History of the Ohio falls cities and their counties : with illustrations and bibliographical sketches, Vol. I, Part 2

Author: Williams, L.A., & Co., Cleveland
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio : L. A. Williams & Co.
Number of Pages: 814

USA > Ohio > History of the Ohio falls cities and their counties : with illustrations and bibliographical sketches, Vol. I > Part 2

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"The walls generally wind around the borders of the elevations they occupy, and when the na- ture of the ground renders some points more ac- cessible than others, the height of the wall and the depth of the ditch at those weak points are pro- portionally increased. The gateways are narrow and few in number, and well guarded by embank- ments of earth placed a few yards inside of the openings or gateways and parallel with them, and projecting somewhat beyond them at each end, thus fully covering the entrances, which, in some cases, are still further protected by projecting walls on either side of them. These works are somewhat numerous, and indicate a clear appre-

ciation of the elements, at least, of fortification, and unmistakably point out the purpose for which they were constructed. A large number of these defensive works consist of a line of ditch and embankment, or several lines carried across the neck of peninsulas or bluff headlands, formed within the bends of streams-an easy and obvious mode of fortification, common to all rude peoples."* Upon the side where a pe- ninsula or promontory merges into the mainland of the terrace or plateau, the enclosure is usually guarded by double or overlapping walls, or a series of them, having sometimes an accompany- ing mound, probably designed, like many of the mounds apart from the enclosures, as a lookout station, corresponding in this respect to the bar- bican of our British ancestors in the Middle Ages.

As natural strongholds the positions they oc- cupy could hardly be excelled, and the labor and skill expended to strengthen them artificially rarely fail to awake the admiration and surprise of the student of our antiquities. Some of the works are enclosed by 'miles of embankment still ten to fifteen feet high, as measured from the bottom of the ditch. In some cases the num- ber of openings in the walls is so large as to lead to the conclusion that certain of them were not used as gateways, but were occupied by bastions or block-houses long ago decayed. This is a marked peculiarity of the great work known as " Fort Ancient," on the Little Miami river and railroad, in Warren county, Ohio. Some of the forts have very large or smaller "dug-holes " in- side, seemingly designed as reservoirs for use in a state of siege. Occasionally parallel earth- walls, of lower height than the embankments of the main work, called "covered ways," are found adjacent to enclosures, and at times connecting separate works, and seeming to be intended for the protection of those passing to and fro within them. These are considered by some antiqua- ries, however, as belonging to the sacred en- closures.

This class of works abound in Ohio. Squier and Davis express the opinion that "there seems to have been a system of defenses extending from the sources of the Susquehanna and Alle- ghany, in Western New York, diagonally across the country through central and northern Ohio

*American Cyclopædia, article "American Antiquities."

HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

to the Wabash. Within this range the works that are regarded as defensive are largest and most numerous." The most notable, however, of the works usually assigned to this class in this country is in Southern Ohio, forty-two miles northeast of Cincinnati. It is the Fort Ancient already mentioned. This is situated upon a terrace on the left bank of the river, two hundred and thirty feet above the Little Miami, and occupies a peninsula defended by two ravines, while the river itself, with a high, precipitous bank, de- fends the western side. The walls are between four and five miles long, and ten to twenty feet high, according to the natural strength of the line to be protected. A resemblance has been traced in the walls of the lower enclosure "to the form of two massive serpents, which are ap- parently contending with one another. Their heads are the mounds, which are separated from the bodies by the opening, which resembles a ring around the neck. They bend in and out, and rise and fall, and appear like two massive green serpents rolling along the summit of this high hill. Their appearance under the over- hanging forest trees is very impressive."* Others have found a resemblance in the form of the whole work to a rude outline of the continent of North and South America.

II. SACRED ENCLOSURES .- Regularity of form is the characteristic of these. They are not, however, of invariable shape, but are found in various geometrical figures, as circles, squares, hexagons, octagons, ellipses, parallelograms, and others, either singly or in combination. How- ever large, they were laid out with astounding accuracy, and show that the Builders had some scientific knowledge, a scale of measurement, and the means of computing areas and determin- ing angles. They are often in groups, but also often isolated. Most of them are of small size, two hundred and fifty to three hundred feet in diameter, with one gateway usually opening to the east, as if for the worship of the sun, and the ditch invariably on the inside. These are fre- quently inside enclosures of a different character, particularly military works. A sacrificial mound was commonly erected in the center of them. The larger circles are oftenest found in connec- tion with squares; some of them embrace as

many as fifty acres. They seldom have a ditch, but when they do, it is inside the wall. The rectangular works with which they are combined are believed never to have a ditch. In several States a combined work of a square with two circles is often found, usually agreeing in this re- markable fact, that each side of the rectangle measures exactly one thousand and eighty feet, and the circles respectively are seventeen hun- dred and eight hundred feet in diameter. The frequency and wide prevalence of this uniformity demonstrate that it could not have been acci- dental. The square enclosures almost invariably have eight gateways at the angles and midway between, upon each side, all of which are covered or defended by small mounds. The parallels before mentioned are sometimes found in con- nection with this class of works. From the Hopetown work, near Chillicothe, Ohio, a "covered way" led to the Scioto river, many hundred feet distant.

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 Builders. In one case within the writer's obser- vation, a rough stone foundation about four rods square was found isolated from any other work, near the Scioto river, in the south part of Ross county, Ohio. 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.

IV. MOUNDS OF SACRIFICE .- These have sev- eral distinct characteristics. In height they sel- dom exceed eight feet. They occur only within or near the enclosures commonly considered as the sacred places of the Builders, and are usually stratified in convex layers of elay or loam alter- nating above a layer of fine sand. Beneath the strata, and upon the original surface of the earth at the centre of the mound, are usually

* Rev. S. D. Peet, in the American Antiquarian for April, 1878.

HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

symmetrically formed altars of stone or burnt clay, evidently brought from a distance. Upon them are found various remains, all of which ex- hibit 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, char- coal, and igneous stones are found with them; also beads, stone implements, simple sculptures, and pottery. The remains are often in such a condition as to indicate that the altars had been covered before the fires upon them were fully extinguished. Skeletons are occasionally found in this class of mounds; though these may have been "intrusive burials," made after the construc- tion 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 par- allelograms. In size they vary from two to fifty feet in length, and are of proportional width and height, the commoner dimensions being five to eight feet.

V. TEMPLE MOUNDS are not numerous. 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 truncated cone; and in whatever form a mound of this class 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. Oft- en, 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 prob- able 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 gradually and approximate more closely to perfect construction, until they end in the great teocallis ("houses of God"). One remarkable platform of this kind in Whit- ley county, Kentucky, is three hundred and sixty feet long by one hundred and fifty feet wide and

twelve high, with graded ascents; and another, at Hopkinsville, is so large that the county court- house is built upon it. The great mound at Ca- hokia, 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 numerous class of tumuli. The largest mounds in the country 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 thou- sand. 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 height 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 conical 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 Indians, who frequently used the ancient mounds for purposes of sepulture. One Ohio mound, however-that opened by Profes.' sor Marsh, of Yale college, in Licking county- contained seventeen skeletons; and another, in Hardin county, included three hundred. But these are exceptional instances. Calcined hu- man 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 South- ern States.

At times a rude chamber or cist of stone or timber contained the remains. In the latter case the more fragile material has generally disap- peared, but casts of it in the earth are still ob- servable. 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

HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

number in Illinois and near Nashville, Tennes- see. 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 Cum- berland mountains heaps of loose stones are found over skeletons, but these stone mounds are probably of Indian origin, and so compara- tively modern. Implements, weapons, orna- ments, and various remains of art, as in the later Indian custom, were buried with the dead. Mica is often found with the skeletons, with precisely what meaning is not yet ascertained; also pot- tery, 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 emi- nent personage. They are usually of earth, but occasionally, in this State at least, of stone.

VII. SIGNAL MOUNDS, OR MOUNDS OF OB- SERVATION. This is a numerous and very inter- esting and important class of the works. Colonel Anderson, of Circleville, Ohio, a des- cendant of the well-known Louisville family, 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, in- telligence might be rapidly flashed over long dis- tances. About twenty such mounds occur be- tween Columbus and Chillicothe, on the eastern side of the Scioto. In Hamilton county, in the same State, a chain of mounds, doubtless de- voted 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.

Like the defensive works already described as part of the military system of the Builders, the positions of these works were chosen with ex cellent 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, re- sults of the long-extinct beacon fires. Some- times they are found in connection with the embankments and enclosures, as an enlarged and elevated part of the walls. One of these, near Newark, Ohio, though considerably reduced, retains a height of twenty-five feet. The huge mound at Miamisburg, Ohio, mentioned as a burial mound, very likely was used also as a part of the chain of signal mounds from above Dayton to the Cincinnati plain and the Kentucky bluffs 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 otherwise often very large, exten- ded figures of men, beasts, birds, or reptiles, and in a very few cases of inanimate things. In Ohio there are three enormous, remarkable earthwork effigies-the "Eagle mound" in the centre 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 Ser- pent," 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 rep- resent 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 Mis- souri, and in parts of Michigan, and to some ex- tent 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, regularly ar- ranged in parallel rows, at times rectangular, otherwise 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 exe- cuted both works, that no sacred character at- tached to the effigies.

X. MINES .- These, as worked by the Build- ers, have not yet been found in many different regions; but in the Lake Superior copper region

HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

their works of this kind are numerous and exten- sive. In the Ontonagon country their mining traces abound for thirty miles. Colonel Whit- tlesey, of Cleveland, 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 operations 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 re- ceived 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 hy Dr. Rau, the archaeologist of the Smithsonian Institution, according to the material of which they are wrought, as follows:

1. 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 finished and more or less nearly finished articles. In the first list are arrow- and spear-heads, perforators, scrapers, cutting and sawing tools, dagger-shaped imple- ments, 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 cere- monial weapons, cutting tools, scraper and spade-like implements, pendants, 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 tablets. 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 re- quired shape.

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

4. SHELL. - Either utensils and tools, as

celts, drinking-cups, spoons, fish-hooks, etc., or ornaments, comprising various kinds of gorgets, pendants, and beads.

5. CERAMIC FABRICS. - Pottery, pipes, hu- man and animal 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 character.

To these may be added :

7. GOLD AND SILVER .- In a recent find in a stone cist at Warrensburg, 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 de- stroying tooth of time, and some specimens, so far as texture is concerned, 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 spec- ulation, and the theorists have pushed into a wilderness of visionary conjectures. Some in- ferences, however, may be regarded as tolerably certain. The number and magnitude of their works, and their extensive range and uniformity, says the American Cyclopedia, prove that the Mound Builders were essentially homogeneous in customs, habits, religion, and government. The general features common to all their re- mains identify them as appertaining to a single grand system, owing its origin to men moving in the same direction, acting under common im- pulses, and influenced by similar causes. Pro- fessor Short, in his invaluable work, thinks that, however writers may differ, these conclusions may be safely accepted: That they came into the country in comparatively small numbers at first (if they were not Autochthones, and there is no substantial proof that the Mound Builders were such), and, during their residence in the territory occupied by the United States, they be- came extremely populous. Their settlements were widespread, as the extent of their remains indicates. The magnitude of their works, some of which approximate the proportions of Egyptian

HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

pyramids, testify to the architectural talent of the people and the fact that they developed a system of government controlling the labor of multi- tudes, 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 degree of ad- vancement and show that they understood the advantages of the division of labor. Their do- mestic utensils, the cloth of which they made their clothing, and the artistic vessels met with everywhere in the mounds, point to the develop- ment of home culture and domestic industry. There is no reason for believing that the people who wrought stone and clay into perfect effigies of animals have not left us sculptures of their own faces in the images exhumed from the mounds.

They mined copper, which they wrought into implements of war, into ornaments and articles for domestic use. They quarried mica for mir- rors and other purposes. They furthermore worked flint and salt mines. They probably pos- sessed 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 established in Missouri. Their defenses were numerous and constructed with reference to strategic principles, while their system of signals placed on lofty sum- mits, visible from their settlements, and com- municating with the great water-courses at im- mense distances, rival the signal systems in use at the beginning of the present century. Their re- ligion 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 sacrifices (pos- sibly human) were offered. We have already al- luded to the development in architecture and art which marked the possible transition of this peo- ple 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, en- grafted new life upon the wreck of Xibalba. 3

Though there is no evidence that the Mound Builders were indigenous, we must admit that their civilization was purely such, the natural pro- duct of climate and the conditions surrounding them .*

THE BUILDERS ABOUT THE FALLS.

But very brief mention is here made of the ancient works found in the three counties whose history is traversed in this work; but full ac- counts of them will be comprised in the chapters relating to their respective localities. Professor Rafinesque's list of the Antiquities of Kentucky, published in 1824, in the introduction to the second edition of Marshall's History of Ken- tucky, and also in separate form, enumerates but four sites of ancient works and one monument in Jefferson county, near Louisville. Dr. Mc- Murtrie's Sketches of Louisville, published in 1819, after some reference to antiquities, says :

There is nothing of the kind peculiarly interesting in the immediate vicinity of Louisville. Mounds or tumuli are occasionally met with, some of which have been opened. Nothing, however, was found to repay the trouble of the search but a few human bones, mixed with others, apparently belonging to the deer.

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History of the Ohio falls cities and their counties : with illustrations and bibliographical sketches, Vol. I, Part 2

Author: Williams, L.A., & Co., Cleveland Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio : L. A. Williams & Co. Number of Pages: 814

Author: Williams, L.A., & Co., Cleveland
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio : L. A. Williams & Co.
Number of Pages: 814