USA > Indiana > Indiana and Indianans : a history of aboriginal and territorial Indiana and the century of statehood > Part 2
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9
I am inclined to doubt the conclusion of Prof. Cox as to the purpose of the mound, as its elevation would make it no higher than the walls, and there is no indication that it was higher originally. I think it more probable that this was a walled town, and that the mound was for the residence of the chief, or cacique, and the temple; but that is a matter of conjecture, based on facts which will appear later. The fact that no large quantity of Mound Builder relics and refuse have been found in the immediate vicinity of so large an establishment, whether a town or merely a fort, would indicate that it was not occupied for a great length of time.
12 Ind. Geol. Report, 1878, p. 134.
13
INDIANA AND INDIANANS
Near Vincennes, in Knox County, there are three large works of a different character, which were described by Prof. Collett. It is neces- sary to remember that he was a believer that the Mound Builders were the ancestors of the Aztecs, and that he was one of those enthusiastic scientists to whom a plausible theory assumed the character of a demonstrated fact, in order to appreciate the assurance of the following description : "Temple Mounds .- This region was well to the center of the Mound Building Nation. Remote from the dangers incident to a more exposed situation and encircled by a bulwark of loving hearts -forts, walled enclosures, and citadels were unnecessary, and not erected as it exposed points on their frontier. Perhaps the seat of a Royal Priesthood, their efforts essayed to build a series of temples which constituted at once capitol and holy city-The Heliopolis of the West. Three sacred mounds thrown upon or against the sides of the second terrace or bluff east and southeast of Vincennes are the result, and in size, symmetry and grandeur of aspect, rival if not excel any prehistoric remains in the United States. All three are truncated cones or pyramidal; and without doubt, erected designedly for sacred purposes, the flat area on the summit was reserved for an Oratory and Altar as in the Teocalli of Mexico.
"The Pyramid, one mile south of Vincennes, is placed on a slightly elevated terrace surrounded by a cluster of small mounds. It is oblong, with extreme diameter from east to west at the base of three hundred feet, one hundred and fifty feet wide, and is forty-seven feet high. The level area on the summit fifteen by fifty feet is crowded with intrusive burials of a later race.
"The Sugar Loaf Mound on Mr. Fay's land, just east of the city line, is built against and upon the side of the bluff, but stands out in bold relief with sharply inclined sides. Diameter from east to west two hundred and sixteen feet, from north to south one hundred and eighty feet, and towering aloft one hundred and forty feet above Vincennes Plain, it commands by twenty-seven feet the high plateau to the east. Area on top sixteen by twenty-five feet. The following section was developed by sinking a shaft centrally from the top :
-
14
INDIANA AND INDIANANS
STRUCTURE OF SUGAR LOAF MOUND
Loess sand 10 ft. 00 in.
Ashes, charcoal and bones 10 in.
Loess sand 17 ft. 00 in.
Ashes, charcoal and bones 10 in.
Loess sand
9 ft. 00 in.
Ashes, charcoal and bones. 2 ft. 00 in.
Red altar clays, burned
3 ft. 00 in.
42 ft. 8 in.
"This shaft closely approached or actually reached the former surface of the hill. It settles decisively the artificial origin of the mound, and indicates a temple three stories high.
"The Terraced Mound on Burnett's land, one mile E. N. E. of Vincennes court house, has an east and west diameter of three hundred and sixty-six feet, from north to south two hundred and eighty-two feet, and rises to an elevation of sixty-seven feet above the plain, with a level area on top ten by fifty feet. A winding roadway from the east furnished the votaries of the sun easy access to the summit."
Prof. Collett seems to have been under the impression that the Aztecs burned their human sacrifices on the summits of their teocallis, but this is not the case. The victims heart was cut out, and consumed in a censer before the idol, but his body was taken away to be eaten. Whoever made the Sugar Loaf Mound, it can hardly be considered a sacrificial mound. That would involve the supposition that they began sacrificing when it was only three feet high, and immolated such a num- ber of victims as to make a deposit of ashes, charcoal and bones two feet deep; that on this they put nine feet of soil, and then immolated to the extent of ten inches more of ashes; then seventeen feet more of earth, followed by ten inches of sacrificial remains; and finally a cover- ing of ten feet of earth. You must also suppose the sacrificial priests wading around in these layers of ashes until the deposits attained the thickness named. The tax on imagination is too great. Some more plausible explanation is needed, and one will be suggested further on. It may be mentioned here, however, that the Aztec temples had on their tops huge stone idols, which could not well be removed from the vicinity, or concealed ; and nothing of that sort has ever been found in Indiana.
It is also due to Prof. Cox to say that he was also a doubter. In fact his scientific training at New Harmony made him so cautious that he said that all efforts to define the purposes of the mounds, "beyond
15
INDIANA AND INDIANANS
the fact substantiated by exploration, that some of the mounds were used as sepulchers for the dead, is, in my opinion sheer guesswork." In 1877 Prof. Cox delivered an address on Archaeology before a newly organized State Archaeological Society. In this he refers to Prof. Collett's report, quoted above, in which the Knox County mounds had been classified as "mounds of habitation, sepulchral and temple mounds", and said : "Archaeologists have, as I think, without due con- sideration, classified the mounds into altar and sacrificial mounds, sepulchral or burial mounds, lookout mounds and mounds of habita- tion. When we dig into a mound and find that it contains human bones, it may then with propriety be called a sepulchral or burial mound. But to speak of others as altar mounds or mounds of worship, mounds of habitation or lookout mounds, is assigning to them a purpose which can not be sustained unless fortified by some better proof than the mythical writings of Spanish historians. It is a common occurrence to find in mounds some ashes and charcoal mixed with human bones, and for this reason the builders have been accused of cremating their dead. So far I have not been able to find any charred human bones, though charred wood and charcoal are of common occurrence. A few fragments of charred bones are reported by Squier and Davis in their so-called sacrificial mounds at Mound City, Ohio. My own opinion is that mounds were simply erected as burial places for the bones of dead chiefs or other persons high in authority. The bones were sprinkled over with ashes and, finally, with earth. Where ashes and charcoal are found in mounds, but no bones, it is possible that the latter disappeared from decay. Charcoal, as is well known, is the most durable of all known substances." 13
The opinion of Prof. Cox is the same as that of the Indians of the Ohio Valley, when the whites came in contact with them. None of them pretended to any knowledge of the origin of these mounds, but re- garded them as burial places of past generations. All the Indians I have talked with on the subject regard the exploration of the mounds by the whites as desecration. The Indians never disturbed them except to make additional burials. This, and the fact that burial mounds were the only kind reached by the early missionaries of this region, fur- nishes the explanation of the remarkable lack of mention of mounds in the early French chronicles of the Northwest. The earliest notice of any in this region that I have ever found is in the Travels of Jonathan Carver, in 1768,14 as follows:
13 Ind. Geol. Report, 1878, p. 149.
14 London, 1779, p. 56.
16
INDIANA AND INDIANANS
"One day having landed on the shore of the Mississippi, some miles below Lake Pepin, whilst my attendants were preparing my dinner, I walked out to take a view of the adjacent country. I had not pro- ceeded far before I came to a fine, level, open plain, on which I per- ceived at a little distance a partial elevation that had the appearance of an intrenchment. On a nearer inspection I had greater reason to suppose that it had really been intended for this many centuries ago.
1
MOUNDS S
N
BEAR
ONNO
BASTION FORT:
WALLOW
W
GATEWAY
EARTH
4 FT HIGH
IN SEC. 2.T.S. R.I. W
MOUND
ANCIENT FORT
AS IT WAS
IN 1816
LOOSE STONES
200
WORKS ON HILL NORTH OF HARDINSBURG, DEARBORN COUNTY
Notwithstanding it was now covered with grass, I could plainly discern that it had once been a breast-work of about four feet in height, extend- ing the best part of a mile, and sufficiently capacious to cover five thousand men. Its form was somewhat circular, and its flanks reached to the river. Though much defaced by time, every angle was distin- guishable, and appeared as regular, and fashioned with as much mili- tary skill as if planned by Vauban himself. The ditch was not visible, but I thought on examining more curiously, that I could perceive there certainly had been one. From its situation also, I am convinced that
GATEWAY
EARTH WORKS
17
INDIANA AND INDIANANS
it must have been designed for this purpose. It fronted the country, and the rear was covered by the river; nor was there any rising ground for a considerable way that commanded it; a few straggling oaks were alone to be seen near it. In many places small tracks were worn across it by the feet of the elks and deer, and from the depth of the bed of earth by which it was covered, I was able to draw certain conclusions of its great antiquity. I examined all the angles and every part with great attention, and have often blamed myself since for not encamping on the spot and drawing an exact plan of it. To show that this descrip- tion is not the offspring of a heated imagination, or the chimerical talk of a mistaken traveler, I find on enquiry since my return, that Mons. St. Pierre and several traders have, at different times, taken notice of similar appearances, on which they have formed the same conjectures, but without examining them so minutely as I did. How a work of this kind could exist in a country that has hitherto (according to the general received opinion) been the seat of war to untutored Indians alone, whose whole stock of military knowledge has only, till within two cen- turies, amounted to drawing the bow, and whose only breast-work even at present is the thicket, I know not. I have given as exact an account as possible of this singular appearance, and leave to future explorers of these distant regions to discover whether it is a production of nature or art. Perhaps the hints I have here given might lead to a more perfect investigation of it, and give us very different ideas of the ancient state of realms that we at present believe to have been from the earliest period only the habitations of savages."
Carver was a well read man, and of an inquiring mind. His state- ment demonstrates the prevailing ignorance of such mounds at that time, and this ignorance was natural. It will be noted that his discovery was in a prairie, where he could view the entire work from one point. At that time most of the great works of the Ohio Valley were covered by dense forests, the trees on the mounds not differing from the sur- rounding trees. A person going through the woods at that time might cross such a fortification as that in Randolph County, and never dream that he had crossed anything more than two small natural ridges. It was not until the Americans began the settlement and survey of this region that the remains of the Mound Builders began to be known; and among the first to attract attention were those at Cincinnati. It has been stated that "the eminent naturalist, C. A. LeSueur, of New Har- mony, was the first to make mention of mounds in this State (Indiana)." 15 This is erroneous. LeSueur did not come to Indiana
15 Ind. Geol. Report, 1878, p. 126.
18
INDIANA AND INDIANANS
until 1826, and there is at least one very interesting mention of mounds before that date. Mr. Samuel R. Brown visited the State ten years earlier, and in 1817 published his Western Gazeteer, in which are several mentions of Indiana mounds, the most interesting being the following as to those in the Whitewater Valley :
"The traces of ancient population cover the earth in every direction. On the bottoms are a great number of mounds, very unequal in point of age and size. The small ones are from two to four feet above the surface, and the growth of timber upon them small, not being over one hundred years old; while the others are from ten to thirty feet high, and frequently contain trees of the largest diameters. Besides, the bones found in the small ones will bear removal, and exposure to the air, while those in the large ones are rarely capable of sustaining their own weight; and are often found in a decomposed or powdered state. There is a large mound in Mr. Allen's field, about twenty feet high, sixty feet in diameter at the base, which contains a greater proportion of bones than any one I ever before, examined, as almost every shovel full of dirt would contain several fragments of a human skeleton. When on Whitewater, I obtained the assistance of several of the inhabi- tants, for the purpose of making a thorough examination of the internal structure of these monuments of the ancient populousness of the country. We examined from fifteen to twenty. In some, whose height was from ten to fifteen feet, we could not find more than four or five skeletons. In one not the least appearance of a human bone was to be found. Others were so full of bones as to warrant the belief that they originally contained at least one hundred dead bodies; children of different ages, and the full grown, appeared to have been piled together promiscuously. We found several scull, leg and thigh bones which plainly indicated that their possessors were men of gigantic stature. The scull of one skeleton was one fourth of an inch thick; and the teeth remarkably even, sound and handsome, all firmly planted. The fore teeth were very deep, and not so wide as those of the generality of white people. Indeed, there seemed a great degree of regularity in the form of the teeth, in all the mounds. In the progress of our researches we obtained ample testimony that these masses of earth were formed by a savage people, yet doubtless possessing a greater degree of civilization than the present race of Indians. We discovered a piece of glass weighing five ounces, resembling the bottom of a tumbler, but concave; several stone axes, with grooves near their heads to receive a withe, which unquestionably served as helves; arrows formed from flint, almost exactly similar to those in use among the present Indians ; several pieces of earthern ware; some appeared to be
19
INDIANA AND INDIANANS
parts of vessels holding six or eight gallons; others were obviously fragments of jugs, jars and cups; some were plain, while others were curiously ornamented with figures of birds and beasts, drawn while the clay or material of which they were made was soft and before the process of glazing was performed. The glazier's art appears to have been well understood by the potters who manufactured this aboriginal crockery. The smaller vessels were made of pounded or pulverized muscle shells, mixed with an earthern or flinty substance, and the large ones of clay and sand. There was no appearance of iron; one of the sculls was found pierced by an arrow, which was still sticking in it, driven about half way through before its force was spent. It was about six inches long. The subjects of this mound were doubtless killed in battle, and hastily buried. In digging to the bottom of them we invariably came to a stratum of ashes, from six inches to two feet thick, which rests on the original earth. These ashes contain coals, fragments of brands, and pieces of calcined bones. From the quantity of ashes and bones, and the appearance of the earth underneath, it is evident that large fires must have been kept burning for several days previous to commencing the mound, and that a considerable number of human victims must have been sacrificed by burning on the spot! Prisoners of war were no doubt selected for this horrid purpose. Perhaps the custom of the age rendered it a signal honor for the chieftains and most active warriors to be interred, by way of triumph, on the ashes of their enemies, whom they had vanquished in war. If this was not the case, the mystery can only be solved by supposing that the fanaticism of the priests and prophets excited their besotted followers to voluntary self-devotion. The soil of the mounds is always different from that of the immediately surrounding earth, being uniformly of a soft vegetable mould or loam, and containing no stones or other hard substances, to 'press upon the dead and disturb their repose.'
"Almost every building lot in Harrison village contains a small mound; and some as many as three. On the neighboring hills, north east of the town, are a number of the remains of stone houses. They were covered with soil, brush, and full grown trees. We cleared away the earth, roots and rubbish from one of them, and found it to have been anciently occupied as a dwelling. It was about twelve feet square; the walls had fallen nearly to the foundation. They appeared to have been built of rough stones, like our stone walls. Not the least trace of any iron tools having been employed to smooth the face of them could be perceived. At one end of the building we came to a regular hearth, containing ashes and coals; before which we found the bones of eight persons of different ages, from a small child to the heads of the family.
20
INDIANA AND INDIANANS
The positions of their skeletons clearly indicated that their deaths were sudden and simultaneous. They were probably asleep, with their feet towards the fire, when destroyed by an enemy, an earthquake or pestilence." 16
THE FEAST OF THE DEAD From Lafitau's Moeurs des Sauvages Ameriquains, Paris, 1724
The statement of facts in this extract is so careful and intelligent- as, indeed, all of Mr. Brown's observations were-that one wonders why it did not occur to him that the occupants of the stone house may
16 Ind. Hist. Coll. Indiana as Seen by Early Travelers, pp. 152-4.
21
INDIANA AND INDIANANS
have been placed there after death, and that the incinerated occupants of the mounds might have been corpses. The probable explanation is that he was not familiar with Indian mortuary customs, and had the common American idea of that time that the chief occupation of the Indians was burning prisoners. Most of the Indian tribes gave a great deal of attention to the care of their dead. The custom of placing bodies on scaffolds was preliminary to burial or cremation, the object being to get rid of the flesh, as the bones were considered the essential portion of the remains. La Hontan's account of his journey to "the Long River" may be fictitious, but he gave a correct statement of the custom of some tribes when he wrote: "The savages that live upon the long River burn their Corps, as I insinuated before; but you must know that they keep them in vaults or Cellars till they have a sufficient number to burn together, which is performed out of the village, in a place set apart for that Ceremony." 17 Some tribes that buried instead of cremating had the same custom of accumulating corpses before bury- ing. Thus, Father Jouvency, one of the earliest missionaries, says : "Every eight or ten years the Hurons, which nation is widely extended, convey all their corpses from all the villages to a designated place, and cast them into an immense pit. They call it the day of the Dead." 18 In his Relation of 1636, Father Le Jeune, speaking of the Huron Feast of the Dead, gives this explanation of their custom :
"Returning from this feast with a Captain (chief) who is very intelligent, and who will some day be very influential in the affairs of the country, I asked him why they called the bones of the dead atisken (i. e. souls-literally "in the bones"). He gave me the best explana- tion he could, and I gathered from his conversation that many think we have two souls, both of them being divisible and material, and yet both reasonable; the one separates itself from the body at death, yet remains in the Cemetery until the feast of the Dead-after which it either changes into a Turtledove, or, according to the most common belief it goes away to the village of souls. The other is, as it were, bound to the body, and informs, so to speak, the corpse; it remains in the ditch of the dead after the feast, and never leaves it, unless someone bears it again as a child. He pointed out to me, as a proof of this metempsychosis, the perfect resemblance some have to persons deceased. A fine Philosophy, indeed. Such as it is, it shows why they call the bones of the dead atisken 'the souls'." 19
17 Thwaite's La Hontan, p. 473.
18 Jesuit Relations, Vol. 1, p. 267.
19 Jesuit Relations, Vol. 10, p. 287.
22
INDIANA AND INDIANANS
The Southern Indians generally collected decaying bodies of their dead in "bone houses" or "charnel houses", as the DeSoto chroniclers called them, to save them for burial; and there are a number of descrip- tions of these places, and of the horrible old custodians who cleaned the flesh from the bones, by early chroniclers. After citing and quoting extensively from early observers, Mr. Charles C. Jones sums up the Georgia field as follows:
"Tumuli filled with numerous skeletons may be regarded as Family or Tribal Mounds. The Indians of Southern Georgia frequently burnt their dead. This custom, however, was not universal, and it obtained to a very limited extent among the tribes resident in the middle and upper portions of the State. The practice of reserving the skeletons until they had multiplied sufficiently to warrant a general cremation or inhumation seems to have been adopted. It was no easy task for the aborigines to erect a tumulus. Hence, saving the construction of grave mounds in honor of distinguished personages, the labor of sepulchral mound-building was postponed until the accumulations of
the bone-house claimed the attention of an entire community. * * Upon the islands and headlands along the coast, the skeletons, with a requisite amount of wood, were first placed in a pile upon the ground. Fire was then applied, and, above the smouldering remains carelessly heaped together, a mound of earth was erected. The charred bones and partially consumed fragments of wood are seldom seen until we have reached the level of the plain upon which the tumulus stands. With rare exceptions, tribal mounds of this description contain but a single stratum of bones, showing that when the cremation was ended and the tumulus finished, it was never reopened. As may well be expected, the bones in these mounds are disposed without order. Being at best but fragmentary in their character, they are intermingled with ashes, charred pieces of wood, broken pottery, cracked pipes, and other relics sadly impaired by the action of fire. The fires kindled in solemnization of these funeral customs were so intense as in some instances to crack the stone celts deposited with the dead. Shell ornaments entirely dis- appear, and the ordinary clay pipes are generally broken to pieces." 20
Such is the only adequate explanation that has ever been offered for those mounds in which, as Mr. Brown stated, he "invariably came to a stratum of ashes, from six inches to two feet thick, which rests on the original earth." His "stone residence" was apparently an abandoned "bone house", from whose vicinity the relatives of the occupants had been driven away without time to bury their dead. The
20 Antiquities of the Southern Indians, pp. 191-2.
23
INDIANA AND INDIANANS
skeletons found above the basic layer of ashes were probably the results of "intrusive burials" by the Indians. In the mound in which no remains were found, the fire had presumably been sufficient to reduce everything to ashes. Of course this explanation will not apply to mounds that have no layer of ashes at the bottom, for there were Indian
BONE HOUSE (After Lafitau)
tribes that did not cremate, as well as tribes that did. And not only did tribes with differing burial customs live in close contact, as is stated above in regard to the Georgia Indians, but in some cases even parts of the same tribe had different customs. Thus, among the Ottawas those of the Great Hare totem, or clan, cremated their dead while those of the other two clans, of the Bear and the Carp totems, buried without cremating.
24
INDIANA AND INDIANANS
The reason for this was given by Father Sebastian Rasles in his letter of Oct. 12, 1723. The Great Hare was the Algonkin demiurge, otherwise known as Michaboo, Manabozho, Nanaboush, or Wisakatca- kwa, and Rasles gives their tradition that: "Before quitting the earth he directed that when his descendants should die, their bodies should be burned, and their ashes scattered to the winds, so that they might be able to rise more easily to the sky." The verity of this had been established by the fact that they had left a member of the clan unburned during a protracted and distressing cold spell, until an old woman pointed out their offense, and his cremation was followed by a thaw- q. e. d.21 Squier and Davis mention 22 three mounds, one of them "nine feet high and forty feet in diameter" that appeared to be composed entirely of "something resembling long exposed and highly compacted ashes, intermingled with specks of charcoal, small bits of burned bones and fragments of sandstone much burned." Gerard Fowke thinks this was "made up of the material gathered on a village site, and containing all the debris of culinary and other domestic occupations." 23 It is rather difficult to imagine savages indulging in so tremendous a sanitary clean-up; and the facts may be explained on the theory that, for some reason, the builders were prevented from completing these mounds by covering them with earth.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.