PREHISTORIC AMERICA.
WE are so accustomed to think of America as the New- World, that the assertion of a recent writer that "America is also an old world, and compares well with other countries in this respect," comes upon the reader with some-. thing of a shock. But when we find how lavishly the remains• of prehistoric races are scattered over the length and breadth. of the North American continent, we realise that ancient
monuments are no more numerous on this than on the other
side of the Atlantic. And when we consider the works left by the lost races, we are constrained to admit that the pre- historic relics of America are as interesting as any yet dis- covered within our own borders. The American archeeologist is, it is true, confronted with a great and peculiar difficulty. His continent is covered with remains of prehistoric races;. but historic time for him begins at least no earlier than the• landing of Columbus, and the mystery which must always envelop a people who have left so little in the way of written records commences for him but four centuries ago. On the other hand, we have clear evidence that some of the early inhabitants were contemporary with the mammoth and the mastodon ; and in South America, at any rate, remains of cliff dwelling races are associated with the bones of no fewer than forty-four animals now entirely extinct. Many interesting notices, more or less fragmentary, have from time to time appeared relative to the wonderful architectural relics of the Cliff-dwellers of Colorado, and to the no less wonderful pyra- mids and earthworks of the Mound-builders of the Mississippi.. But the four-hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America has been marked, among other things, by the publica- tion in one volume of all that has yet been made known of' the Mound-builders,—a volume of which it is not too much to. say that it is one of the most interesting of all archsoological records. When the relies of this vanished race first began to. attract attention some forty years ago, it was thought that the silver sword-scabbards, iron knives, and Hebrew inscrip- tions then brought to light, were traces of a highly civilised " people who had migrated from some historic country."' Latterly the current of opinion has been tending quite the other way, and some authorities appear to think that the real
Mound-builders, who had nothing to do with the modern implements which had been "intruded" among their remains, were, after all, mere savages. But it is the view of many eminent American antiquarians that these early races- Mound-builders, Cliff-dwellers, and others coeval with them —" constituted a online which differed essentially from any other now known to history." The works of the Mound-builders are most abundant in the Mississippi Valley. They are found, it is true, in other parts of the continent, but nowhere else do they wear in such pro- fusion or such magnitude. From the Red River to Florida, from the Alleghanies to the Rocky Mountains, the whole ground is strewn with their remains. In Ohio alone, there are ten thousand mounds for burial or for the foundations of dwellings, and more than fifteen hundred enclosures sur- rounded with earthworks. Some of the mounds are acres in extent,—Monk's Mound, the great tumulus of Cahokia, near St. Louis, rises by four platforms to a height of a hundred feet, and covers sixteen acres of ground. Some tribes, .evidently hunters by occupation, using tools and weapons made of unsmelted copper and meteoric iron, have left, in addition to the ordinary conical mounds, huge earthern .effigies, not only of beasts of the chase, elk and moose, wolf and panther, goose and wild-duck, but of hawks and swallows, of lizards, snakes, and tadpoles. One such figure of a serpent is nearly five hundred yards long. Other tribes, apparently more warlike, have left earthern walls, some of which are still thirty feet high, and enclose as much as four hundred acres of ground. The actual mounds which are so numerous served in many cases for burial, and were so used by successive races. In some instances it is clear that interments con- tinued even into historic times. Of two mounds in the same group, one contained the skeleton of a medicine-man with a modern looking-glass, perhaps not fifty years old, in its hand. Another mound in the group contained the skeleton of a child, with a string of beads on its wrist and a pot of sweetmeats at its head ; while trees of at least three centuries' growth were growing in the ground above. That these struc- tures have been used by successive races is well illustrated by a mound in Illinois, in which, lying underneath recent Indian interments, was the skeleton of some long-forgotten Jesuit pioneer, with a rosary of Venetian beads about its waist, and a silver crucifix still in its bony hand.
There must have been several entirely different races of Mound-builders, to judge from the wide differences in the style and materials of their works. In the upper part of the Mississippi Valley the mounds are mainly burial-places. In Wisconsin, many are in the shapes of animals. In other dis- tricts the mounds contain chambers roofed with logs. The Gulf States are remarkable for their earthen pyramids. At one point on the Lower Mississippi is a group of eight, one of which covers six acres of ground. Its sides correspond to the points of the compass, and it is surrounded by a ditch ten feet deep. In Ohio are a great many so-called sacred enclosures, some of which are of large extent. Not a few of them consist of a square and two adjacent circles, and look like gigantic geometrical figures. The atone forts are larger still. The walls of Fort Ancient are still twenty feet high and three miles and a half in length, enclosing a space of one hundred and forty acres. An immense number of relics have been collected by various explorers. Few, per- haps, are of greater interest than those lately taken from a mound on Paint Creek. At the base of the tumulus, which was five hundred feet long, were domed chambers, four or five feet high. In one of these was a skeleton, -evidently of some distinguished warrior. On its head, fastened to a sort of helmet, were wooden antlers, covered with copper. Over it were strewn pearls, bears' teeth, and claws of eagles. At its side lay a pipe, an agate spear, head, and canes covered with copper. Other skeletons in the same mound were clad in copper armour, decorated with elaborate and beautiful designs. Here, too, was found a copper axe,—still sharp, 40 lb. in weight, and bearing traces of gilding. In a burial-mound on the Iowa river, in a district which was inhabited by hunter tribes, were found three chambers, roofed with logs, and in the central room eight skeletons were seated on the floor, each with a drinking-cup at its feet. In a mound on the Scioto river—a huge tumulus 160 ft. long and 90 ft. wide—were twelve chambers, each con- taining a skeleton. A remarkable point is the size of the trees which are sometimes found in these old works. Some were felled in Ohio which had been growing for five centuries on the long-deserted ramparts of an old fort. One tree that grew on the wall of a fort in Ohio had 550 rings in it. This does not, it is true, imply a really high degree of antiquity ; but there seems no reason to doubt that the early Mound- builders were contemporary with the mastodon, if not with the mammoth. Many pipes have been found which clearly represent the latter ; while remains of the former have been found, so recent that the turf-cutters greased their boots with marrow taken from the bones. Among the bones of a mastodon dug up in Missouri were discovered the arrow-heads which, as it lay helpless in the bog, bad been shot at it by hunters. Near it were the stones they had burled at it, while the ashes of fires they had lighted round the carcase were still heaped against it 6 ft. high. Much excitement was caused in 1866 by the discovery of what is known as the Calaveras skull, at a depth of 130 ft. below the surface, on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada,—a clear proof, as it was at first thought, of the vast antiquity of man on the American continent. Almost more extraordinary was the " Nampa Image," a tiny figure of a man of baked clay, that came up in a sand-pump from a depth of no less than 320 ft. It is now recognised that the skull owed its burial to accumulations of flood debris, and that the clay figure came from an unsuspected Indian mine. Two very remarkable stone slabs, called the Davenport Tablets, which it is said were dug up in Missouri, were in- scribed, one with a cremation scene, including thirty figures of men and animals ; and the other with archaic-looking characters. Many of these characters, however, are now seen to be taken from the Roman, Arabic, Phoenician, and Hebrew alphabets, and both tablets are regarded as spurious.
The civilisation of the Mound-builders was at one time thought, to have been equal to that of Tyre or Babylon or Egypt. It was even confidently asserted that here were the relics of the ten " Lost Tribes,"—a suggestion we may well remember, since out of it grew the gigantic imposture, the " Book of Mormon." It must, however, be admitted that there are points in the work of the Mound-builders, in their effigies and pyramids and " sacred enclosures," which strongly support the view that America was at some remote period visited by successive waves of invaders from Europe, from the coast of Asia, even from Mongolia. Rites such as prevailed in Phoenicia in Old Testament times were widely practised on the North American continent. The more closely the relics of the lost races are examined, the more clear becomes the evidence that their worship combined elements of Druidical, of Hittite, and of Phoenician ceremonial. The faiths of the Far East, the worship of fire, of the serpent, and of the sun, extensively prevailed throughout the whole area occu- pied by the Mound-builders. Their relics abound with symbols which, in the Old World, " belonged to the secret mysteries, the mysteries which were so full of cruelties and degradations."
It is here, then, among objects associated with their religious observances, that we must look for the key to this great problem,--the problem as to who were this strange people, and from what sources the North American continent received the first impulses of its ancient civilisation.
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