarse matting. They carved pipes in stone or moulded them in clay, sometimes in fantastic forms, while again they fashioned them with rare skill into the perfect effigies of animals and birds, or possibly ornamented them with likenesses of their own faces. With the exception of a few observations on the altar and sepulchral mounds, we refrain from a further treatment of the works above classified, as having no particular bearing on the question in hand, and refer the reader to the works of Squier and Davis, and also to that of Dr. Foster, already often quoted. Of the Altar or Sacrificial Mounds, the first-named authors remark: The general characteristics of this class of mounds are: 1. That they occur only within the vicinity of the enclosures or sacred places; 2. That they are stratified; 3. That they contain symmetrical altars of burned clay or stone, on which were deposited various remains which in all cases have been more or less subjected to the action of fire.[66] The same authors present the following section of a mound examined by them at Mound City, near Chillicothe, Ohio, which is a fair sample of the usual stratification observed in altar mounds.[67] The altar which this mound contained was a parallelogram measuring 8 × 10 feet at its base and 4 × 6 feet at its top. It was only eighteen inches in height, and contained a basin with a dip of nine inches. In this basin were found fine ashes, fragments of pottery and shell beads. A reference to the figure shows that the sand-stratum is semicircular, with its extremities resting on the outer sides of the altar. The skeleton shown in the figure designates a point three feet below the apex of the mound where two well-preserved skeletons were found. The strata were disturbed for their burial evidently at a considerable period after the construction of the mound. This is a fair example of the “intrusive burial” practised in the mounds by Red Indians. The same authors found some of these altars rich in relics; one especially in the vicinity of the above-described mound contained nearly two hundred pipes carved in stone. Also a considerable number of pearl and shell beads and copper ornaments covered with silver. It is quite probable that the copper was from their Lake Superior mines, as they alone are known to yield deposits of silver with copper. The same peculiarity was observed with reference to the copper ornaments and implements found in the Marietta works. The pipes secured in this mound were much calcined by heat, and considerable copper had been fused in the basin of the altar. In some of the mounds examined large collections were obtained, and in some instances, articles made of obsidian, which it is believed could be procured nowhere nearer than the Mexican mountains of Cerro Gordo, or the region west of the Rocky Mountains.[68]
Pestles and Mullers. (Nat. Mus.) Surface Finds.
Section of Altar Mound. (After Squier and Davis.)
Vase from an Ohio Mound.
The evidences are abundant that some mysterious rites were performed at the altar mounds; cremation only may have been practised, but we fear that even more awful and heart-sickening ceremonies took place upon these altars as well as upon the high temple sites in which human victims may have been offered to appease the elements or the sun or moon by their death agonies. What splendid ceremonial, what mystic rites administered by a national priesthood in the presence of a devout multitude may have accompanied these horrible sacrifices, are beyond even the limits of conjecture. Besides cremation, inhumation was also practised extensively. Multitudes of mounds were devoted either partly or exclusively to such uses. Mr. Tomlinson, the owner of the Grave Creek Mound, who sank a shaft from its original summit to its centre, and intercepted it by a tunnel along the surface of the ground, speaking of the latter excavation, remarks: “At the distance of one hundred and eleven feet we came to a vault, which had been excavated before the mound was commenced, eight by twelve feet and seven in depth. Along each side and across the ends, upright timbers had been placed, which supported timbers thrown across the vault as a ceiling. These timbers were covered with loose unhewn stone, common to the neighborhood. The timbers had rotted and tumbled into the vault. * * * In this vault were two human skeletons, one of which had no ornaments, the other was surrounded by six hundred and fifty ivory (shell) beads, and an ivory (bone) ornament six inches long.” Thirty-five feet above the bottom vault another was found containing a skeleton decorated with copper rings, plates of mica and shell disks. The number of disks cut from the shell known as the Buscycon perversum and collected by the excavators was 2350; of mica 250 specimens, and of the little shell known as Marginella apicina, 500; all of which had been pierced and strung as beads. Ten skeletons were subsequently found together upon enlarging the horizontal tunnel. Ashes, charcoal and burnt bones were also discovered in large masses. Though this was the largest of this class of mounds, still the general characteristics of the contents are the same in all of them, and are usually disposed in the same relative position to each other.[69] One of the most interesting explorations of sepulchral mounds was that conducted in the autumn of 1865 by Professor O. C. Marsh, assisted by Mr. Geo. P. Russell, of Salem, Mass., in what is known as the “Taylor Mound,” situated two and a half miles south of Newark, Ohio. The mound was ten feet high and eighty feet in diameter, and was surmounted by a forest of oak trees ranging from two and a half to eight feet in thickness, while the decaying trunks of a former growth were lying upon the ground. The mound was excavated from the apex downward. Five feet from the surface a pipe and a tube of stone unknown in Ohio were found. Seven feet from the top, in a thin white layer of earth, a string of more than one hundred beads of native copper were found around the neck of a child about three years old. The salts of the copper had preserved the cord of vegetable fibre on which they were strung. The beads were about one-fourth of an inch in length and one-third in diameter. They evidently had been hammered out of the metal in its original state, and the workmanship displayed no inferior skill. One foot deeper the remains of two adults, male and female, were found carefully buried in layers of bark, their heads towards the east, and the body of the female resting upon that of the male skeleton. Immediately above these were found a considerable number of charred human bones and the evidences of cremation or human sacrifice in honor to the couple (probably man and wife) below. The Professor even expresses the fear that the wife—who appears to have been about thirty years of age—may have been put to death and buried above the remains of her deceased consort. A foot deeper the party found another layer of charcoal, ashes and charred bones, similar to the above, and immediately beneath it a carefully-buried skeleton, much decomposed, lying in a white layer of earth, and with its head toward the east. A few inches below this skeleton several carelessly-buried skeletons were found near the natural level of the earth. Below the natural surface a cist six feet long, three feet wide and two feet deep was found containing the remains of eight or more skeletons, which seem to have been imperfect when buried. The remains had been thrown into the grave in a careless and perhaps hasty manner. In the grave were found nine lance and arrow-heads of flint. Six small hand-axes, one of them of hematite and the others of compact greenstone or diorite, a small hatchet of hematite, a flint chisel and scraper, fine needles or bodkins made of the metatarsal bones of the common deer, a whistle made from the tooth of a young bear, and spoons cut from the shells of river mussels. A rude vessel of clay was found, but broken, while several bones of animals, all but two of existing species in Ohio at present, were discovered; though it is worthy of remark that the remains of the deer were of a size seldom attained by the species at the present day. All the skulls found in the mound were broken, and all but two so badly decayed that no effort was made to preserve them. These two were of small size showing the vertical occiput, prominent vertex and large inter-parietal diameter. There is abundant evidence that the mound had never been disturbed by Indians.[70]
Stone Pipes from Ohio Mounds.
One of the best evidences which we have of the systematic government and habits of the Mound-builders, together with the comparatively advanced state of the practical arts among them, is found in the ancient copper mines of the Lake Superior Region so extensively operated by them at quite a remote period.[71] These were first discovered by Mr. S. O. Knapp, agent of the Minnesota Mining Company, in 1848. One excavation explored by this gentleman was thirty feet deep, filled with clay and a mass of mouldering vegetable matter. Eighteen feet from the surface he found a mass of copper ten feet long, three feet wide and two feet thick, weighing over six tons. By digging around this great lump of metal, he observed that it was resting on “a cob-work of round logs or skids six or eight inches in diameter, the ends of which showed plainly the strokes of a small axe or cutting tool about two and a half inches in width”. The wood, from its exposure to moisture, had lost all its consistency, and opposed no more resistance to a knife-blade than would ordinary peat. After having raised the mass of copper over five feet along the foot wall of the lode on the timbers by means of wedges, the ancient miners had abandoned the task. The walls of the mine still show the marks of fire; charcoal and stone mauls were taken from this and similar excavations. The largest of these mauls weighed thirty-six pounds and was encircled by a double groove around its centre. Withes were probably wound in these grooves by which two men could wield the maul very effectively. The number of smaller hammers of greenstone and porphyry removed from these works by Mr. Knapp exceeded ten cart-loads. In one of the pits a rude oak ladder was found, made by trimming the branches of a tree at a distance from the trunk to leave a sufficient foothold. Wooden levers, preserved beneath the water, were also of frequent occurrence. A copper maul, shaped by pounding in a cold state, and weighing upwards of twenty pounds, was found in this locality, as well as many well-formed copper implements designed for various purposes. Upon a mound of rubbish near one of the excavations, Messrs. Foster and Whitney saw a pine stump ten feet in circumference—the trunk having been broken fifteen feet from the ground—which must have grown and died after the earth was thrown up. Mr. Knapp mentions a hemlock which he found growing on a heap of rubbish which had 395 rings of annual growth. Fallen and decayed trees of a previous generation were found lying across the pits. In front of the Waterbury mine are blocks of stone weighing two and three tons which had been removed by the ancient miners from the shaft, and when observed by Colonel Whittlesey, they were covered by a forest growth of the full size and kind common to the neighboring region. Under a pile of rubbish the remains of a trough of cedar bark was brought to light and had been used to carry off water baled from the mine by means of wooden bowls, some of which were preserved by water in the mines. Mr. S. W. Hill communicated to Dr. Foster in 1872 the discovery of mining pits in Isle Royal, measuring fifty feet in depth.[72] In the Ontonagon region for thirty miles traces of the ancient miners abound. The idea that the Indians formerly worked these mines was abandoned shortly after their discovery. They possess no tradition of copper mines, nor did their ancestors visited by the Jesuit Fathers in the early part of the seventeenth century obtain any intelligence of mines, though they penetrated this region in 1660. They often mention the occurrence of loose masses of copper found in the shape of boulders, but could learn nothing from the Indians as to their origin. It is quite certain that no traditions were current among them on the subject. “Instead,” says Col. Whittlesey, “of viewing copper as an object of every day use, they regarded it as a sacred Manitou, and carefully preserved pieces of it wrapped up in skin in their lodges for many years; and this custom has been continued to modern times.”[73] Father Allouez, in his Relation, has described this custom.[74] Father Dablon, who shortly afterward visited the Lake Superior tribes, has described their superstitions concerning an island where the missionaries first met with copper.[75] That the Mound-builders were these ancient miners, there is abundant evidence. Col. Whittlesey has described a collection of copper implements from Carp River containing pieces of native silver, such as have often been found in the Ohio mounds.[76] We have already referred to this peculiarity of the Lake Superior copper. The use of copper by the Mound-builders was very general all the way from Wisconsin to the Gulf, and the labor involved in a journey of a thousand miles from the Ohio Valley to the copper regions, the toil of the summer’s mining, and the tedious transportation of the metal to their homes upon their backs, and by means of an imperfect system of navigation, indicates either industry and resolution such as no savage Indian ever possessed, or a condition of servitude in which thousands occupied a position of abject slavery.
Aboriginal Stone Axes. Surface Finds.
Stone Mauls and Hammers. Surface Finds.
Copper Celts—the smaller from a Mound near Savannah, Tennessee. (Nat. Mus.)
No permanent abodes were erected by the miners in this region, no mounds were constructed, but the indications all point to a summer’s residence only and a return to the south with the accumulation of their toil when the severities of winter approached. Frederick von Hellwald expresses it as his opinion that the Mexicans obtained all their copper from the Lake Superior mines, and adds that no evidences exist that copper was mined in Mexico or Central America prior to the Spanish Conquest.[77] Humboldt affirms that various metals were mined by the Mexicans, but does not specify copper.[78] Col. Whittlesey and Prof. Andrews estimate that in the ancient Lake Superior mines worked by the Mound-builders, the removed metal would aggregate a length of one hundred and fifty miles in veins of varying thickness. This fact certainly indicates that great supplies were transported southward.
This remarkable people was evidently possessed of the beginnings of science; at least if the Davenport and Cincinnati tablets are genuine, astronomy must have received considerable attention at their hands. In the former tablet we observe a cycle divided into twelve months (which, however, is so modern and coincides so strictly with our division as to excite suspicion of fraud), while in the latter we have the number 368 as the sum of the products of the longer and shorter lines, suggestive of an approximation to the number of days in a year. Other supposed astronomical instruments have been discovered in the mounds of Ohio, and several of these, antique tubes, telescope devices, were discovered in the course of excavations made in 1842 in the most easterly of the Elizabethtown group, West Virginia. Mr. Schoolcraft makes the following statement concerning them: “Several tubes of stone were disclosed, the precise object of which has been the subject of various opinions. The longest measured twelve inches, the shortest eight. Three of them were carved out of steatite, being skillfully cut and polished. The diameter of the tube externally was one inch and four-tenths; the bore eight-tenths of an inch. By placing the eye at the diminished end, the extraneous light is shut from the pupil, and distant objects are more clearly discerned.”[79] A silver figure found in Peru represents a man in the act of studying the heavens through one of these tubes, and Captain Dupaix saw a stone in Mexico bearing the figure of a man sculptured on its side in the act of using a similar tube.[80]
Clay Vessels from Mounds in the Mississippi Valley. ¼ Size. (Nat. Mus.)
Clay Tube from an Ohio Mound. ½ Natural Size. (Peabody Mus.)
With reference to the civilization of the Mound-builders, however much writers may differ, we think the following conclusions may be safely accepted: That they came into the country in comparatively small numbers at first (if they were not Autochthones, and there is no substantial proof that the Mound-builders were such), and during their residence in the territory occupied by the United States they became extremely populous. Their settlements were widespread, as the extent of their remains indicate. The magnitude of their works, some of which approximate the proportions of Egyptian pyramids, testify to the architectural talent of the people and the fact that they had developed a system of government which controlled the labor of multitudes, whether of subjects or slaves. They were an agricultural people, as the extensive ancient garden-beds found in Wisconsin and Missouri indicate. Their manufactures afford proof that they had attained a respectable degree of advancement, and show that they understood the advantages of the division of labor.[81] Their domestic utensils, the cloth of which they made their clothing, and the artistic vessels met with everywhere in the mounds, point to the development of home culture and domestic industry. There is no reason for believing that the people who wrought stone and clay into perfect effigies of animals have not left us sculptures of their own faces in the images exhumed from the mounds.
Large Clay Vessel from Milledgeville, Georgia. Size 14 Inches High and 13 Inches across Aperture. (Nat. Mus.)
They mined copper, which they wrought into implements of war, into ornaments and articles for domestic use. They quarried mica for mirrors and other purposes.[82] They furthermore worked flint and salt mines. They probably possessed some astronomical knowledge, though to what extent is unknown.
Copper Relics from Wisconsin. (From photos furnished by Prof. Butler.)
Their trade, as Dr. Rau has shown, was widespread, extending probably from Lake Superior to the Gulf, and possibly to Mexico.[83] They constructed canals by which lake systems were united, a fact which Mr. Conant has recently shown to be well established in Missouri.[84] Their defences were numerous and constructed with reference to strategic principles, while their system of signals placed on lofty summits, visible from their settlements and communicating with the great watercourses at immense distances, rival the signal systems in use at the beginning of the present century. Their religion seems to have been attended with the same ceremonies in all parts of their domain. That its rites were celebrated with great demonstrations is certain. The sun and moon probably were the all-important deities, to whom sacrifices (possibly human) were offered. We have already alluded to the development in architecture and art which marked the possible transition of this people from north to south. Here we see but the rude beginnings of a civilization which no doubt subsequently unfolded in its fuller glory in the valley of Anahuac, and spreading southward engrafted a new life upon the wreck of Xibalba. Though there is no evidence that the Mound-builders were indigenous, we must admit that their civilization was purely such—the natural product of climate and the conditions surrounding them.[85]
CHAPTER II.
ANTIQUITY OF MAN ON THE WESTERN CONTINENT.
Antiquity of the Mounds—No Tradition of the Mound-builders—Vegetation Covering the Mounds—Age of Mound Crania—Probable Date of the Abandonment of the Mounds—Ancient Shell-heaps—Man’s Influence on Nature—Supposed Testimony of Geology—Agassiz on the Floridian Jaw-bone—Remains on Santos River—The Natchez Bone—Remains on Petit Anse Island—Brazilian Bone caves—Dr. Koch’s Pretended Discoveries—Ancient Hearths—Age of the Mississippi Delta—Dr. Dowler’s Discovery at New Orleans—Dr. Abbott’s Discoveries in New Jersey—Discoveries in California—Inter-Glacial Relics in Ohio—Crania from Mounds in the North-west—No Evidences as yet Discovered Proving Man’s Great Antiquity in America.
AT the opening of the preceding chapter we made some allusions to the supposed antiquity of the Red Indian, a subject of growing archæological significance, though as yet it affords us rather unsatisfactory evidence, scientifically considered, relative to the problem of man’s antiquity on this continent. Quite different, however, is the estimate which we place on data left us by the people of the mounds. The question of the antiquity of the Mound-builders is one which cannot be accurately determined; no chronometric scale can be applied to the uncertain record which they have left behind them. Their history is a sealed book, and the approximate date of their first occupancy of the Mississippi Basin is as uncertain as the period of man’s origin. However, certain data present themselves for our consideration which lead us to conclude that a few thousand years, three or four perhaps, and possibly even less time, is all that is required in which to account for their growth into a nation and the moderate advancement which they made toward civilization. As to when the Mound-builders left this country, is another question, and can be approximated more closely. It is a well-known fact that no tradition was ever found among the Indians as to the origin or the purpose for which the mounds were constructed. They described them as having been found by their ancestors in the same condition in which we now see them, and clothed, if not with the same, at least with a growth of vegetation similar to that which covers them to-day. It is true the Iroquois, who are supposed to have reached the lake regions and the Ohio Valley some time previous to the Algonquins, had certain vague traditions of a people whom they called the “Allighewi;” but there seems to be nothing in those indefinite allusions which would associate that unknown people with the mounds. Still, Indian tradition is nearly valueless in determining this question, since any fact, however grave, was soon forgotten by a people so savage and unsettled. The tribes of the lake region, says Dr. Lapham in his Antiquities, so soon forgot the visit of the Jesuit Fathers that their descendants a few generations later had no tradition of the event. The same is true of the Indians of the Mississippi Valley with reference to De Soto’s expedition, “which must,” remarks Dr. Foster, “have impressed their ancestors with dread at the sight of horses ridden by men, and the sound of fire-arms, which they must have likened to thunder. Sir John Lubbock states that the New Zealanders at the time of Captain Cook’s visit had forgotten altogether Tasman’s visit, made less than one hundred and thirty years before.”[86] Another argument for the construction of the mounds at a remote period, and which is certainly of little more value than Indian tradition, is that which supposes the Mound-builders to have erected works on the lowest of the river terraces existing at the time of their occupancy of the country. Much stress has been laid on the fact that no works have been found on the lowest-formed of the river terraces which mark the subsidence of the western rivers. “And as there is no good reason,” remarks Mr. Baldwin, “why their builders should have avoided erecting them on that terrace while they raised them promiscuously on all the others, it follows, not unreasonably, that this terrace has been formed since the works were erected.”[87] To any one familiar with the great rise and fall which takes place annually in the water-level of the Ohio and Mississippi and all of their tributaries, the fallacy of such an argument is at once apparent. We must at least allow that the Mound-builders learned by experience, just as animals do, even if we could deny them a very high order of intelligence. Little time could have elapsed after their advent to these valleys before they observed the impracticability of erecting mounds or enclosures on most of the alluvial bottoms bordering these streams. The raging torrents which sometimes sweep through the valleys of the central basin, uprooting the largest trees, carrying away natural embankments, forming immense deposits of new alluvium, submerging miles of adjacent country, and in many ways changing its physical conformation, would in a few years obliterate any traces of earthworks built within their reach.[88] Far more certain data, however, is furnished in the arborescent vegetation which covers many of the works, with which to measure part of the period during which they have remained unoccupied, though we are left in uncertainty as to the remoteness of their abandonment. The annular rings of a tree present us indisputable evidence as to its age.[89] It is evident that the forests which cover these remains have grown up since they were vacated, as no difference exists between them and the surrounding vegetation—no break exists in the density of the forests in the immediate vicinity of the works. The oldest of the trees found upon the works present eight hundred annual rings, indicating as many years of growth.[90] This cannot, however, be set down as the limit of the period of their abandonment, since, as it seems that this country was open and mostly unwooded in the sections thickly settled by the Mound-builders, a considerable time would be requisite for the slow encroachments of a forest, even when the trees which now stand upon the mounds may have been preceded by trees of other species or by two or three generations of their own.[91] The age of the trees on the mound-works in the Ohio Valley or farther north, rarely exceeds five hundred or six hundred years, and such cases as that cited by Sir Charles Lyell are the exceptions. Farther south, in the Mississippi Valley and near the Gulf, they are still younger than those at the north.[92] So noticeable is this that we are led to think the Gulf coast may have been occupied by the Mound-builders for a couple of centuries after they were driven by their enemies from the country north of the mouths of the Missouri and Ohio Rivers. The condition of skeletons found in the mounds indicate an antiquity which they furnish us no means of measuring. It is not to be presumed that all human remains discovered in excavating the works were interred immediately previous to the abandonment of the country. Some of them may belong to the middle or beginning of the period of their residence in the territory occupied by the United States. Human remains taken from the mounds, perhaps furnish us better evidence of the long residence of the Mound-builders in this country than any other data in our possession. It suffices to say that few Mound-builder crania have been recovered in a condition to be of any service to science; although of late years, several valuable collections have been made. The preservation of the skeletons depends greatly on the composition of the soil in which they are found. The Loess has afforded well-preserved remains, however, with the gelatinous matter leached out. The crania of the sandy loam of river bottoms, on the other hand, are in all cases so far decayed upon discovery that the greatest precautions fail to prevent them from crumbling to dust when exposed to the light and air. Mastodon bones, on the contrary, recovered from peat swamps, and much older than any of the remains of the Mound-builders, are found to have retained so much of their gelatinous matter as to furnish a nourishing soup.[93] To these evidences may be added the testimony derived from the ancient ruins which points to long-continued occupation and to a considerable lapse of time since their abandonment.
How long the Mound-builders occupied the country north of the Gulf of Mexico it is impossible in the present state of science to determine. Some authors conjecture that they were here two thousand years; that we think would be time enough, though after all it is but conjecture. It seems to us, however, that the time of the abandonment of their works may be more closely approximated. A thousand or two years may have elapsed since they vacated the Ohio Valley, and a period embracing seven or eight centuries may have passed since they retired from the Gulf coast. As an evidence of a large population having existed in this country at a former period, we have immense shell-heaps artificially collected, extending along the Atlantic coast from Nova Scotia to Florida, on the Gulf coast and up the river valleys through nearly all of the Southern States. It is difficult to assign the formation of these vast remains to any definite period or to any particular people. Though of the same character as the Kjökken-Möddings (Kitchen-Middens) of the Danish, they furnish no indications of so great an antiquity. This has been shown by Dr. Jeffries Wyman in his researches in Maine and Massachusetts.[94] Sir Charles Lyell made an examination of a shell-bank on St. Simon’s Island, near the mouth of the Allamaha River, Georgia, so extensive that it covers ten acres to a depth varying from five to ten feet.[95] Dr. Brinton has described immense accumulations in Florida. On Amelia Island, shells exist to the depth of three feet over an area 150 yards wide and a quarter of a mile long. Notable instances of a similar kind are Turtle Mound near Smyrna—a mass of oyster shells thirty feet thick—and a shell-bank on Crystal River four miles from its mouth, reaching a height of forty feet.[96] Dr. Wyman carefully examined many of the fresh-water shell-heaps of Florida and obtained pretty satisfactory results.[97] Near the Silver spring upon a shell-heap covering nearly twenty acres, stand several live-oaks of immense size, the largest of which measured between twenty-six and twenty-seven feet in circumference. Excavations under this monster, taken together with its position on the side of the shell-bank, proved it to be of more recent origin than the latter. Prof. Wyman, by allowing twelve rings to the inch and granting it a semi-diameter of fifty inches, estimated that it was not less than six hundred years old. Of course the shell-bank may have existed a long time before any vegetation appeared upon it. The crania of the shell-banks of Florida differ from those of the Mound-builders in greater thickness as well as greater mean capacity.[98] In his Fresh-water Shell-Mounds of the St. John’s River, and in his memoir on Human Remains in the Shell-heaps of the St. John’s River (Seventh Annual Report of Peabody Museum, pp. 26 et seq.), Dr. Wyman reports having discovered the startling fact that cannibalism prevailed among the barbarous people of the shell-banks. In the Peabody Museum a collection of human bones taken from the shell-banks by Dr. Wyman are arranged to illustrate this sad discovery. It is possible that this people had some relationship to the Caribs. Prof. Forshey has described in brief the vast extent and proportions of the marine shell-banks of the Gulf coast, and the shores of the bayous, lakes and lagoons where Guathodon shells are found. Those of Louisiana, especially near New Orleans, are remarkable, but have yielded no remains, except broken pottery, flint flakes and stone hatchets. A shell-bank at Grand Lake, on the Teche, however, upon which great live-oaks are growing, situated fifteen miles inland, from which the sea has receded since its formation, “yielded unique specimens of axes of hæmatitic iron-ore and glazed pottery.”[99] Probably the most remote shell-bank from the sea containing marine shells, occurs on the Alabama River, fifty miles inland.[100] Fresh-water shell-banks, other than those examined in Florida, furnish evidences of slow accumulation and indicate a comparatively remote antiquity for their origin. On Stalling’s Island, in the Savannah River, two hundred miles above its mouth, is a shell-bank three hundred feet in length by one hundred and twenty feet in width, with an average depth of over fifteen feet.[101] In the American Bottom and on many of the tributaries of the Mississippi, shell-banks occur, composed of varieties of the Unios and Anodons. A remarkable example of such accumulation is the well-known shell-bank a mile and a half south of New Harmony, Indiana, and situated on a high hill 170 feet above the level of an arm of the Wabash River. The bank covers an area of a quarter of an acre, and has attracted the attention of eminent scientists like Leasure, Say, Lyell and others, but nothing of value was developed that would refer the construction of this and similar banks to any people more ancient than the Mound-builders.[102] On the Pacific coast, great numbers of shell-banks exist, but contain nothing different from those in other parts of the country. (See Researches in the Kjökken Möddings of the Coast of Oregon and of the Santa Barbara Islands and Adjacent Mainland, by Paul Schumacher. Bulletin of U. S. Geol. and Geog. Survey, vol. iii, No. 1.) There can be little doubt but these strange and vast accumulations indicating the presence of an extinct population, had a remote beginning, and have been added to from time to time by different peoples, removed from each other both by the diversities of race and the lapse of time.
A trifle more than a decade ago the treatment of the subject of this chapter would have called for a discussion of the antiquity of the magnificent architectural remains of Southern Mexico, and of the still older ruins of the Maya civilization in Yucatan, and the branches of that people in Central America; but the indefatigable labor which has been bestowed by several eminent antiquarians upon the ancient history of the civilized nations of the New World previous to its discovery by Europeans, has transferred this part of the subject to another field; has elevated it from the uncertain position it occupied in archæology to a place in the realm of history. It is true that it is difficult to draw the line between tradition and history, and especially so in this case; but as tradition does not conflict with archæology in its bearing on the ancient civilization of Tropical America, it is better than nothing; certainly archæology thus far has amounted to little more than nothing in revealing the approximate period of the origin of these remains. While it has done much towards verifying tradition and assisted largely in its interpretation, it has not been adequate to the task of solving the age of these remains. Tradition, on the contrary, and we might almost say history, carries us back three thousand years, if not farther, as the period when man—whether the first here or not—appeared upon the Western Continent. The discussion of this part of our subject will be given in a future chapter. Too much doubt exists with reference to the stupendous remains of Peru, especially in the neighborhood of Lake Titicaca, Tiahuanaco, Old Huanaco, and Grau-Chimu, as to whether they antedated the arrival of the Incas by a great lapse of time, to admit of a serious discussion here. Nothing of a scientific character is available as yet upon which even to base conjecture. Rivero and Tschudi, it is true, have treated the subject, and their work has been often quoted, but after all it amounts to but little more than a description of the remains, which serves the good end of exciting interest in the subject. The antiquities and legendary history of the Peruvians have so recently been treated with such ability by Mr. E. G. Squier, that the South American civilization needs no attention in this connection.
In considering the question as to how long man has inhabited this continent, his influence upon nature cannot be overlooked. In the animal kingdom, certain animals were domesticated by the aborigines from so remote a period that scarcely any of their species, as in the case of the lama of Peru, were to be found in a state of unrestrained freedom at the advent of the Spaniards. In the vegetable kingdom more abundant testimony of the same nature is presented. A plant must be subjected to the transforming influences of cultivation for a long time before it becomes so changed as no longer to be identified with the wild species, and infinitely longer before it becomes entirely dependent upon cultivation for propagation. Yet we find that both of these facts have been accomplished with reference to the maize, tobacco, cotton, quinoa and mandico plants; and the only species of palm cultivated by the South American Indians, that known as the Gulielma speciosa, has lost through that culture its original nut-like seed, and is dependent upon the hands of its cultivators for its life.[103] Alluding to the above-named plants, Dr. Brinton remarks: “Several are sure to perish unless fostered by human care. What numberless ages does this suggest? How many centuries elapsed ere man thought of cultivating Indian corn? How many more ere it had spread over nearly a hundred degrees of latitude and lost all resemblance to its original form?”[104] Certainly this class of evidence, though furnishing no chronometric scale, points us to an antiquity for man on this continent more venerable than that suggested either by tumuli or architectural remains. The peculiar value of this argument rests in the fact that with the exception of cotton, none of the plants indicated have ever been cultivated by any other people than the aborigines of America, and could not have matured their characteristics of dependence in the old world, and been brought hither through the channel of immigration.
Back of the age of man’s monuments of an architectural character, beyond the beginning of the first existing shell-heap, and at a time probably more remote than the first cultivation of maize, it has been supposed that man occupied the Western Continent as a contemporary with the mastodon, megalonyx and other extinct animals. Our information in this department is entirely dependent upon the revelations of geological science. Unfortunately very little data which may be termed truly scientific has been brought to light. While considerable seeming testimony to man’s antiquity on this continent has been produced from a geologic quarter, still it mostly has been of an unscientific character. Fossils and human remains are said to have been discovered in localities and in associations that if the statements of those who found them could be relied on, would give man an antiquity here as great as in the valley of the Somme or in the bone caves of Belgium, France, and England. In the instances alluded to, it is not so often feared that the veracity of discoverers is doubtful as that their general lack of acquaintance with the science should make them liable to error. Where a competent geologist is not present to examine a fossil in situ, and report intelligently upon its position and surroundings, the case must remain open to suspicion. Unfortunately for science, this is precisely the weak point in most of the reputed “finds” which are cited as evidence in this field. In 1848, Count Pourtales found in Florida, according to Agassiz, a human jaw and teeth, and bones of the foot, embedded in a calcareous conglomerate forming a part of a coral reef. This reef, according to Agassiz, may be 135,000 years old, and the human remains at least ten thousand years.[105] This statement has been accepted as reliable by Sir Charles Lyell,[106] Daniel Wilson,[107] and other noted scientific gentlemen. Count Pourtales, however, makes a statement which materially alters the case. He says: “The human jaws and other bones found by myself in Florida in 1848, were not in a coral formation, but in a fresh-water sandstone on the shore of Lake Monroe, associated with fresh-water shells or species still living in the lakes (Paulina, Ampullaria, etc.). No date can be assigned to the formation of that deposit, at least from present observation.”[108] Human remains were found a number of years ago embedded in the solid rock in the island of Guadaloupe. “But more careful investigation proved the rock to be a concretionary limestone formed from the detritus of corals and shells.”[109] This rock was ascertained to have been one of very rapid formation.
Sir Charles Lyell, in his Travels in America in 1842, expressed the opinion that certain human remains found embedded in the solid rock near the town of St. Paul on the Santos River, Brazil, were of great antiquity.[110] Subsequently referring to the memoir of Dr. Meigs on the shell-heap of which the rock was a part,[111] he expresses the opinion that shells were brought to the place and heaped up over the remains, and “were bound together in a solid stone by the infiltration of carbonate of lime, and the mound may therefore be of no higher antiquity than those above alluded to on the Ohio.”[112] In a few instances it has been alleged that the remains of man have been found associated with the remains of the mastodon and other extinct animals. More than thirty years ago Dr. Dickson of Natchez discovered the pelvic bone of a man, the os innominatum, mingled with the bones of extinct animals (megalonyx and mylodon). This discovery was made two and one-half miles from Natchez, at the bottom of what is known as Bernard’s Bayou, an immense ravine from thirty to sixty feet deep and several miles long, formed by the convulsions of the earthquake of 1811–12. This bone is now in the possession of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Sir Charles Lyell visited the spot where it was discovered in 1846, and made a careful examination of the bone then in the possession of Dr. Dickson, and also explored the “Mammoth Ravine.” He discusses the case as follows: “It appeared to be quite in the same state of preservation and was of the same black color as the other fossils, and was believed to have come like them from a depth of about thirty feet from the surface. In my Second Visit to America in 1846,[113] I suggested as a possible explanation of this association of a human bone with remains of a mastodon and megalonyx, that the former may possibly have been derived from the vegetable soil at the top of the cliff, where, as the remains of extinct mammalia were dislodged from a lower position, and both may have fallen into the same heap or talus at the bottom of the ravine, the pelvic bone might, I conceived, have acquired its black color from having lain for years or centuries in a dark superficial peaty soil common in that region. I was informed that there were many human bones in old Indian graves in the same district stained of as black a dye.” * * * “No doubt, had the pelvic bone belonged to any recent mammifier other than man, such a theory would never have been resorted to; but so long as we have only one isolated case, and are without the testimony of a geologist who was present to behold the bone when still engaged in the matrix, and to extract it with his own hands, it is allowable to suspend our judgment as to the high antiquity of the fossil”.[114] Both Dr. Joseph Leidy[115] and Prof. C. G. Forshey,[116] who have examined the case, agree with the above. A few years ago a fragment of matting composed of the outer bark of the southern cane (Arundinaria macrosperma) was discovered on Petit Anse Island in Vermillion Bay, Louisiana, in connection with the remains of a fossil elephant. This island, containing about five thousand acres, is the locality of an extraordinary mine of rock salt, discovered and worked considerably during the late rebellion. The salt is found in nearly all parts of the island at the depth of fifteen or twenty feet below the surface of the soil. The matting was discovered near the surface of the salt, and about two feet above it were the remains of an elephant, including the tusks. Prof. Henry was the first to call public attention to the matter in a notice based on the verbal statements of T. F. Cleu, Esq., who presented a specimen of the matting to the Smithsonian Institution.[117] In 1867, Prof. E. W. Hilgard and Dr. E. Fontaine, secretary of the New Orleans Academy of Sciences, examined the locality. We regret to say that the report made by the latter is so confused in its use of terms and so conflicting in its statements as to be of no service to science.[118] Prof. Hilgard is, on the contrary, clear on the subject. He considers the heap in which the matting, elephant bones, and subsequently pottery in great profusion, were found, “A mass of detritus washed down from the surrounding hills.” “The pottery,” he remarks, “at some points form veritable strata three and six inches thick.” He then adds in a note that “it is very positively stated that mastodon bones were found considerably above some of the human relics. In a detrital mass, however, this cannot be considered a crucial test.”[119] Dr. Foster, after citing the above, interposes the objection, “That in an island whose area is less than eight miles square, there would be few floods of sufficient power to transport such heavy bones as the tusks and molars of mastodons to any considerable distance.”[120] Certainly the question is an open one, and in its present unsettled status proves nothing. The same uncertainty attaches itself to the discoveries of Dr. Lund, the distinguished Swedish naturalist, made many years ago in the bone caves of Minas Geraes, Brazil. This indefatigable investigator examined more than eight hundred caverns, and in only six were human remains found. In one instance out of the six, the remains were associated with the bones of animals now extinct, but the original stratification had been disturbed, and the presumption is that it was a case of comparatively recent interment.[121]
The most remarkable instance of the supposed, or we might be allowed in this case to say pretended discovery of human remains in association with those of extinct animals, is that set forth by Dr. Koch. This collector of curiosities described his discovery of a mastodon giganteus in 1839 in Gasconade County, Missouri, at a spot on the Bourbeuse River, first in a newspaper article of January 1839, and cited in the American Journal of Science and Arts.[122] And a second time in the St. Louis Commercial Bulletin of June 25, 1839, which article was also noticed in the above Journal.[123] This article was signed “A. Koch, Proprietor of the St. Louis Museum.” Subsequently he published descriptions in pamphlets, which unfortunately did not always convey the same impressions.[124] Dr. Koch, after referring to the discovery of a back and hip bone of this remarkable animal, gives the following description: “I immediately commenced opening a much larger space; the first layer of earth was a vegetable mould, then a blue clay, then sand and blue clay. I found a large quantity of pieces of rocks, weighing from two to twenty-five pounds each, evidently thrown there with the intention of hitting some object. It is necessary to remark that not the least sign of rocks or gravel is to be found nearer than from four or five hundred yards, and that these pieces were broken from larger rocks, and consequently carried here for some express purpose. After passing through these rocks I came to a layer of vegetable mould; on the surface of this was found the first blue bone, with this a spear and axe; the spear corresponds precisely with our common Indian spear; the axe is different from any I have seen. Also on this earth were ashes nearly from six inches to one foot in depth, intermixed with burned wood and burned bones, broken spears, axes, knives, etc. The fire appeared to have been the largest on the head and neck of the animal, as the ashes and coals were much deeper here than in the rest of the body; the skull was quite perfect, but so much burned that it crumbled to dust on the least touch; two feet from this was found two teeth broken off from the jaw, but mashed entirely to pieces. By putting them together, they showed the animal to have been much larger than any heretofore discovered. It appeared by the situation of the skeleton, that the animal had been sunk with its hind feet in the mud and water, and, unable to extricate itself, had fallen on its right side, and in that situation was found and killed as above described; consequently the hind and fore-feet on the right side were sunk deeper in the mud, and thereby saved from the effects of the fire; therefore I was able to preserve the whole of the hind foot to the very last joint, and the fore foot, all but some few small bones that were too much decayed to be worth saving. Also between the rocks that had sunk through the ashes, were found large pieces of skin that appeared like fresh-tanned sole leather, strongly impregnated with the lye from the ashes; and a great many of the sinews and arteries were plain to be seen on the earth and rocks, but in such a state as not to be moved except in small pieces the size of a hand, which are now preserved in spirits.” “Should any doubts arise in the mind of the reader of the correctness of the above statement, he can be referred to more than twenty witnesses who were present at the time of digging.”[125] Subsequent accounts agree substantially with the above except that we never again hear of the “large pieces of skin,” the “sinews and arteries,” “which are now preserved in spirits.” The presumption is that the author, upon mature reflection, arrived at the conclusion that in reality he had seen nothing of the kind, and in fact had never preserved such relics in spirits.
Dr. Koch made a second discovery about one year subsequently in Benton County, Missouri, in the bottom of the Pomme-de-Terre River, at about ten miles above its junction with the Osage River. His description is as follows: “The second trace of human existence with these animals I found during the excavation of the Missourium. There was embedded immediately under the femur or hind-leg bone of this animal, an arrow-head of rose-colored flint, resembling those used by the American Indians, but of larger size. This was the only arrow-head immediately with the skeleton; but in the same strata, at a distance of five or six feet, in a horizontal direction, four more arrow-heads were found. Three of these were of the same formation as the preceding. The fourth was of very rude workmanship. One of the last-mentioned three was of agate, the others of blue flint. These arrow-heads are indisputably the work of human hands. I examined the deposit in which they were embedded, and raised them out of their embedment with my own hands. The original stratum on which this river flowed at the time it was inhabited by the Missourium theristocaulodon and up to the time of its destruction, was of the upper green sand. On the surface of this stratum, and partly mingled with it, was the deposit of the before-described skeleton. The next stratum is from three to four feet in thickness, and consisted of a brown alluvium of the Eocene region, and was composed of vegetable matters of a tropical production. It contained all the remainder of the skeleton.” “Most of these vegetables were in a great state of preservation and consisted of a large quantity of cypress burs, wood and bark, tropical cane, ferns, palmetto leaves, several stumps of trees, and even the greater part of a flower of the strelitzia class, which when destroyed was not full blown. There was no sign or indication of any very large trees; the cypresses that were discovered being the largest that were growing here at the time. These various matters had been torn up by their roots and twisted and split into a thousand pieces apparently by lightning combined with a tremendous tempest or tornado; and all were involved in one common ruin. Several veins of iron pyrites ran through the stratum.” “The next over this formation was a layer of plastic clay of the Eocene region, also with iron pyrites. It was three feet in thickness; over this a layer of conglomerate from nine to eighteen inches in thickness; over this a layer of marl of the Pliocene region, from three to four feet in thickness; next, a second conglomerate from nine to eighteen inches in thickness. This was succeeded by a layer of yellow clay of the Pliocene; over this a third layer of conglomerate from nine to eighteen inches in thickness, and at last the present surface, consisting of brownish clay mingled with a few pebbles, and covered with large oak, maple, and elm trees, which were, as near as I could ascertain, from eighty to one hundred years old. In the centre of the above-mentioned deposit was a large spring which appeared to rise from the very bowels of the earth, as it was never affected by the severest rain, nor did it become lower by the longest draught.”[126] The preceding accounts were presented to the St. Louis Academy of Sciences in a special paper several years later (1857).[127]
Dr. Foster is inclined to believe that Dr. Koch was not mistaken in his claimed discovery, having arrived at that opinion by pointedly questioning him on the subject a short time before his (Koch’s) death.[128] Charles Rau is also of the opinion that he was truthful.[129] Mr. J. D. Dana, however, discusses the case as follows: “In the account of the second case above cited Dr. Koch says that the Missourium was embedded in a brown alluvium of the Eocene region resting on the ‘upper green sand;’ that next over it was plastic clay of the ‘Eocene region’ and beds of the ‘Pliocene region.’ He thus makes his Missourium to have come from the lower tertiary, and from a bed just above the green sand (cretaceous) when actually from quartenary beds; and he uses the terms Eocene and Pliocene, as if he had no familiarity with geological facts or language. The earlier pamphlet of 1840 avoids this bad geology, ‘the upper green sand,’ in that being called simply quicksand and the other beds merely beds of clay and conglomerate. All the pamphlets sustain the conclusion that Dr. Koch knew almost nothing of geology, and that what he gradually picked up from intercourse with geologists, he generally made much of but seldom was able to use rightly.”[130] The same critic says: “In zoological knowledge he was equally deficient,” and cites the fact of the discoverer recognizing the resemblance to the mastodon, still makes the animal an inhabitant of the watercourses like the hippopotamus; states that his food “consisted as much of vegetables as of flesh, although he undoubtedly consumed a great abundance of the latter,” and makes the marvelous revelation that he “was capable of feeding himself with his fore-foot after the manner of the beaver or otter.” Mr. Dana continues: “He says that one arrow-head lay ‘immediately under the femur or thigh-bone,’ and he further states in his later article of 1857, that ‘he carefully thought to investigate the point as to its having been brought thither after the deposit of the bone’ and decided against it. The observation and conclusion would have been more satisfactory had the author been a better observer.” “The descriptions of the deposits in Gasconade County containing the remains of an animal the principal part of which was consumed by fire is a still more unsatisfactory basis for a safe conclusion as to age. But in the article of 1857, he says that the layer of ashes, etc., ‘was covered by strata or alluvial deposits consisting of clay, sand and soil, from eight to nine feet thick, forming the bottom of the Bourbeuse (River) in general,’ which seems to make it almost certain that the beds were of quite recent origin.”[131] Mr. Dana considers Dr. Koch’s evidence as “very doubtful.”[132] Dr. Foster has figured a fossil which, for a better name, he has designated as a “stone hatchet,” from the modified drift of Jersey County, Illinois.[133] He is positive as to the position in which it was found, but has doubt as to its human origin. The probabilities are that its peculiar shape is due to its exposure to atmospheric agents. He remarks, however: “On the whole, I will not positively assert that this specimen is of human workmanship, but I affirm that if it had been recovered from a plowed field I should have unhesitatingly said it was an Indian hatchet.” In the Proceedings of the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences for July, 1859, Dr. Holmes describes the occurrence of fragments of pottery in close proximity with the bones of the mastodon and megatherium, on the Ashley River in South Carolina. The case, however, has not been considered authentic by scientific men. Dr. Holmes is possibly mistaken.[134] Col. Charles Whittlesey, in 1838, saw at Portsmouth, Ohio, on the Ohio River, remains of ancient fire-places situated eighteen to twenty feet above low water and about fifteen feet below the surface. He states, “at low water and thence up to a height of twelve or fifteen feet is a bed of sand and transported gravel, containing pebbles of quartz, granite, sandstone and limestone, derived partly from the adjacent Carboniferous and Devonian rocks and partly from the northern drift, the upper part much the coarsest. On this is a layer of blue quicksand from one to five feet thick, in which is a timber-bed including large numbers of the trunks, branches, stumps and leaves of trees, such as are now growing on the Ohio, principally birch, black-ash, oak and hickory. Over the dirt-bed is the usually loamy yellow clay of the valley, fifteen to thirty feet thick, on which are very extensive works of the Mound-builders. In and near the bottom of this undisturbed homogeneous river-loam I saw two places where fire had been built on a circular collection of small stones, a part of which were then embedded in the bank.”[135] Near these fire-places the writer of the above found the membranous covering of common river shells (the Unios). We think that no geologist familiar with the constant changes of the Ohio River bed, will consider that the conditions surrounding these ancient fire-places warrant us in assigning them a much greater antiquity than we attach to the Mound-builders’ works in the neighborhood. In 1846, Sir Charles Lyell, when at New Orleans, made an estimate of the time required to account for the immense annual deposit of the Mississippi River in the neighborhood of its delta. From a computation based on certain data, which assumed the area of the alluvial plain which is the result of those deposits, to equal 30,000 square miles, several hundred feet thick in some places, he estimated that probably 100,000 years would be requisite.[136] Subsequently, during the process of excavating for the New Orleans Gas Works, it was found necessary to cut through four buried cypress forests. At the depth of sixteen feet and on the fourth forest level, a human skeleton distinctly of the Indian type,[137] was found under the roots of a cypress tree, together with burnt wood. Dr. Dowler, dividing the history of the delta into, 1. The epoch of grasses or aquatic plants; 2. That of the cypress (Taxodium distichum) basins, and 3. That of the live-oak platform, tabulates the age of the strata overlying the skeleton as follows:
| Epoch of aquatic plants | 1,500 | years |
| Epoch of the cypress basin, in which he assumes only two successive growths | 11,400 | „ |
| Epoch of live-oak platform | 1,500 | „ |
| ——— | ||
| Total | 14,400 | years |
The basis for his estimate of the age of the cypress basins was the computed age of the trees of the fourth level, ten feet in diameter and probably reaching 5,700 years.[138] Sir Charles Lyell in a later work, though still adhering to his former estimate of the time required in which to form the delta, cannot accept Dr. Dowler’s great antiquity for the remains.[139] The question in hand of course involves the question of the antiquity of the deposit where the skeleton was found, which is well-nigh identical with the vexed question of the age of the delta. The very diversity of opinion on this subject precludes the possibility of its consideration here. We will content ourselves by citing two estimates in addition to those already given. Professor Edward Hitchcock calculated that the entire delta embraced a bulk of matter equal to 2,720 cubic miles, for the deposit of which he thought 14,204 years necessary.[140] Humphries and Abbot think that both the area and thickness of the deposit have been overstated, and instead of 30,000 square miles for the former, they claim only 19,450. As to the latter, they estimate the thickness of the alluvial matter as but twenty-five feet on the river banks along the St. Francis swamp; thirty-five along the Yazoo swamp, and continuing of uniform thickness to Baton Rouge; while the artesian well at New Orleans showed it in that locality to reach a point forty feet below the level of the Gulf. These authors base their calculations as to the age of the deposits on the following ascertained facts: the total yearly contributions of the river equal a prism two hundred and sixty-eight feet in height, with a base of one mile square; two hundred and sixty-two feet is the supposed mean yearly advance of the river; the original mouth of the Mississippi was near the afflux of the Bayou Plaquemine, and has hence progressed two hundred and twenty miles since it began to empty its deposits into the Gulf. Supposing these data to be correct, they estimate that only four thousand four hundred years have elapsed since that period.[141] This would give the skeleton alluded to a comparatively recent origin. We are inclined to believe that the above estimate assigns a period for the formation of the delta as much too short as that of Sir Charles was too long. As to the antiquity of the skeleton, probably Dr. Foster’s solution of the question is as near correct as any that ever may be proposed: “Thus, then, with these carefully-observed computations before us, we are not prepared to accept the high antiquity assigned by Dr. Dowler to the human remains found beneath the surface at New Orleans. What he regards as four buried forests which once flourished on the spot, may be nothing more than driftwood brought down the river in former times which became embedded in the silts and sediments which were deposited on what was then the floor of the Gulf.”[142]
If all the indications were verified, we should be justified in assigning man a much greater antiquity in the Rocky Mountain region and on the Pacific slope than in any other part of North America. Mr. E. L. Berthoud collected numerous stone implements in what he considers to be tertiary gravel on Crow Creek and in the region of the South Platte River, Lat. 40 N., Long. 104 W. Two shells secured in the same locality by him have been pronounced a corbicula and a rangia respectively, and are thought to belong to the older Pliocene or possibly to the Miocene.[143] The evidence in this case is, however, unsatisfactory, and cannot be admitted to be of scientific value without further authentication.
In 1857 a portion of a human cranium was found associated with bones of the mastodon at the depth of one hundred and eighty feet below the surface in a mining shaft at Table Mountain, California. Dr. C. F. Winslow sent this fragment to the Boston Natural History Society, but no importance was attached to it, since no other evidence other than that furnished by workmen in the mine could be obtained. Subsequently, when an entire skull was reported to have been found in the gold drift near Angelos in Calaveras County, in a shaft one hundred and fifty feet deep, the intelligent portion of the community pronounced the finder guilty of a scientific fraud, and it is not yet a certainty that their decision was incorrect. However, Professor Whitney, of the State Geological Survey, upon hearing of the case examined the mine, and found that the shaft passed through five beds of lava and volcanic tufa and four beds of auriferous gravel. It was in one of these beds that the skull was said to have been found. Some of the cemented gravel was still adhering to the skull when it came into the Professor’s possession, and Professor Wyman, to whom it was submitted subsequently, refers to the difficulty which he had in removing the incrustation. Professor Whitney, on the testimony of the possessor of the skull, pronounced it an authentic “find,” and while his decision has been acquiesced in by a number of scientific gentlemen of repute, Professor Wyman among them, still the great majority, we believe, are unwilling to rest their faith on such slender evidence. Though no crack was apparent through which the skull might have fallen from the surface, such might have existed at an earlier period. In a region which is the product of volcanic action there is room for suspicion, especially in cases like both of these, where, as Sir Charles Lyell has said, no geologist was present at the moment of discovery to see the fossil in situ and extricate it with his own hands from the matrix which contained it.
President Edward Orton, of the Ohio State University, recently called our attention to the discovery of relics of human workmanship found many years ago near Waynesville, Ohio, at the depth of over twelve feet below the surface. Dr. Robert Furnas, a clergyman of the Society of Friends, courteously furnished us the following statement: “The relic was obtained about the year 1824. It was in the process of digging a well for my grandfather. My father, then twenty-one years of age, was performing the work of excavation, when at the depth of thirteen or fourteen feet he came to a dark mould about two feet deep, on the top of which was lying a thimble and a piece of coarse cloth six inches wide and a yard long. The outer edge containing the fringe showing the end of the chain or warp at the end of the fabric and point of fastening in weaving.” “The removal above after passing through the soil consisted of solid clay of a yellowish-brown color. The farm was purchased by my grandfather in 1803, and occupied by him to the time of his death in 1863. He was the pioneer of the place, having settled there in an unbroken forest. The location is on the top of the hill on the east side of the Little Miami River forty or fifty feet above the level of the stream. The cloth soon lost all traces of texture on coming in contact with the air. The thimble was in a pretty good state of preservation.”[144] Professor Orton, who has examined the locality and studied the case in hand, expressed the opinion to us that it was not only authentic, but (while not amounting to absolute proof) seemed to associate man’s works with a deposit which has furnished remains of the mastodon. The Professor considers the dark mould referred to as that upon which the relics were lying to be of an inter-glacial vegetable deposit peculiar to Southern Ohio, and once constituting an ancient surface of the land inhabited with animal life.[145] The cloth from its coarse character bears a resemblance to that of the mounds, while its length of just a yard is suggestive of more modern measurements.[146]
Dr. C. C. Abbott has unquestionably discovered many palæolithic implements in the glacial drift in the valley of the Delaware River near Trenton, New Jersey. Among a number of rude implements from the undisturbed gravel of the region is a spear-head, found six feet from the surface, on the site of the Lutheran Church, Broad Street, Trenton, N. J. The circumstances surrounding it were such as to justify the conclusion that the weapon had not gotten into its position where found “subsequently to the deposition of the containing layer of pebbles.” Subsequent investigation has brought to light sixty well finished flint implements, all of them from what appears to be undisturbed drift. Some of the relics have as many as from twenty to forty planes of cleavage, all equally weathered. The specimens are not unlike their neolithic counterparts taken from the aboriginal graves and stone cists of Tennessee.[147] Dr. Abbott concludes that the gravel, boulders, and rude implements associated with them were deposited by ice-rafts on the descent of a glacier down the valley, and that man more rude and ancient than the red Indian dwelt at the foot of the glacier, being driven south by its advance and following it again to the north upon its return.[148] Professors Shaler and Pumpelly, however, while considering the deposit as of glacial origin, think it was subsequently modified by water-action. Dr. Abbott, with great fairness, admits that, “Inasmuch as such subsequent action may have occurred long after the final deposition of the gravel, as true glacial drift, the antiquity of the contained stone implements is proportionately lessened.” Professor Shaler, after a partial examination of the locality, remarks that “if these remains are really those of man, they prove the existence of inter-glacial man on this part of our shore.”[149] Dr. Abbott and Prof. Aug. R. Grote believe that the Eskimo is the surviving representative of paleolithic and glacial man in North America. The latter believes that man reached this continent during the Pliocene, and before the ice-period had interfered with a warm climate in the north.[150] Recently Dr. Abbott has said: “It may be that, as investigations are carried further, it will result not so much in proving man of very great antiquity, as in showing how much more recent than usually supposed was the final disappearance of the glacier.”[151] On [page 30] we referred to mounds examined in the North-west, N. lat. 47°, W. long. 98° 38´, by General H. W. Thomas.[152] In these mounds crania indicating a very low type of intelligence were discovered—in form resembling skulls of the great Gibbon monkey.[153] From the standpoint of the development theory (and by this we do not mean evolution, but that progression which takes place when a savage advances from his low state toward civilization), the evidences are abundant that man is older by far on the Western side of the continent and perhaps in the North-west, than elsewhere in the new world. Though this discovery by General Thomas does not reach back in antiquity to geologic times, still it cannot be denied that a considerable period must have elapsed before low-type crania of the North-west could have developed into the crania of the Ohio Valley Mounds. Professor James Orton, in commenting on the investigations of Wilson on the coast of Equador, refers to the discovery of gold, copper and stone vestiges of a former population in the system of terraces traced from the coast through the province of Esmeraldas to Quito. He remarks: “In all cases these relics are situated below high-tide mark, in a bed of marine sediment, from which he (Wilson) infers that this part of the country formerly stood higher above the sea. If this be true, vast must be the antiquity of these remains, for the upheaval and subsidence of the coast is exceedingly slow.”[154] The antiquity of man in Europe is an established fact, but how remote is a question which science as yet fails to answer. When geologic research opens up Central Asia, no doubt man will be found to have existed there a long period anterior to his advent in Europe. But for the decadence of Arabic glory and learning we should now probably be in possession of a fund of information concerning that region as well as of man’s early history. Were the discovery of the human skull in the gold drift of California an authentic case, we should have strong reasons for supposing a remote intercourse existed between Asia and the Pacific coast. It is quite certain the crania of the North-west Mounds, as compared with those of the Mississippi region, clearly point to that fact. We have seen that as yet no truly scientific proof of man’s great antiquity in America exists. This conclusion is concurred in by most eminent authorities.[155] At present we are probably not warranted in claiming for him a much longer residence on this continent than that assigned him by Sir John Lubbock, namely, 3,000 years. Future research may develop the fact that man is as old here as in Europe, and that he was contemporaneous with the Mastodon. As the case stands in the present state of knowledge, it furnishes strong presumptive evidence that man is not autochthonic here, but exotic, having originated in the old world, perhaps thousands of years prior to reaching the new.
CHAPTER III.
DIVERSITY OF OPINION AS TO THE ORIGIN OF THE ANCIENT AMERICANS.
Conflict of Discovery and Dogmatism—Antipodes—Arabic Learning in the 8th Century—Spirit of Early Writers on America—Common Opinion as to the Origin of the Americans—Father Duran—Lost Tribes of Israel—Garcia—Lascarbot—Villagutierre—Torquemada—Pineda, etc.—Abbé Domenech—Modern Views—Pre-Columbian Colonization—Plato’s Atlantis—Kingsborough—The Book of Mormon—Phœnicians—George Jones—Greek and Egyptian Theories—The Tartars—Japanese and Chinese Theories—Fusang—The Mongol Theory—Traces of Buddhism—White-Man’s Land—The Northmen—The Welsh Claim.
VARIOUS perplexing problems presented themselves to the minds of the discoverers of the new continent for solution, as well as to their immediate successors, which were greatly intensified by the dogmatic teaching of the times. The status of science in the Middle Ages was defined from time to time by some ecclesiastical utterance without any reference to the phenomena of nature or the revelations of accidental discovery. We say accidental, for no designed or systematic investigation was so much as tolerated, much less encouraged by friendly recognition. This unfortunate antagonism to progress had its foundation chiefly in ignorance, and its origin in the misinterpretation and perversion of Sacred Scripture.
Two questions, especially in view of the dogmatic utterances of the day, presented grave difficulties to the minds of the discoverers and their successors in the New World. “Is the world a sphere?” “Are the Inhabitants of the Indias of a common origin with the rest of mankind?” These were the most serious problems that forced themselves upon their consideration. As long ago as 280 B. C., the investigations of Aristarchus of Samos, though not accepted by antiquity, suggested an affirmative answer to the first question. But the Fathers of the Church had spoken authoritatively on this subject at quite an early day, and consequently left no room for speculation. St. Augustine discusses the question as follows: “But as to the fable that there are antipodes, that is to say, men on the opposite side of the earth, where the sun rises when it sets to us, men who walk with their feet opposite ours, that is on no ground credible. And, indeed, it is not affirmed that this has been learned by historical knowledge, but by scientific conjecture, on the ground that the earth is suspended within the cavity of the sky, and that it has as much room on the one side of it as on the other; hence they say that the part which is beneath us must also be inhabited. But they do not remark that although it be supposed or scientifically demonstrated that the world is of a round and spherical form, yet it does not follow that the other side of the earth is bare of water; or even though it be bare, does it immediately follow that it is peopled. For Scripture, which proves the truth of its historical statements by the accomplishment of its prophecies, gives no false information; and it is too absurd to say that some men might have taken ship and traversed the whole wide ocean, and crossed from this world to the other, and that thus even the inhabitants of that distant region are descended from that one first man.”[156]
Though, during the kalifate of Al-Mamoun (A.D. 813–833) Arabic learning had well-nigh demonstrated the globular form of the earth and determined its circumference, according to their measurements, to be about 24,000 miles, still not a man in Christendom ventured to advocate the theory for almost half a dozen centuries, such was the power of the ban put upon investigation which ran counter to the pre-expressed opinions of a dark age. The theories of Tascanelli and the observations of Columbus on the polar star prepared the way for the great triumph achieved by De Gama in 1497–8, in his voyage around the Cape of Good Hope; and the question of the globular form of the earth was forever set at rest twenty-two years afterwards by the voyage of Magellan.[157] When it was definitely determined that America was a continent of itself and not the eastern extremity of India, the fact that it was inhabited gave rise to speculations which have since been often repeated. Through an unaccountable misapprehension, not only the questions of the origin of the Americans, but the manner of their separation from the rest of the race, together with the routes they pursued in reaching the new world—all were thought to be capable of solution by the light of Scripture. The education of the early writers enables us to account for the intolerance with which they looked upon any other solution of the problem than that which alone would conform to the teachings of the church.[158]
It is true that the natural nobility of character possessed by such writers as Las Casas, Duran and a few others, tempered the fanaticism which had been inculcated by education, and enabled them to furnish invaluable information concerning the real condition and traditions of the so-called Indians. But, upon the other hand, there were great numbers of blind, unscrupulous ecclesiastics who either destroyed outright the manuscripts and picture-writing of the natives, committing them to the flames, or so warping tradition in order that it might conform to their mistaken theology, that in many cases the most precious information is irretrievably lost. Such men could hardly be expected to have treated calmly and with any degree of liberality the question before us—one which has so often been asked, but as yet never satisfactorily answered, and one which in the present state of knowledge cannot be.[159]
The unanimity with which the most celebrated writers on the Americans during three centuries following the discovery, fixed upon a solution of the problem, will be best illustrated in the following pages: One of the most ingenious and at the same time most calmly expressed opinions on the origin problem is that recorded by Father Duran, a native of Tezcuco in Mexico, in his History of New Spain, written in the year 1585.[160] He was convinced that the natives had a foreign origin, and that they performed a long journey of many years duration in their migration to the new world. He arrived at these conclusions on account of several considerations, some of which are as follows: The natives had no definite knowledge of their origin, some claiming to have proceeded from fountains and springs of water, others that they were natives of certain caves, and others that they were created by the gods, while all admit that they had come from other lands. Furthermore, they preserved in their traditions and pictures the memory of a journey in which they had suffered hunger, thirst, nakedness and all manner of afflictions, “with which,” he adds, “my opinion and supposition is confirmed that these natives are of the ten tribes of Israel that Salmanasar, king of the Assyrians, made prisoners and carried to Assyria in the time of Hoshea, king of Israel, and in the time of Hezekiah, king of Jerusalem, as can be seen in the fourth Book of the Kings, seventeenth chapter, where it says that Israel was carried away from their land to Assyria, etc., from whence, says Esdras, in Book Fourth, chapter third, they went to live in a land, remote and separated, which had never been inhabited, to which they had a long and tedious journey of a year and a half, for which reason it is supposed these people are found in all the islands and lands of the ocean constituting the Occident.”[161] The preceding opinion was concurred in by many Spanish writers; but the first English writer to support the theory was Thorowgood, in his work entitled, Jewes in America.[162] L’Estrange, who replied to this work, controverted the theory of the lost tribes of Israel, but concluded that Shem was the progenitor of the Americans; that he was ninety-eight years old at the time of the flood, and was not present at the building of Babel.[163] “Thus far,” he quaintly remarks, “have I offered my week conceptions, first, how America may be collected to have bin first planted, not denying the Jewes leave to goe into America, but not admitting them to be the chief or prime planters thereof, for I am of opinion, that the Americans originated before the captivity of the ten tribes, even from Shem’s near progeny.”[164] Garcia presents an argument in favor of the same theory, based upon the presence of Scripture names in Peru and Yucatan. He is positive that the word Peru has the same meaning as Ophir, the name of the grandson of Heber, from whom the Hebrews derive their name. In Yucatan he also finds the name Ioctan, identical with that of Ophir’s father.[165] However, with a determination not to be surpassed by any other theorist who might assume the unity of the race as the basis of his conjectures, he offers a plan for populating the new world so comprehensive that no room was left for originality in any who might follow him in the same field. Hispaniola, Cuba and neighboring isles, he believed to have been peopled by the Carthaginians. The natives of other parts proceeded from the ten lost tribes; others from the people whom Ophir commanded to colonize Peru; others from the people living in the isle Atlantis; others from regions adjoining that island, and by means of it passed to America; others from the Greeks; others from the Phœnicians, and still others from the Chinese and Tartars.[166] Lescarbot cites five opinions on the subject, all based more or less on scriptural authority, and adds his own that the Americans were the descendants of Noah. He thinks it not impossible for voyagers to have reached the western continent when Solomon’s ships were sent on voyages of three years’ duration.[167] Herrera, with characteristic soberness, states that because of the lack of knowledge concerning the proximity of the continents at the “ends of the earth” he is unable to say positively from whom the natives were descended, but it seems most reasonable to him to suppose that they are the descendants of men who passed to the West Indies by the proximity of the land.[168] Villagutierre reiterates the same opinion, believing that Noah’s descendants were able to reach the new world either by land in some unknown quarter, or by swimming, or by embarking in canoes and balsas, for short distances. He supposes that animals reached the new continent in the first two ways.[169] Torquemada, after a long discussion of the subject, falls in with this view, adding, however, the opinion that, because of their color, they in all probability were descended from the sons and grandsons of Ham.[170] Pineda adopts substantially the preceding opinion, but improves upon it somewhat by pointing out the particular branch of the family of Ham, to which we may trace the origin of the first Americans. For some reason, perhaps no more apparent to himself than us, he designates Naphtuhim, son of Mezraim and grandson of Ham, as their progenitor. He thinks that the colonization was accomplished soon after the confusion of tongues, and may have been effected in any of the numerous ways we have previously mentioned. He cites the tradition of Votan as a proof.[171] Siguenza y Gongora and Sister Agnes de la Cruz, according to Clavigero, were the authors of this opinion, who further designated Egypt as the starting-point for that important expedition of colonists.[172]
Echevarria y Veitia treats the subject fully, tracing it through the traditions of the people. He cites their creation and flood myths, their account of the building of the Tower of Babel and the confusion of tongues, their dispersion upon the face of the earth, and the passage of seven families to the new world (to Hue hue Tlappalan) by means of balsas, with which they crossed rivers and arms of the sea which they encountered in their journey. Though minute in his details, he does nothing more in this respect than other important writers to whom we shall refer in a further chapter, except that his computations by means of the Mexican calendar have enabled him to assign dates to some of these occurrences, which, though they probably are not accurate, are at least interesting. His study of the Mexican paintings convinces him that the natives had a foreign origin.[173] The same author in a part of his work refers to the giants as the first inhabitants of the country, but fails to state whether they came from the old world or not.[174] Ulloa thinks Noah’s long and aimless voyage in the ark was not without fruit to the science of navigation. It gave confidence to his immediate descendants, who no doubt were enterprising enough to construct similar vessels and undertake voyages in them. These, falling in with adverse winds and treacherous currents, were driven to strange islands and even to the new world, and being unable to return, became the first colonists in these remote regions. He thinks the custom of eating raw fish, common to the American tribes, was acquired during long sea voyages.[175] The Abbé Domenech’s opinion has been cited by Mr. Bancroft in his summary of the views of this class of writers; we presume, however, only for the amusement of the reader.[176] The Abbé, less than a score of years ago, committed himself to the ludicrous and antiquated theory that Ophir had colonized Peru.[177] Clavigero considers the creation, flood, and Babel myths of the natives sufficient evidence of unity of origin. He, however, believes that the migration to this continent began at a very early period.[178]
These few writers pretty well represent the opinions of their numerous contemporaries who, though they wrote voluminously enough on this subject, added nothing to what we have noted. The opinions of modern writers are as diverse as those of Garcia, and only surpass him in the ingenuity with which they press their favorite theories. Very little has been done in this field with a true scientific spirit. Each has been an advocate rather than an inquirer; has had his theory to prove sometimes at the expense of reason and fact, and it is remarkable that the majority of works written by such advocates have presented the familiar anomaly of more learning than of probability. It is scarcely the province of this work to discuss these well-known productions of imaginative and too often credulous writers. To more than refer to them would be to lose sight for the time of the object before us.
The claims for the Pre-Columbian colonization of this continent of course include most of those already mentioned, and properly are of two classes: First, those which fix the period of colonization remote enough to account for the old civilization or some phases of it. Second, those which avowedly are too recent to have accomplished that civilization. Of the first-named class there are about a dozen thoroughly elaborated claims, while of the second there are less than half that number. Mr. Warden years ago treated them all in a manner and with a fullness which has not been excelled by any more recent writer.[179] Though it is due to Mr. Bancroft to say that never before has the subject been so exhaustively handled in our own language as by him.[180] As nothing new has been developed in this field of speculation since Mr. Bancroft, and we might add since Mr. Warden treated it, and as nothing could be contributed either to the sciences of ethnology or archæology by a repetition of the old discussion here, for we have our doubts whether any of the claims can ever be substantiated at all, we will content ourselves with the simple enumeration of the theories. A theory which rivals in antiquity, if Egyptian chronology is reliable, the claims of the Fathers that the immediate descendants of Noah peopled the new world shortly after the deluge, is that which seeks to establish the truth of the tradition told to Solon by the Egyptian priests of Psenophis, Sonchis, Heliopolis and Sais concerning the ancient island Atlantis. Critias, whose grandfather had heard the tradition from Solon, communicated it to Socrates. Plato first committed it to writing, and states that the events which it described occurred nine thousand Egyptian years before Solon heard it. After speaking of the “Atlantic Sea,” the priest adds “that sea was indeed navigable, and had an island fronting that mouth which you call the Pillars of Hercules; and this island was larger than Libya and Asia put together, and there was a passage hence for travellers of that day to the rest of the islands, as well as from those islands to the whole opposite continent that surrounds the real sea. For as respects what is within the mouth here mentioned, it appears to be a bay with a kind of narrow entrance, and that sea is indeed a true sea, and the land that entirely surrounds it may truly and most correctly be called a continent.” The priest concludes his account with the statement that an earthquake in a single night buried the entire island and its inhabitants. This mysterious island has been sought for in every quarter of the globe; but the fact that part of the description seems applicable to the West Indies and the Gulf of Mexico, has led theorists to place its submerged shores between that locality and the Cape Verde or Canary groups. It is claimed that this imaginary land bridge, this backbone of earth and rock, may have once been the connecting link between the two continents. The claim has had many champions, but none so celebrated as the lamented Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg. The labors of this learned Américaniste are too well known to require comment.[181] The Codex Chimalpopoca, a Nahua MS. of anonymous authorship, which served the Abbé as the chief authority for the Toltec Period of his Histoire des Nations Civilisées, is the basis upon which he rests the advocacy of his “Atlantic Theory.” This singular Codex, which appears to the eyes of the uninitiated to be only “A History of the Kingdoms of Culhuacan and Mexico,” he considers susceptible of an allegorical interpretation, in which he reads the history and fate of that first of the continents, on whose soil originated all civilization and whose inhabitants were the genii of the arts, the origin of which are without even a tradition.[182]
The popularity of the Jewish theory at an early date has been indicated by our citations from some of the Spanish missionaries. Garcia, after a seven years residence in Peru, wrote his work for the purpose of proving conclusively that the Jews had been the chief colonists of the continent at an early date. He elaborated the argument set forth by Father Duran,[183] which is founded on passages in Esdras, but proceeded to prop up this theory with a catalogue of analogies between the Jews and Americans, some of which are so remote from each other that the very attempt to assimilate them is simply puerile. Garcia has had many disciples, some of whom have been no more critical than himself.[184] The illustrious advocate of the Jewish colonization of America was that indefatigable antiquary, Lord Kingsborough. No more masterly, no abler and more exhaustive defence was ever made in behalf of a hopeless and even baseless claim than his; and as the result, the historian and antiquary has placed at his disposal fac-simile prints of most of the important hieroglyphic MSS. of Mexican authorship deposited in the various libraries of Europe, as well as pictures of the architecture and stone records common to ancient America. We must confess that the work itself, with its curious plates, its maze of notes and references, its masterly and novel discoveries of analogies, though many of them are imaginary, is to us, after prolonged examination, as much of a riddle as the great and improbable theory which it seeks to establish.[185] Closely allied to the theory of the ten lost tribes, is the claim set forth in that pretentious fraud, the Book of Mormon, which attributes the colonization of North America, soon after the confusion of tongues, to a people called Jaredites, who, by divine guidance, reached our shores in eight vessels, and developed a high state of civilization on our soil. These first colonists, however, became extinct about six centuries B.C., because of their social sins. The Jaredites were followed by a second colony, this time of Israelites, who left Jerusalem in the first year of the reign of Zedekiah, King of Juda. They reached the Indian Ocean by following the shores of the Red Sea, where they built a vessel which bore them across the Pacific to the western coast of South America. Having arrived in the new land of promise, they separated into two parties, called Nephites and Laminites respectively, after their leaders. They grew to be great nations and colonized North America also. Religious strife sprang up between the two nations because of the wickedness of the Laminites; the Nephites, however, adhered to their religious traditions and the worship of the true God. Christ appeared in the new world and by his ministrations converted many of both peoples to Him. But towards the close of the fourth century of our era, both Laminites and Nephites backslid in faith and became involved in a war with each other which resulted in the extermination of the latter people. The numerous tumuli scattered over the face of the country cover the remains of the hundreds of thousands of warriors who fell in their deadly strife. Mormon and his son Morani, the last of the Nephites who escaped by concealment, deposited by divine command the annals of their ancestors, the Book of Mormon written on tablets, in the hill of Cumorah, Ontario County, New York, in the vicinity of which the last battle of these relentless enemies took place.[186] The claim, of course, merits mention only on the ground of its romantic character, and not on the supposition for a moment that it contains a grain of truth. The Phœnician and Carthaginian colonization of this continent has been much discussed and credited by a larger number of Americanists than any other theory, except that which refers the original population to those parts of Asia adjacent to Alaska. This claim is based on the maritime achievements of that nation of navigators. The three-year voyages of Hiram and Solomon’s fleet to Ophir and Tarshish, has often been made to do service for this theory. Ophir has most frequently been placed by its advocates in Hayti or Peru.[187] Such speculations, however, are incapable of proof, and are scarcely deserving of sober consideration. The theory itself is one of the few that command respectful attention, since tradition, history, and many facts in natural science, seem to point to its probability.[188] Mr. Bancroft refers at some length to the voyage of Hanno, a Carthaginian navigator, whose exploits beyond the pillars of Hercules, with a fleet of sixty ships and thirty thousand men, is recorded in his Periplus.[189] With true critical insight, Mr. Bancroft rejects the opinion that Hanno reached America, and thinks he only coasted along the shores of Africa.[190] The only tradition preserved by the Americans is that of the mysterious Votan, whom some have sought to assign to a Phœnician nativity.[191] Of late years the theory of the Phœnician colonization has failed to receive its share of support from new writers. This is owing probably to the fact that the labors of Mr. George Jones, embodied in his Original History of Ancient America Founded on the Ruins of Antiquity; the Identity of the Aborigines with the People of Tyrus and Israel, and the Introduction of Christianity by the Apostle St. Thomas,[192] may have rendered all such support unnecessary. It is more probable, however, that the assumption and credulity displayed in this extraordinary work have discouraged any critical writer from aspiring to the honor of having his name transmitted to posterity as an advocate of the Phœnician theory, side by side with that of the author of the Original History. We have no space to devote to so positive a writer, except to state that he colonizes America with a remnant of the inhabitants of Tyre who escaped from their island-city when it was besieged by Alexander the Great in 332 B. C. They sailed out beyond the Pillars of Hercules to their colonies in the Canaries, whence the trade-winds bore them across the Atlantic to the shores of Florida. Ezekiel xxvii. 26, is quoted as proof: “Thy rowers have brought thee into great waters; the east wind hath broken thee in the midst of the seas.”[193] The theory that the ancient Americans descended from the Greeks has been incidentally advocated by several authors, most of the arguments being based upon supposed Greek inscriptions. Two advocates of the theory are, however, quite decided in its defence, namely, Mr. Pidegeon[194] and Mr. Lafitau.[195] The latter believing that the ancient inhabitants of the Grecian archipelago were driven from their country by Og, king of Bashan, supposes the inhabitants of the new world descended from that people, and cites numerous analogies of a political and social nature.[196] No claim has been advanced, we believe, which advocates an actual Egyptian colonization of the new world, but strong arguments have been used to show that the architecture and sculpture of Central America and Mexico have been influenced from Egypt, if not attributable directly to Egyptian artisans. These arguments are based on the resemblance between the gigantic pyramids, the sculptured obelisks, and the numerous idols of these pre-historic countries and those of Egypt. It requires no practised eye to trace a resemblance in general features, though it must be said that the details of American architecture and sculpture, are peculiarly original in design.[197] The principal advocate of the theory, Delafield, has furnished many comparisons, but we think no argument has been presented sufficiently supported by facts to prove that American architecture and sculpture had any other than an indigenous origin.[198] Turning westward our attention is arrested by the probability of the theory which claims that this continent was peopled with the Tartars and nations occupying the regions of North-western Asia. No one can consider the natural certainty of long-continued communication between the two continents at Behring’s Straits without being impressed with the truth that that narrow channel served probably as the first highway between the old world and the new, and vice versa. Certainly a part of the ancient population of America came upon our soil at that quarter. Mr. Bancroft remarks: “The customs, manner of life, and physical appearance of the natives on both sides of the straits are identical, as a multitude of witnesses testify, and it seems absurd to argue the question from any point. Of course, Behring’s Strait may have served to admit other nations besides the people inhabiting its shores into America, and in such cases there is more room for discussion.”[199] Nearly as plausible is the theory which claims that if the original population of this continent were not Japanese, at least a considerable infusion of Japanese blood into the original stock has taken place from time to time, either by intentional colonization or by the accidents incident to navigation. The great number of shipwrecks which are continually being cast upon our Pacific coast by the Japanese current or Kuro-suvo are constant and substantial witnesses to the reasonableness of the claim.[200]
The Chinese colonization theory, unfortunately, does not date far enough back to account for the oldest American civilization. It is nevertheless remote enough, were it proven true, to considerably antedate the Aztec and Inca periods. Upwards of a century ago the learned French sinologist Deguignes announced that he had found in the writings of early Chinese historians the statement that in the fifth century of our era certain adventurers of their race had discovered a country which they called Fusang.[201] He further expressed it as his opinion that the country described must be Western America, and probably Mexico. The original document on which the Chinese historians base their statements was the report of a Buddhist missionary named Hoei-Shin, who in the year 499 A.D., claims to have returned from a long journey of discovery to the remote and unknown east. This report, whatever may be its intrinsic value, was accepted as true by the Chinese, and found its way into the history of Li yan tcheon—written at the beginning of the seventh century of our era. In 1841, Dr. Neumann, Professor of Oriental Languages and History at Munich, after a residence of a couple of years at Canton, published a translation of the narrative of Hoei-Shin with comments upon it.[202] A few of the most striking passages of the account given by this Buddhist missionary are as follows: “Fusang is about 20,000 Chinese li in an easterly direction from Tahan and east of the Middle Kingdom.[203] Many Fusang trees grow there whose leaves resemble the Dryanda cordifolia; the sprouts, on the contrary, resemble those of the bamboo tree, and are eaten by the inhabitants of the land. The fruit is like a pear in form, but is red. From the bark they prepare a sort of linen which they use for clothing, and also a sort of ornamental stuff. The houses are built of wooden beams; fortified and walled places are there unknown. They have written characters in this land, and prepare paper from the bark of the Fusang. The people have no weapons and make no wars, but in the arrangement of the kingdom, they have a northern and southern prison. Trifling offenders are lodged in the southern prison, but those confined for greater offences in the northern. The name of the king is pronounced Ichi. The color of his clothes changes with the different years. The horns of the oxen are so large that they hold ten bushels. They use them to contain all manner of things. Horses, oxen, and stags are harnessed to their wagons. Stags are used here as cattle are used in the Middle Kingdom, and from the milk of the hind they make butter. No iron is found in the land; but copper, gold, and silver are not prized, and do not serve as a medium of exchange in the market. Marriage is determined upon in the following manner: the suitor builds himself a hut before the door of the house where the one longed for dwells, and waters and cleans the ground every evening. When a year has passed by, if the maiden is not inclined to marry him he departs; should she be willing it is completed. In earlier times these people lived not according to the laws of Buddha, but it happened that in the second year—named ‘Great Light’ of Song (A.D. 458)—five beggar-monks from the kingdom of Kipin went to this land, extended over it the religion of Buddha, and with it his early writings and images. They instructed the people in the principles of monastic life, and so changed their manners.”[204] Dr. Neumann does not claim that the Chinese Fusang tree is identical with the Maguay plant, but that the resemblance between it and the great numbers of the latter found in Mexico suggested a name for the country to the discoverer. The uncertainty as to the distance, arising out of our inability to determine what was considered the length of a Chinese li in the fifth century, is of course an obstacle to the satisfactory solution of the question. The amusing and preposterous statement as to the size of the horns of oxen is no argument against the general truth of the narrative, since we have no data from which to determine the capacity of the measure, the name of which is here translated bushel, since the widest possible difference exists between the ancient and modern Chinese tables of measurement. The references to horses and oxen are perplexing, and give the narrative the air either of imposture or mistake, since both were brought to America first by the Spaniards.[205] The argument by the opponents of this theory that Fusang was Japan stands on a very slender foundation, since at a very early period, centuries before our era, Japan afforded naval stations for Chinese ships.[206] Klaproth, and later Dr. E. Bretschneider, designated the island of Tarakai, known as Saghalien on our maps, as the Fusang of Hoei-Schin.[207] M. D’Eichthal and Professor Neumann have both made able arguments in defence of the authenticity and reasonableness of this claim, but there are too many uncertainties about it to admit of its unqualified acceptance. We are more disposed to give credence to the theory that the Chinese discovered America at a very early day, than to attach much importance to the particular account of that discovery by Hoei-Shin. The theory is a good one, with an abundance of geographical and ethnological testimony in its favor.[208]
Closely allied to the Chinese theory is that so enthusiastically advocated by Ranking, who maintains that the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan, in the thirteenth century sent a large fleet against Japan, but that the vast armada was destroyed by a tempest, and a portion of its ships were wrecked on the shores of Peru.[209] The first Inca he believes was the son of Kublai Khan. It is a well-known fact that the Mongol fleet was dispersed by a storm, but there are grave objections to the opinion that any of the vessels were cast upon the shores of South America. No tradition was found among the Peruvians only three centuries later concerning the Incas or any other people having reached their shores by the accident of shipwreck, or who could be identified as of Asiatic origin. It is true the Incas may have designed to keep their human origin as well as their misfortunes a secret, that they might the better set up their claim to imperial and divine honors among the people whom they sought to subjugate by that most powerful ally to ambition—superstition. Mr. Ranking wrote a very plausible book, but often fell into errors of credulity and unrestrained enthusiasm which leaves many of his statements open to suspicion. The theory cannot be accepted without additional and more satisfactory proof.[210] Should it prove to be true, it certainly cannot throw light upon the origin of the population, but only on a phase of civilization. Humboldt, Tschudi, Viollet-le-Duc, Count Stolberg and other writers have pointed out striking analogies between the religion of Southern Asia, especially of India and that of Mexico.[211] If the argument from analogy is to be relied on, there is abundant reason to believe that Buddhism in a modified form had permeated the religious systems of the new world with its mystic element besides grafting upon them some of its better and more humane institutions.
These are all the colonization claims worth mentioning, which date back far enough to account for the ancient civilization. Of the second class (those too recent to have made much impression on the existing state of things) there are three. The earliest of these as to date, is the claim which credits the Irish with the colonization of the Atlantic coast from North Carolina to Florida. “White-Man’s Land,” so often located in this country, is no doubt imaginary. The obscure and unsatisfactory chronicle which forms the basis of this claim destroys its own authority by the statement that White-Man’s Land was six days’ sail from Ireland.[212] Another legend set forth by Broughton, which claims that St. Patrick preached the Gospel in the “Isles of America,” carries its own refutation upon its face by the use of the word America in its text.[213] The Scandinavian discovery of America is a well-known fact, and requires no discussion here. The Codex Flatioiensis, as expounded by the learned Prof. Rafn in the Antiquitates Americanæ, has, no doubt, set at rest the whole matter. Humboldt, in reviewing the evidence upon which the claim is founded, sums it up in these words: “The discovery of the northern part of America by the Northmen cannot be disputed. The length of the voyage, the direction in which they sailed, the time of the sun’s rising and setting, are accurately given. While the caliphate of Bagdad was still flourishing under the Abbassides, and while the rule of the Samanides, so favorable to poetry, still flourished in Persia, America was discovered about the year 1000 by Lief, son of Eric the Red, at about 41½° north latitude.” No evidence of a substantial character has been produced to show that the Scandinavians left any impress upon the American civilization. It is true, Brasseur de Bourbourg, when he first began his labors in the field of American archæology expressed such an opinion, but we believe he never repeated it in the latter years of his life.[214] The learned Abbé was guilty of many contradictions, and this may be considered one of them. The most positive claims in this direction are advanced by two recent authors, M. Gravier[215] and Prof. Anderson,[216] the former attributing the Aztec civilization to Norse influence. He cites the discovery in Brazil of an ancient city near Bahia, in which was found the statue of a man pointing with his forefinger to the North Pole; of course, according to M. Gravier, he was a Northman.[217] Several authorities for the discovery of Norse remains in the United States might be cited, but the unwarrantable arguments of most of them add nothing to the already established fact of Norse colonization in the tenth century of our era. Another Pre-Columbian claim to the discovery of America is that which declares Madoc-Ap-owen and his Welsh countrymen to have reached this continent in 1170 A.D. The chronicle on which the claim is based, is wanting in authority. A translation of it, taken from a history of Wales by Dr. Powell, was published by Hakluyt, in 1589. As this claim can have no relation to our subject, we refrain from a discussion of it here.[218] The only remaining theory, and probably the most important of all, because of its purely scientific character, which presents itself for our consideration, is that which not only considers the civilization of ancient America to have been indigenous, but also claims the inhabitants themselves to have been autochthonic; in a word, that by process of evolution or in some other way, the first Americans were either developed from a lower order in the animal kingdom or were created on the soil of this continent. As the latter theory involves a denial of the unity of the race, it requires a separate and critical examination.
CHAPTER IV.
THE ORIGIN OF THE AMERICANS AS VIEWED FROM THE STANDPOINT OF SCIENCE.
Origin Theories—Indigenous Origin—Separate Creation Theory—Dr. Morton’s Theory—Agassiz’s Views—Dr. Morton’s Cranial Measurements Classified—Prof. Wilson’s Measurements—Dr. Morton’s Theory of Ethnic Unity Groundless—Ethnic Relationships—Typical Mound-skull—Crania from the River Rouge—Dr. Farquharson’s Measurements—Crania from Kentucky—Researches in Tennessee by Prof. Jones—Measurements—Prof. Putnam’s Collection of Crania from Tennessee Mounds—Low Type Crania from the Mounds—Development Observable in Mound Crania—Head-Flattening Derived from Asia—Diseases of the Mound-builders—Physiognomy of the Ancient Americans—Languages—Evolution and its Bearing on the Origin of the American—Darwin and Hæckel on the Indigenous American—The Autochthonic Hypothesis Groundless—Unity of the Human Family—Accepted Chronology Faulty.
THE want of evidence for the theories which designate particular nations as the first colonizers of the Western Continent, long ago produced a feeling of distrust, which led some to repudiate all claims for the foreign origin of the first inhabitants of this continent. This theory, which claims for the most ancient inhabitants an autochthonic origin, has had from time to time among its advocates some of the most respectable ethnologists. The character of their attainments, and in many cases their arguments in behalf of this most remarkable hypothesis, command the respect of all who are interested in this fascinating field of speculation.
At first it was maintained that the Creator had placed an original pair of human beings here, as Scripture teaches that He did in the old world.[219] Other writers equally confident that the first ancestors of the American race were indigenous, have not so definitely expressed themselves as to the manner of their origin.[220] The most recent phase of the autochthonic theory is that which designates evolution as the means by which the continent was populated with human beings, developed from its own fauna. This latter question is now the most absorbing of all that occupy the attention of the American Anthropologists. But to go back to the separate creation view, we find it expressed in general and unscientific utterances at first, mostly based on the hasty observation of travellers who, in many cases, had little knowledge of anthropologic or ethnic principles. In fact, the subject was not fairly discussed and its advocacy based on satisfactory investigation until the justly celebrated Dr. Samuel G. Morton, of Philadelphia, issued his Crania Americana, containing the results of the most diligent researches on the skulls of the Mound-builders, Mexicans, Peruvians, and many of the known tribes of the Red Indians. In the face of abundant proof among the crania of his own splendid collection, and contrary to the testimony of his numerous measurements, which have often since been used against his theory, this diligent investigator arrived at the conclusion that the Americans were a distinct race, originated in this continent, having a uniform cranial type (excepting only the Eskimo), from the Arctic Circle to Patagonia.
A division, however, of this supposed homogeneous race was made by this author into Toltecan and Barbarous nations; the former appellative comprising all the semi-civilized peoples, while the latter embraced the wild tribes. All were believed to have had the same origin and to belong to the same cranial type. “It is curious to observe, however,” remarks Dr. Morton, “that the Barbarous nations possess a larger brain by five and a half cubic inches than the Toltecans; while, on the other hand, the Toltecans possess a greater relative capacity of the anterior chamber of the skull in the proportion of 42.3 to 41.8. Again the coronal region, though absolutely greater in the Barbarous tribes, is rather larger in proportion in the semi-civilized tribes; and the facial-angle is much the same in both, and may be assumed for the race at 75°.”[221] In conclusion, the author is of the opinion that the facts contained in his work tend to sustain the following propositions: (1) “That the American race differs essentially from all others, not excepting the Mongolian; nor do the feeble analogies of language, and the more obvious ones in civil and religious institutions and the arts, denote anything beyond casual or colonial communication with the Asiatic nations; and even these analogies may perhaps be accounted for, as Humboldt suggested, in the mere coincidence arising from similar wants and impulses in nations inhabiting similar latitudes.” (2) “That the American nations, excepting the Polar tribes, are one race and one species, but of two great families which resemble each other in physical, but differ in intellectual character.” (3) “That the cranial remains discovered in the mounds, from Peru to Wisconsin, belong to the same race and probably to the Toltecan family.”[222] Among the several ethnologists and naturalists who accepted without question the conclusions reached by Morton, the chief was Agassiz, who adopted them as auxiliary to his theory of the correspondence of human life with certain associations in the animal kingdom.[223] They served as a sure foundation, so far as this continent is concerned, for his opinion that the races originated in nations. “We maintain,” says the eminent naturalist, “that, like all organized beings, mankind cannot have originated in single individuals, but must have been created in that numerical harmony which is characteristic of each species. Men must have originated in nations, as the bees have originated in swarms, and as the different social plants have covered the extensive tracts over which they have naturally spread.”[224] This view has been enlarged upon by Messrs. Nott and Gliddon, who argue that, “if it be conceded that there were two primitive pairs of human beings, no reason can be assigned why there may not have been hundreds.”[225] The uniqueness of the so-called American race not only fails of proof, but is positively disproven by the measurements of crania accompanying Morton’s plates, and any thoughtful person cannot avoid surprise that so distinguished a scholar as Agassiz should have committed himself to a theory without first submitting it to a crucial test. That there is a great variety of type observable among the crania figured by Morton, even a superficial examination will show, while a more careful classification presents several facts of interest. For this classification we consider the simple division of the crania into long and short skulls sufficient. The question of other divisions has been often discussed, but with Mr. Huxley we content ourselves with the simplest classification. Referring to a particular instance, he says, “taking the antero-posterior diameter as 100, the transverse diameter varies from 98 or 99 to 62. The number which thus expresses the proportion of the transverse to the longitudinal diameter of the brain-case is called the cephalic index. Those people who possess crania with a cephalic index of 80 and above are called brachycephali (short-skulled), those with a lower index are dolichocephali (long-skulled).”[226] Dr. Meigs, while accepting the classification into long and short skulls, admits that it is open to the objection that it forces into either and opposite classes crania closely related to each other in type and measurement.[227] Yet it must be admitted, that in proportion as arbitrary divisions are increased, these difficulties are multiplied, and that this simple, twofold classification presents the fewest.[228] In the following tables, which contain all the measurements accompanying the plates in the Crania Americana, the cephalic index is placed in the left-hand column. That a wide difference of type is apparent between the extremes of the dolichocephalic and brachycephalic measurements, certainly cannot be denied.
(A) DOLICHOCEPHALIC CRANIA, SCALE OF CLASSIFICATION LESS THAN 80 TO 100. | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cephalic Index, proportion of the Parietal to the Longitudinal Diam. (the latter assumed as 100). | ||||||||||||
| No. of Plate in Morton’s Work. | ||||||||||||
| Longitudinal Diameter. | ||||||||||||
| Parietal Diameter. | ||||||||||||
| Vertical Diameter. | ||||||||||||
| Frontal Diameter. | ||||||||||||
| Extreme Length of Head and Face. | ||||||||||||
| Inter-Mastoid Arch. | ||||||||||||
| Inter-Mastoid Line. | ||||||||||||
| Occipito-Frontal Arch. | ||||||||||||
| Horizontal Periphery. | ||||||||||||
| Interior Capacity.* | ||||||||||||
| Cap. of Anterior Chamber.* | ||||||||||||
| 66. | II | 6.9 | 4.6 | 4.3 | 3.7 | 7.5 | .... | .... | .... | .... | 64. | 17. |
| 72.6 | IV | 7.3 | 5.3 | 5.3 | 4.3 | 8.2 | 14. | 4.3 | 15. | 19.8 | 81.5 | 31.5 |
| 67 | V | 6.7 | 4.5 | 4.1 | 4.1 | 8.8 | 11.5 | 3.6 | 14.2 | 18. | 65.5 | 19.7 |
| 75.2 | XVIII | 6.9 | 5.2 | 5.4 | 4.2 | .... | 14.5 | 4.1 | 14. | 19.2 | 78. | 30. |
| 78.9 | XXIII | 7.1 | 5.6 | 5.5 | 4.7 | .... | 15. | 4.1 | 14.8 | 20.3 | 89. | 52.? |
| 73.6 | XXV | 7.2 | 5.3 | 5.3 | 4.3 | .... | 14.1 | 4.5 | 14.7 | 19.1 | 82. | 35. |
| 79.4 | XXVII | 6.8 | 5.4 | 5.5 | 4.3 | .... | 15. | 4.4 | 14.3 | 20.1 | 81.5 | .... |
| 78. | XXVIII | 7.3 | 5.8 | 5.5 | 4.8 | .... | 15.1 | 4.6 | 14.2 | 20.9 | 94. | 43. |
| 75.3 | XXX | 7.3 | 5.5 | 5.5 | 4.3 | .... | 14.6 | 4.6 | 14.9 | 21. | 90. | 33.5 |
| 73. | XXXIV | 7.8 | 5.7 | 5.3 | 4.4 | .... | 16.8 | 4. | 15.8 | 22.1 | 98. | 35.5 |
| 72.4 | XXXIII | 6.9 | 5. | 5.3 | 4.2 | .... | 14.3 | 3.9 | 14.4 | 19.8 | 71. | 26. |
| 78.5 | XXXII | 7. | 5.5 | 5.1 | 4.6 | .... | 14.4 | 4.2 | 14.5 | 20. | 78.5 | 33. |
| 65.4 | XXXV | 7.8 | 5.1 | 5.4 | 4.2 | .... | 14.2 | 4.5 | 15.5 | 20.8 | 93.5 | 35. |
| 72. | XXXVI | 7.5 | 5.6 | 5.8 | 4.1 | .... | 14.4 | 4.3 | 14.9 | 20.8 | 92.5 | 36. |
| 73.6 | XXXVII | 7.2 | 5.8 | 5.5 | 4.3 | .... | 15. | 4.4 | 14.2 | 19.8 | 74. | 32.5 |
| 76. | XL | 7.1 | 5.4 | 5.1 | 4.3 | .... | 13.8 | 4.3 | 14. | 19.9 | 77. | 38.? |
| 79.4 | LI | 7.3 | 5.8 | 5.4 | 4.4 | .... | 14.6 | 4.2 | 14.1 | 20.3 | 86.5 | .... |
| 74.6 | LII | 7.1 | 5.3 | 5.5 | 4.8 | .... | 14.6 | 4.2 | 14.6 | 20. | 85.5 | .... |
| 79.7 | LXI | 7.1 | 5.6 | 5.5 | 4.6 | .... | 15.5 | 4.1 | 15. | 20.2 | 87. | .... |
| 75.7 | LXIV | 7. | 5.3 | 5.1 | 4.8 | .... | 14.6 | 4. | 14. | 20.2 | .... | |
| 79. | LXV | 7.2 | 5.7 | 5.1 | 4.5 | .... | .... | .... | .... | .... | .... | .... |
| 78.2 | LXVI | 6.9 | 5.4 | 5.4 | 4.1 | .... | 15. | 4.1 | 14.2 | 19.5 | 84.5 | 32.5 |
| 74.7 | .... | 7.1 | 5.3 | 5.2 | 4.3 | .... | 14.4 | 4.2 | 14.5 | 19.9 | 82.6 | 32.8 |
* In cubic inches, the remaining measurements in lineal inches. | ||||||||||||
(A) DOLICHOCEPHALIC CRANIA, SCALE OF CLASSIFICATION LESS THAN 80 TO 100. | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cephalic Index, proportion of the Parietal to the Longitudinal Diam. (the latter assumed as 100). | |||||
| No. of Plate in Morton’s Work. | |||||
| Cap. of Posterior Chamber.* | |||||
| Cap. of Coronal Region. | |||||
| Facial Angle. | |||||
| REMARKS. | |||||
| 66. | II | 47. | .... | .... | Peruvian Child from Atacama (ancient). |
| 72.6 | IV | 50. | 16.2 | 73° | Ancient Peruvian Cemetery near Arica. |
| 67 | V | 45.7 | 12.7 | 61° | Ancient Peruvian. |
| 75.2 | XVIII | 48. | 14.2 | 76° | Female Skull from Acapacingo, Mexico. Supposed Ancient Tiahuica. |
| 78.9 | XXIII | 37.? | 19.? | 78° | Seminole Warrior from Florida. |
| 73.6 | XXV | 47. | 12.2 | 77° | Cherokee Warrior. |
| 79.4 | XXVII | .... | .... | 75° | Uchee. |
| 78. | XXVIII | 51. | 14.7 | 84° | Chippeway (Algonquin-Lenapé). |
| 75.3 | XXX | 56.5 | 13.5 | 75° | Miami Chief (Algonquin-Lenapé). |
| 73. | XXXIV | 62.5 | 19. | 80° | Potowatamie (Algonquin-Lenapé). |
| 72.4 | XXXIII | 45. | 80° | Naumkeag from Massachusetts. | |
| 78.5 | XXXII | 45.5 | 16.2 | 76° | Female Lenapé or Delaware. |
| 65.4 | XXXV | 58.5 | 11.5 | 78° | Cayuga Chief 150 years old (Iroquois). |
| 72. | XXXVI | 56.5 | 18.4 | 74° | Oneida (Iroquois). |
| 73.6 | XXXVII | 41.5 | 9.5 | 78° | Huron Chief. |
| 76. | XL | 44.? | 18.2 | 78° | Black Foot. |
| 79.4 | LI | .... | .... | 76° | Supposed Mound-builder, Circleville Mound. |
| 74.6 | LII | .... | .... | 79° | Supposed Mound-builder from a Mississippi River Mound. |
| 79.7 | LXI | .... | .... | 80° | From Ancient Tomb, Ottumba, Mexico. |
| 75.7 | LXIV | .... | .... | 70° | Charib of Venezuela. |
| 79. | LXV | .... | .... | .... | Charib of St. Vincent. |
| 78.2 | LXVI | 52. | 19. | 76° | Arucanian Chief, Chili. |
| 74.7 | .... | 49.2 | 15.3 | 76° | Mean. |
* In cubic inches, the remaining measurements in lineal inches. | |||||
(B) BRACHYCEPHALIC CRANIA, SCALE OF CLASSIFICATION, 80 AND UPWARDS TO 100. | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cephalic Index, proportion of the Parietal to the Longitudinal Diam. (the latter assumed as 100). | ||||||||||||
| No. of Plate in Morton’s Work. | ||||||||||||
| Longitudinal Diameter. | ||||||||||||
| Parietal Diameter. | ||||||||||||
| Vertical Diameter. | ||||||||||||
| Frontal Diameter. | ||||||||||||
| Extreme Length of Head and Face. | ||||||||||||
| Inter-Mastoid Arch. | ||||||||||||
| Inter-Mastoid Line. | ||||||||||||
| Occipito-Frontal Arch. | ||||||||||||
| Horizontal Periphery. | ||||||||||||
| Interior Capacity.* | ||||||||||||
| Cap. of Anterior Chamber.* | ||||||||||||
| 66. | II | 6.9 | 4.6 | 4.3 | 3.7 | 7.5 | .... | .... | .... | .... | 64. | 17. |
| 80. | III | 6.5 | 5.2 | 5.1 | 4.3 | 8.3 | 14.5 | 4. | 13.8 | 18.5 | 72.5 | 26. |
| 83. | VI | 6.5 | 5.4 | 5.2 | 4.4 | .... | 14.6 | 4. | 14.4 | 19.5 | 67.5 | 28.5 |
| 100. | VII | 5.4 | 5.4 | 4.6 | 4. | .... | .... | .... | .... | .... | 61. | .... |
| 98. | VIII & IX | 6.8 | 5.7 | 5.1 | 4.4 | .... | 14.5 | 4.1 | 12.7 | 18.4 | 71.7 | 28.7 |
| 98.3 | XI | 6.1 | 6. | 5.5 | 4.7 | .... | 16. | 4.5 | 14.1 | 19.5 | 83. | 33.5 |
| 89.5 | XI A | 6.7 | 6. | 5.6 | 4.5 | .... | 16.2 | 4.5 | 14.5 | 20.2 | 89. | 34. |
| 92. | XI B | 6.3 | 5.8 | 5.3 | 4.5 | .... | 15. | 4. | 13.2 | 19. | 76.5 | 30. |
| 98.3 | XI C | 6. | 5.9 | 5. | 4.4 | .... | 15.5 | 4. | 13.2 | 19. | 77. | 28. |
| 81.6 | XI D | 6.5 | 5.5 | 5.6 | 4.6 | .... | 14.8 | 4.5 | 13.6 | 19.5 | 68.5 | 33 |
| 80. | XVI | 7.1 | 5.7 | 5.2 | 4.4 | .... | 15.9 | 4. | 14. | 20.5 | 83. | 39. |
| 80. | XVII | 6.8 | 5.5 | 6. | 4.6 | .... | 15.6 | 4.4 | 14.6 | 19.9 | 89.5 | 33.5 |
| 80. | XVII A | 6.6 | 5.3 | 5.2 | 4.3 | .... | 14.6 | 4.1 | 13.6 | 19. | 74. | 28. |
| 89. | XVIII | 6.4 | 5.7 | 5.4 | 4.5 | .... | 14.6 | 4.5 | 13.5 | 20.2 | 77. | 30. |
| 80. | XIX | 6.9 | 6.6 | 5.9 | 4.2 | .... | 15.5 | 4.3 | 14. | 20. | 85. | 39.2 |
| 80. | XXII | 7.3 | 5.9 | 5.8 | 4.6 | .... | 15.9 | 4.4 | 15.3 | 20.7 | 93. | 35.5 |
| 84.3 | XXIV | 7. | 5.9 | 5.8 | 4.5 | .... | 14.7 | 4.6 | 14.2 | 20.5 | 91.5 | 44. |
| 81.4 | XXVI | 7. | 5.7 | 5.3 | 4.6 | .... | 15.3 | 4.5 | 14.4 | 20.8 | 94.7 | 42.5 |
| 82.3 | XXIX | 6.8 | 5.6 | 5.5 | 4.2 | .... | 14.7 | 4.1 | 14.1 | 19.9 | 86.5 | 36.5 |
| 81.3 | XXXI | 7. | 5.9 | 5.5 | 4.7 | .... | 15.3 | 4.7 | 14.2 | 20.9 | 91.5 | 40. |
| 81.8 | XXXVIII | 6.6 | 5.4 | 4.9 | 4.4 | .... | 13.7 | 4.3 | 13. | 19.1 | 70.5 | 31. |
| 85. | XXXIX | 6.7 | 5.7 | 5.4 | 4.2 | .... | 14.7 | 4.4 | 13.5 | 19.8 | 85. | 36. |
| 90. | XLI | 6.5 | 5.9 | 5.3 | 4.6 | .... | 15.1 | 4.1 | 13.4 | 19.5 | 83. | 37.5 |
| 80.5 | XLII | 6.7 | 5.4 | 5.3 | 4.4 | .... | 14. | 4.2 | 14. | 19.4 | 74. | 33. |
| 88. | XLIII | 6.7 | 5.9 | 4.6 | 4.7 | 8.3 | 14.2 | 4. | 12.9 | 20. | 69. | 32.5 |
| 96. | XLIV | 6.2 | 6. | 5.3 | 4.6 | .... | 14.4 | 4.2 | 13.4 | 19. | 70. | 30. |
| 91.3 | XLV | 6.9 | 6.3 | 4.8 | 4.9 | 8.5 | 15.7 | 4. | 14. | 21. | 92. | 34. |
| 89.2 | XLVI | 6.7 | 6. | 4.5 | 5. | 8.3 | 14.9 | 4.2 | 13. | 19.8 | 78. | 26. |
| 92.6 | XLVII | 6.8 | 6.3 | 4.9 | 5.2 | 8.8 | 14.8 | 4.3 | 13. | 20.4 | 87. | 35.5 |
| 87.8 | XLVIII | 6.6 | 5.8 | 5. | 4.8 | 7.9 | 14.2 | 4.2 | 13. | 19.5 | 79. | 36.5 |
| 87. | XLIX | 7. | 6.1 | 4.1 | 4.9 | 8.8 | 13.9 | 4. | 12.7 | 20.2 | 75. | 28. |
| 99.9 | LIII | 6.6? | 6. | 5. | .... | .... | .... | .... | .... | .... | .... | .... |
| 111.8 | LIV | 5.9 | 6.6 | 5.1 | 4.4 | .... | 15.6 | 4.4 | 12.4 | 19.6 | 80. | .... |
| 84.5 | LV | 6.6 | 5.6 | 5.6 | 4.1 | .... | 15.2 | 4.4 | 14. | 19.5 | 87.5 | .... |
| 87. | LVI | 6.2 | 5.4 | 4.9 | 4.3 | .... | 14.6 | 3.8 | 13.3 | 18.5 | 74.5 | 30. |
| 81.1 | LVII | 6.9 | 5.6 | 5.1 | 4.4 | .... | 15.3 | 4.3 | 14. | 19.7 | 79. | 29.5 |
| 86.1 | LVIII | 6.5 | 5.6 | 5. | 4.5 | .... | 14.7 | 3.8 | 13.2 | 19.2 | 76.5 | 34. |
| 84. | LIX | 6.3 | 5.3 | 5.4 | 4.4 | .... | 14.3 | 4.2 | 13.5 | 19.2 | 74. | .... |
| 89.3 | LX | 6.6 | 5.3 | 5.4 | 4.4 | .... | 14. | 4. | 14. | 19.3 | 76. | .... |
| 80.6 | LXII | 6.7 | 5.4 | 5.5 | 4.3 | .... | 14.5 | 4.1 | 14. | 19.3 | 81. | 35.2 |
| 80.6 | LXVIII | 6.7 | 5.4 | 4.9 | 4.7 | .... | 14.2 | 4.9 | 13.4 | 19.5 | 77. | 32. |
| 87. | .... | 6.8 | 5.7 | 5.1 | 4.5 | .... | 14.6 | 4.2 | 13.9 | 19.5 | 79.5 | 37.1 |
| Forty Skulls.* In cubic inches, the remaining measurements in lineal inches. | ||||||||||||
(B) BRACHYCEPHALIC CRANIA, SCALE OF CLASSIFICATION, 80 AND UPWARDS TO 100. | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cephalic Index, proportion of the Parietal to the Longitudinal Diam. (the latter assumed as 100). | |||||
| No. of Plate in Morton’s Work. | |||||
| Cap. of Posterior Chamber.* | |||||
| Cap. of Coronal Region. | |||||
| Facial Angle. | |||||
| REMARKS. | |||||
| 66. | II | 47. | .... | .... | Peruvian Child from Atacama (ancient). |
| 80. | III | 46.5 | 14.7 | 68° | Ancient Peruvian from Lake Titicaca. |
| 83. | VI | 39. | 10.2 | 76° | Chimuyan, Peru. |
| 100. | VII | .... | .... | .... | Inca Peruvian Child. |
| 98. | VIII & IX | 43. | 11.4 | 75° | Inca Peruvian Female from Temple of Sun, near Lima. |
| 98.3 | XI | 49.5 | 15.7 | 81° | Inca Peruvian from Temple of the Sun. |
| 89.5 | XI A | 55.5 | 20.5 | 80° | Inca Peruvian from Temple of the Sun. |
| 92. | XI B | 46.5 | 12.2 | 80° | Inca Peruvian from Temple of the Sun. |
| 98.3 | XI C | 49. | 11.3 | 80° | Inca Peruvian from Temple of the Sun. |
| 81.6 | XI D | 35.5 | .... | 75° | Inca Peruvian from Temple of the Sun. |
| 80. | XVI | 44. | 17.5 | 72° | Ancient Mexican from Cerro de Quesilas. |
| 80. | XVII | 56. | 19.5 | 80° | Ancient Mexican from Tacuba. |
| 80. | XVII A | 46. | 11.5 | 77° | Mexican Indian from Pamas tribe. |
| 89. | XVIII | 47. | .... | 78° | From an Ancient Tomb near Mexico. |
| 80. | XIX | 45.7 | 13.2 | 71° | Chetimaches from Cemetery in St. Mary’s parish, Louisiana. |
| 80. | XXII | 57.5 | 25. | 72° | Seminole Warrior. |
| 84.3 | XXIV | 47.5 | 18.1 | 81° | Seminole. |
| 81.4 | XXVI | 52.2 | 15.6 | 72° | Skull of the Chief of the Creek Indians. |
| 82.3 | XXIX | 50. | 15.5 | 79° | Menominee Female (Algonquin-Lenapé). |
| 81.3 | XXXI | 51.5 | 12.7 | 82° | Ottogamie (Algonquin-Lenapé). |
| 81.8 | XXXVIII | 39.5 | 10.6 | 75° | Pawnee Female from the Platte River. |
| 85. | XXXIX | 49. | 16.6 | 77° | Dakota Warrior. |
| 90. | XLI | 45.5 | 14.1 | 77° | Osage. |
| 80.5 | XLII | 41. | 14. | 76° | Chinouk (natural form). |
| 88. | XLIII | 36.5 | 9.9 | 72° | Chinouk (artificially flattened). |
| 96. | XLIV | 40. | .... | 70° | Klalstonl of Oregon, (artificially flattened). |
| 91.3 | XLV | 58. | 19.3 | 73° | Killemook Chief. Oregon (artificially flattened). |
| 89.2 | XLVI | 59. | 8.7 | 70° | Clalsap, Columbia River (artificially flattened). |
| 92.6 | XLVII | 51.5 | 11.2 | 68° | Kalapooyah, on Oregon River (artificial). |
| 87.8 | XLVIII | 42.6 | .... | 70° | Clickitat from Columbia River (artificially flat.) |
| 87. | XLIX | 47. | 6.2 | 66° | Cowalitek, Columbia River (artificially flattened). |
| 99.9 | LIII | .... | .... | 78° | Grave Creek Mound. |
| 111.8 | LIV | .... | .... | 72° | From an Alabama River Mound. Supposed Natchez (flattened). |
| 84.5 | LV | .... | .... | 80° | Skull from a Mound in Tennessee. |
| 87. | LVI | 44.5 | 14.5 | 71° | Skull from a Mound at Santa Peru. |
| 81.1 | LVII | 49.5 | 14.1 | 72° | Skull from a Tumulus in the Valley of Rimac, Peru. |
| 86.1 | LVIII | 42.5 | 13.7 | 74° | Mound Skull, Valley of Rimac, Peru. |
| 84. | LIX | .... | .... | 76° | From an Ancient Tomb at Ottumba, Mexico. |
| 89.3 | LX | .... | .... | 77° | From Ancient Tomb, Ottumba, Mexico. |
| 80.6 | LXII | 45.7 | 18. | 76° | Skull from a Cave at Golconda, Illinois. |
| 80.6 | LXVIII | 45. | 11.9 | 72° | Arucanian Chief from Chili. |
| 87. | .... | 45. | 14.2 | 75°31´ | Mean. |
| Forty Skulls.* In cubic inches, the remaining measurements in lineal inches. | |||||
It will be observed that the widest range is found between the proportions of the skull of the Cayuga chief 100 years old (Plate XXXV) with a cephalic index of only 65.4, and those of some of the Peruvian crania having a cephalic index of over 98. The supposed Natchez skull (Plate LIV) is so artificially flattened as to exclude it from the calculation. The mean cephalic index of each of the tables exhibits a well-defined type of the long and the short skull respectively. The former 74.7 and the latter 87 are both far enough removed from the dividing line (80) to leave no doubt that the types are distinct and separate. Additional data, materially strengthening the conclusion of the variety of types found among American crania, has been furnished by that eminent authority Dr. Daniel Wilson.[229] The following table of measurements in inches is based upon his extensive researches:
|
No. of Crania in each Class. |
Description of Crania. |
Mean Longitudinal Diameter. |
Mean Parietal Diameter. |
Cephalic Index. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 | Mound Crania (two from Morton, four undoubtedly from the mounds). | 6.54 | 5.67 | 86.7 |
| 12 | Cave Crania. | 6.62 | 5.78 | 85.7 |
| 29 | Peruvian Brachycephalic Crania. | 5.97 | 5.12 | 85.7 |
| 16 | Peruvian Dolichocephalic Crania. | 6.49 | 4.95 | 76.2 |
| 8 | Mexican Dolichocephalic Crania. | 7.05 | 5.41 | 76.7 |
| 7 | Mexican Brachycephalic Crania. | 6.56 | 5.51 | 84.0 |
| 31 | Dolichocephalic Crania of Am. Indians. | 7.24 | 5.47 | 75.5 |
| 22 | Brachycephalic Crania of Am. Indians. | 6.62 | 5.45 | 82.3 |
| 12 | Living Algonquins, Brachycephalæ. | 7.25 | 6.00 | 82.7 |
| 39 | West Canadian Hurons (male). | 7.39 | 5.50 | 74.4 |
It requires no careful examination of these figures to observe that the type of skull among the American aborigines, ancient or modern, was in no sense constant, since among the same tribes long and short skulls occur in almost equal numbers. This fact is especially true among the savage Indians. Among the semi-civilized nations, however, as among the Peruvians and Mexicans, the long and short skulls mark the successive existence and destruction of distinct peoples having physiological characteristics peculiar to themselves. The Peruvian elongated crania are always found with large-boned skeletons having strong hands, while the short or rounded crania accompany very small bones, such as were unable to endure labor like the building of pyramids and the erection of such edifices as are found in Peru.[230]
It is with the utmost deference to the genius, and with full recognition of the valuable researches of Dr. Morton, that we disagree with his conclusions and pronounce his theory without foundation in fact. There is no evidence furnished by the measurement of crania that an American race, as unique in itself and distinct from the rest of mankind, ever existed.[231] One of the most interesting studies connected with these tables, as well as other measurements made more recently, is the question of relationship between the various semi-civilized peoples of the ancient period. First and most naturally the type of the mound crania attracts attention, and calls for comparisons with the Indian type and with that of the remarkable people of the more southern civilization.
The “Scioto Mound” skull figured by Dr. Davis in Plates xlvii and xlviii of The Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, was pronounced by Dr. Morton in Dr. Meigs’ catalogue of the human crania in the collection of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, as “perhaps the most admirably formed head of the American race hitherto discovered.”
The most important measurements are as follows:
| Longitudinal diameter | 6.5 | inches. |
| Parietal „ | 6.0 | „ |
| Vertical „ | 6.2 | „ |
| Inter-mastoid arch | 16.0 | „ |
| Horizontal circumference | 19.8 | „ |
| —— | ||
| Cephalic index | 92.3 | „ |
The chief features as pointed out by the above-named author, are: the elevated vertex, flattened occiput, great inter-parietal diameter, ponderous bony structure, salient nose, large jaws and broad face. These he pronounces to be characteristics of the American cranium. Dr. Wilson has shown that Dr. Morton has contradicted his own previous definition of what that type is as well as the description given by Humboldt.[232] The propriety of selecting any single cranium as typical of the Mound-builders would be as questionable in this connection as it was for Dr. Morton and the authors of the Types of Mankind to designate the Scioto Mound skull as a type of the American cranium. Until within a few years but few genuine mound skulls were accessible, and considerable suspicion was reasonably attached to the genuineness of several, including three or four of the so-called mound skulls in the Crania Americana. Recent explorations have brought to light a large number, of unquestioned genuineness. The Peabody Museum alone possesses 300, and of these 200 were exhumed by Prof. F. W. Putnam.
From a number of measurements only is it possible for us to approximate the type of the mound skull. We have already referred to the low type skulls secured by Gen. H. W. Thomas from a mound in Dakota Territory.[233] Unfortunately we are without measurements, but from the description we observe that the forehead is decidedly receding, and the orbital ridges are excessively developed. The inferior maxillary is of unusual prominence and much more massive, as is the entire bony structure, than in the common Indian cranium. Another cranium of similar characteristic was exhumed from the great mound on the River Rouge near its junction with the Detroit River, Michigan, by Mr. Henry Gillman. From this mound several crania were taken, of which one (though evidently adult) presented the hitherto, I think I may say, unprecedented feature of its capacity being only fifty-six cubic inches. The mean given by Morton and Meigs of the Indian cranium is eighty-four cubic inches, the minimum being sixty-nine cubic inches. This cranium, forwarded with other relics to the Peabody Museum, presents (though in no wise deformed) the further peculiarity of having the ridges for the attachment of the temporal muscle only .75 of an inch apart, in this respect resembling the cranium of the chimpanzee. It is rarely that in human crania those ridges approach each other within a distance of two inches, while they vary from that to four inches apart.[234] Eight crania were exhumed by Mr. Gillman from the great mound on Rouge River, which furnished him the following measurements:
DIMENSIONS, ETC., OF CRANIA EXHUMED FROM THE GREAT MOUND, RIVER ROUGE, MICHIGAN.
| No. | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capacity (Approximate).[235] | |||||||||
| Circumference. | |||||||||
| Length. | |||||||||
| Breadth. | |||||||||
| Height. | |||||||||
| Breadth of Frontal. | |||||||||
| Index of Breadth. | |||||||||
| Index of Height. | |||||||||
| Index of Foramen Magnum. | |||||||||
1.[236] | 18.65 | 19.00 | 7.30 | 6.00 | 5.35 | 4.02 | .822 | .733 | .465 |
2.[237] | 18.10 | 19.50 | 7.30 | 5.20 | 5.60 | 3.60 | .712 | .767 | .547 |
3. | 18.00 | 19.50 | 7.00 | 5.40 | 5.60 | 3.95 | .777 | .800 | .500 |
4. | 18.47 | .... | 7.20 | 5.40 | 5.77 | 4.07 | .763 | .801 | .479 |
5.[238] | 16.54 | 18.50 | 6.90 | 4.70 | 4.94 | 3.74 | .681 | .716 | .... |
6.[239] | 18.23 | 22.40 | 6.80 | 5.80 | 5.63 | 4.63 | .853 | .828 | .397 |
7.[240] | 18.82 | .... | 7.60 | 5.62 | 5.60 | 4.01 | .739 | .736 | .473 |
8. | 15.93 | 18.00 | 5.35 | 5.03 | 5.55 | 4.08 | .940 | 1.037 | .605 |
Means. | 17.84 | 19.48 | 6.93 | 5.40 | 5.50 | 4.01 | .786 | .802 | .495 |
| No. | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontal Arch. | ||||||||
| Parietal Arch. | ||||||||
| Occipital Arch. | ||||||||
| Longitudinal Arch. | ||||||||
| Length of Frontal. | ||||||||
| Length of Parietal. | ||||||||
| Length of Occipital. | ||||||||
| Zygomatic Diameter. | ||||||||
1.[236] | 12.15 | 12.00 | 11.65 | 14.00 | 5.50 | 4.40 | 4.10 | .... |
2.[237] | 11.80 | 12.75 | 11.50 | 15.35 | 4.95 | 5.50 | 4.90 | 4.20 |
3. | 12.65 | 12.20 | 10.30 | 14.60 | 5.00 | 4.75 | 4.85 | .... |
4. | 12.10 | 12.00 | 11.10 | 13.45 | 4.75 | 5.40 | 4.30 | .... |
5.[238] | 11.20 | 10.25 | 11.30 | 13.95 | 4.50 | 4.75 | 4.70 | 5.00 |
6.[239] | 11.10 | 13.15 | 11.00 | 14.85 | 5.40 | 4.60 | 4.85 | 5.00 |
7.[240] | 11.50 | .... | .... | .... | 5.10 | .... | .... | .... |
8. | 11.90 | 12.80 | 11.30 | 13.90 | 4.90 | 4.90 | 4.10 | .... |
Means. | 11.80 | 12.16 | 11.16 | 14.30 | 5.01 | 4.90 | 4.54 | 4.93 |
Note.—The fragments of a cranium, consisting chiefly of a very retreating frontal, and presenting traits of a low and brutal character, reminding one of the Neanderthal skull, were found underneath the above tabulated crania.
We observe that only three of these crania are brachycephalic, while the remaining five, and the mean of all, fall under the class of dolichocephalic crania, according to our classification. Mr. Gillman would call some of them Orthocephalic, and the mean of the eight crania giving a cephalic index of .786 and .802 as an index of height might properly be so classified. The same gentleman exhumed from an ancient mound on Chambers Island, Green Bay, Wisconsin, six crania, which as to type were equally divided into long and short skulls, while the mean cephalic index, .817, assigned them to the brachycephalic class. The long skulls were not far removed, however, from the dividing line between the classes (.80). The energetic and intelligent labors of Dr. R. J. Farquharson of the Davenport, Iowa, Academy of Sciences, has placed within our reach measurements upon twenty-five mound crania.[241] The following are the most important measurements in inches:
| CRANIA. | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Horizontal Circumference. | |||||
| Longitudinal Diameter. | |||||
| Transverse Diameter. | |||||
| Internal Capacity. | |||||
| Cephalic Index or Ratio of Diameter. | |||||
| Mean of Nine Crania from Albany, Ill. | 19.8 | 6.8 | 5.1 | 68. | .768 |
| Mean of Eleven from Rock River, Ill. | 20.15 | 7.0 | 5.4 | 74.48 | .771 |
| Mean of Four from Henry County, Ill. | 19.5 | 7.0 | 5.2 | 74.47 | .743 |
| One from Davenport | 19.5 | 7.0 | 5.25 | 76.20 | .752 |
This table introduces a new feature into the investigation in hand; the brachycephalic or the near approximation to the short skull is displaced by a mean cephalic index of .758, indicating the well-marked dolichocephalic type. The mean internal capacity 73.3 inches falls considerably below the mean of mound crania as measured by Squier and Davis, Wilson and others, from localities farther south.
The mean results of Dr. Farquharson’s measurements[242] show a greater vertical than transverse diameter, a peculiarity of most Mississippi mound skulls, distinguishing them from Peruvian crania. In the Ohio Valley the brachycephalic type is quite decided, though the general features of high receding forehead, flattened occiput, and great transverse diameter, establish their relationship to all other North American mound crania yet discovered. Three Ohio Valley mound skulls, as to the genuineness of which no suspicion can be entertained, namely the Scioto Mound cranium and two crania from the Grave Creek Mound, give the following measurements in the mean: Longitudinal diameter, 6.5 inches; parietal diameter, 6 inches; vertical diameter, 5.5 inches, and 90.7 as their cephalic index. The mean internal capacity, though not obtainable with any degree of accuracy, in this instance is no doubt from eight to ten cubic inches greater than in the Davenport crania. With the general characteristics alike, minor differences may in most instances be attributed to artificial pressure. A valuable collection of mound crania was made in Kentucky for the Smithsonian Institution and the Peabody Museum, by Mr. S. S. Lyon, and is thoroughly reliable as a basis for measurements. Professor Wyman, in the Fourth Annual Report of the Peabody Museum, describes them as follows: “The twenty-four crania measured (Table VIII) show a mean capacity of 1313 cubic centimetres, which is greater than that of the Peruvians, but less than that of the North American Indians generally (viz., 1376 cubic centimetres, or 84 cubic inches). They differ also from those of the ordinary Indians in being lighter, less massive, in having the rough surface for muscular attachments less strongly marked. * * * In proportions they present a very considerable variation among themselves. Assuming the length of the skull to be 1.000, the breadth ranges from 0.712 to 0.950 of the length. The average proportion is 0.857, which places them in the short-headed group.”
We have already called attention to the extensive and thorough work performed by Professor Joseph Jones in Tennessee, the report of which was published in 1876 by the Smithsonian Institution in a “contribution” entitled Explorations of the Aboriginal Remains of Tennessee. Professor Jones secured above a hundred mound and stone grave crania, mostly in the valley of the Cumberland and on the banks of the Big Harpeth River. Some of the skeletons accompanying these crania were of gigantic stature, a fact which is at variance with the opinion that they were related to the diminutive race of Inca Peruvians.[243] On the contrary, however, a strong argument for the relationship between the Mound-builders and the Peruvians is found in the frequent occurrence of the Inca-bone (os inca) so-called, on the mound crania.[244] Mr. Henry Gillman found this same bone in one of the crania exhumed by him from the great mound of Rouge River, Michigan, with a disposition to its formation in several others.[245] Professor Jones is convinced of the unity of the mound race throughout the entire Mississippi Basin. The following table of measurements, published in the Antiquities of Tennessee, is one of the most valuable which has yet been prepared:
| Number of Cranium. | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Facial Angle in Degrees. | ||||||||||||
| Internal Capacity in Cubic Inches. | ||||||||||||
| Longitudinal Diameter in Inches. | ||||||||||||
| Parietal Diameter. | ||||||||||||
| Frontal Diameter. | ||||||||||||
| Vertical Diameter. | ||||||||||||
| Inter-Mastoid Arch. | ||||||||||||
| Inter-Mastoid Line. | ||||||||||||
| Occipito-Frontal Arch. | ||||||||||||
| Horizontal Periphery. | ||||||||||||
| Diameter of Head and Face. | ||||||||||||
| Zygomatic Diameter. | ||||||||||||
1 | 76.5 | 75. | 6.3 | 5.4 | 4.3 | 5.5 | 15. | 5. | 13.5 | 19. | 7.5 | 5.1 |
2 | 80. | 78. | 6. | 5.6 | 4.4 | 5.4 | 14.6 | 5.1 | 13.2 | 18.9 | 7.2 | 5.2 |
3 | 75. | 78. | 6.1 | 5.7 | 4.3 | 5.6 | 15. | 5.2 | 13. | 19. | 7.3 | 5.3 |
4 | .... | 82. | 6.2 | 5.7 | 4.1 | 5.5 | 15.2 | 5.4 | 14. | 19. | .... | 5.2 |
5 | 77. | 84. | 6.5 | 5.8 | 4.4 | 5.8 | 15.5 | 5.2 | 14.3 | 19.9 | 7.4 | 5.3 |
6 | 76. | 68. | 6.4 | 4.9 | 3.9 | 5.5 | 13.9 | 4.5 | 13.8 | 18.2 | 7.1 | 4.6 |
7 | 81. | 103. | 7. | 5.9 | 4.8 | 6.4 | 16.8 | 5.3 | 15.7 | 20.8 | 7.8 | 5.5 |
8 | 80. | 80. | 6.6 | 5.6 | 4.3 | 5.5 | 15. | 4.6 | 13.8 | 19.3 | 7.2 | 5.2 |
9 | 78. | 79. | 7. | 5.2 | 3.9 | 5.8 | 14.7 | 4.6 | 15.2 | 19.5 | 7.4 | 5. |
10 | 81. | 76. | 6.3 | 6. | 4.4 | 5.4 | 15.7 | 4.6 | 13.8 | 19.4 | 6.8 | 5.3 |
11 | 80. | 90. | 6.9 | 5.6 | 4.3 | 6. | 15.7 | 4.8 | 14.8 | 20.3 | 7.6 | 5.5 |
12 | 77. | 80. | 6.8 | 5.2 | 4.1 | 5.8 | 15. | 4.7 | 14.4 | 19.5 | 7.8 | 5.2 |
13 | 82. | 81. | 6.9 | 5.5 | 4.3 | 5.7 | 15. | 4.8 | 14. | 19.6 | 7.8 | 5. |
14 | .... | 92. | 6.1 | 6.4 | 4.4 | 6. | 16.5 | 5.4 | 13.8 | 19.8 | .... | .... |
15 | .... | 79. | 6.1 | 5.8 | 4.6 | 5.5 | 15. | 4.8 | 13.4 | 18.9 | .... | .... |
16 | .... | .... | 7.2 | 5.7 | 4.6 | 5.9 | 16. | 4.6 | 15.2 | 20.8 | .... | .... |
17 | .... | .... | 6.1 | 5.5 | 4.1 | 4.5 | 14. | .... | 13.6 | 19. | .... | .... |
18 | .... | .... | 6.5 | 5.8 | 4.5 | 4.6 | 15. | .... | .... | 19.4 | .... | .... |
19 | 82. | 79.2 | 6.7 | 5.5 | 4.2 | 5.5 | 15. | 4.4 | 13.5 | 19.1 | 7.8 | 5.2 |
20 | 75. | 81.4 | 6.5 | 5.7 | 4. | 5.6 | 14.4 | 5. | 13.3 | 19.2 | 7.1 | 5.3 |
21 | 82. | 80.5 | 6.4 | 5.9 | 4.6 | 5.7 | 15. | 4.9 | 14. | 19. | 7.3 | 5.4 |
Max. | 82. | 103. | 7.2 | 6.4 | 4.8 | 6.4 | 16.8 | 5.4 | 15.7 | 20.8 | 7.8 | 5.5 |
Min. | 75. | 68. | 6. | 4.9 | 3.9 | 4.5 | 13.9 | 4.4 | 13. | 18.2 | 6.8 | 4.6 |
Mean | 78.8 | 81.44 | 6.5 | 5.68 | 4.21 | 5.56 | 15.0 | 4.57 | 13.88 | 19.8 | 7.4 | 5.2 |
The most noticeable feature in the table aside from the mean cephalic index .874 is the great internal capacity of cranium No. 7, which was found in a stone grave in a mound near Nashville, with a skeleton over six feet long. The occiput is but slightly flattened, and the general contour of the head is symmetrically oval. Morton gives as the mean internal capacity of fifty-two Caucasian skulls 87 cubic inches; the largest of the series measured 109 cubic inches, and the smallest 75 cubic inches. This remarkable cranium gives an internal capacity of 103 cubic inches, vastly above the mean European skull, and only falling six cubic inches below the largest measured by Morton. As we observed a considerable increase in capacity in the Scioto Mound cranium, with its ninety cubic inches, over the crania of the north-west and north, of Michigan and Davenport, so here a most remarkable advance upon the capacity of the Scioto cranium is presented. The evidence of considerable development in the size of the cranium in this same race is clear; and taken with other testimony, such as the great improvement in art and architecture, indicates probably a movement from north to south, and that the mound race was older in the former region than in the latter.
In September, 1877, Prof. F. W. Putnam and Mr. Edwin Curtiss exhumed sixty-seven crania from stone graves located in the neighborhood of Nashville, Tennessee. These crania were measured by Miss Jennie Smith and Mr. Lucian Carr, and the latter has tabulated and described them in the Eleventh Annual Report of the Peabody Museum (pp. 361 et seq., Cambridge, 1878). As some interesting features occur in the tables, we insert here Mr. Carr’s mean measurements. It will be observed that the classification in this instance is threefold, besides the distinct position assigned to the “much flattened” crania.
MEAN MEASUREMENTS OF SIXTY-SEVEN CRANIA FROM STONE GRAVES IN TENNESSEE.
| Number of Crania. | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capacity. | ||||||||||
| Length. | ||||||||||
| Breadth. | ||||||||||
| Height. | ||||||||||
| Index of Breadth. | ||||||||||
| Index of Height. | ||||||||||
| Width of Frontal. | ||||||||||
| Index of Breadth. | ||||||||||
2 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 5 | ||||||
1 | Dolichocephali | 5 | 1325 | 184 | 132 | 142 | .716 | .775 | 94 | .730 and under. |
6 | 18 | 16 | 11 | 18 | ||||||
2 | Orthocephali | 18 | 1346 | 172 | 134 | 141 | .775 | .819 | 89 | .740 @ .800 |
15 | 29 | 28 | 18 | 29 | ||||||
3 | Brachycephali | 29 | 1284 | 165 | 141 | 142 | .856 | .865 | 90 | .800 @ .900 |
7 | 15 | 15 | 8 | 15 | ||||||
4 | Much Flattened | 15 | 1461 | 156 | 152 | 145 | .973 | .907 | 93 | .900 and over. |
Mr. Carr calls attention to the fact that while the classified crania as a whole are brachycephali, still from twenty-three to thirty-three per cent. of the whole cannot be considered as falling within that group. Whether the five dolichocephali in the table belonged to the same race cannot be determined. They were buried together, for Prof. Putnam found a long and a short skull side by side in the same grave. Mr. A. J. Conant (see Commonwealth of Missouri, St. Louis, 1877, 8vo, pp. 106–7) discovered in a mound in South-eastern Missouri two crania belonging to skeletons buried in regular order, with a large number of other skeletons at the bottom of the mound, which differed strangely from all others found in that locality. The forehead was entirely wanting, and the contour of the top of one of the skulls was almost flat. It closely resembles the Neanderthal skull. Mr. Conant thought it at first to be an intrusive burial, but careful examination proved it to have been placed in position before the building of the mound, and to have been interred with as much care as was bestowed upon any of the other occupants of the mound. Vases, drinking vessels and food-pans accompanied it as they did all the other skeletons.
Mr. Carr thinks such crania as he has pointed out belonged to individuals who were conquered in war, or adopted or introduced into the tribe by intermarriage. Mr. Conant considers that the low type cranium which he discovered belonged to a very ancient race, the predecessors of the Mound-builders, and not far removed from the palæolithic races of Europe.
The mound skulls are readily distinguishable from those of the Red Indian. Only in the Davenport crania and the five dolichocephali from Tennessee do we see any approximation as to form. However, the remaining characteristics of the Davenport crania establish the fact that they belonged to people of the mounds. In our classification of Dr. Morton’s measurements, it will be observed that only two supposed mound skulls appear among the dolichocephali (long skulls, A), and too much doubt is attached to their genuineness to admit of their use in drawing inferences. All the remainder belong to the savage tribes except three Peruvians of the ancient race of the region of Titicaca. In the table of brachycephali but few of the savage tribes are represented, except those which practice artificial compression to the extent of deformity. The mound skull as compared with the Inca Peruvian presents few resemblances, except that both generally belong to the brachycephalic class, and the singular and important fact already mentioned that the Inca bone has been found in North American mound crania. It is possible that when more extensive research is made, this distinguishing feature may lead to the conclusion that the races were one or closely related. On the other hand, the massive bony structure of some of the mound crania does not correspond with the facial bones of the Inca crania, which are very light and delicate. Prof. Wilson has pointed out the additional fact that the vertical diameter of the Peruvian short crania is not so great as that of the mound and Mexican short skulls, but a reference to the Professor’s own tables shows that the mean difference amounts only to thirty-seven-hundredths of an inch, altogether too small a variation to serve as the basis for ethnic generalizations.[246] Few if any similarities can be traced between the dolichocephali of Peru and the brachycephalic Mound-builders, the only resemblances being the heavy bony structure possessed in common by both races. The crania of the dolichocephali of Peru are pronounced of a Mongol cast and form, and are in every respect unlike the mound crania. Turning our attention, however, to the ancient Mexican crania, we find, so far as we are able to judge from the limited number of skulls which have come into the possession of ethnologists, a parallelism in measurements and resemblance in the various distinctive features, such as flattened occiput, broad transverse diameter, retreating forehead, strong bony structure, and a remarkable agreement in vertical diameter with those of the mounds of the Mississippi Basin, which point unmistakably to the closest relationship. Seven Mexican brachycephali measured by Prof. Wilson in the Boston and Philadelphia collections previously referred to, gave a mean vertical diameter of 5.55 inches.[247] Four Mound-builder crania measured by the same investigation gave precisely the same result, while the remaining measurements varied from each other but slightly. In confirmation of this result it is worthy of notice that the mean vertical diameter of the twenty-one mound and stone grave crania from Tennessee varied from that of the Mexican crania by only one one-hundredth of an inch (5.56).
When Dr. Morton began his investigations, he was disposed to recognize the existence of distinct races, represented by the dolichocephalic and brachycephalic crania of Peru.[248] But in later years, and at a period subsequent to the issue of his justly celebrated work, he concluded that the Peruvian elongated head was the product of artificial compression and not the distinguishing mark of an ancient race which long antedated the Incas.[249] Prof. Wilson has thoroughly discussed this subject, and from a series of investigations, conducted on a much more extensive scale than those of Dr. Morton, he has shown conclusively that the distinguished craniologist was quite mistaken as to the facts upon which he based his later views.[250] Much valuable information was afforded Prof. Wilson by the researches and collections of John H. Blake, Esq., made during that gentleman’s residence in Peru, as well as the extensive collection of Dr. J. C. Warren of Boston. Prof. Wilson points out the essential difference between the compressed and the naturally dolichocephalic cranium in these words: “Few who have had extensive opportunities of minutely examining and comparing normal and artificially formed crania, will, I think, be prepared to dispute the fact that the latter are rarely, if ever, symmetrical. The application of pressure on the head of the living child can easily be made to change its natural contour, but it cannot give to its artificial proportions that harmonious repetition of corresponding developments on opposite sides which may be assumed as the normal condition of the unmodified cranium. But in so extreme a case as the conversion of a brachycephalic head averaging about 6.3 inches longitudinal diameter by 5.3 inches parietal diameter into a dolichocephalic head of 7.3 by 4.9 inches diameter, the retention of anything like the normal symmetrical proportions is impossible. Yet the dolichocephalic Peruvian crania present no such abnormal irregularities as could give plausibility to the theory of their form being an artificial one, while peculiarities in the facial proportions confirm the idea that it is of ethnic origin and not the product of deformation.” Besides these differences there are peculiarities of a structural nature sufficient in themselves to distinguish the Peruvian long from the short crania. The former is small, narrow and decidedly long; the forehead is low and retreating, and two-thirds of the brain-cavity lies behind the occipital foramen. The superior maxillary is protruding and holds the incisor teeth obliquely. The weight of the bony structure also exceeds that in the brachycephalic. Though both classes are found artificially compressed, yet they are always distinguishable from each other. One of the best illustrations of this fact, and one already used by Prof. Wilson, is afforded in contrasting two dolichocephalic crania, both obtained by Mr. Blake in his explorations of the ancient cemeteries of Arica and Atacama. Both are evidently of children; one is in its normal condition, symmetrical, and when viewed from above presents the outlines of a graceful oval form, while the other was subjected to such compression as to throw the volume of the brain backward and to greatly deform the frontal bone.[251] A slight tendency to assume the dog-shaped head of the Chinooks of the Columbia River is manifest, where deformation is carried to such an extent as to produce monstrosities. However, even then, the normal brachycephalic type of skull of the Chinooks is not transformed to the dolichocephalic, since the base of the cranium remains comparatively unaffected while distension takes place in a posterior and upward direction. Mr. Squier in his Peru (p. 580, Appendix), has shown that circular compression produces a symmetrical effect in the same direction.
The custom of artificially flattening the head has, upon investigation, been shown not to be peculiar alone to the aborigines of America, but to have been practised by many of the semi-civilized peoples of antiquity in different parts of Europe and Asia. Hippocrates, in his treatise De Aëre, Aquis, et Locis, has described this savage practice among a people whom he calls Machrocephali, supposed to have inhabited the region near the Palus Mæotis, in the vicinity of the Caucasus. He says, “The custom stood thus: as soon as the child was born, they immediately fashioned its soft and tender head with their hands, and by the use of bandages and proper arts, forced it to grow lengthwise, by which the spherical figure of the head was prevented and the length increased.” Strabo refers to a people occupying a portion of Western Asia, who were addicted to the same custom and had foreheads projecting beyond their beards.[252] Pliny places them in Asia Minor,[253] while Pomponius Mela places the Machrocephali on the Bosphorus.[254] Blumenbach has figured in his first decade, a compressed skull obtained by him from Russia and probably originally from one of the tumuli of the Crimean Bosphorus, where it is supposed to have been exhumed during the Russian occupation. In 1843, Rathke figured and described in Müller’s Archiv für Anatomie, another example of the compressed human crania, obtained from an ancient grave near Kertsch in the Crimea. In 1820, Count August von Brenner obtained on his estate at Fuersbrunn near Grafenegg in Austria, a skull of similar characteristics. This was, upon examination, decided to have belonged to an Avarian Hun. Prof. Retzius described it in the Proceedings of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Stockholm in 1844, adducing arguments to strengthen that supposition. Dr. Tschudi, however, conceived the idea that it might have been a Peruvian skull which had been brought to Europe as a curiosity during the reign of Charles V. and afterwards thrown aside. His communication appeared in Müller’s Archiv für Anatomie. The opinion of the learned traveller was, however, subsequently reversed by the discovery at Atzgersdorf, near Vienna, of another and similar cranium. More recently others have come to light at the Village of St. Roman in Savoy, and in the Valley of the Doubs near Mandense. Dr. Fitzinger has probably investigated this subject with more thoroughness than any other writer, and has shown in his articles in the Transactions of the Imperial Academy of Vienna, that this custom was native to the Scythian region in the vicinity of the Mœtian Moor, and prevailed in the Caucasus and along the shores of the Black and Caspian seas and the Bosphorus. Among the most interesting relics cited as sustaining his views is an ancient medal struck in commemoration of the destruction of Aquileia by Attila the Hun in A.D. 452, and bearing the bust of that “Scourge of God.” The head represented in profile is of precisely the same shape as those of the other Avir skulls, having a flattened form in a vertical and oblique direction. Thierry in his Attila has traced the origin of the custom of flattening the skull, to the Huns, who, descending from their home upon the steppes of Northern Asia, left their remains upon many a field in Europe. One of these deformed skulls was discovered in 1856 by J. Hudson Barclay, in a large cavern near the Damascus Gate at Jerusalem. The skeleton was of unusually large size and decayed, but the skull, which was pretty well-preserved, was brought to this country and is preserved in the collection of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.[255] Dr. J. Atkinson Meigs concluded, upon careful examination, that its occiput had been flattened by pressure during childhood. The testimony of Dr. Tschudi, rendered undesignedly, amounts to the best of evidence of the transition of this custom from the eastern shores of Asia to Peru, and this isolated instance has been strengthened beyond question or doubt by the abundant proof which has been brought to light since attention was directed to the subject.[256]
In referring to the methods by which artificial compression was brought about in America, Prof. Wilson remarks: “Trifling as it may appear, it is not without interest to have the fact brought under our notice by the disclosures of ancient barrows and cysts, that the same practice of nursing the child and carrying it about, bound to a flat cradle-board, prevailed in Britain and the North of Europe long before the first notices of written history reveal the presence of man beyond the Baltic or the English Channel, and that in all probability the same custom prevailed continuously from the shores of the German Ocean to Behring Straits.”[257] Dr. L. A. Gosse testifies to the prevalence of the same custom among the Caledonians and Scandinavians of the earliest times,[258] and Dr. Thurman has treated the same peculiarity of the early Anglo-Saxon.[259] It is a matter of no little surprise to the inquirer in this field to learn that this system of skull distortion introduced into Southern Europe by the Asiatic hordes which overran it in the fifth century has been perpetuated, though somewhat modified, and at present is in vogue in the south of France.[260] The distinguished Dr. Foville, in charge of the Asylum for Insane in the Department Seine-Inférieure and Charenton, has figured this process in his work on the Anatomy of the Nervous System, as well as a number of skulls which have striking Peruvian resemblances. The artificial form in this case is produced by the use of peculiar head-dresses or bandages.[261] The Egyptians placed a pillow under the neck and not for the head; hence the elongated crania characteristic of the race, and it is not a little remarkable that the Feejee Islanders have the same custom at the present day. The Kankas of the Sandwich Islands produce the flattened occiput by supporting the infant’s head always in the palm of the hand.[262] The South Sea Islanders have a flattened occiput, as Pickering describes it, projecting but slightly beyond the line of the neck.[263] Prof. Wilson comments upon this fact as follows: “Traces of purposed deformation of the head among the islanders of the Pacific, have an additional interest in their relation to one possible source of the South American population by Oceanic migration, suggested by philological and other independent evidence. But for our present purpose the peculiar value of these modified skulls lies in the disclosures of influences operating alike undesignedly, and with a well-defined purpose, in producing the very same cranial conformation among races occupying the British Islands in ages long anterior to earliest history, and among the savage tribes of America and the simple islanders of the Pacific in the present day.”[264] It is a well-known fact that flattening the skull has prevailed from the earliest times in most parts of the American Continent, especially on the Pacific coast. From the extreme north to Southern Peru, flattening the skulls was regarded as an artistic improvement on nature and was practised with a maternal solicitude, if we judge from the customs of the modern Chinooks, deserving of a higher aim. More centrally and toward the Atlantic border the custom was not so carefully and generally practised, unless we may except the case of the Natchez, who carried it to almost the extreme reached at present by the Columbia River tribes. The object of this strange transformation is believed to have been twofold, “to give,” as Torquemada supposes, in referring to the Peruvians, “a fierce appearance in war,” and to obtain the mark of a royal and dominant race, a fashion which seems to have been transmitted without a variation, from its Mongol source. The Chinooks consider it the mark of superiority, and will not permit the tribes subject to them to practise it. Mr. Paul Cane, has illustrated this subject with drawings made during his visit to the Columbia and Vancouver’s Island, while Dr. Pickering, Mr. Hale and others, have described the hideous and beastly aspect of the singular people practising the deformation. Skull flattening among the American tribes may be classified as intentional and unintentional. To the class of intentionally flattened skulls we may assign those of the twenty or more tribes of the North-west coast, the Natchez, the ancient Mayas, the Peruvians, and some of the more central and eastern South American tribes. The North-western flatheads subject the head of a child during the first eight or ten months of its life to pressure produced by means of a cradle or cradle-board, provided with a board which rests upon the forehead and tied down upon it by means of cords extending to the foot of the cradle, while the other end is connected to the head of the cradle with a hingelike attachment.
Chinooks (Flat-Heads), after Catlin.
The Natchez produced the artificial form by bandaging the infant’s head to a well-cushioned cradle-board by means of strips of deer-skin.[265] The Caribs bandaged the head with pieces of wool, and gave it a very quadrangular shape. The Choctaws produced artificial compression by means of a bag of sand.[266] The unintentional flattening of the skull arose from the quite general use of the cradle-board without any board for pressure, or the custom common among many American tribes of the mother suckling the child over her shoulder, a practice widely prevalent in Africa and among savage nations. In the former instance it is but reasonable to suppose that the form of a tender and pliable skull would be modified more or less by the shape of the hard cradle-board, and by the position in which it was placed upon its rest. This fact accounts for the slight occipital compression of the mound skulls and also for the irregularity of the flattening in many cases. The latter process, that of nursing the child from its position on the shoulder or back would no doubt subject the head to a slight pressure, perhaps in most cases in a lateral direction.
The general prevalence of the unnatural custom of flattening the skull on the eastern border-land of Europe and among the numerous tribes of the western coast of America, together with its presence in Polynesia as a connecting link, we think justifies us in concluding that it originated among the wild hordes of the northern steppes of Asia, from which centre it spread in lines of radiation until it reached the remote localities in which recent research has found it.[267] This fact is suggestive of a remote intercourse between peoples separated by seas and mountains, if it does not serve as an argument for the unity and common origin of the human family.
A careful examination of the remains of the pre-historic races other than the measurement of crania has contributed largely to our fund of information concerning their life and habits. Science has rendered us pretty familiar with some of the diseases to which they were subject. Dr. Farquharson has described a singular manifestation of disease of the cervical vertebræ, shown in a peculiar roughening of the articular surfaces, and also by a true or bony anchylosis of these points. He concludes that the people of the mounds must have been possessed of a considerable degree of civilization and facilities for the care of the sick during a long period, in order to have effected the cure which the condition of the bones indicate had taken place.[268] One of the most alarming discoveries, however, is that which apparently shows the general prevalence of syphilis. That this loathsome disease was common among the various tribes of Equinoctial America is attested to by the discoverers and their successors, and has been much commented upon, and held by some authors to have been of American origin. The most recent supporter of this view is Professor Jones, to whom we have already referred.[269] He found in most of the mounds which he explored in Tennessee bones bearing syphilitic nodes, and believes them to be the oldest traces of the disease in existence. Dr. Farquharson made similar discoveries in the Iowa and Illinois mounds. Prof. Putnam, however, attributes the nodes to other diseases. That flattening of the leg-bone or tibia, peculiar to pre-historic man in Europe, and perhaps the result of rugged exertion in climbing mountains and traversing the country with that rapidity which the chase required where the horse is wanting, is more noticeable in the remains of some of the Mound-builders than in any other people. This peculiarity of the tibia called platycnemism, is probably a provision of nature, securing a firmer and better defined process upon which the muscles of the leg could fasten themselves, and its prominence among the people of the mounds indicates the possession of great pedestrian powers.[270]
The singular custom of perforating the skull after death (and possibly during life) is shown to have been in vogue by the discovery of a number of crania at the River Rouge Mound in Michigan with artificial apertures. No light as yet has been thrown upon the significance of this strange practice.[271] The nearest approach to the natural condition and characteristic physiognomy of the pre-historic inhabitants of this continent, is observable in the Peruvian mummies collected in latitude 18° 30´ S., on the shore of the Bay of Chacota, near Arica, by Mr. Blake, and transferred by him to Boston. Many others have since been exhumed, and though embalmed and buried in a climate which preserves the brightest colors of the garments with which they were enshrouded, still the shrivelled condition of the corpses furnishes us the assurance that their type of features can never be truly recovered from nature. Dr. Morton has figured the head of one of these mummies in Plate I of the Crania Americana, from which the physiognomy may be partially restored by the aid of a vivid imagination. Notwithstanding the temptation which presents itself, and one which has been sufficiently indulged already, it would certainly be idle to speculate as to what that type might have been. However, one feature of the Peruvian mummies has been preserved true to life, and is of the greatest value in determining ethnic relations. The silicious sand and marl of the plain southward of Arica, where the most remarkable cemeteries are situated, is slightly impregnated with common salt as well as nitrate and sulphate of soda. These conditions, together with the dry atmosphere rivalling that of Egypt, and in which fleshy matter dries without putrefaction, the human hair has been perfectly preserved, and comes to us as one of the best evidences of the diversity of the American races yet produced. In general it is a lightish brown, and of a fineness of texture which equals that of the Anglo-Saxon race.[272] Straight, coarse, black hair is universally characteristic of the Red Indians, and is known to be one of the last marks of race to disappear in intermarriage with Europeans. The ancient Peruvians appear, from numerous examples of hair found in their tombs, to have been an auburn-haired race. Garcilasso, who had an opportunity of seeing the body of the king Viracocha, describes the hair of that monarch as snow-white.[273] Haywood has described the discovery at the beginning of this century of three mummies in a cave on the south side of the Cumberland River, near the dividing line of Smith and Wilson Counties in Tennessee. They were buried in baskets, as Humboldt has described some of the Peruvians to bury, and the color of their skin was said to be fair and white, and their hair auburn and of a fine texture.[274] The same author refers to several instances of the discovery of mummies in the limestone and saltpetre caves of Tennessee with light yellowish hair.[275] Prof. Jones supposes that the light color of these so-called mummies of Tennessee and Kentucky was due to the action of lime and saltpetre.[276]
We have every reason to believe that the men of the mounds were capable of executing in sculptures reliable representations of animate objects. The perfection of the stone carvings, as well as the terra-cotta moulded figures of animals and birds obtained from the mounds, have excited the wonder and admiration of their discoverers. It was evidently a favorite pastime for those primitive artists to reproduce the human features, for effigies and masks have often been exhumed together with other sculptures. The perfection of the animal representations furnish us the assurance that their sculptures of the human face were equally true to nature.[277] The accompanying figures of sculpture and masks together with those found in the sculpture of the Mayas and Nahuas, shown in a future chapter, furnish us with a twofold argument: first, that an American type of physiognomy as such did not exist; that, upon the contrary, it was as variable and diversified as can now be found among the peoples of Europe or elsewhere; second, that a strong resemblance between some of the sculptures of the mounds and those of Mexico exist. It is a remarkable fact that those of Palenque furnish the most striking likeness to those of the Mississippi Valley.[278] There is, perhaps, no means of ascertaining of what color the pre-historic Americans were, certainly not of the Mound-builders; but judging from the great variety of tints and shades that prevail among the wild tribes of North America alone, we may conclude that no argument in favor of an American race can be based upon color.[279]
Mound Sculptures: upper left-hand figure from a shell-heap near Mobile, Ala., the others from Tennessee mounds.
The Menominees, sometimes called the “White Indians,” formerly occupied the region bordering on Lake Michigan, around Green Bay. The whiteness of these Indians, which is compared to that of white mulattoes, early attracted the attention of the Jesuit missionaries, and has often been commented upon by travellers.[280] While it is true that hybridity has done much to lighten the color of many of the tribes, still the peculiarity of the complexion of this people has been marked from the first time a European encountered them. Almost every shade, from the ash color of the Menominees, through the cinnamon red, copper and bronze tints, may be found among the tribes formerly occupying the territory east of the Mississippi—the remnants of some of which are now in the Indian Territory and others in the North-west—until we reach the dark-skinned Kaws of Kansas, who are nearly as black as the negro. The Indians in Mexico are known as the “black people,” an appellation designed to be descriptive of their color. Viollet le Duc is of the opinion that the builders of the great remains in Southern Mexico and Yucatan belonged to two different branches of the human family, a light-skinned and dark-skinned race respectively.[281] The variety of complexion is as great in South America as among the tribes of the northern portion of the continent.
Probably one of the most incontrovertible arguments against American ethnic unity is that which rests upon the unparalleled diversity of language which meets the philologist everywhere. The monosyllable and the most remarkable polysyllables known to the linguist; synthetic and analytic families of speech, simplicity and complexity of expression, all seem to have sprung up and developed into permanent and in some cases beautiful and grammatical systems side by side with each other until the Babel of the Pentateuch is realized in the indescribable confusion of tongues. The actual number of American languages and dialects is as yet unascertained, but is estimated at nearly thirteen hundred, six hundred of which Mr. Bancroft has classified in his third volume of the Native Races of the Pacific States. It is true that the American languages present a few features quite peculiar to themselves (which will be treated hereafter), but as language is never constant, is not a pyramid with its unchanging architectural plan, but is a plant which passes through such transitions in the process of its growth as to lose entirely some of the elements which it possessed at first, so we may as reasonably expect that in the course of time certain peculiarities incident to certain climatic conditions, certain phases of nature and certain types of civilization, should develop themselves as distinguishing features of the speech of the continent. The very fact that language is unstable—is a matter of growth—renders the argument that these peculiarities indicate unity of the American race valueless; while, on the other hand, the fact that here we have a greater number and variety of languages than is to be found in any of the other grand divisions of the earth, is strong evidence of a diversity more radical than that which simply arises from tribal affiliations. In view of the wide differences existing between the native Americans themselves in every feature which admits of being subjected to a scientific test, we are forced to the conclusion, solely resting on the evidence in the case, that the theory of American ethnic unity is a delusion, an infatuating theory which served only to blind its advocates as to the plain facts, and led them into grave errors which will become all the more palpable as scientific investigation progresses.
As yet no substantial reason for considering the ancient occupant of this continent as peculiar in himself, and as unlike the rest of mankind, has been set forth. Nothing in the American’s physical organization points to an origin different from that to which each of the species of the genus homo may be assigned. Whatever truth there may be in the diverse origin of the black and white race, the separate creation theory, in so far as it maintains that the Creator originated upon the soil of this continent a peculiar and separate race of men, must in the eyes of this age of criticism lack evidence, and be assigned to its place with thousands of others which from time immemorial have been contributing to the construction of a foundation reef which will ultimately rise like a bold headland above the dark waters of uncertainty into the realm of truth.
A few students of American Anthropology have solved the question of the origin of the ancient population upon the hypothesis of its having developed from a lower order in the animal kingdom, itself indigenous to the Western Continent. One of the most distinguished representatives of this school, perhaps, is Frederick von Hellwald of Vienna, who states his views as follows: “I am unable to give in my adhesion to the theory which assumes that the original seat of the human races must be sought in higher Asia or somewhere else, whence mankind are supposed to have spread themselves gradually over the whole globe; an assumption which is contradicted in the most decisive manner by the peopling of the new world. It is impossible to enter here into all the hypotheses which have been framed for the explanation of a fact so perplexing to the Biblical students of the sixteenth century, and of course later times; it is enough to say that thus far not one of them have been found to correspond even approximately to the demands of science, and that theory is probably in every point of view the most tenable and exact which assumes that man, like the plant, a mundane being, made his appearance generally upon earth when our planet had reached that stage of its development which unites in itself the conditions of man’s existence. In conformity with this view, I regard the American as an Autochthon.”[282] This subject resolves itself into two questions: (1) Is the origin of the human race by the processes of development from a lower order of animal an ascertained fact? (2) If so, does the American continent furnish any species of ape or any known fauna from which man could have developed? It is taken for granted that the reader is fully familiar with Darwinism (the origin of species by means of natural selection, the joint result of the independent researches of Darwin and Wallace) and Lamarckism (the theory of man’s descent from the ape),[283] both of which have been so enthusiastically advocated by Spencer, Huxley, Hæckel and many others. Their works and the magnificent array of facts which their patient researches have accumulated command our admiration, even if full assent cannot be given to all their conclusions.
The first question: Is the origin of the human race by the processes of development from a lower order of animal an ascertained fact? would at first seem to require a lengthy discussion at our hands. But in a special work on a subject altogether foreign to the question, such a discussion would certainly be out of place. Even if this were not true, the above question as stated requires no discussion. We believe that no advocate of the hypothesis of evolution could be found so sanguine or so unguarded, who would come forward and answer the question in the affirmative. On the contrary, we believe the question would call forth an honest negative from the great body of scientists who hold to the hypothesis of evolution. Obstinacy alone could deny that the groups of facts which have been brought to our knowledge, the occasional well-marked transitional forms[284] which are turning up, the unquestionable tendency in species to vary, and possibly of their varieties slowly to form new species under modified surroundings, point to a principle, a law in nature, which may be characterized as the law of development or evolution. But on the other hand, the hypothesis that such a law exists, or, if you please, the fact that it exists, does not imply that it is universal in its application or that it has extended through all the realm of nature. Indeed, pure justice to the advocates of the hypothesis requires the statement that they have never made such a claim.[285] The fact that such eminent scientists as Mivart and Wallace deny the development of man from a lower order, is sufficient evidence that the hypothesis in its widest bearing is not accepted by all, much less is an ascertained “fact.” It appears, therefore, that the first question being unsettled, and as yet incapable of solution, the argument turns upon the second question: Does the American Continent furnish any species of ape or any known fauna from which man could have developed? Before answering the question in the light of present knowledge, it will be of interest to note the reply made by the late Professor Joseph Henry to the view of Frederick von Hellwald, quoted on a preceding page. His estimate of the probabilities of man developing from the lower orders of animals in more than one locality on the globe is expressed as follows: “The spontaneous generation of either plants or animals, although a legitimate subject of scientific inquiry, is as yet an unverified hypothesis. If, however, we assume the fact that a living being will be spontaneously produced when all the physical conditions necessary to its existence are present, we must allow that in the case of man, with his complex and refined organization, the fortuitous assembly of the multiform conditions required for his appearance would be extremely rare, and from the doctrine of probabilities could scarcely occur more than at one time and in one place on our planet; and further, that this place would most probably be somewhere in the northern temperate zone. Again, the Caucasian variety of man presents the highest physical development of the human family; and as we depart either to the north or south, from the latitude assumed as the origin of the human race in Asia, we meet with a lower and lower type until at the north we encounter the Esquimaux, and at the south the Bosjesman and the Tierra Fuegian. The derivation of these varieties from the original stock is philosophically explained on the principle of the variety in the offspring of the same parents, and the better adaptation and consequent chance of life of some of these to the new conditions of existence in a more northern or southern latitude.”[286] As a direct answer to the question, however, we can do nothing more than refer to the opinions of the two greatest advocates of evolution. “In order to form a judgment on this head,” says Mr. Darwin, “with reference to man, we must glance at the classification of the Simiadæ. This family is divided by almost all naturalists into the Catarhine group, or old world monkeys, all of which are characterized (as the name expresses) by the peculiar structure of the nostrils, and by having four pre-molars in each jaw; and into the Platyrhine group or new world monkeys (including two very distinct sub-groups), all of which are characterized by differently constructed nostrils and by having six molars in each jaw. Some other small differences might be mentioned. Now man unquestionably belongs, in his dentition, in the structure of his nostrils, and in some other respects, to the Catarhine or old world division; nor does he resemble the Platyrhines more closely than the Catarhines in any characters, excepting in a few of not much importance and apparently of an adaptive nature. Therefore, it would be against all probability to suppose that some ancient new world species had varied, and had thus produced a man-like creature with all the distinctive characters proper to the old world division, losing at the same time all its own distinctive characters. There can, consequently, hardly be a doubt that man is an offshoot from the old world Simian stem, and that under a genealogical point of view he must be classed with the Catarhine division.”[287] Such was Mr. Darwin’s opinion in 1871; and that the views of evolutionists have not changed since that time as to this question, we call attention to the words of the distinguished Professor Hæckel in his History of Creation, which are as follows: “Probably America was first peopled from North-eastern Asia by the same tribe of Mongols from whom the Polar men (Hyperboreans and Esquimaux) have also branched. This tribe first spread in North America, and from thence migrated over the isthmus of Central America down to South America, at the extreme south of which the species degenerated very much by adaptation to the very unfavorable conditions of existence. But it is also possible that Mongols and Polynesians emigrated from the west and mixed with the former tribe. In any case the aborigines of America came over from the old world, and did not, as some suppose, in any way originate out of American apes. Catarhine or narrow-nosed apes never at any period existed in America.”[288] The same argument holds good if it be ascertained that both man and apes developed from a common ancestor. With these authoritative utterances from the most celebrated representatives of the development school, we shall rest the fanciful hypothesis of the autochthonic origin of the ancient American population. Some who may not concur in our opinion as to the question of man’s development from lower animal forms, may be willing to admit that the Americans had an old world origin, which certainly, in the light of facts, is the only rational view.[289] The unity of the human family is a theory, if not a fact, which is supported by a mass of testimony of the most diversified character. The habits and customs, the sympathies, the wants and fears, the simpler arts, as well as most bodily proportions, point to a relationship which finds its easiest explanation in a unity of origin. It is chiefly, however, in the ruder arts that this correspondence of style or type is observable. No better illustration of this offers itself than the similarity of form or forms in which flint arrow-heads are found in all parts of the world. It would be impossible for the most expert archæologists to assign a promiscuous collection of flint weapons to the various quarters of the globe from which they may have been gathered, simply on the ground of characteristic forms.[290] The common methods of producing fire by means of friction, employed with but slight variation among people the most remotely separated,[291] is an inexplicable fact, except on the ground of an early community of residence or identical inventive genius. The universality of certain architectural forms such as the pyramid, and the singular fact that they have generally been used for places of sepulture, offers an argument in the same direction. The fact indicates either an early community of residence or identity of mental organization. The physical resemblances of all races in certain stable features which have never been known to change, indicate a divergence from a common centre—from one type. The slight differences in the type of skull which characterize some nations from others, is no argument against original unity, since those peculiarities are certainly of more recent origin than the unknown events which at a remote period scattered men over the face of the earth.[292] Probably no difference between the races of men has been considered so essential as that of color, for none has furnished such reasonable ground for the views of polygenists as the marked contrast between the African and Caucasian types. Years ago the view that color was the result of tropical climate was abandoned,[293] for the Eskimo and Lapps are almost as dark as many Africans, and their residence under the arctic circle has continued from a remote antiquity. Upon the other hand every variation in color, from the darkest to the lightest possible shades, exist among African tribes. The antiquity of the negro type as we now see it, is unquestionably considerable. As proof of this we have the oft-referred to argument from Egyptian paintings. In a temple at Beyt-el-Welee, in Nubia, constructed in the reign of Rameses II, is a painting which has been reproduced by Bonomi, in which a negro kneels at the feet of Sethos I, father and predecessor of Rameses II. All the peculiarities of the Negroid type are conspicuous; the blackness of the color, the thickness of lips, flatness of nose and woolliness of hair which pertain to the African of to-day are unquestionably present.[294] The painting representing this remarkable ethnic fact is 3200 years old, dating from 1400 years before Christ. The Duke of Argyll, on the authority of Prof. Lepsius, states that in earlier representations of the negro, referable to the “Twelfth Dynasty” or about 1900 B. C., the negro color is strongly marked, but not the negro features.[295] It is a question whether this fact indicates a transition from one type to another, or whether the painting is a true representation of the Nubians, who are known not to have flat noses or projecting lips. It is supposed also that the unskillfulness of the artists may account for the absence of the typal lines.[296] Hieroglyphic writings have been found dating about 2000 years B. C., in which mention is made of the employment of Negro or black troops by an Egyptian king in the prosecution of a great war.[297] At that remote period, when Abraham was almost the sole representative of the Jewish race, the negro type had multiplied and developed into strong tribes, which were important factors in the military contests of the oldest of powers—the Egyptian.
Notwithstanding this seeming permanence of type, it is well known that of all physical conditions, color is the most liable to change in every organism. Many animals under domestication change their color entirely.[298] In our Southern States it was observed that house-slaves of the third generation presented quite a markedly different appearance from field slaves.[299] This was owing as much, no doubt, to different food and different habits of life as to protection from the sun, though many different races have quite the same color while their habits of life are as different as well could be imagined. Of this class, the Eskimo, Chinese, and Fuegeans are examples. However, the fact that color is variable even in a slight degree, indicates that considerable if not radical changes might be brought about during a great length of time. Mr. Darwin has furnished the most rational solution of the question, which he describes briefly as follows: “Various facts which I have elsewhere given, prove that the color of the skin and hair is sometimes correlated in a surprising manner with a complete immunity from the action of certain vegetable poisons and from the attack of parasites. Hence it occurred to me that negroes and other dark races might have acquired their dark tints by the darker individuals escaping during a long series of generations from the deadly influence of the miasmas of their native countries.”[300] This doctrine of the survival of only the fittest, while all the weaker and perhaps lighter complexioned individuals of a race gradually succumbed to the deadly influence of climate, no doubt will explain the origin of the dark races, known to enjoy a special immunity against yellow and other fevers.[301] At all events, the formation of the distinctive features of races requires a great lapse of time. The geologist asks for time in which to account for the formation of strata, and the intelligent world now grants it to him without limit, and just as reasonably may the ethnologist ask for time in which to account for the formation of racial types.[302] Nor need the most literal interpreter of Genesis object to this demand on the ground of any conflict with the letter even of the historic narrative of the Pentateuch. The accepted chronology, based on Archbishop Usher’s interpretation, is no part of the text of Genesis. It is purely the product of his inadvertence and the blindness of many others of his school of Biblical chronologists. It is evident that the rules of interpretation applied to the tenth chapter of Genesis, according to which the names of the descendants of Noah’s sons are taken to represent individuals only, cannot hold. The probabilities are that they represent considerable tribes or nations. This probability is an established fact in the sixteenth and subsequent verses. In the fifteenth verse we learn that Canaan, the grandson of Noah, “begat Sidon, his first-born, and Heth.” Here the writer seems to refer to individuals, but it is probable that he alludes even to the origin of tribes. In the sixteenth verse we are not left in doubt on the subject, for there he no longer speaks of individuals or generations but of the growth of nations. He immediately adds after the above quotation, “and [begat] the Jebusite, and the Amorite, and the Girgasite, and the Hivite, and the Arkite, and the Sinite,” etc., etc.[303] The account makes no pretensions at chronology or at furnishing data for any system, and the constructions put upon its condensed account of the origin and growth of nations during an indefinite lapse of time by short-sighted interpreters, are unwarranted and certainly do injustice to the oldest of our histories. When we go back of the birth of Christ two thousand years—to the time of Abraham—this is as far as we can tread with certainty in the light of History. This period has been aptly designated by the Duke of Argyll as “Time absolute.” But when we go back of 2000 B. C., we are compelled to walk in a twilight glimmer, with only the dim rays from occasional cuneiform inscriptions, and the condensed accounts contained in Genesis, falling across our uncertain pathway. This period the above able writer has chosen to call “Time relative,” and the probabilities are that its measure is double if not treble that of the portion of “Time absolute” which precedes the Christian Era. An additional fact in this connection which strengthens the preceding is, that the three most ancient versions of the Pentateuch—the Hebrew, the Samaritan and the Septuagint—vary considerably in their statements as to the ages of many of the patriarchs at the birth of their sons. So wide is the difference in this respect between the Hebrew and Septuagint versions that their chronologies cannot be reconciled at all, the latter allowing a period of eight hundred years more than the former from Adam to Abraham; such being the case, it is impossible to arrive at the time of the flood or the origin of the race. These contradictions in versions, however, do not in any way impeach the historic authority of the Pentateuch, since it is in no sense a chronology any more than it is a work on geographic or astronomic science. The known antiquity of Egypt and China, to say nothing of the facts revealed by geology concerning man’s antiquity, can never be reconciled with Usher’s system, which is in no sense the true chronology of any known version of the Pentateuch.[304]
In this chapter we have seen that there is nothing to indicate that the Americans owe their origin to a special act of creation, and further, if they originated by the process of development (for which there is no sufficient evidence), that it was not upon the American continent. We are supported in these conclusions by the most respectable writers on American Ethnology[305] and Antiquities. That the American population is of old world origin there can be little doubt; but from whence it came, and to what particular people or peoples it owes its birth, is quite another question.[306] That view seems open to least objections which maintains that the Western Continent received its population at a comparatively early period in the history of the race, before the peoples of Western Europe and Eastern Asia had assumed their present national characteristics or fully developed their religious and social customs.[307]