The Problem of the Ohio Mounds Part 4

The last were with the skeleton of a child found at the depth of 3 1/2 feet. They are precisely of the form of the ordinary sleigh- bell of the present day, with pebbles and sh.e.l.l-bead rattles.

That this child belonged to the people to whom the other burials are due will not be doubted by any one not wedded to a preconceived notion, and that the bells are the work of Europeans will also be admitted.

In another mound a little farther up the river, and one of a group probably marking the site of one of the "over-hill towns," were found two carved stone pipes of a comparatively modern Cherokee type.

The next argument is founded on the fact that in the ancient works of the region alluded to are discovered evidences of habits and customs similar to those of the Cherokees and some of the immediately surrounding tribes.

In the article heretofore referred to allusion is made to the evidence found in the mound opened by Professor Carr of its once having supported a building similar to the council-house observed by Bartram on a mound at the old Cherokee town Cowe. Both were built on mounds, both were circular, both were built on posts set in the ground at equal distances from each other, and each had a central pillar. As tending to confirm this statement of Bartram's, the following pa.s.sage may be quoted, where, speaking of Colonel Christian's march against the Cherokee towns in 1770, Ramsey [Footnote: Annals of Tennessee, p. 169.] says that this officer found in the center of each town "a circular tower rudely built and covered with dirt, 30 feet in diameter, and about 20 feet high. This tower was used as a council-house, and as a place for celebrating the green-corn dance and other national ceremonials."

In another mound the remains of posts apparently marking the site of a building were found. Mr. M. C. Read, of Hudson, Ohio, discovered similar evidences in a mound near Chattanooga, [Footnote: Smithsonian Rept, for 1867 (1868), p. 401.] and Mr.

Gerard Fowke has quite recently found the same thing in a mound at Waverly. Ohio.

The sh.e.l.l ornaments to which allusion has been made, although occasionally bearing designs which are undoubtedly of the Mexican or Central American type, nevertheless furnish very strong evidence that the mounds of east Tennessee and western North Carolina were built by the Cherokees.

Lawson, who traveled through North Carolina in 1700, says [Footnote: Hist. of N. C., Raleigh, reprint 1860, p. 315.] "they [the Indians] oftentimes make of this sh.e.l.l [a certain large sea sh.e.l.l] a sort of gorge, which they wear about their neck in a string so it hangs on their collar, whereon sometimes is engraven a cross or some odd sort of figure which comes next in their fancy."

According to Adair, the southern Indian priest wore upon his breast "an ornament made of a white conch-sh.e.l.l, with two holes bored in the middle of it, through which he ran the ends of an otter-skin strap, and fastened to the extremity of each, a buck- horn white b.u.t.ton." [Footnote: Hist. Am. Indians, p. 84]

Beverly, speaking of the Indians of Virginia, says: "Of this sh.e.l.l they also make round tablets of about 4 inches in diameter, which they polish as smooth as the other, and sometimes they etch or grave thereon circles, stars, a half-moon, or any other figure suitable to their fancy." [Footnote: Hist. Virginia, London, 1705, p. 58]

[Ill.u.s.tration with caption: FIG. 2. Engraved sh.e.l.l gorget from a Tennessee mound.]

Now it so happens that a considerable number of sh.e.l.l gorgets have been found in the mounds of western North Carolina and east Tennessee, agreeing so closely with those brief descriptions, as may be seen the figures of some of them given here (see Figs. 2 and 3), as to leave no doubt that they belong to the same type as those alluded to by the writers whose words have just been quoted.

Some of them were found in the North Carolina mound from which the iron articles were obtained and in connection with these articles.

Some of these sh.e.l.ls were smooth and without any devices engraved upon them, but with holes for inserting the strings by which they were to be held in position; others were engraved with figures, which, as will be seen by reference to the cuts referred to, might readily be taken for stars and half-moons, and one among the number with a cross engraved upon it.

The evidence that these relics were the work of Indians found in possession of the country at the time of its discovery by Europeans, is therefore too strong to be put aside by mere conjectures or inferences. If they were the work of Indians, they must have been used by the Cherokees and buried with their dead.

It is true that some of the engraved figures present a puzzling problem in the fact that they bear unmistakable evidences of pertaining to Mexican and Central American types, but no explanation of this which contradicts the preceding evidences that these sh.e.l.ls had been in the hands of Indians can be accepted.

[Fig. 3: Sh.e.l.l gorget with engraving of coiled serpent]

In these mounds were also found a large number of nicely carved soapstone pipes, usually with the stem made in connection with the bowl, though some were without this addition, consisting only of the bowl with a hole for inserting a cane or wooden stem. While some, as will hereafter be shown, closely resemble one of the ancient Ohio types, others are precisely of the form common a few years back, and some of them have the remains of burnt tobacco yet clinging to them.

Adair, in his "History of the North American Indians," [Footnote: P. 433.] says:

"They mate beautiful stone pipes and the Cherokees the best of any of the Indians, for their mountainous country contain many different sorts and colors of soils proper for such uses. They easily form them with their tomahawks and afterwards finish them in any desired form with their knives, the pipes being of a very soft quality till they are smoked with and used with the fire, when they become quite hard. They are often full a span long and the bowls are about half as large again as our English pipes. The fore part of each commonly runs out with a sharp peak 2 or 3 fingers broad and a quarter of an inch thick."

Not only were pipes made of soapstone found in these mounds, but two or three were found precisely of the form mentioned by Adair, with the fore part running out in front of the bowl (see Fig. 5, p. 39).

Jones says: [Footnote: Antiq. So. Indians, p. 400.]

It has been more than hinted at by at least one person whose statement is ent.i.tled to every belief, that among the Cherokees dwelling in the mountains there existed certain artists whose professed occupation was the manufacture of stone pipes, which were by them transported to the coast and there bartered away for articles of use and ornament foreign to and highly esteemed among the members of their own tribe.

This not only strengthens the conclusions drawn from the presence of such pipes in the mounds alluded to, but may also a.s.sist in explaining the presence of the copper and iron ornaments in them.

During the fall of 1886 a farmer of east Tennessee while examining a cave with a view to storing potatoes in it during the winter unearthed a well preserved human skeleton which was found to be wrapped in a large piece of cane matting. This, which measures about 6 by 4 feet, with the exception of a tear at one corner is perfectly sound and pliant and has a large submarginal stripe running around it. Inclosed with the skeleton was a piece of cloth made of flax, about 14 by 20 inches, almost uninjured but apparently unfinished. The st.i.tch in which it is woven is precisely that imprinted on mound pottery of the type shown in Fig. 96 in Mr. Holmes's paper on the mound-builders' textile fabrics reproduced here in Fig. 4. [Footnote: Fifth Ann. Rept.

Bur. Ethnol., p. 415, Fig. 96.]

[Ill.u.s.tration with caption: FIG. 4. Twined fabric impressed on a piece of pottery obtained from a mound in Jefferson County, Tennessee.]

Although the earth of the cave contains salts which would aid in preserving anything buried in it, these articles can not be a.s.signed to any very ancient date, especially when it is added that with them were the remains of a dog from which the skin had not all rotted away.

These were presumably placed here by the Cherokees of modern times, and they form a link not easily broken between the prehistoric and historic days.

It is probable that few persons after reading this evidence will doubt that the mounds alluded to were built by the Cherokees. Let us therefore see to what results this leads.

In the first place it shows that a powerful and active tribe in the interior of the country, in contact with the tribes of the North on one side and with those of the South on the other, were mound-builders. It is reasonable to conclude, therefore, that they had derived this custom from their neighbors on one side or the other, or that they had, to some extent at least, introduced it among them. Beyond question it indicates that the mound-building era had not closed previous to the discovery of the continent by Europeans. [Footnote: Since the above was in type one of the a.s.sistants of the Ethnological Bureau discovered in a small mound in east Tennessee a stone with letters of the Cherokee alphabet rudely carved upon it. It was not an intensive burial, hence it is evident that the mound must have been built since 1820, or that Guess was not the author of the Cherokee alphabet.]

CHAPTER V.

THE CHEROKEES AND THE TALLEGWI.

The ancient works of Ohio, with their "altar mounds," "sacred enclosures," and "mathematically accurate" but mysterious circles and squares, are still pointed to as impregnable to the attacks of this Indian theory. That the rays of light falling upon their origin are few and dim, is admitted; still, we are not left wholly in the dark.

If the proof be satisfactory that the mounds of the southern half of the United States and a portion of those of the Upper Mississippi Valley are of Indian origin, there should be very strong evidence in the opposite direction in regard to those of Ohio to lead to the belief that they are of a different race. Even should the evidence fail to indicate the tribe or tribes by whom they were built, this will not justify the a.s.sertion that they are not of Indian origin.

If the evidence relating to these works has nothing decidedly opposed to the theory in it, then the presumption must be in favor of the view that the authors were Indians, for the reasons heretofore given. The burden of proof is on those who deny this, and not on those who a.s.sert it.

It is legitimate, therefore, to a.s.sume, until evidence to the contrary is produced, that the Ohio works were made by Indians.

The geographical position of the defensive works connected with these remains indicates, as has been often remarked by writers on this subject, a pressure from northern hordes which finally resulted in driving the inhabitants of the fertile valleys of the Miami, Scioto, and Muskingum, southward, possibly into the Gulf States, where they became incorporated with the tribes of that section. [Footnote: Force: "To what race did the mound-builders belong?" p. 74, etc.] If this is a.s.sumed as correct it only tends to confirm the theory of an Indian origin.

But the decision is not left to mere a.s.sumption and the indications mentioned, as there are other and more direct evidences bearing upon this point to be found in the works of art and modes of burial in this region. That the mound-builders of Ohio made and used the pipe is proven by the large number of pipes found in the mounds, and that they cultivated tobacco may reasonably be inferred from this fact.

The general use of the pipe among the mound-builders is another evidence of their relation to the Indians; while, on the other hand, this fact and the forms of the pipes indicate that they were not connected with the Nahua, Maya, or Pueblo tribes.

Although varied indefinitely by the addition of animal and other figures, the typical or simple form of the pipe of the Ohio mound- builders appears to have been that represented by Squier and Davis [Footnote: Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, 1847, p.

179.] in their Fig. 68; and by Rau in Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, No. 287. [Footnote: 1876, p. 47, Fig. 177.] The peculiar feature is the broad, flat, and slightly-curved base or stem, which projects beyond the bowl to an extent usually equal to the perforated end. Reference has already been made to the statement by Adair that the Cherokees were accustomed to carve, from the soft stone found in the country, "pipes, full a span long, with the fore part commonly running out with a short peak two or three fingers broad and a quarter of an inch thick." But he adds further, as if intending to describe the typical form of the Ohio pipe, "on both sides of the bowl lengthwise." This addition is important, as it has been a.s.serted [Footnote: Young Mineralogist and Antiquarian, 1885, No. 10. p. 79.] that no mention can be found of the manufacture or use of pipes of this form by the Indians, or that they had any knowledge of this form.

E. A. Barber says: [Footnote: Am. Nat., vol. 16, 1882, pp. 265, 266]

The earliest stone pipes from the mounds were always carved from a single piece, and consist of a flat curved base, of variable length and width, with the bowl rising from the center of the convex side (Anc. Mon., p. 227).

The typical mound pipe is the Monitor form, as it may be termed, possessing a short, cylindrical urn, or spool-shaped bowl, rising from the center of a flat and slightly-curved base. [Footnote: For examples of this form see Rau: Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, No. 287, p. 47, Fig. 177.]

Accepting this statement as proof that the "Monitor" pipe is generally understood to be the oldest type of the mound-builders'

pipe, it is easy to trace the modifications which brought into use the simple form of the modern Indian pipe. For example, there is one of the form shown in Fig. 5, from Hamilton County, Ohio; another from a large mound in Kanawha Valley, West Virginia; [Footnote: Science. 1884, vol. 3, p. 619.] several taken from Indian graves in Ess.e.x County, Ma.s.s.; [Footnote: Abbott, Prim.

Industry, 1881, Fig. 313, p. 319; Bull. Ess.e.x Inst., vol. 3, 1872, p. 123.] another found in the grave of a Seneca Indian in the valley of the Genesee; [Footnote: Morgan, League of the Iroquois, p. 356.] and others found by the representatives of the Bureau of Ethnology in the mounds of western North Carolina.

[Ill.u.s.tration with caption: FIG. 5. Pipe from Hamilton County, Ohio.]

So far, the modification consists in simply shortening the forward projection of the stem or base, the bowl remaining perpendicular.

The next modification is shown in Fig. 6, which represents a type less common than the preceding, but found in several localites, as, for example, in Hamilton County, Ohio; mounds in Sullivan County, east Tennessee (by the Bureau); and in Virginia.

[Footnote: Rau: Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, No. 287, p. 50, Fig. 190.] In these, although retaining the broad or winged stem, we see the bowl a.s.suming the forward slope and in some instances (as some of those found in the mounds in Sullivan County, Tenn.) the projection of the stem is reduced to a simple rim or is entirely wanting.