The Mound-Builders

In the central part of North America, along the valleys of the Mississippi and the Ohio rivers, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes, there are remains of the works of an extinct race of people, now known as the "Mound-Builders." Very little is known of their history, except that they were a people akin to those who settled in Mexico and Central America, and that they were a very different race of people from the North-American Indians.

They are generally considered the aborigines of this continent, which is fast proving itself to be as old, if not older, than the eastern continent.

At what time these people made their appearance in North America, and erected the mounds from which they are named "Mound-Builders," is uncertain, and can never, perhaps, be fully ascertained; but antiquarians who have investigated these wonderful monuments, assure us that they have full proof that the builders enjoyed a high state of civilization, were expert agriculturists, good mathematicians, adepts in the arts, and devotees of some form, or of different forms, of religious faith.

Of these mounds, or tumuli, it is said that ten thousand are found in the State of Ohio alone. Some of these have evidently been built as mausoleums, others for defence, still others as altars on which to offer sacrifices; but it is difficult to assign a reason for those built in the shape of various animals, such as alligators, buffaloes, eagles, serpents, etc.

Several of these mounds cover many hundred acres of ground. One near Newark, O., forms a perfect circle a mile in circumference, and twenty feet high. It is large enough to accommodate the county fair of the Agricultural Society; and upon it, beech, maple, and hickory trees have grown luxuriantly, showing, it is believed, that the erection of this mound far antedates the time of Columbus. In the same county is the "Alligator Mound," which is two hundred and fifty feet long, and fifty feet wide. The famous "Serpent Mound," on Brush Creek, Adams County, O., is more than one thousand feet in length: the embankment is five feet high, and has a base of thirty feet at the centre of the body, diminishing slightly toward the head and tail. In West Virginia, there stands a sepulchral mound, which is seventy feet in vertical height, and has a circumference of nine hundred feet.

In the mounds of Ohio, there is frequently a combination of a square and two circles; and, wherever found, they correspond in this respect, that the sides of the squares measure exactly one thousand and eighty feet, and the adjacent circles have a circumference of seventeen hundred and eight hundred feet respectively.

In the construction of the military mounds, still greater mathematical skill is shown. They are erected on high ground, and often in groups extending several miles, and all connected one with another.

Such of the sepulchral mounds as have been excavated are found to contain human bones; but they crumble into dust when exposed to the air, so that no estimate of the size or national characteristics of the race can be formed. In the figures of heads on the pottery, and especially on clay pipe-bowls found in the mines, there is a strong resemblance to the sculptured heads found in the ruins in Yucatan.

It is thought that the Aztecs, found in Mexico by Cortez; and the ancient Peruvians, whose empire was destroyed by Pizarro,--may have been remnants of the Mound-Builders, who were driven south by invading hordes (such as our Indian tribes) from the other continent across Behring's Strait; but this is all conjecture.

In the Mississippi valley, the mounds are very numerous; and it is said that some of them, as is shown by the growth of trees and by the excavation of antique articles, cannot be less than two thousand years old. One of these represents a man with two heads; the body being fifty feet long, and twenty-five feet across the breast.

Who the Mound-Builders were, remains to be answered; yet, so long as the mounds exist, they testify to the fact, that, at a very remote age, a race of people, now extinct, was in possession of this country, from the frozen lakes of the North to the Gulf of Mexico, and from Vermont to the Rocky Mountains.

For further information, see "Prehistoric Times," Lubbock; "The Recent Origin of Man," Southall; "Primitive Man," Figuier; "Prehistoric Races of the United States," Foster.