History of Hamilton County, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 6

Author: Ford, Henry A., comp; Ford, Kate B., joint comp; Williams, L.A. & co., Cleveland, O., pub
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio, L. A. Williams
Number of Pages: 590

USA > Ohio > Hamilton County > History of Hamilton County, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches > Part 6

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More of the enclosures left by the Mound Builders are believed to belong to this class than to the class of de- fensive works. They especially abound in Ohio. The finest ancient works in the State-those near Newark, Licking county -- are undoubtedly of this kind. They are -rather were-twelve miles in total length of wall, and enclose a tract of two miles square. The system of em- bankment is intricate as well as extensive, and encloses a number of singular mounds-one of them in the shape of an enormous bird track, the middle toe one hundred and fifty-five feet, and each of the other toes one hundred and ten feet in length. A superb work, representing the combi- nation of a square with two circles, of the dimensions pre- viously stated, exists in Liberty township, Ross county, a few miles from Chillicothe. A work in Pike county con- sists of a circle enclosing a square, each of the four cor- ners of which touches the circle, the gateway of the circle being opposite the opening in the square. Several com- binations of the square and the circle appear in the Hope- town works, four miles north of Chillicothe. Circleville derives its name from the principal ancient work-a cir- cle and a square-which formerly stood upon its site. Many other remains of the kind are familiarly known in Ross and Pike, Franklin, Athens, Licking, Montgomery, Butler, and other counties.

III. MISCELLANEOUS ENCLOSURES .- The difficulty of referring many of the smaller circular works, thirty to fifty feet in diameter, found in close proximity to large works, to previous classes, has prompted the suggestion that they were the foundations of lodges or habitations of chiefs, priests, or other prominent personages among the Build- ers. In one case within the writer's observation, a rough stone foundation about four rods square was found iso- lated from any other work, near the Scioto river, in the

south part of Ross county. At the other extreme of size, the largest and most complex of the works, as those at Newark, are thought to have served, in part at least, other than religious purposes-that they may, besides furnishing spaces for sacrifice and worship, have included also arenas for games and marriage celebrations and other festivals, the places of general assembly for the tribe or village, the encampment or more permanent residences of the priesthood and chiefs. Mr. Isaac Smucker, a learned antiquary of Newark, to whom we are indebted for im- portant facts presented in this chapter, says :

Some archæologists maintain that many works called Sacred Enclo- sures were erected for and used as places of amusement, where our predecessors of pre-historic times practiced their national games and celebrated their great national events; where they held their national festivals and indulged in their national jubilees, as well as performed the ceremonials of their religion. And it may be that those (and there are many such) within which no central elevation or altar occurs, were erected for the purposes last named, and not exclusively (if at all) for purposes connected with their religion, and are therefore erroneously called Sacred Enclosures. Other ancient peoples, if indeed not all the nations of antiquity, have had their national games, amusements, fes- tivals, and jubilees ; and why not the Mound Builders, too? Notably in this regard the ancient Greeks may be named, with whom, during the period known as the "lyrical age of Greece," the Olympic, the Pythian, the Nemean, and the Isthmian games became national festi- vals. And without doubt the Mound Builders, too, had their national games, amusements, festivals, and jubilees, and congregated within their enclosures to practice, celebrate, and enjoy them.

IV. MOUNDS OF SACRIFICE .- These have several dis- tinct characteristics. In height they seldom exceed eight feet. They occur only within or near the enclosures, commonly considered as the sacred places of the Build- ers, and are usually stratified in convex layers of clay or loam alternating above a layer of fine sand. Beneath the strata, and upon the original surface of the earth at the center of the mound, are usually symmetricaly formed altars of stone or burnt clay, evidently brought from a distance. Upon them are found various remains, all of which exhibit signs of the action of fire, and some which have excited the suspicion that the Builders practiced the horrid rite of human sacrifice. Not only calcined bones, but naturally ashes, charcoal, and igneous stones are found with them; also beads, stone implements, simple sculp- tures, and pottery. The remains are often in such a con- dition as to indicate that the altars had been covered before the fires upon them were fully extinguished. Skele- tons are occasionally found in this class of mounds; though these may have been " intrusive burials" made after the construction of the works and contrary to their original intention. Though symmetrical, the altars are by no means uniform in shape or size. Some are round, some elliptical, others square or parallelograms. In size they vary from two to fifty feet in length, and are of pro- portional width and height, the commoner dimensions be- ing five to eight feet.

V. TEMPLE MOUNDS are not so numerous. In this State it is believed they were only at Marietta, Newark, Portsmouth, and about Chillicothe. They are generally larger than the altar and burial mounds, and are more frequently circular or oval, though sometimes found in other shapes. The commonest shape is that of a trun- cated cone; and, in whatever form a mound of this class

HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO.

may be, it always has a flattened or level top, giving it an unfinished look. Some are called platforms, from their large area and slight elevation. They are, indeed, almost always of large base and comparatively small height. Often, as might reasonably be expected, they are within a sacred enclosure, and some are terraced or have spiral ascents or graded inclines to their summits. They take their name from the probable fact that upon their flat tops were reared structures of wood, the temples or "high places" of this people, which decayed and disappeared ages ago. In many cases in the northern States these must have been small, from the smallness of their sites upon the mounds; but as they are followed southward they are seen, as might be expected, to increase gradual- ly and approximate more closely to perfect construction, until they end in the great teocallis ("houses of God"). One remarkable platform of this kind in Whitley county, Kentucky, is three hundred and sixty feet long by one hundred and fifty wide and twelve high, with graded as- cents; and another, at Hopkinsville, is so large that the county court house is built upon it. The great mound at Cahokia, Missouri, is of this class. Its truncated top measured two hundred by four hundred and fifty-two feet.

VI. BURIAL MOUNDS furnish by far the most numer- ous class of tumuli. The largest mounds in the coun- try are generally of this kind. The greatest of all, the famous mound at Grave creek, Virginia, is seventy-five feet high, and has a circumference at the base of about one thousand. In solid contents it is nearly equal to the third pyramid of Mykerinus, in Egypt. The huge mound on the banks of the Great Miami, twelve miles below Dayton, has a hight of sixty-eight feet. Many of the burial mounds are six feet or less in height, but the average height as deduced from wide observation of them, is stated as about twenty feet. They are usually of con- ical form. It is conjectured that the size of these mounds has an immediate relation to the former importance of the personage or family buried in them. Only three skeletons have so far been found in the mighty Grave Creek mound. Except in rare cases, they contain but one skeleton, unless by "intrusive" or later burial, as by In- dians, who frequently used the ancient mounds for pur- poses of sepulture. One Ohio mound, however-that opened by Professor Marsh, of Yale college, in Licking county-contained seventeen skeletons; and another, in Hardin county, included three hundred. But these are exceptional instances. Calcined human bones in some burial mounds at the North with charcoal and ashes in close proximity, show that cremation was occasionally practiced, or that fire was used in the funeral ceremonies ; and "urn burial" prevailed considerably in the southren States. At times a rude chamber or cist of stone or tim- ber contained the remains. In the latter case the more fragile material has generally disappeared, but casts of it in the earth are still observable. The stone cists furnish some of the most interesting relics found in the mounds. They are, in rare cases, very large, and contain several bodies, with various relics. They are like large stone boxes, made of several flat stones, joined without cement or fastening. Similar, but much smaller, are the stone

coffins found in large number in Illinois and near Nash- ville, Tennessee. They are generally occupied by single bodies. In other cases, as in recent discoveries near Portsmouth and elsewhere in Ohio, the slabs are arranged slanting upon each other in the shape of a triangle, and having, of course, a triangular vault in the interior. In the Cumberland mountains heaps of loose stones are found over skeletons, but these stone mounds are proba- bly of Indian origin, and so comparatively modern. Im- plements, weapons, ornaments, and various remains of art, as in the later Indian custom, were buried with the dead. Mica is often found with the skeletons, with pre- cisely what meaning is not yet ascertained; also pottery, beads of bone, copper, and even glass-indicating, some think, commercial intercourse with Europe-and other articles in great variety, are present.

There is also, probably, a sub-class of mounds that may be mentioned in this connection-the Memorial or Monumental mounds, thrown up, it is conjectured, to perpetuate the celebrity of some important event or in honor of some eminent personage. They are usually of earth, but occasionally, in this State at least, of stone.

VII. SIGNAL MOUNDS, OR MOUNDS OF OBSERVATION. This is a numerous and very interesting and important class of the works. Colonel Anderson, of Circleville, thinks he has demonstrated by actual survey, made at his own expense, the existence of a regular chain or system of these lookouts through the Scioto valley, from which, by signal fires, intelligence might be rapidly flashed over long distances. About twenty such mounds occur be- tween Columbus and Chillicothe, on the eastern side of the Scioto. In Hamilton county a chain of mounds, doubtless devoted to such purpose, can be traced from the primitive site of Cincinnati to the "old fort," near the mouth of the Great Miami. Along both the Miamis numbers of small mounds on the projecting headlands and on heights in the interior are indubitably signal mounds.

Judge Force says: "By the mound at Norwood signals could be passed from the valley of Mill creek to the Little Miami valley, near Newtown, and I believe to the valley of the Great Miami near Hamilton."

Like the defensive works already described as part of the military system of the Builders, the positions of these works were chosen with excellent judgment. They vary in size, according to the height of the natural eminences upon which they are placed. Many still bear the marks of intense heat upon their summits, results of the long- extinct beacon fires. Sometimes they are found in con- nection with the embankments and enclosures, as an en- larged and elevated part of the walls. One of these, near Newark, though considerably reduced, retains a height of twenty-five feet. The huge mound at Miamisburgh, mentioned as a burial mound, very likely was used also as a part of the chain of signal mounds from above Day- ton to the Cincinnati plain and the Kentucky bluff beyond.

VIII. EFFIGY OR ANIMAL MOUNDS appear principally in Wisconsin, on the level surface of the prairie. They are of very low height-one to six feet-but are other-

HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO.

wise often very large, extended figures of men, beasts, birds, or reptiles, and in a very few cases of inanimate things. In this State there are three enormous, remark- able earthwork effigies-the "Eagle mound" in the cen- ter of a thirty-acre enclosure near Newark, and supposed to represent an eagle on the wing ; the " Alligator mound," also in Licking county, two hundred and five feet long; and the famous "Great Serpent," on Brush creek, in Adams county, which has a length of seven hundred feet, the tail in a triple coil, with a large mound, supposed to represent an egg, between the jaws of the figure. By some writers these mounds are held to be symbolical, and connected with the religion of the Builders. Mr. Schoolcraft, however, calls them "emblematic," and says they represent the totems or heraldic symbols of the Builder tribes.

IX. GARDEN BEDS .-- In Wisconsin, in Missouri, and in parts of Michigan, and to some extent elsewhere, is found a class of simple works presumed to be ancient. They are merely ridges or beds left by the cultivation of the soil, about six inches high and four feet wide, regu- larly arranged in parallel rows, at times rectangular, other- wise of various but regular and symmetrical curves, and in fields of ten to a hundred acres. Where they occur near the animal mounds, they are in some cases carried across the latter, which would seem to indicate, if the ·same people executed both works, that no sacred charac- ter attached to the effigies.

X. MINES .- These, as worked by the Builders, have not yet been found in many different regions; but in the Lake Superior copper region their works of this kind are numerous and extensive. In the Ontonagon country their mining traces abound for thirty miles. Colonel Whittlesey estimates that they removed metal from this region equivalent to a length of one hundred and fifty feet in veins of varying thickness. Some of their opera- tions approached the stupendous. No other remains of theirs are found in the Upper Peninsula; and there is no probability that they occupied the region for other than temporary purposes.

THE CONTENTS OF THE MOUNDS.

Besides the human remains which have received sufficient treatment for this article under the head of Burial mounds, and the altars noticed under Mounds of Sacrifice, the contents of the work of the Mound Builders are mostly small, and many of them unimportant. They have been classified by Dr. Rau, the archaeologist of the Smithsonian Institution, according to the material of which they are wrought, as follows:

I. STONE .- This is the most numerous class of relics They were fashioned by chipping, grinding, or polishing, and include rude pieces, flakes, and cores, as well as fin_ ished and more or less nearly finished articles. In the first list are arrow and spear-heads, perforators, scrapers, cutting and sawing tools, dagger-shaped implements, large implements supposed to have been used in digging the ground, and wedge or celt-shaped tools and weapons. The ground and polished specimens, more defined in form, comprise wedges or celts, chisels, gouges, adzes

and grooved axes, hammers, drilled ceremonial weapons, cutting tools, scraper and spade-like implements, pen- dants and sinkers, discoidal stones and kindred objects, pierced tablets and boat-shaped articles, stones used in grinding and polishing, vessels, mortars, pestles, tubes, pipes, ornaments, sculptures, and engraved stones or tab- lets. Fragmentary plates of mica or isinglass may be included under this head.

2. COPPER .- These are either weapons and tools or ornaments, produced, it would seem, by hammering pieces of native copper into the required shape.

3. BONE AND HORN .- Perforators, harpoon-heads, fish- hooks, cups, whistles, drilled teeth, etc.

4. SHELL .- Either utensils and tools, as drinking-cups, spoons, fish-hooks, celts, etc., or ornaments, comprising various kinds of gorgets, pendants, and beads.

5. CERAMIC FABRICS .- Pottery, pipes, human and ani- mal figures, and vessels in great variety.

6. WOOD .- The objects of early date formed of this material are now very few, owing to its perishable char- acter.

To these may be added :

7. GOLD AND SILVER .- In a recent find in a stonecist at Warrensburgh, Missouri, a pottery vase or jar was found, which had a silver as well as a copper band about it. Other instances of the kind are on record, and a gold ornament in the shape of a woodpecker's head has been taken from a mound in Florida.

8. TEXTILE FABRICS .- A few fragments of coarse cloth or matting have survived the destroying tooth of time, and some specimens, so far as the texture is con- cerned, have been very well preserved by the salts of copper, when used to enwrap articles shaped from that metal.

THE MOUND BUILDERS' CIVILIZATION.

This theme has furnished a vast field for speculation, and the theorists have pushed into a wilderness of vis- ionary conjectures. Some inferences, however, may be regarded as tolerably certain. The number and magni- tude of their works, and their extensive range and uni- formity, says the American Cyclopædia, prove that the Mound Builders were essentially homogeneous in cus- toms, habits, religion, and government. The general features common to all their remains identify them as appertaining to a single grand system, owing its origin to men moving in the same direction, acting under com- mon impulses, and influenced by similar causes. Pro- fessor Short, in his invaluable work, thinks that, however writers may differ, these conclusions may be safely ac- cepted: That they came into the country in compara- tively small numbers at first (if they were not Autoch- thones, 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 indicates. The magnitude of their works, some of which approximate the propor- tions of Egyptian pyramids, testify to the architectural talent of the people and the fact that they developed a system of government controlling the labor of multitudes,

HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO.

whether of subjects or slaves. They were an agricultural people, as the extensive ancient garden-beds found in Wisconsin and Missouri indicate. Their manufactures offer proof that they had attained a respectable de- gree of advancement and show that they understood the advantages of the division of labor. 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 peo- ple 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. They mined cop- per, which they wrought into implements of war, into or- naments and articles for domestic nse. They quarried mica for mirrors and other purposes. They furthermore worked flint and salt mines. They probably possessed some astronomical knowledge, though to what extent is unknown. Their trade, as Dr. Rau has shown, was widespread, extending probably from Lake Superior to the Gulf, and possibly to Mexico. They constructed canals, by which lake systems were united, a fact which Mr. Conant has recently shown to be well es- tablished in Missouri. Their defences were numer- ous and constructed with reference to strategic prin- ciples, while their system of signals placed on lofty their settlements, and communicating with the great water courses at immense summits, visible from dis- tances, rivaled the signal systems in use at the begin- ning 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 were probably the all-important deities to which sacri- fices (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 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 condition surrounding them .*

THE BUILDERS IN HAMILTON COUNTY.

Very brief notice of them will be made here, anything like detailed description being reserved for the special histories to come later in this work. Reference has been made above to the extensive signal system in the Miami country, and to numerous works upon the present site of Cincinnati. Elsewhere in the county the Builders have left frequent remains. They abound in Columbia, An- derson, and Spencer townships, and are found all along the Little Miami valley from below Newtown to points above Milford. On the other side of the county, in the valley of the Great Miami, they are found numerously at the mouth of the stream, about Cleves, and for miles

along the banks above and below Colerain. Near this place, about one mile south of the county line, is the cel- ebrated enclosure known as "the Colerain works," sur- rounding a tract of about ninety-five acres. Judge Force thinks there was a strong line of fortifications along the Great Miami, from the mouth to Piqua, with advanced works near Oxford and Eaton, and with a massive work in rear of this line, at Fort Ancient. In the interior of Hamilton they appear at Norwood, Sharon, in Springfield township, and elsewhere to some extent. This region was undoubtedly one of the densest centers of popula- tion. We shall view some of their works more closely before this volume is closed.

CHAPTER IV. THE OHIO INDIANS.

" Then a darker, drearier vision Passed before me, vagne and cloudhike;

I beheld our nations scattered, All forgetful of my counsels, Weakened, warring with each other; Saw the remnants of our people Sweeping westward, wild and woful, Like the cloud-rack of a tempest, Like the withered leaves of autumn."

H. W. LONGFELLOW, "Hiawatha."

AFTER the Mound Builder came the red man. For un- told centuries his history is a blank. Whence he came, how he spread over the continent, what his earlier num- bers, supplies material for the philosophic historian. The literature of past ages is silent concerning these things; the voice of tradition is almost equally reticent. It seems quite certain, however, notwithstanding some speculations to the contrary, that no other race inter- vened between the mysterious people of the mounds and the savages whom Columbus and other discoverers found upon our soil. By the red men-fewer in numbers, doubtless, but fiercer, braver, and more persistent than their antagonists-the Builders were driven out and pushed to the southwest, hosts of warriors on both sides perishing in the protracted struggle. As Halleck says:

"What tales, if there be tongues in trees, These giant oaks could tell Of beings born and buried here!"

The new race was vastly inferior to the older. It was more a nomadic people. Villages and other permanent habitations seldom contained, through the course of many generations, the same tribes. They were not given, except to a very limited extent, to the tillage of the soil. War and the chase were their chief occupa- tions, and the products of the latter, with spontaneous yields from the forest and stream, furnished the simple necessaries of their lives. Change for the worse as it was, apparently, in the population of this part of North America, it was doubtless in the order of Divine Provi- dence, that the land-might, by and by, be the more easily and advantageously occupied by the white man, who

* The Americans of Antiquity, pp. 96-100.

HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO.

would come to fill it again with busy life and to dot its surface with the monuments of a civilization to which the wildest dreams of his predecessors never reached.

THE IROQUOIS AND THE ERIES.

The light of history begins to dawn upon the Indians of Ohio during the latter part of the seventeenth cen- tury. As early as 1609 the explorer, Champlain, made mention of the Iroquois, who then dwelt about the castern end of Lake Ontario. In 1683 La Hontan names them again and says they are "in five cantons, not unlike those of the Swisses. Though these cantons are all one nation, and united in one joint interest, yet they go by different names, viz .: The Sonontouans [Sen- ecas], the Goyagoans [Cayugas], the Onnatagues [Onon- dagas], the Ononyonts [Oneidas], and the Aguies [Mo- hawks]." The Five afterwards became the famous "Six Nations," and are sometimes mentioned as seven. These formed one of the three great divisions of the Indian tribes east of the Mississippi-the Huron-Iroquois, the Algonquins, and Mobilians, dwelling respectively, it may be stated in a general way, on the great lakes, the Ohio river, and the Gulf of Mexico. The second of these families, though perhaps not the most powerful in war, the first seemingly holding the supremacy, was by far the most numerous and widespread. Their habitat is de- scribed as "originally reaching from Lake Superior to the mouth of the St. Lawrence, and from the west of Maine to Pamlico sound along the Atlantic coast, and from the Ro- anoke river to the headwaters of the Ohio and westward to the mouth of the river, and from that point, including all south and west of Lake Erie, to Lake Superior again, leaving the Iroquois on Lake Ontario like an island in the midst of a great sea."* To this stock belonged most of the Ohio tribes ; but to their neighbors, east and west, the Iroquois and the Hurons, were allied in blood the ill-fated Filians, or Eries, the first of all western tribes to be observed and mentioned by the French explorers. They are first designated by the former name on Cham- plain's map, published in 1680; are again so named on the map of Richard Blome three years later; and so gen- erally on the old maps until 1735. Long before this, however, they are supposed to have been driven out, ex- terminated, or amalgamated with other tribes. Blome, in 1683, places the "Senneks," or Senecas, one of the Five Nations of the Iroqouis, among the Eries on the south of the lake to which the latter gave the name; and that probably is the tribe into which the Eries ultimately merged. Charlevoix, in 1744, puts their later tribal designation upon his map near the east end of Lake Erie (they had been located upon a map of 1703 near the west end), but adds the remark: "The Eries were destroyed by the Iroquois about one hundred years ago." Also, upon a map prepared by John Hutchins and pub- lished in 1755, where the tribe is assigned a former terri- tory stretching along the whole south shore of Lake Erie, this note appears: "The antient Eries were extirpated upwards of one hundred years ago by the Iroquois, ever since which time they [the Iroquois] have been in posses-

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History of Hamilton County, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 6

Author: Ford, Henry A., comp; Ford, Kate B., joint comp; Williams, L.A. & co., Cleveland, O., pub Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio, L. A. Williams Number of Pages: 590

Author: Ford, Henry A., comp; Ford, Kate B., joint comp; Williams, L.A. & co., Cleveland, O., pub
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio, L. A. Williams
Number of Pages: 590