USA > Ohio > Coshocton County > Centennial history of Coshocton County, Ohio, Vol. I > Part 2
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The State survey of the large mound along the river road on the Porteus farm revealed charcoal traces, a few pottery fragments, flint chips, small bones, a trinket or ceremonial of lead, and a finely chipped spear-head six inches long. This was the extent of the dis- covery, "to our chagrin," as the archaeologist reports, "after exceed- ingly laborious and dangerous excavation." The report states that no larger force of workmen was ever put on a mound in the Ohio Valley. "Sixteen men were employed day and night for four days in sinking a trench thirty-five feet wide and seventy feet long. The sides were loose and dangerous, and heavy bracing was necessary. No burials were discovered, although tunnels were run several yards on the base line in various directions. This was disappointing, espe- cially after the expenditure of a large sum of money. However, we learn again that it is not always the largest and most imposing mon- ument which contains the greatest treasure. Failure to find anything cannot be charged to imperfect or hasty examination-the whole center of the mound was exposed by the trench and tunnels for a dis- tance of thirty by twenty-five feet. As it was desirable to restore the
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HISTORY OF COSHOCTON COUNTY
monument to its former shape, we engaged Mr. Porteus to fill our trench."
Composed entirely of earth and unstratified this mound suggests the question of how much the rains of ages may have reduced the height, possibly from a towering structure to the present pile of twenty-three feet. There is also a query, in connection with mound excavating in general, as to whether or not the practice of digging to the present base line may be stopping short of discoveries farther down.
The Porteus mound crowds the Muskingum bank so closely that the riverside drive has cut the side of the mound. It is one of the very few earthworks found on the last of the river terraces to be re- claimed from the stream, suggesting that it was among the last con- structions of the Moundbuilders. Whether intended as a monument in connection with the ancient cemetery it overlooks, or possibly as a signal station, is another Moundbuilder mystery.
As to age, the trees growing upon mounds cannot carry esti- mates back much beyond six hundred years, while there is never ab- sent the uncertainty of prior growths, whether or not we assume as the scholarly Brinton does that the Moundbuilders planted trees on their earthworks. However, Judge M. F. Force, of Cincinnati, has pointed out the absence from mounds of any little hillocks indicating the uprooting of an older growth of trees, and the inference is drawn that the Moundbuilders flourished till about a thousand years ago.
A sacrificial significance is attached to the charcoal traces of burnt wood or calcined ashes of bones found in our mounds, implying that a religion of fire-worship prevailed here in which human sacrifice and the burning of prisoners may not have been unknown.
So far the attempts to disclose the ethnological relations of the Moundbuilders on cranial evidence lack sufficient data, and have also been embarrassed by inadequate care in distinguishing intrusive bur- ials of a later date. The wide divergence of views is shown in the theory of some connecting the Moundbuilders' skulls with the Pueb- los, and the contention of others for similarity to those of Mexico and Peru. A favorite view is that the Moundbuilders north of this region were long heads, with receding foreheads, and those south were short heads, with high foreheads and more brains. The southern Mound- builders, it is contended, were the most ingenious and industrious,
20
HISTORY OF COSHOCTON COUNTY
and made the best implements and greatest earthworks, notably that huge effigy, the Serpent Mound; also Fort Ancient, the Alligator Mound, and the elaborate works at Newark. The theory continues that there was war between the north and south Moundbuilders, which would suggest that the opposing forces may have met on this middle ground in our county. But the whole theory is well summed up by Professor E. O. Randall, secretary of the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society, when he terms it "largely skull speculation and fanciful imagination." The professor, commenting on the burials of these people, observes the evidence therein that "they had their great chiefs or 'big men,' and the extent and character of their 'buildings' certainly prove that they understood organization and subordination in their social system; that there were 'bosses' in those prehistoric days who directed and controlled the workmen. They may not have been troubled with the question of combined cap- ital, but they surely wrestled with the great question of labor."
A skull pierced in the crown was found in the mound on Frank Maxwell's land up the Walhonding three miles from Coshocton. This recalls the pierced skull reported in the ancient cemetery. The Maxwell mound is described as five feet high and sixty feet in diameter, and located on the second terrace two hundred yards from the river. The State survey removed about all the area originally covered by the mound, and found ten skeletons, some well preserved. Previous digging had disturbed two skeletons in the center, cutting one at the hips, and destroying all of another save the skull. In the eight years since the prior excavation, the bodies near the opening had decayed more than those farther away. All the skeletons were extended upon the base line and lay in various directions. Pottery, arrowheads, and a bone smoothed and sharpened at the edge were found in addition to the skull with the hole in the crown.
The report of field work by the State Archaeological Society in 1896 speaks of Walhonding as built over several mounds and a vil- lage site, and refers to mounds north on the Johnson farm and the Workman farm. Human teeth were found near the center of the Johnson mound. A few feet lower and on the base line were traces of burnt earth and charcoal. There were a few broken arrowheads and one whole specimen scattered through the soil, and near the teeth
CAVALLO ON THE MOHICAN.
A FAMED SHIPPING POINT WHICH VANISHED WITH THE PASSING OF THE PIONEERS, THEN ROSE AGAIN.
21
HISTORY OF COSHOCTON COUNTY
a cone-shaped stone. The mound measured nine feet in height and sixty-nine feet across the base.
The smaller Workman mound contributed more to the State museum. From a five-foot height the plow had worn it down to two feet, barely high enough to trace its outline. Near the bones of a deer was found a stone tube. Resting on slight traces of bone and with edges overlapping was a layer of sixty-seven arrowheads of clear quartz, or chalcedony, all more leaf-shaped than the usual arrow- head. Near these was a pocket of chips that apparently were struck off in flaking the implements. This is the only burial of the kind re- corded in this country.
On Colonel Pren Metham's farm a few miles away in Jefferson Township is a deposit of chalcedony, and it is presumed that this quarry furnished the material for the ancient implements found in the Workman mound. On the Metham hill were found battered- looking rocks, presumably carried up from the river to be hurled against the wall of flint. Likely under the 'blows of such primitive sledge-hammers the fragments flew. Heaps of flint chips marked the spot as the workshop of the professional arrowmaker. Nicked stones lay among the chips, left by the workers who returned no more. In a sandstone crevice near the Colonel's house was found a cache of flints, some finely finished, and at the spring a fragment of ancient pottery and a layer of broken sandstone. Similar layers in the earth have been noticed elsewhere in the county, always adjacent to springs.
Fifty-four years ago a stone mound was opened on a hilltop near the Colonel's house. A rock pile, eighteen feet square and five feet deep, composed of sandstone layers, was removed, revealing a sepul- chre floored with a large, flat sandstone, and walled with sandstone slabs. On the floor lay part of a skull, a thigh bone, teeth and a few other fragments of a skeleton. The thigh bone indicated the dead to have been of unusual height, more than seven feet. In addition to a few flint darts several stone pendants were found in the sepulchre. These "plum bob" or shuttle shaped stones recall those found in Sci- oto Valley earthworks which have been variously regarded as cere- monial, or ornamental, or mayhap used as charm stones, or as weights to keep the thread taut in weaving.
22
HISTORY OF COSHOCTON COUNTY
Crowning a hilltop on the Darling farm across the river, a cres- cent-shaped wall of stone attracted attention in the early days as the work of ancient people. The wall, breast-high, extended thirty feet. It was built of large flat stones.
At best we have but a meagre record of ruins in this region, ruins found under circumstances which seemingly assign to them very remote antiquity belonging not only to a moundbuilding period but to a stone age also. It is much regretted that more information has not come to us from early observers of earthworks and stone- works which afterward perished under the march of agriculture. Something about plowing up ashes and charcoal would have added fully as much mound testimony as careful measurements of feet high and feet wide, and done archæologic science just as immeasureable service.
In addition to the detailed report of Coshocton County mound exploration by the State, as mentioned herein, the survey tabulates half a hundred or so prehistoric earth and stone remains according to townships. Following is a revised exhibit :
COSHOCTON COUNTY. ANCIENT EARTHWORKS AND STONEWORKS.
TOWNSHIPS
EARTH MOUNDS
STONE MOUNDS
VILLAGE ; ENCLOS- SITES URE
CIRCLE
CRES- CENT
GROUP STONE GRAVES
MOUND GROUP
GLACIAL KAME BURIAL
Bethlehem
4
1
1
1
Clark.
1
1
. .
Franklin
2
Jackson
1
1
.. .
. ...
Jefferson
3
1
. . .
...
Keene.
Lafayette
2
1
1
1
Oxford
1
2
Perry
1
Pike.
1
Tiverton
2
1
1
..
Tuscarawas.
2
2
2
1
.
. . .
.....
...
TOTALS.
26
7
8
2
3
1
2
1
4
1
1
1
1
1
1
Newcastle.
5
2
1
1
Virginia
1
. ..
The foregoing does not include several vanished earthworks re- ported years ago in various parts of the county. On the plains of Linton Township, at the cross roads half a mile southwest of Plain-
23
HISTORY OF COSHOCTON COUNTY
field, there was once a square of several acres which, it is related, was enclosed by four embankments six feet high, now plowed down. There was an entrance at each corner. Several miles down Wills Creek there was a circle. About seventy years ago a small mound near Plainfield was opened by J. D. Workman, who found stone relics. Another mound two miles below was reported opened by Wesley Pat- rick, who found a skull and thigh exceptionally large.
Other vanished earthworks were mounds of Virginia Township near the Muskingum; a circle in White Eyes Township, breast-high and enclosing an acre on a bluff overlooking White Eyes Creek, half a mile south of Chili. Stone axes and flints were reported found in this circle. West of Roscoe a dozen years ago, according to Andrew Fisher, surveyor, traces of a belt of red soil were still seen, thirty feet wide, circling a hilltop. The circle was three hundred feet in diam- eter.
Among the mounds plowed down years ago was one in Oxford Township thirty feet wide. A circle enclosing three acres north of West Lafayette and several mounds of Lafayette Township were ob- literated by the plow, one on the Shaw estate, one cut away by the railroad on the Ferguson farm, and another leveled on the Higbee place. Seventy years ago the river road in Franklin Township lev- eled a mound containing half a dozen skeletons arranged like the radii of a circle, with heads toward the center.
In Coshocton, where Fourth and Locust streets cross, the finding of skeletons was associated with early reports regarding a mound there, though later identified as an Indian burying ground. In Tiver- ton Township it is told there was a circle enclosing three acres, while excavation along the Walhonding Canal revealed scattered skeletons and sitting skeletons, ashes, stone axes, flint and pestles: and on a hilltop overlooking the Mohican a stone wall, breast-high, extended one hundred and thirty-two feet. In Keene Township the stone was hauled away from a hilltop stone mound, but the only record that sur- vives is the inevitable measurement of twelve feet across and three feet high.
On Howard Miller's farm in Keene Township, a few miles from Coshocton, is a circle that has excited much interest in recent exam- ination of this county's ancient earthworks. Although cut down by the plow in earlier years, its location in an orchard has somewhat
24
HISTORY OF COSHOCTON COUNTY
preserved its outline. There is an opening in the circle, and the plow, usually the mound destroyer, was in this instance a discoverer; for it came upon a path of red stone leading from this opening in the circle down to the spring now used by the Avon kennels.
The blood-red path has the appearance of burnt stone, according to some observers, but it is not unlike the red sandstone found else- where in the county. There have been no skeletons found in this circle to indicate the sepulchral function belonging to the burial mounds of this region, neither does its size classify this circle among our ancient works of military significance, nor can it be even faintly likened to an effigy mound, of which none for that matter is recorded in this county.
It is related that a "race-track" fad prevailed among some pio- neer settlers, and that here a ring may have been laid out, but the wild impossibility of putting speed into horses within this garden ring is equaled only by the desperate hopelessness of getting any speed out of them. On this farm in 1816 Nicholas Miller erected a mill which was burned, but no connection is shown between that and to- day's ruin.
The layer of broken sandstone found in the earth here is similar to layers discovered near springs in New Castle Township and Jeffer- son Township. Whether or not the red path from the circle to the spring illustrates some rite or custom of the ancient people who dwelt here only the future archaeology may chronicle.
A short distance from this circle, across the road, is a knob of earth standing in the valley like an island hill. On top is a chain of pits, variously associated with reported finding of mica, also with ancient smelting, and even an Indian tradition of gold. An explana- tion has been advanced that the uprooting of trees left these holes as well as several others on a nearby hillside, but in each place the num- ber of pits in such close proximity is submitted in contradiction of the tree belief.
All the exploration of earthworks and stoneworks in our county has revealed no clue to the language which the Moundbuilders spoke -a mere mumbling perhaps, or such picturesque speech as the Indian "hat survives in our local nomenclature of Walhonding, Tuscarawas, Muskingum, Coshocton, Mohican, and so on.
25
HISTORY OF COSHOCTON COUNTY
Much has been written by prominent supporters of the theory that Indians built the mounds, and this belief has been strengthened by the conclusions reached by field workers of the Bureau of Ethnol- ogy. Cyrus Thomas maintains that the defensive enclosures are the work of Iroquois-Huron tribes, and he affirms that the habits of Moundbuilders correspond to historic habits of the Cherokees. Not- withstanding, evidence is still lacking that any Indians in this region ever possessed the military energy to construct the works here.
There is the theory that the Moundbuilders were in some way connected with the Pueblo Indians, or the Aztecs, or the Peruvians, either coming from them or migrating south and erecting works there. This is questioned, however, by the wide dissimilarity between the mounds here and the works in southern lands. There is nothing about the ancient remains in our county that even remotely suggests the Pueblo cliff dwellings, or the majestic ruins of the Aztecs and Toltecs of Mexico, or the Inca temples of Peru.
Inquiry into the origin of our Moundbuilders has led many into the Asiatic belief, although a people like the Chinese or Japanese who might have populated this land would presumably have left as charac- teristic records here as those which stamp their own Orient. As for the much-discussed Chinese account of Buddhist priests discovering the strange land of Fusang, whatever part of America that may have or may not have been, we get nothing in that description to explain the ancestry of our Moundbuilders.
The elaborate expositions of the belief that the American ab- origines were descendants of the lost tribes of Israel relate principally to linguistic resemblances between the Hebrew and the Indian, and this throws no light on the Moundbuilder question. While the Jew- ish migration theory is recognized in the Mormon bible, and even western mounds have been made to yield Hebrew inscriptions, this belief is not corroborated by collateral proofs from the mounds of Coshocton County.
Similarly the theory has been advanced that our early inhab- itants came from Wales in view of reported traces of Welsh in the speech of the Tuscaroras and other Indians, and someone has pointed out that our mounds resemble mounds in Wales. However, with due regard to the discussions of the learned men in the seventeenth cen- tury and others since then, the opinion most generally accepted today
26
HISTORY OF COSHOCTON COUNTY
is that the Welsh view, while possible, is by no means probable. We are reminded that nothing is slenderer than incautious linguistic inferences carried to fanciful extent by confident enthusiasm.
Contentions that the mounds were built by Egyptians and by Finns and by the Irish and by descendants of the Canaanites expelled by Joshua show a tendency to a facility rather than felicity in pre- senting theories on the subject. In seeing a resemblance between our mounds and the ancient monumental architecture of Egypt and other lands there is danger of seeing overmuch.
The attempt to prove by similarity of remains that our Mound- builders came from an early race in Europe, possibly the white- bearded men spoken of in Mexican tradition, is met by E. G. Squier's comment that the monumental resemblances referred to indicate sim- ilar conditions of life rather than ethnic connections.
The historical verity of pre-Columbian visits to this land by Irish colonists or by Norsemen depends upon accepting as genuine chroni- cles the romantic sagas of unbridled fancy, the embellished stories of the fireside variously re-told for centuries by mouth and finally told on skin. The sagas bear the general character of popular traditions to such a degree that much more trustworthy evidence is needed in de- termining the origin of our Moundbuilders.
As for considering him a distinct product of America, unrelated to the old world, this view is ably upheld by Louis Agassiz, but at- tacked both by theologians holding fast to orthodox interpretation of Genesis, and by evolutionists including Darwin. However, those holding the autochthonous view are at least on an equal footing with other theorists in the one particular that it is not safe for any of them to dogmatize.
Out of the silence of centuries this primitive life came; into silence it has gone. What wonderful drama may have developed in these forest wilds, what weird scenes may have been enacted in strange worship of strange gods, what dreaded spirits were appeased by blazing fires, only these ruins and ashes remain to tell. And in them, too, rests the everyday story of this ancient life, its habits, in- dustries, arts, customs, migrations, and physical characterizations. It is assumed our Moundbuilders knew agriculture, and turned hunt- ers with the coming of game into these valleys. Their pottery is evi- dence that, while the potter's wheel may have been unknown to them,
27
HISTORY OF COSHOCTON COUNTY
they at least understood some sort of mechanical process, giving a revolving motion to their clay. Their implements and ornaments disclose their art in stone, and by the same token illustrate their migrations and intertribal traffic.
Theirs was a life of peace and war until the climax was reached and the tragedy culminated in devastation and ruin. After that, an appalling stillness with the fall of the curtain, to rise again on this stage where the tragedies of the red man awakened the forest echoes once more with terrifying voice.
a
TURN BASIN IN OHIO CANAL NEAR EVANSBURG, WHERE THE BAREFOOT GARFIELD DROVE THE TOW-PATH MULE
CHAPTER III
THE INDIAN LIFE AND CHARACTER: SCENES ILLUS- TRATING TRIBAL SOCIETY, CUSTOMS, AMUSE- MENTS, INDUSTRIES, LINGUISTICS, WARFARE, AND SOMETHING OF SAVAGE ROMANCE WITH- IN OUR BORDERS.
The red man's hour on this stage is traced in something more than his flaked flints and stone implements. His real story lives in the notebooks of those missionaries and travelers who came to this region in the twilight of Indian power. It is these Coshocton records that are spread upon pages of American history.
They give us an Indian picture that is part savage, part human, a glimpse of the primitive life in its real colors: the sensual dance; the fiendish scalp song, aw-oh, aw-oh, in mockery of shrieking vic- tims : the warriors' chant, he-uh, he-uh, in the hideous war dance with brandishing tomahawks and spears; the practical labor of the corn- field: the feasting from kettles crusted with former banquets. It is no idealized myth of romance; only naked truth with a dash of dramatic interest in the scenes that marked the gradual retreat of the red men before the advancing hosts of whites.
Of the half dozen Indian villages scattered through this wilder- ness in the eighteenth century the largest extended along the river- side, now Water Street, Coshocton. There were the typical surround- ings pictured in Longfellow's lines-
Round about the Indian village Spread the meadows and the cornfields, And beyond them stood the forest.
The brown hands of the squaws and their daughters built the double row of huts and wigwams, wove the mats of grass upon which their lordly braves reclined, dressed the skins of deer and buffalo, and toiled over the cornfields. To woman also fell the lot of "blessing" the corn after planting ; and on a dark night when sleep hung over the village some "Laughing Water," unclad and unabashed, stole from her lodge to walk around the cornfield-
24
30
HISTORY OF COSHOCTON COUNTY
No one but the Midnight only Saw her beauty in the darkness, No one but the Wawonaissa Heard the panting of her bosom; Guskewau, the darkness, wrapped her Closely in his sacred mantle,
So that none might see her beauty, So that none might boast, "I saw her!"
And thus her footprints marked a charmed line over which neither insect nor worm was supposed to creep, thereby insuring a good crop -eloquent proof that in our ancient agriculture there was at least more poetry if less overalls than in our modern art.
Madam of the Indian home led the busy life within the village while her lord and master went hunting and fishing. Nor did she complain; rather was it her pride to labor thus for him who provided meat and clothed her in fur by the chase, and defended their home against their enemies.
So she went on devotedly pounding the corn into flour, and baking the dough on ashes, and serving it for bread. She rose to banquet heights with a boiled dinner of corn, pumpkins, beans, chestnuts and meat, sweetened with maple sugar, and all cooked together in one pot, with its deposits and incrustations from previous banquets. There was one merciful feature about it: they had only two meals a day. The menu was varied with fish, game, potatoes, cabbage, turnips, cucumbers, squash, melons, roots, fruits and berries-not bad for light housekeeping with one pot.
Madam's accomplishments did not stop there. With thread from the rind of the wild hemp and nettles she wove the feathers of turkeys and geese into blankets. She also made blankets of beaver and coon skin, and shirts and petticoats, leggings and moccasins of deer and bear skin, the fur being worn next to the body in winter, and outside in summer. Sometimes the fur was scraped off with rib bones of the elk and buffalo.
So in the peaceful days the Indian life lolled along: some easy tramping over mossy trails, some drifting in canoes, some village handiwork, and much squatting around on blankets, with the ever- present pipe of uppowoc, the while many voices filled the camp; for
31
HISTORY OF COSHOCTON COUNTY
among themselves the Indians were talkative enough. And theirs was a marvelously picturesque talk, a language of nature, of the for- est, the clouds, the sun, the moon, the water. If talking of swiftness their word for it was the deer; strength to them was symbolized by the bear; fury they likened unto the wind; and thus throughout a vocabulary of wonderful expressiveness.
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