USA > Iowa > Fayette County > Past and present of Fayette County, Iowa, Volume I > Part 3
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It is interesting to note that in the selection of sites for their earth- works, the Mound-Builders were influenced by the same motives, apparently, which governed their European successors. It is a well established fact that nearly every city of importance in the valleys of the Ohio and Mississippi, and their tributaries, is located on the ruins left by this ancient people. Of these, we mention Chicago, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Frankfort, Kentucky, as being near the borders of our own state. Sixteen of the principal cities of Ohio are so located, while many others in other states could be mentioned. The sites selected by the Mound-Builders for their most pretentious works were on the river terraces, or bottoms, no doubt because of the natural high- ways thus rendered available, besides the opportunities for fishing and the cultivation of the warm, quick soil, easily tilled.
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Old residents of Fayette county will remember with pleasure the late Judge Samuel Murdock, of Elkader, who made this subject the study of a lifetime. Perhaps Judge Murdock did more in the line of investigation of the Iowa mounds than all others combined, and his lectures were the subject of universal comment and great interest.
THE MOUNDS.
A full description of these ancient works, or even a mention of them, would require more space than can be accorded to the subject in this work. The patient student must avail himself of the opportunities presented in the perusal of the elaborate works published on this interesting and fascinating subject, while the casual reader has but little interest beyond a superficial view.
Surveys and explorations of the many mounds which have been opened seem to indicate that they were all constructed along similar lines, though vastly different in size and apparently designed for different purposes. Some appeared to be constructed for defense against the encroachments of an enemy, and show that some knowledge of military fortifications was pos- sessed by the designers and builders. The ancient works are of three classes : The heavy embankments found on the level or lowlands; the larger works, composed of earth and stone on the hill-tops, and the smaller mounds scat- tered everywhere, on high or low ground, indiscriminately.
The dimensions of the mounds do not vary greatly, being usually from two hundred and fifty to three hundred feet in diameter, and are either square or circular in form, often combining both forms in one figure. The square or rectangular works, found in combination with the circles, are of various dimensions; but it has been noticed that certain groups are distinguished by such an uniformity in size that archaeologists have been persuaded to claim that the builders had a standard of measurement. These squares have almost invariably eight gateways, all of which are covered or protected by small mounds. A few have been discovered which are octagonal in form. The mounds are designated as "defensive," "sacred," "sacrificial," "sepulchral" and "memorial," according to the uses to which they were put. There is also a class of mounds, variously designated as "animal," "emblematic" or "sym- bolical," which were crude representations of certain animals, reptiles, birds and even men, sometimes sufficiently accurate in their representations to plainly show the characters or objects they were designed to represent. Most curious of all are the effigy mounds in Ohio, which are surpassed, however, by those in Wisconsin and Iowa.
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THE BUILDERS.
The peculiar and distinctive features of these various relics of past ages are of little interest to the general reader, and yet the fact of their existence, and that they are the only remains of a race of human beings long since ex- tinct, urges the effort to solve the mystery of the ancient people and their works. But the solution of the problem has baffled the skill of the most noted scientists of two continents, since the existence of these "works of hu- man hands" was first determined. True, we have theories, ably supported by argument, and these, in the absence of absolutely established facts, we must accept, weigh, adopt or discard, and still remain in darkness as to the origin, mission and final destiny of the Mound-Builders.
Judging by the works which they have left,-and that is in accord with Scriptural suggestion,-they were a powerful race of slightly civilized and industrious people. The earth monuments, only, remain, these enclosing a few relics of rude art, together with the last lingering remains of mor- tality-the crumbling skeleton-which the curious investigators have dis- turbed in their resting places. But even these have yielded to scientific minds, strongly imaginative, some knowledge of the character and lives of the race. The twentieth century dawns in almost as great ignorance of the prehistoric race as did the nineteenth; yet in the ever restless spirit of modern investi- gation, efforts have been made to link the Mound-Builders with some an- cient and far-distant race of civilized mankind.
Dr. John S. Newberry, late professor of geology and paleontology in Columbia College, sums up a voluminous article on this subject in the follow- ing language: "From all the facts before us, we can at present say little more than this: That the valley of the Mississippi and the Atlantic coast were once densely populated by a sedentary, agricultural, and partially civil- ized race, quite different from the modern nomadic Indians, though possibly the progenitors of some of the Indian tribes; and that. after many centuries of occupation, they disappeared from our country at least one thousand, per- haps many thousands, of years before the advent of the Europeans. The pre- historic remains found so abundantly in Arizona appear to be related to the Professor Newberry cites Squier's "Memoir of the Ancient Monuments of the West." "Aboriginal Monuments of the State of New York," "Ancient America," "The Monuments of the Mississippi Valley" and "Prehistoric Races of the United States."
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EARLY INDIAN HISTORY.
We trust the generous reader will tolerate a few words on this subject. of which, though traditional, we will give the most reliable information derived from such sources, and we will also present the conclusions of men who have devoted their lives to the study of the early aborigines. Dr. C. S. Rafinesque, in his admirable work, "The Ancient Annals of Kentucky," makes a vigorous use of the imagination when he traces the American folk well nigh back to Adam. He says that the middle West first became the center of the Atalan people. This he ascribes to a period two thousand years ago. Later the Atalans were divided into two branches, the Apalans of the North and the Talegans of the Ohio valley; that these people warred against the Istacan and Siberian invasions, and finally drove the ancient people to the South. founding Mexican civilization. Then came the Lenap and Menguy invaders across Behring strait to possess the Ohio and St. Lawrence country, and a period is approached in which definite dates can be assigned.
Whatever may be the basis for Doctor Rafinesque's theoretical account, it may be suggested here that it is as good history as any of the time before the coming of the Lenap and Menguy forefathers of the red men found in the North after the Columbian discovery.
The Indians who inhabited the northern region east of the Mississippi at the beginning of historic times were, in language, of two great families, which are given the French names Algonquin and Iroquois. These are not Indian names. In fact, from the word Indian itself, which is a misnomer- arising from the slowness of the early voyagers to admit that they had found unknown continents-down to the names of tribes, there is a confusion of nomenclature and often a deplorable misfit in the titles now fixed in history by long usage. The Algonquin family may more properly be termed the Lenape, and the Iroquois the Mengwe. The Lenape themselves, while using that name, also employed the more generic title of Wapanackki. The Iroquois had the ancient name of Onque Honwe, and this in their tongue, as Lenape in that of the other family, signified men with a sense of importance- "the people," to use a convenient English expression.
According to the Lenape tradition, that people came from a distant home to a great river, which they called the Nameesi Sippee, where they found another nation, the Mengwe, engaged in a similar migration. On crossing the river a powerful nation was discovered in possession of the country, called the Tallegawi, or Allegawi, a race of tall, stout men, who had large towns and built fortifications and intrenchments. Meeting with a des-
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perate resistance from this people, the Lenape and Mengwe made an alliance, agreeing to conquer and divide the country between themselves, and after many great battles and probably many years they were successful.
Such is the tradition of the conquest as gathered from the Lenni Lenape (Delawares), "the grandfather people," by Heckewelder, in his "History, Manners and Customs of the Indian Nations." There is no reason to dis- credit the tradition in its essential particulars. Some students prefer to in- terpret the Nameesi Sippee as the Detroit river rather than the Mississippi, according to their notions of a northeastward starting point of migration, but this is not material to our narrative. Unfortunately, the Indian habit of giving names to rivers and places according to some striking physical char- acteristic, each nation or tribe bestowing a name of its own, does not warrant the certain application of Nameesi Sippee to the Mississippi river. The title might be given to any "great river," that being its signification. The Alle- gawi left their name, as a perpetual monument, attached to the mountain chain of the East, and to the Ohio river in the language of one of the con- quering nations.
Dr. D. G. Brinton, in "The American Race," has explained that the name Tallegawi means the Tallega or Tallika people, and suggests Tsalaki, the Indian name of which "Cherokee" is a corruption. Before the Talle- gawi, according to the ancient painted record of the Lenape, translated by Rafinesque, there were the "Snake people," who might have been the first mound-builders.
The Lenape became the most widespread of the new peoples. Some tribes remained west of the Mississippi, while others pushed on to occupy the Atlantic coast from Virginia to Labrador. "They were typical Americans, up to the stature of the best European nations, well formed and stalwart. They had the physiognomy of warriors, prominent nose, thin lips, piercing black eyes. Their black hair was carefully pulled from their heads save a patch on the crown from which grew long locks, on which they bound gaudy feathers. Their hands and feet were of aristocratic smallness. Each family lived alone in wattled huts, the little towns being surrounded by palisades of stakes. They cultivated grain and vegetables, made coarse pottery, wove mats, and dressed the skins which they were good enough hunters to obtain from the deer, bear and buffalo, though they had no better weapons than stone-tipped arrows, chipped out most artfully from flint or chert. They dug copper, and in the remotest parts of their territory had the red pipe bowls from Minnesota or the black slate pipes from Vancouver island. The sun, with fire as its symbol, was their chief object of adoration, and the
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young warrior must make his sun-vows at dawn from a solitary hill-top be- fore he became worthy of a place among men. The four winds that brought the rains were also objects of reverence, as well as the animal that was the symbol of the tribe, and the Lenape remembered with pious faithfulness the hero god Michabo, who taught them laws and gave them maize and tobacco, and sometime would come again. These Indians were those known in later years as the Delawares, the Maumees, the Mohegans, the Manhattans, the Piankeshaws, the Pottawattamies, the Shawnees and numerous other tribes. All were one family in the likeness of their language, though they often had their family quarrels, and they bear in history the name given them by the French from one of their most unworthy tribes, the Algonquins.
The Mengwe made their homes along the lower great lakes and the St. Lawrence river, never reaching the coast, and thus they came to be wholly surrounded by the Lenape. They were a fiercer people and models of physi- cal development. The stock is unsurpassed by any in the world. It stands on record that the five companies of Iroquois from New York and Canada during the Civil war stood first on the list of all recruits of our army for height, vigor and corporeal symmetry. Though the Lenape regarded them as inferiors and called them cannibals, they held themselves superior to all races, and certainly gave some proof of superiority in their history. The women among them were accorded more than ordinary respect, at least in ancient times, and were represented by a speaker in all councils. In the Wendet tribe the women of each gens elected the chief, who represented it in all tribal councils. The "long house" was a distinctive feature of Mengwe life-large communal log houses, fortified with palisades, and so strong that the white pioneers did not err in calling them castles.
Included in this stock of people were the Mohawks, Oneidas, Senecas, Cayugas, Eries, Cherokees, Wyandots, Tuscaroras and others, these being the names commonly given them in history. The Wahash (Osage), it is be- lieved, they left beyond the Mississippi in the migration.
But the Cherokees among the Mengwe, and the Shawanees among the Lenape, are people difficult to classify. The language of both races was copious, admirably constructed, flexible and generally melodious. That of the Lenape was the more guttural, the sounds represented by ch or g in printed words closely approximating the German ch. They also had deli- cately sounded nasal vowels resembling the French. The dictionaries and grammars of the language that have been published demonstrate the remark- able richness of the tongues in words and in their inflection and combination.
The clans of the Lenni Lenape (called Delawares by the English) were (3)
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known among the Indians by their totems, the Turtle, Turkey and Wolf, the turtle being the highest in honor, while among the Mengwe there were clans and totems of Turtle, Wolf, Bear, Deer, Beaver, Hawk, Crane and Snipe, each having separate towns. There were no Indian kings. The gov- ernment was in the hands of the elected chief and the council of old and worthy men. The chief was the keeper of wampum, used for tribal negotia- tions, and he ivas authorized to control the clan or tribe as far as his diplo- macy could carry him, but no orders or attempts at forcible discipline would be tolerated. He could not make war or peace, or levy taxes, and was re- quired to hunt for his living the same as any other warrior. There was no limit of lands; all belonged to all. There were scarcely any penal laws, but, unless some atonement were made, murder could be avenged by the friends of the victim. The most generous hospitality was the rule, and when anyone needed a necessity of life, there was no harm in taking it without asking. Said one (James Smith) who had passed a number of years as a forcibly adopted Indian: "They are not oppressed or perplexed with expensive liti- gation ; they are not injured by legal robbery; they have no splendid villains that make themselves grand and great on other people's labor, and they have neither church nor state created as money-making machines."
The early aborigines, as contemplated in this article, were very skillful in war. They had a system of military maneuvers peculiar to themselves, and could march forward in battle line, form circles or semi-circles to surround an enemy, or form hollow squares from which to face outward to repel an attack with the most exact precision, and they implicitly obeyed their leaders. They won famous battles against white troops in historic times, and could teach strategy to white commanders as well as the highest statecraft. (The Iroquois advised the union of the American colonies, when the colonists, like inferior Indians, were too jealous of each other to consent to it. )
Of another side of Indian character, Gen. William Henry Harrison has left an interesting suggestion. "By many," he said, "they are supposed to be stoics, who willingly encounter privations. The very reverse is the fact ; for if they belong to either of the classes of philosophers that prevailed in the declining years of Rome, it is to that of the Epicureans, for no Indian will forego an enjoyment or suffer an inconvenience if he can avoid it. Even the gratification of some strong passion he is ever ready to postpone, when its accomplishment is attended with unlooked-for danger or unexpected hard- ship." There were, of course, darker sides to the picture. The women did not enjoy too much honor, and there were some rites that remind one of the ancient people of the Mediterranean whose civilization is admired. Their
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marriages were made with as little ceremony as among the ancient Hebrews, and often were temporary. The warriors were cruel, perhaps more so than Europeans of their day, and possibly there were more horrible atrocities on the borders of the colonies than occurred during the Thirty Years' war in Germany, or in the Irish wars or in the Netherlands. Captives were some- times burned at the stake, and once in a while portions of them were eaten, as a sort of religious rite. But originally at least, captive women were treated honorably.
Volney, the once famous French philosopher, who studied the Indian after he had suffered much from conquest and the strong drink of the white man, remarked: "I have often been struck with the analogy subsisting be- tween the Indians of North America and the nations so much extolled- ancient Greece and Italy. In the personages of Homer's 'Iliad' I find the manners and discourse of the Iroquois and the Delawares." After he had visited the Maumees and talked with Little Turtle, he remarked that Thucyd- ides, in describing the Greeks at the period of the Trojan war, very closely pictured the mode of life of the western Indians. The red men were super- stitious, or religious, as one may choose to call them. They believed in two supernatural powers, the keechee manitoo, or good spirit, and matchee mani- too, or satan, like the ancient Persians, though the Ahura Mazda of the lat- ter was the good god. To the good spirit they made prayers and offerings of baked meats, which, however, all shared in eating, having no priests with special privileges. The matchee manitoo was perhaps more the object of concern, but he could be driven away, and his evil influence averted, by the shaking of gourd rattles or by the smoke of tobacco thrown upon a fire. Their most common remedy for illness was as far advanced as the practice of those people today who have found that cleanliness is often preferable to drugs. The Turkish bath was common in the Mississippi valley hundreds of years ago. The Indian would take it in a little tent of hides, over some hot stones, and if he could stand a smudge of tobacco in addition to the hot air, the bath gained the merit of a religious ceremony.
Such were the ancient people of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. About the year 1459 the greatest event affecting their history, after the conquest of the Allegawi, oc- curred, namely, the confederation of the five Mengwe tribes known to us as Mohawks, Oneidas, Senecas, Cayugas and Onondagas, under the leadership of the great chieftain and statesman, Ayoun-wat-ha. familiar in romance as Hiawatha. This confederation was founded to maintain quiet among those tribes, and was called the Kayanerenhkowa, or "great peace," whence the
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French, "Iroquois," or Eroke people. This confederation, while it held the five tribes in firm alliance, did not forbid war with their neighbors, the Lenapes, or other tribes of the Mengwe family.
A wonderful happening in 1535 was the appearance of Cartier and his Frenchmen in the St. Lawrence river, as high as Hochelaga (Montreal). It was the advance guard of the new era, in which the Iroquois confederation should be conspicuous for more than two centuries and then pass away, with all the Indian power. Cartier reported that he had found the route to Cathay, for which all explorers in America were searching. The first permanent set- tlement in this region was made by Champlain in 1608, at Quebec. There for a time he made friends with a tribe which the French called "good Iro- quois," or Hurons. They were a powerful people, of the Mengwe family, but at war with their cousins, the Iroquois of the confederation. Soon Cham- plain consented, with fatal effect upon French dominion in America, to join in an expedition of Hurons and Adirondacks against the Iroquois, and the arms of the French routed the red men of the confederacy at Ticonderoga. But two months later Hendrik Hudson sailed up the river which bears his name, and in a few years a great trading station was established at the place which the Delawares came to know as Manahachtanienk (Manhattan), and the Iroquois speedily made a covenant, or treaty of lasting peace, with the Dutch, and obtained the European fire-arms, in the use of which they soon became masters.
But even when equipped with bow and arrow alone they made an effec- tual barrier to French progress to the southwest. Because of the hostility he provoked, Champlain turned to the Ottawa river and visited Georgian bay. Within a quarter of a century after the unfortunate battle of Ticonderoga Nicollet discovered Lake Michigan, and as late as 1648 the French knew more of the far western lake of Winnebago than they did of Lake Erie, or even the falls of Onyagaro (Niagara), of which they had heard tales from the Indians. It was not for want of enterprise that the French submitted to this restriction. In 1615 Champlain invaded the Iroquois country and laid siege in a medieval manner to the walled capital, Onondaga, but was repulsed and compelled to retreat. Then in 1629 the English captured Quebec, and for a little while Canada and the right of exploring unknown rivers and lakes were granted to a favorite of Charles I. But Charles had a claim against the king of France for promised but unpaid dower, and when his father-in-law had settled this claim, the English charter was annulled. Meanwhile the Puritans had made their settlement among the Lenape of Massachusetts, and Jamestown had been established in Virginia, both under grants from the Eng-
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lish monarch, reaching to the western seas, though no one but the Spanish had an adequate conception of the vast territory that lay between the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans.
The Christian religion, as taught by the Franciscan fathers, was brought to the Indians about Niagara in 1626, but the adventurous priest, Joseph de la Roche Daillon, barely escaped with his life. After Quebec was restored to the French in 1632 came the Jesuits, who had some success in instructing the Hurons, but none with the Iroquois. Some Jesuit fathers visited Sault Ste. Marie in 1642, and on their return were taken by the Iroquois and sav- agely tortured. Father Joques, the only survivor, was taken across New York state before his release.
With the advent of the French and Dutch the Indians found they could obtain wampum, clothing, guns and ammunition, and many trinkets dear to both warriors and women, as well as "firewater" that might serve even bet- ter than their ancient besum (herb drink) in fortifying themselves for hunt- ing or fighting excursions, all in exchange for beaver skins and other peltry. The Iroquois held a position commanding the channel of trade, both with the Dutch and the French. The latter had humiliated them in war, while the Dutch had sought their friendship and encouraged them to control the trade. It was natural, therefore, that they should seek to cut off the French trade and possess for themselves the hunting grounds of all the adjacent regions. Thus the fur trade became a controlling motive in the politics of the North- west, and continued so until the war of 1812. Its first effect was that the Iroquois launched upon a great career of conquest. In 1643 they attacked the Attiwondaronks, called by the French the "neutral nation," living north and south of Niagara, and these were driven out, or absorbed in the victorious tribes. Within a few years the Huron towns in upper Canada, though strong enough to be called palisaded castles, were stormed and captured, the inhab- itants driven far to the west and the country made desolate and empty of people. The last great battle, according to the Huron tradition, as told to General Harrison, was fought in canoes on Lake Erie, in which nearly all the warriors of both nations perished. The story of this campaign was told in Europe and divided attention with the ghastly details of the massacre of fifty thousand English in Ireland. It would be interesting to trace the career of some of the early explorers, but the purpose of this chapter has already been accomplished, though perhaps misnamed in designating it all as "Iowa Antiquities."
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