History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume I, Part 5

Author: Lee, Alfred Emory, 1838-; W. W. Munsell & Co
Publication date: 1892
Publisher: New York and Chicago : Munsell & Co.
Number of Pages: 1202

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The magnitude of these ancient works is no less impressive than the skill of their arrangement, or the extent of their distribution. "Some of them recall the barrows of Europe and Asia, or the huge mounds and ramparts of Mesopotamia, as displayed at Babylon and Nineveh ; while others remind us of the ruined hippo- dromes and amphitheatres of the Greeks and Romans. . . . The barrows and ram- parts are constructed of' mingled earth and stones; and from their solidity and extent must have required the labour of a numerous population, with leisure and skill sufficient to undertake combined and vast operations. . . . These barrows vary in size, from a few feet in circumference and elevation, to structures with a basal circumference of one or two thousand feet, and an altitude of from sixty to ninety feet, resembling, in dimensions, the vast tumulns of Alyattes near Sardis."22 The lines of embankment vary in height from five to thirty feet, and, in the inverse order of their frequency enelose areas of from one to fifty, two hundred and even four hundred acres. Lewis and Clarke discovered one on the Upper Missouri with an estimated interior area of six hundred acres. But the space enclosed does not always indicate the amount of labor expended. A fortified hill in Highland Connty has a mile and five-eighths of heavy embankment enclosing an area of only forty aeres. The group of works at the mouth of the Scioto has an aggregate of not less than twenty miles of embankment surrounding a space of about two hun - dred acres.2"

The mounds vary in height and diameter from a few feet, or yards, to the dimensions of the famous tumulus at Grave Creek, in West Virginia, which has a height of seventy feet, and measures a thousand feet around its base. The great mound near Miamisburg, in Montgomery County, Ohio, rises to a perpendicular height of sixty-eight feet, has a circumference of 852 feet, and contains 311,353 cubic feet of earth. " The truncated pyramid at Cahokia, Illinois, the largest aneient earthwork in the United States, has an altitude of ninety feet, and is upwards of two thousand feet in circumference at the base. The great mound at Selserstown, Mississippi, is computed to cover six acres of ground. Mounds of

THE PREHISTORIC RACES.

these extraordinary dimensions are most common at the South, though there are some of great size at the North."" Says Flint in his geography : " We have seen mounds which would require the labor of a thousand men employed npon our canals, with all their mechanical aids, and the improved implements of their labor for months. We have more than once hesitated, in view of one of these prodigious mounds, whether it were not really a natural hill."

The builders of such works, observes General Foree, "could not have been a sparse population ; they must have been to some extent an agricultural people ; they must have had, perhaps each tribe for itself, a strong government of some sort, whether a chief or a eouneil, that direeted and was obeyed."25

The purpose of all this mammoth delving, ramparting and mounding is indi- eated rather by the form it has taken than by its dimensions. A few special ex- amples may illustrate both. Let those of an obviously military character be first considered.

The positions of such works, as well as their torms of construction, are almost invariably suggestive of a judgment shrewd and trained in defensive warfare. The elevations which they oeeupy are such as no other points can command, and are usually inaccessible by their steepness exeept at one or two points. The summits are guarded by simple parapets thrown up a little below the brow of the hill, and of variable height and solidity, according to the facilities of the outlying ground for assault. Sometimes the embankment crosses the peninsula formed by the june- tion of two waterconrses and is refused along each bank which it tonches, as if to guard against flank attack. Within the intrenchments water for the garrison is invariably supplied by springs, streams or ponds. Mounds so located as to suggest their use as watchtowers sometimes rise within, without or in connection with the parapets. Concentric or overlapping walls usually gnard the openings which seem to have been intended as gateways. Other openings, sometimes numerons, are believed to have been occupied by bastions of wood, which have now disappeared.

" Nothing can be more plain," says Colonel Whittlesey, " than that most of the remains in Northern Ohio, particularly those on the Cuyahoga river, are military works. There have not yet been found any remnants of timber in the walls; yet it is very safe to presume that palisades were planted on them, and that wooden posts and gates were erected at the passages left in the embankments and ditches. All the positions are contiguous to water, and none of them have higher land from which they might in any degree be commanded. Of the works bordering on the shore of Lake Erie, through the State of Ohio, there are none but may have been intended for defence, although in some of them the design is not perfectly mani- fest. They form a line from Conneaut to Toledo, at a distance of from three to five miles from the lake, and all stand upon or near the principal rivers."26 This line seems to have been part of a general system of defenses "extending from the sources of the Alleghany and Susquehanna, in New York, diagonally across the country through Central and Northern Ohio to the Wabash."27

Whittlesey continues : " The most natural inference in respect to the northern cordon of works is, that they formed a well-occupied line, constructed either to pro- teet the advance of a nation landing from the lake and moving southward for con- quest ; or, a line of resistance for a people inbabiting these shores and pressed upon by their southern neighbors. The scarcity of mounds, the absence of pyramids of

HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

earth which are so common on the Ohio, the want of rectangular and other regu- lar works, at the north,-all these differences tend to the conclusion that the north- ern part of Ohio was occupied by a distinct people. At the north there is generally more than one wall of earth, and the ditches are invariably exterior. [In the non- military works the ditehes are usually behind the parapets ] There are some pas- sages, or ' sally ports,' through the outer parallel, and none through the inner one. There is also, in general, a space between the parallels sufficiently large to contain a considerable body of fighting men. By whatever people these works were built, they were much engaged in offensive or defensive wars. At the south, on the other hand, agriculture and religion seem to have chiefly occupied the attention of the ancient people.

" In view of the above facts we may venture to suggest a hypothesis, without undertaking to assign to it any more than a basis of probability. Upon the as- sumption that two distinct nations occupied the State, - that the northern were warlike, and the southern peaceful and agricultural in their habits,- may we not suppose that the latter were overcome by their northern neighbors, who built the military works to be observed on the Ohio and its tributaries, while the more regu- lar structures are the remains of the conquered people ?"28

The differences here pointed out between the northern and southern earth- works are important. The northern are exclusively military, the southern are partly so but mostly of a non-military character. First among the defensive works, in the order in which they are mentioned by Squier and Davis, is that which oc- cupies the summit of a lofty detached hill near the village of Bourneville, twelve miles west of Chillicothe. This striking eminence rises abruptly in the broad val- ley of Paint Creek, the waters of which wash its base. Its summit is a wide plain marked with considerable depressions which contain water the whole year round. Around its brow, a little below the crest, are seen the remains of a stone wall which is two and a quarter miles in length, and encloses a space of 140 acres. On its southern face this wall crosses an isthmus between the waters of Black Run and Reeves Run, and is so arranged there, by eurving inward, as to form three gate- ways eight feet in width. The stones are of all sizes, and of sufficient quantity to have formed a parapet eight feet thick and of equal height. On the least abrupt sides the wall is heaviest. The position commands a view of numerous other works of the mound-building race, which seems to have been partial to the Paint Creek Valley. In respect to area inclosed this is the most extensive hill-work known in this country. It betokens great labor and the presence of a large popu- lation.

The work known as Fort Hill, described in the first Geological Survey of Ohio, is situated in the southern part of Highland County, thirty miles from Chillicothe and twelve from Hillsborough. This also is a steep, detached eminence and on most of its circumference difficult to scale. Its embankment, over a mile and a half in length, consists of mingled earth and stone, and varies in height from six to fifteen feet, with an average hase of thirty-five or forty fect. It extends around the brow of the hill, enclosing an irregular space of forty-eight acres within which are three different ponds. The ditch has an average width of fifty feet, and is in some places sunk into the stratum of sandstone which underlies the ' terrace. Thirty-three gateways, eleven of which have corresponding causeways across the

THE PREHISTORIC RACES.

diteh, open in the embankment at irregular intervals. "Considered in a military point of view, as a work of defence, it is well ehosen, well guarded, and, with an adequate force, impregnable to any mode of attack practised by a rude or semi- civilized people. As a natural stronghold, it has few equals ; and the degree of skill displayed and the amount of labor expended in constructing its artificial de- fences, challenge our admiration and excite our surprise. With all the facilities and numerous mechanical appliances of the present day, the construction of a work of this magnitude would be no insignificant undertaking."" Excepting a few small scattered mounds there are no other aueient remains nearer this work than the Paint Creek Valley, sixteen iniles distant.

Another fortified eminence rises on the west side of the Great Miami in Butler County, three miles below Hamilton. Its summit, skirted by a ditchless wall of earth and stone averaging five feet in height, overlooks all the adjacent country. The sides of the hill are steep, and are flanked by deep ravines. The enclosed space, sixteen acres, shows several excavations or "dugholes," from which material for the work seems to have been taken. Mounds suitably placed for sentinel and observation posts are composed, in part, of loose stones. Four entrances twenty feet wide open at the salients, and are curiously guarded by curved embankmeuts folding over one another like the Tlascalan gateways of the Aztees.

The crowning illustration of this class of works, and one of the most interest- ing on the continent, is that known as Fort Ancient, situated in Warren County, on the banks of the Little Miami, thirty-five miles northeast of Cincinnati. Profes- sor John Locke, of the first Geological Survey, thus described it in 1843 :

This work occupies a terrace on the left bank of the river, and 230 feet above its waters. The place is naturally a strong one, being a pennisula defended by two ravines, which, origi- nating on the east side near to each other, diverging and sweeping around, enter the Miami. the one above, the other below the work. The Miami itself, with its precipitons bank of two hundred feet, defends the western side. The ravines are occupied by small streams. Quite around this peninsula, on the very verge of the ravines, has been raised an embankment of unusual height and perfection. Meandering around the spurs, and reentering to pass the heads of the gullies, it is so winding in its course that it required 196 stations to complete its survey. The whole circuit of the work is between four and five miles. The number of cubic yards of excavation may be approximately estimated at 628,800. The embankment stands in many places twenty feet in perpendicular height ; and although composed of tough diluvial clay, without stone except in a few places, its outward slope is from thirty-five to forty-three degrees. This work presents no continuous ditch ; but the earth for its construction has been dug from convenient pits which are still quite deep or filled with mud and water. . . . I am astonished to see a work, simply of earth, after braving the storm of thousands of years, still so entire and well marked. Several circumstances have contributed to this. The clay of which it is built is not easily penetrated by water. The bank has been, and is still, mostly covered by a forest of beech trees, which have woven a strong web of their roots over its steep sides ; and a fine bed of moss (Polytrichum) serves still further to afford protection.

The embankment has an average height of between nine and ten feet, but sometimes rises to twenty, with a base at the most exposed parts sixty feet in width. There are over seventy openings in the line which it is believed were originally occupied by bastions or blockhouses of timber. Originally these open- ings seem to have been ten or fifteen feet in width. An outwork 1350 feet long consists of two parallel walls which close at their farther extremity, there enclos- ing a small mound. The main work comprises two grand divisions connected by

HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

a long and narrow passage across which traverses are thrown. Water for the garrison is supplied by reservoirs and springs. At numerous points along the em- bankment are found large quantities of water-worn stones which it must have required great labor to collect. Bravely defended the work is impregnable against barbarian assault.

The ancient earth works in Ohio excel in numbers, extent and variety those of all the other States. Whatever the force was which has left these vestiges, we find its presence, its character and its magnitude more profusely and significantly symbolized here than anywhere else. In part this symbolization betokens a mili- tary people, but only in part. While certain works, such as those just described, are plainly of a military origin, a much larger number, of no special military adap- tation, seem to be intended for some purpose connected with the superstitious or pastoral pursuits of the builders. This is particularly the case in the Scioto Valley, where the square and circle, either separately or in combination, were favorite forms of construction. "Most of the cirenlar works are small, varying from 250 to 300 feet in diameter, while others are a mile or more in circuit. Some stand iso- lated, but most in connection with one or more mounds, of greater or less dimen- sions, or in connection with other more complicated works. Wherever the circles occur, if there be a fosse or ditch, it is almost invariably interior to the parapet. Instances are frequent where no ditch is discernible, and where it is evident that the earth composing the embankment was brought from a distance, or taken up evenly from the surface. In the square and in the irregular works, if there be a fosse at all, it is exterior to the embankment; except in the case of fortified hills, where the earth, for the best of reasons, is usually thrown from the interior."30

The circular and rectangular enclosures are generally situated on low bottom lands under the command of adjacent heights. This of itself proves that they could hardly have been intended for defensive purposes. The fact that the fosse, whenever it accompanies this class of works, lies within the parapet, makes the proof conclusive. The walls are sometimes massive, but for the most part vary from three to seven feet in height. The smaller circles have each a single gateway, opening usually to the east. Sometimes they contain one or more small mounds supposed to be intended for sacrificial purposes. Numerous little circles, from thirty to fifty feet in diameter, and devoid ofentrances, are observed in the vicinity of larger works. Conjecture has doubtfully assumed that they may be remains of the vanished lodges of officers or priests. A few of the circles are slightly ellipti- cal, and octagonal forms of construction, as well as squares and rectangles, are sometimes seen. A large octagon near Chillicothe has equal sides, and angles arranged in mutual correspondence. In the rectangular works gateways open at the angles and midway on each side, all covered by small interior mounds or other elevations. The geometrical symmetry of the forms is striking. Many of the cir- cles are perfect, and many of the squares exact. Taken with the further fact that several of the squares measure exactly one thousand and eighty feet on each side, this is supposed to indicate the use_of some standard of measurement and some means of determining angles.

The great magnitude of some of these enclosures has been cited as the strongest objection to the hypothesis of their exclusively religious purpose. Squier and Davis, who raise this objection, answer it by suggesting that the Ohio works "were

THE PREHISTORIC RACES.

probably, like the great circles of England, and the squares of India. Pern and Mexico, the sacred enclosures within which were erected the shrines of the gods of the ancient worship and the altars of the ancient religion. They may have em- braced consecrated groves, and also, as they did in Mexico, the residences of the ancient priesthood." Like the sacred structures of the Aztees, they may have been regarded as a final refuge in time of peril, under the protection of the deities to whom they were dedicated. They may also have been used as arenas for games and other amusements.

The further suggestion is made that the religious ceremonials of the mound. builders may have partaken of a national character, and therefore have drawn great multitudes together. Reasons are not wanting for the belief that the government of the people may have been a government by the priesthood, and that the popular superstition, whatever it was, exercised a powerful control over the minds of its devotees. Certain it is that altars have been found within the sacred enclosures on which sacrifices were performed, and on which human beings were probably immolated. "We find also pyramidal structures which correspond entirely with those of Mexico and Central America except that, instead of being composed of stone they are constructed of earth, and instead of broad flights of steps have graded avenues and spiral pathways leading to their summits."31

As these structures resemble those of the ancient Mexican race, may not the ceremonials to which they were consecrated have borne a like resemblance? Human sacrifices were practised by the Aztecs, we are told, surpassing those of any of the nations of antiquity. The number of victims annually offered up has been estimated at from twenty to fifty thousand. One of the most important Aztec festivals, says Prescott, "was that in honor of the god Tezcatlepoca, whose rank was inferior only to that of the Supreme Being. He was called 'the soul of the world,' and supposed to have been its creator. He was depicted as a handsome man, endowed with perpetual youth. A year before the intended sacrifice, a cap- tive distinguished for his personal beanty, and without a blemish on his body, was selected to represent this deity. Certain tutors took charge of him, and instructed him how to perform his new part with becoming grace and dignity. He was arrayed in a splendid dress, regaled with incense, and with a profusion of sweet- scented flowers, of which the ancient Mexicans were as fond as their descendants at the present day. When he went abroad he was attended by a train of royal pages, and as he halted in the streets to play some favorite melody, the crowd prostrated themselves before him, and did him homage as the representative of their good deity. In this way he led an easy, luxurious life till within a month of his sacrifice. Four beautiful girls, bearing the names of the principal goddesses, were then selected to share the honors of his bed; and with them he continued to live in idle dalliance, feasted at the banquets of the principal nobles, who paid him all the honors of divinity.

At length the fatal day of sacrifice arrived. The term of his shortlived glories was at an end. He was stripped of his gaudy apparel, and bade adieu to the fair partners of his revel- ries. One of the royal barges transported him across the lake to a temple which rose on its margin, about a league from the city. Hither the inhabitants of the capital flocked to wit- ness the consummation of the ceremony. As the sad procession wound up the sides of the pyramid the unhappy victim threw away his gay chaplets of flowers, and broke in pieces the

HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

musical instruments with which he had solaced the hours of captivity. On the summit he was received by six priests whose long and matted locks flowed disorderly over their sable robes, covered with hieroglyphic scrolls of mystic import. They led him to the sacrificial stone, a huge block of jasper, with its upper surface somewhat convex. On this the prisoner was stretched. Five priests secured his head and limbs; while the sixth, clad in a scarlet mantle emblematic of his bloody office, dexterously opened the breast of the wretched vic- tim with a sharp razor of itztli- a volcanic substance hard as flint, - and inserting his hand in the wound, tore out the palpitating heart. The minister of death, first holding this up toward the sun, an object of worship throughout Anahuac, cast it at the feet of the deity to whom the temple was devoted, while the multitudes below prostrated themselves in humble adoration.32

Who knows but that scenes of which this was a type, exaggerated, perhaps, only in its splendors, may have taken place within these mysterious circles, squares and polygons, and around these skeleton-bearing mounds, in the valleys of Ohio ?

The most primitive form of human memorials is that of a simple heap of earth or stones. It is the form which seems to have first suggested itself to the prehis- torie races, and time has fully justified the wisdom of its adoption. While the proudest architecture in marble and granite has crumbled in decay these mounds of earth have preserved their symmetry almost perfeet through the lapse of cen- turies. Many of them stand to-day apparently as rounded and complete as the hands of their builders left them before recorded history began. Nor have they been limited to any single country, or continent. "They are scattered over India; they dot the steppes of Siberia and the vast region north of the Black Sea ; they line the shores of the Bosphorus and the Mediterranean, they are found in old Scandinavia, and are singularly numerous in the British Islands. In America, they prevail from the great lakes of the north, through the valley of the Missis- sippi, and the seats of semi-civilization in Mexico, Central America, and Peru, even to the waters of the La Plata on the south. We find them also on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, near the mouth of the Columbia River, and on the Colorado of Cali - fornia."33 In the Western and Southern States of this Union they may be counted by tens of thousands.

The individual forms of the mounds were doubtless determined by the special purposes for which they were intended. Usually they are simple cones, some- times terraced, frequently truncated. Some are elliptical or pearshaped. The pyramidal form is always truncated, and commonly provided with graded ascents to the summit. A lozenge-shaped mound surrounded by a wall and ditch rises on the Virginia shore of the Ohio nearly opposite to Blennerhassett's Island. An octagonal mound in Woodford County, Kentucky, measures 150 feet on each side, and has three graded ascents. Two small cones surmount its level truncated sum- mit. A curious oval-shaped mound rises on the east bank of the Scioto River in Liberty Township, Ross County, Ohio. In Bradford County, Tennessee, exist several extensive terraces or earth platforms, one of which covers three acres. The courthouse of Christian County, Tennessee, at Hopkinsville, is built on one of these artificial terraces. Another large terrace in Henry County, same State, serves as the site of a dwelling. In the South are found many Teoealli-shaped structures, bearing a suggestive resemblance to those of the Aztecs. Examples of this form are found as far north as Portsmouth, Marietta, Chillicothe and Newark.

Jam Gallonny

THE PREHISTORIC RACES.

The conical form is sometimes' mounted by a spiral stairway, other forms by ter- races resembling stairs.

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History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume I, Part 5

Author: Lee, Alfred Emory, 1838-; W. W. Munsell & Co Publication date: 1892 Publisher: New York and Chicago : Munsell & Co. Number of Pages: 1202

Author: Lee, Alfred Emory, 1838-; W. W. Munsell & Co
Publication date: 1892
Publisher: New York and Chicago : Munsell & Co.
Number of Pages: 1202