XII. ANTIQUITIES OF THE NORTHWEST…

XII. ANTIQUITIES OF THE NORTHWEST

GENERAL CHARACTER OF NORTH-WESTERN REMAINS -- NO TRACES OF EXTINCT OR OF CIVILIZED RACES -- ANTIQUITIES OF CALIFORNIA -- STONE IMPLEMENTS -- NEWSPAPER REPORTS -- TAYLOR'S WORK -- COLORADO DESERT -- TRAIL AND ROCK-INSCRIPTIONS -- BURIAL RELICS OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA -- BONES OF GIANTS -- MOUNDS IN THE SATICOY VALLEY -- NEW ALMADEN MINE -- PRE-HISTORIC RELICS IN THE MINING SHAFTS -- STONE IMPLEMENTS, HUMAN BONES, AND REMAINS OF EXTINCT ANIMAL SPECIES -- VOY'S WORK -- SAN JOAQUIN RELICS -- MERCED MOUNDS -- MARTINEZ -- SHELL MOUNDS ROUND SAN FRANCISCO BAY, AND THEIR CONTENTS -- RELICS FROM A SAN FRANCISCO MOUND -- ANTIQUITIES OF NEVADA -- UTAH -- MOUNDS OF SALT LAKE VALLEY -- COLORADO -- REMAINS AT GOLDEN CITY -- EXTENSIVE RUINS IN SOUTHERN COLORADO AND UTAH -- JACKSON'S EXPEDITION -- MANCOS AND ST ELMO CAÑONS -- IDAHO AND MONTANA -- OREGON -- WASHINGTON -- MOUNDS ON BUTE PRAIRIE -- YAKIMA EARTH-WORK -- BRITISH COLUMBIA -- DEANS' EXPLORATIONS -- MOUNDS AND EARTH-WORKS OF VANCOUVER ISLAND -- ALASKA.

Ruins of the New Mexican Pueblo type, described in the preceding chapter, extend across the boundary lines of New Mexico and Arizona, and have been found by travelers in southern Utah and Colorado; stone and bone implements similar to those used by the natives when the first Europeans came and since that time, are frequently picked up on the surface or taken from aboriginal graves in most parts of the whole northern region; a few scattered rock-inscriptions are reported in several of the states; burial mounds and other small earth-heaps of unknown use are seen in many localities; shell mounds, some of them of great size, occur at various points in the coast region, as about San Francisco Bay and on Vancouver Island, and they probably might be found along nearly the whole coast line; and the mining shafts of California have brought to light human remains, implements wrought by human hands, and bones of extinct animals, at great depths below the surface, evidently of great age. With the preceding paragraph and a short account of the ruins of Colorado, I might consistently dispose of the antiquities of the Northwest.

There has not been found and reported on good authority a single monument or relic which is sufficient to prove that the country was ever inhabited by any people whose claims to be regarded as civilized were superior to those of the tribes found by Europeans within its limits. It is true that some implements may not exactly agree with those of the tribes now occupying the same particular locality, and some graves indicate slight differences in the manner of burial, but this could hardly be otherwise in a country inhabited by so many nations whose boundaries were constantly changing. Yet I have often heard the Aztec relics of California and Oregon very confidently spoken of. It is a remarkable fact that to most men who find a piece of stone bearing marks of having been formed by human hands, the very first idea suggested is that it represents an extinct race, while the last conclusion arrived at is that the relic may be the work of a tribe still living in the vicinity where it was found.

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[Sidenote: CALIFORNIAN RELICS.]

California has within her limits large quantities of native utensils and many burial deposits, some of which doubtless date back to the time when no European had yet set foot in the country. A complete description of such relics, illustrated with cuts of typical specimens from different sections of the state, would be of great value in connection with the account of the Californian tribes given in a preceding volume; but unfortunately the material for such description and cuts are utterly wanting, and will not be supplied for many years. Officers and assistants connected with the U. S. Coast Survey and other government exploring expeditions, are constantly, though slowly, gathering relics for the national collection, and a few individuals acting in an unofficial capacity have examined certain localities and described the aboriginal implements found therein through trustworthy mediums. But most of the discoveries in this direction are recorded only in newspaper accounts, which, in a large majority of cases, offer no guarantee of their authenticity or accuracy. Many are self-evident hoaxes; many others are doubtless as reliable as if published in the narrative of the most trust-worthy explorer or in the transactions of any learned society; but to decide upon the relative merits of the great bulk of these accounts is altogether impossible, to say nothing of the absence of drawings, which, after all, are the only satisfactory description of miscellaneous relics. I therefore deem it not advisable to fill the pages of a long chapter with a compilation of the almost innumerable newspaper items in my possession, useless for the most part to antiquarians, and comparatively without interest to the general reader. Dr Alex. S. Taylor has already made quite a complete compilation of the earlier accounts in Californian newspapers, which he published in the California Farmer in 1860-3. Without, as a rule, going into details, I shall present a brief résumé of what has been written about Californian relics of aboriginal times, giving in full only a few reports of undoubted authenticity.[XII-1]

Brasseur de Bourbourg tells us that in the distant north "was found anciently a city named Tula, the ruins of which are thought to have been found in the valley, still so little explored, of Tulares. The Americans have announced in their newspapers the discovery of these Californian ruins, but can one credit the reports?" Brasseur possibly alludes in the paragraph quoted to certain reports circulated about 1853, which announced the discovery, somewhere in the desert of the Colorado on the California side, of a ruined bridge of stone, where no river had run for ages, together with an immense pyramid, and other grand remains. These reports seem to have originated in the correspondence of a Placerville newspaper; but whether they were manufactured in the office of the paper, or were actually sent in by some roaming prospector of an inventive turn of mind, does not appear.[XII-2]

[Sidenote: COLORADO DESERT.]

Mr Blake found in the Colorado desert "several long, path-like discolorations of the surface, extending for miles in nearly straight lines, which were Indian trails. The only change which was produced appeared to be the removal or dimming of the polish on the pebbles. There was no break in the hard surface, and no dust. That the distinctness of the trail was made by the removing of the polish only, became evident from the fact that figures and Indian hieroglyphics were traced, or imprinted, on the surface adjoining the path, apparently by pounding or bruising the surface layer of the pebbles. These trails seemed very old, and may have endured for many generations."[XII-3] A writer in the Bulletin mentions a road which extends from the mouth of the Coahuila Valley of San Gorgonio Pass, beginning at Noble's ranch, eastwardly across the desert in almost a straight line, to the mouth of the Colorado Cañon. The earth is worn deep, and along its course the surface is strewn with broken pottery. In many of the soft rocks the imprints of the feet of men and animals are still plainly visible. The road is not much over a foot wide, and from it branch off side paths leading to springs or other sources of water.[XII-4] The only other remains in the desert of which I find any record are some rock-inscriptions at Pah Ute Creek, located about thirty miles west from the Mojave villages. Mr Whipple gives a drawing of the inscriptions, which bear a strong resemblance in their general character, as might be expected, to those which have been found in so many localities in the New Mexican region.[XII-5]

The vertical face of a granite cliff at San Francisquito Pass, near a spring, was covered with carved characters, probably similar to those last described. One of the characters resembled a long chain, with a ball at one end, surrounded by rays like those employed in our representations of the sun; another was like in form to an anchor. Well-worn ancient foot-paths, old reservoirs, and other undescribed relics are reported in the vicinity of Owen's lake and river.[XII-6] Painted figures in blue, red, and white, are reported, together with some Spanish inscriptions of a date preceding 1820, in Painted Rock Valley, four days' journey east by south from Tejon Pass, also in the cañada of the San Juan arroyo, which empties into the Salinas River near the mission of San Miguel. In the former case the figures are painted on a blue grayish rock, about twenty feet square and hollowed out in bowl shape.[XII-7]

[Sidenote: BURIAL RELICS IN THE SOUTH.]

Mr Paul Schumacher, engaged in the service of the United States Coast Survey, has taken great interest in Californian aboriginal relics, which he has collected for the Smithsonian Institution at Washington. In the vicinity of San Luis Obispo, between points Sal and San Luis, he examined during the past year four graves or burial deposits, known as nipomo, walckhe, kesmali, temeteti. These graves furnished some three hundred human skeletons, or rather about that number were examined, and also quite a large number of domestic utensils, weapons, and ornaments. Among these relics great uniformity is observed, indicating that all the graves belonged to the same tribe of natives. Nine specimens are shown in the cut on the opposite page, made from Mr Schumacher's drawings. Fig. 1, 2, and 9, represent large cooking-pots, globular or pear-shaped, and hollowed out of magnesian mica. The circular opening of fig. 9, having a small and narrow rim, measures only five inches in diameter, while the greatest diameter of the pot is eighteen inches. Near the edge of the opening this vessel is only a quarter of an inch thick, but the thickness increases regularly towards the bottom, where it is an inch and a quarter. Sandstone mortars of different dimensions, but of similar forms, were found in great abundance with the other utensils, one of the largest of which is shown in fig. 8. This is sixteen inches in diameter and thirteen in height. The smallest are only an inch and a half high, and three inches in diameter. The pestles are of the same material, and their form is shown in fig. 3. There was moreover, quite an assortment of what seem to be cups, measuring from one and a quarter to six inches in diameter, and neatly worked out of serpentine, the surface of which was brightly polished. Specimens are shown in fig. 5 and 7. Another similar one, the smallest found, was enclosed in three shells, in a very curious manner, as shown in fig. 6. In this enclosed cup was a quantity of what is described as paint; and traces of the same material were found in all the cups, indicating that they were not used to contain food. Fig. 4 represents a plate which is presumably of stone, although the cut would seem to indicate a shell. These domestic implements deposited by the aborigines with their dead were rarely broken, and when they were so, the breakage was caused in every instance by the pressure of the soil or other superimposed objects. One peculiar circumstance in connection with these relics was that some broken mortars and pestles were repaired by the use of asphaltum as a cement. All the relics collected by Mr Schumacher, as well as those which I have copied, are preserved in the National Museum at Washington.[XII-8] The same explorer is now engaged in making an examination of the islands of the Santa Barbara Channel, where it is not improbable that many interesting relics may be discovered. Mr Taylor heard from a resident of San Buenaventura that "in a recent stay on Santa Rosa Island, in 1861, he often met with the entire skeletons of Indians in the caves. The signs of their rancherías were very frequent, and the remains of metates, mortars, earthen pots, and other utensils very common. The metates were of a dark stone, and made somewhat after the pattern of the Mexican. Extensive caves were often met with which seemed to serve as burial places of the Indians, as entire skeletons and numerous skulls were plentifully scattered about in their recesses." Some very wonderful skulls are also reported as having been found on the islands, furnished with double teeth all the way round the jaw.[XII-9]

[Sidenote: MISCELLANEOUS REMAINS.]

Miscellaneous relics reported on authority varying from indifferent to bad at different points in the southern part of the state, are as follows: In 1819 an old lady saw a gigantic skeleton dug up by soldiers at Purísima on the Lompock rancho. The natives deemed it a god, and it was re-buried by direction of the padre. Taheechaypah pass and the mission of San Buenaventura are other localities where skeletons of extraordinary size have been found. The old natives at San Luis Rey have seen in the mountain passes tracks of men and animals in solid rock. These tracks were made, those of the men at least, by their fathers fleeing from some convulsion of nature which occurred not many generations back. Nine miles north of Santa Barbara on the Dos Pueblos rancho, some small mounds only two or three feet high have been seen on the point of the mesa overlooking the sea. Mr Carvalho claims to have dug from a small mound near Los Angeles the bones of a mastodon, including four perfect teeth, one of which weighed six pounds. Miss Saxon speaks of high mounds in the vicinity of rivers, said to have been once the site of villages so located for protection against floods.[XII-10]

In the plain at the mouth of the Saticoy River, twelve miles below San Buenaventura, and five or six miles from the sea, are reported two mounds, regular, rounded, and bare of trees. One of them is over a mile long and two hundred feet high, and the other about half as large. If the report of their existence is correct, there seems to be no evidence that they are of artificial formation, except their isolated position on the plain, and a native tradition that they are burial-places. One writer suggests that they are the graves of a people, or of their kings, whose cities are buried beneath the waters of the Santa Barbara Channel. The site of the cities presents some obstacles to exploration, and the details of their construction are not fully known. Twenty miles farther up the Saticoy is a group of small mounds, ten or twelve in number and five or six feet high. They "seem to have been water-worn or worked out by running water all around the mounds so as to isolate each one." Near these mounds, on the Cayetano rancho, is a field of some five hundred acres, divided by parallel ridges of earth, and having distinct traces of irrigating ditches, supplied by a canal which extends two or three miles up the Sespe arroyo. It is said that the present inhabitants of this region, both native and Spanish, have no knowledge of the origin of these agricultural works.[XII-11]

It is said that the New Almaden quicksilver mines were worked by the natives for the purpose of obtaining vermilion, long before the coming of the Spaniards. The excavation made by the aboriginal miners was long supposed to be a natural cavern, extending about one hundred feet horizontally into the hill, until some skeletons, rude mining tools, and other relics of human presence revealed the secret.[XII-12]

In various localities about Monterey, in addition to the usual mortars and arrow-heads, holes in the living rock, used probably as mortars for pounding acorns and seeds, are reported by Taylor; and the Santa Cruz 'skull cave' is spoken of as 'noted throughout the country' for having furnished bones now preserved in the Smithsonian Institution.[XII-13]

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[Sidenote: REMAINS FROM THE MINES.]

One of the most interesting classes of Californian antiquities is that which includes aboriginal remains discovered in the mining counties, at considerable depths below the surface of the ground. The stone implements thus found are not in themselves particularly interesting, or different from those which have been found under other circumstances; nor do they include any specimens which indicate the former existence of any race more advanced than that found in the country by Europeans. But the chief importance of these antiquities consists in the great depth at which some of them have been found, and in the fact that they have been found in connection with the fossil bones of animals belonging to species now no longer existing in the country. The existence of the work of human hands buried hundreds of feet beneath the many successive layers of different rocks and earths, might not necessarily imply a greater age than one dating a few centuries before the coming of the Spaniards; although few would be willing to admit, probably, that natural convulsions so extensive have taken place at so recent an epoch. But when the work of human hands is shown to have been discovered in connection with the bones of mastodons, elephants, horses, camels, and other animals long since extinct, and that they have been so found there seems to be sufficient proof, it is hardly possible with consistency to deny that these implements date from a remote antiquity. Newspaper items describing relics of this class are almost numberless; a few of the specimens have fallen into the hands of scientific men, who have carefully examined and described them; but a great majority, even of such implements as have not been completely overlooked by the miner who dug or washed them from their deep resting-places, have been lost after exciting a momentary curiosity, and their important testimony lost to science. Mr C. D. Voy of Oakland has shown much energy and interest in the examination of stone implements and fossils from the mines. The relics themselves have of course been found in almost every instance by miners in their search for gold; but Mr Voy has personally visited most of the localities where such discoveries were reported, and seems to have taken all possible pains to verify the authenticity of the discoveries, having in many cases obtained sworn statements from the parties who made them. An unpublished manuscript written by this gentleman is entitled Relics of the Stone Age in California, and is illustrated with many photographs of specimens from his own and other collections. This work, kindly furnished me by Mr Voy, is probably the most complete extant on the subject, and from it I take the following descriptions. The author proceeds by counties, first describing the geology of each county, and then the relics of whose existence he has been able to learn, and the localities where they were found. Except a brief statement in a few cases of the depth at which stone remains were found, and of the strata that covered them, I shall not touch upon the geologic formation of the mining region. Nor does a particular or scientific description of the fossil remains come within the scope of my work. A brief account of the stone implements and the positions in which they have been discovered will suffice.

[Sidenote: TUOLUMNE COUNTY.]

Of all the counties Tuolumne has apparently proved the richest in antiquarian remains. From the mining tunnels which penetrate Table Mountain there was taken in 1858 a stone mortar holding two quarts, at a depth of three hundred feet from the surface, lying in auriferous gravel under a thick strata of lava. In 1862 another mortar was found at a depth of three hundred and forty feet, one hundred and four of which were composed of lava, and eighteen hundred feet from the mouth of the tunnel. This relic is in Mr Voy's collection, accompanied by a sworn statement of the circumstances of its finding. Dr Snell is said to have had in his possession in 1862 a pendant or shuttle of silicious slate, similar to others of which I shall give a cut; spear-heads six or eight inches long, and broken off at the hole where they were attached to the shaft; and a scoop, or ladle, of steatite. These relics were found under Table Mountain at the same depth as the preceding, together with fossil bones of the mastodon and other animals, and are preserved in the Smithsonian Institute and in the museum of Yale College. The cut represents a stone mortar and pestle, found at Kincaid Flat in clayey auriferous gravel, sixteen or twenty feet below the surface, where many other stone implements, with bones of the mastodon, elephant, horse, and camel, have been found at different times. A bow handle, or shuttle, of micaceous slate found here will be shown in another cut with similar relics from a different locality.[XII-14]

At Shaw's Flat, with bones of the mastodon, a stone bead of calc-spar, two inches long and the same in circumference, was taken from under a strata of lava at a point three hundred feet from the mouth of the tunnel. The granite mortar shown in the cut, holding about a pint, came from the same mining town.

At Blanket Creek, near Sonora, stone relics and bones of the mastodon were found together in 1855.[XII-15] Wood's Creek was another locality where stone relics with fossil bones, including those of the tapir, are reported to have been dug out at a depth of twenty to forty feet. The mortar and pestle shown in the cut is one of many stone implements found, with fossil bones, at Gold Springs Gulch, in 1863, at a depth of sixteen feet in auriferous gravel, like the most of such relics. It is twelve and a half inches in diameter, weighs thirty pounds, and holds about two quarts. The cross-lines pecked in on the sides with some sharp instrument, are of rare occurrence if not unique. Among the other implements found here, are what Mr Voy describes as "discoidal stones, or perhaps spinal whorls. They are from three to four inches in diameter, and about an inch and a half thick, both sides being concave, with centre perforated. It has been suggested that these stones were used in certain hurling games." They are of granite and hard sandstone. The author has heard of similar relics in Ohio, Denmark, and Chili. Another relic, found at the same place in 1862, with the usual bones under twenty to thirty feet of calcareous tufa, is a flat oval dish of granite, eighteen inches and a half in diameter, two or three inches thick, and weighing forty pounds. It is shown in the cut, and, like the preceding, is preserved in Mr Voy's cabinet, now at the University of California. Texas Flat was another locality where fossil bones were found with fresh-water shells.[XII-16]

[Sidenote: CALAVERAS COUNTY.]

Calaveras County has also yielded many interesting relics of a past age, of the same nature as those described in Tuolumne.[XII-17] The famous 'Calaveras skull' was taken from a mining shaft at Altaville, at a depth of one hundred and thirty feet beneath seven strata of lava and gravel.[XII-18] The evidence was sufficient to convince Prof. Whitney and other scientific men that this skull was actually found as claimed, although on the other hand some doubt and not a little ridicule have been expressed about the subject. Many stone mortars and mastodon-bones have been found about Altaville and Murphy's, but not under lava.[XII-19]

At San Andrés, in 1864, according to sworn statements in Mr Voy's possession, large stone mortars were taken from a layer of cemented gravel six feet thick, lying under the following strata:--coarse sedimentary volcanic material, five feet; sand and gravel, one hundred feet; brownish volcanic ash, three feet; cemented sand, four feet; blueish volcanic sand, fifteen feet. At the Chili Gulch, near Mokelumne Hill, the skull of a rhinoceros is reported to have been found in 1863.[XII-20]

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[Sidenote: STONE HAMMERS.]

The mortar shown in the cut was found in gravel at a depth of ten feet, at Shingle Springs in El Dorado County. At Georgetown and vicinity there were found at different dates, large stone dishes very similar to that at Gold Springs Gulch, shown in a preceding cut; grooved stones like those at Spanish Flat, soon to be mentioned; and mortars resembling that at Kincaid Flat. At Spanish Flat were found several oval stones with grooves round their circumference, as shown in the preceding cut, and weighing from a pound and a half to two pounds. They were apparently used as hammers or weapons by fitting a withe handle round them at the groove. Many other mortars and stone implements were taken from the same locality, including two pendants, shuttles, or bow-handles, very well worked from greenstone, five or six inches long, and about one inch thick in the middle. These two relics, together with a similar one from Table Mountain before alluded to, are shown in the cut. At Diamond Spring mortars were found at a depth of a hundred feet, and both fossil bones and stone relics have been taken from time to time from the mines about Placerville.[XII-21]

In Placer County, mastodon bones are reported at Rockland, and stone mortars and other implements at Gold Hill and Forest Hill. One dish at the latter place was much like that at Gold Springs Gulch, shown in a preceding cut.[XII-22]

In Nevada County stone implements have been found at different dates, from ten to eighty feet below the surface, at Grass Valley, Buckeye Hill, Myer's Ravine, Brush Creek, and Sweetland.[XII-23]

Fossil bones of extinct animals and stone implements like those that have been described, and which I do not deem it necessary to mention particularly, since such mention would be but a repetition of what has been said, with a list of depths and localities, have been found, according to Mr Voy's explorations, in Butte County at New York Flat, Oroville, Bidwell's Bar, and Cherokee Flat; in Stanislaus about Knights Ferry; in Amador at Volcano, Little Grass Valley, Jackson, Pokerville, Forest Home, and Fiddletown; in Siskiyou at Trench Bar, on Scott River, at Yreka, and Cottonwood; in Trinity about Douglas City; in Humboldt, at Ferndale and Humboldt Point; in Merced at Snelling on Dry Creek; in Mariposa, at Horse Shoe Bend, Hornitos, Princetown,--a mortar thirty-six inches in diameter--Buckeye Ravine, Indian Gulch, and Bear Creek; in Fresno at Buchanan Hollow and Millerton; and at several points not specified in Tulare and Fresno.[XII-24]

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[Sidenote: MISCELLANEOUS MINE RELICS.]

The cut shows a stone relic discovered in digging a well in the San Joaquin Valley, imbedded in the gravel thirty feet below the surface. "The material is sienite and the instrument is ground and polished so as to display in marked contrast the pure white of the feldspar and the dark-green or black of the hornblende. It is in the form of a double-cone, one end terminating in a point, while the other end is blunted, where it is pierced with a hole which instead of being a uniform gauge, is rimmed out, the rimming having been started from the opposite sides. In examining this beautiful relic, one is led almost instinctively to believe that it was used as a plummet for the purpose of determining the perpendicular to the horizon. So highly-wrought a stone would hardly have been used as a sinker for a fishing-net: it may have been suspended from the neck as a personal ornament. When we consider its symmetry of form, the contrast of colors brought out by the process of grinding and polishing, and the delicate drilling of the hole through a material so liable to fracture, we are free to say it affords an exhibition of the lapidary's skill superior to anything yet furnished by the Stone Age of either continent," at least such is Mr Foster's conclusion. Prof. Whitney states that he has two or three similar implements, and that they are generally regarded as sinkers for use in fishing.[XII-25] Mr Taylor tells us that he saw in 1852, on a high mesa, probably a league in circumference, on or near the Merced River, thousands of small mounds, five or six feet high, and apparently of earth only.[XII-26] Capron says that on the plains of San Joaquin "are found immense mounds of earth, which present evidences of their great antiquity. It is supposed that they were thrown up, by the Indians, for observatories, from which to survey the floods, or as places of resort for safety when the plains became suddenly inundated, and the ranging hunters were caught far in the interior."[XII-27] In the banks of a creek near Martinez, resting on yellow clay, under five feet of surface soil, a mortar and pestle were recently found by some boys, according to a local newspaper. The mortar was about sixty inches in circumference, and weighed nearly two hundred pounds. "It has the form of a slightly flattened well-rounded duck egg; and has evidently been artificially shaped in exterior form, as well as in the bowl, and looks as fresh as if it had but yesterday been turned off from the Indian sculptor's hands, while the polish of the pestle is smooth and lustrous, as if it had been in daily use for the hundred or two years, at least, that it must have been lying under the inverted mortar, as shown by the level of five-feet accumulations of the valley-surface stratum of soil above the yellow clay upon which it was found, together with the partially-decomposed remains of a human frame."[XII-28]

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[Sidenote: SHELL MOUNDS.]

[Sidenote: SAN FRANCISCO RELICS.]

Only one class of Californian antiquities remains to be mentioned--the shell mounds. They are probably very numerous, and a thorough examination of their contents could hardly fail to be here as it has proved in Europe, a source of very important results in connection with ethnological studies. Little or nothing has been done in the way of such an examination, although a few mounds have been opened in excavating for roads or foundations of buildings. These few have yielded numerous stone, bone, and shell implements and ornaments, together with human remains, as is reported, but the relics have been for the most part lost or scattered, and submitted to no scientific examination and comparison. Dr Yates sent to the Smithsonian Institute, in 1869, a collection of relics taken from mounds in Alameda County. It is not expressly stated that these were shell mounds, although I have heard of the existence of several in that county. This collection included, "stone pestles, perforators or awls, sinkers, a phallus, spindles, a soapstone ladle, stone mortar and pestle, pipe bowls, shell and perforated stone ornaments, an ancient awl and serrated implements of bone."[XII-29] A very large shell mound is reported near San Pablo, in Contra Costa County. It is said to be almost a mile long and a half a mile wide, and its surface is covered with shrubbery. The shells composing this mound are those of the oyster, clam, and mussel, all having been exposed to the action of fire, and nearly all broken. Fragments of pottery made of red clay are found on the surface and near the top.[XII-30] Many smaller shell mounds are reported in the vicinity of San Mateo, and one has been opened in making a road at Saucelito during the present year, furnishing many stone relics, of which I have no particular description. Quite a number of mounds are known to exist on the peninsula of San Francisco, several being in the vicinity of the silk factory on the San Bruno road. One of them covered an area of two acres, was at least twenty-five feet deep, and from it were taken arrow-heads, hammers, and many other relics. One of these shell mounds, near the old Bay View race track is being opened by Chinamen engaged in preparation for some building, as I write this chapter. Mr James Deans, of whose explorations I shall have more to say when treating of the antiquities of British Columbia, has brought me a large number of stone and bone relics taken from this deposit, the different classes of which are illustrated in the accompanying cut. Fig. 1 is an awl of deer-bone, and fig. 2 is another implement of the same material, curiously grooved at the end. These bone implements occur by thousands, being from three to eight inches in length. Fig. 3, 4, are perhaps stone sinkers, or as is thought by some, weights used in weaving, symmetrically formed, the former from diorite, the latter from sandstone, and not polished. Fig. 3 is four inches long, and an inch and a half in its greatest diameter. Hundreds of these pear-shaped weights are found in the mounds, but the end is usually broken off, as is the case with fig. 4. Fig. 5 is an implement carved from a black clayey slate, and has a brightly polished surface. It is four inches long, one inch in diameter at the larger end, and three quarters of an inch at the smaller. It is hollow, but the bore diminishes in size regularly from each end, until at a point about an inch and a half from the smaller end it is only a quarter of an inch in diameter. I have no idea what purpose this implement was used for, unless it served as a handle for a small knife or awl, or possibly as a pipe.

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Such is the rather fragmentary and unsatisfactory information I am able to present respecting aboriginal relics in California. Doubtless there are many relics, and valuable scraps of information respecting the circumstances of their discovery, in the possession of individuals, of which no mention is made in this chapter--indeed, I expect to hear of a hundred such cases within a month after the appearance of this volume; but many years must necessarily elapse before a satisfactory and comprehensive account of the antiquities of our state can be written, and in the meantime there is a promising field for patient investigation. The difference, after all, between this chapter and many of those that precede it, in respect to thoroughness, is more apparent than real; that is, it results naturally from the nature of north-western remains. For if there were architectural monuments, pyramids, temples, and fortifications, or grand sculptured idols and decorations, in California and her sister states, there is no doubt that such monuments would have been ere this more thoroughly explored than those of Palenque; and on the other hand, respecting the only classes of antiquities found in the Northwest, there yet remains as much or more to learn in Mexico and Central America as in the Pacific United States.

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[Sidenote: ANTIQUITIES OF NEVADA.]

Respecting the antiquities of Nevada, I have only the following account of a ruined city in the south-eastern part of the state, discovered by what is spoken of as the 'Morgan Exploring Expedition,' and described by a correspondent of the New York Tribune. "On October fifteenth, in the centre of a large valley we discovered some Indian salt works, but there were no signs of their having been lately used. In the southern section of the same valley, was a curious collection of rocks, mounds and pillars, covering several acres in extent and resembling the ruins of an ancient city. We saw some remnants of what had once been arches, with keystones still perfect, and a number of small stone pillars constructed with a peculiar kind of red mortar or cement, set upright about twenty feet apart, as if they had been used to support an aqueduct for conveying water from a large stream half a mile distant, into the outskirts of the city. In some places the lines of streets were made distinctly visible by the great regularity of the stones. These streets were now covered with sand many feet deep, and seemed to run at right angles to each other. Some of the stones had evidently been cut into squares with hard tools, although their forms had been nearly destroyed by centuries of time. The impression forced upon our minds was that the place had been once inhabited by human beings somewhat advanced in civilization. Many traders noticed the existence of similar ruins in other sections of the country between the Rocky and Sierra Nevada Mountains. They may probably be the sites of once flourishing fields and habitations of the ancient Aztecs."[XII-31] It is just possible that the New Mexican type of ruins extends across into Nevada as it is known to into Utah and Colorado, and that a group of such remains was the foundation of the report quoted. It is quite as likely, however, that the report is groundless.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: SALT LAKE VALLEY.]

Mr Rae examined a group of burial mounds in the Salt Lake Valley, Utah, and took from them "flint spear heads, flint arrow-heads, stone implements and fragments of rude pottery." These mounds had the appearance of natural sand-hills, as the people in the vicinity supposed them to be.[XII-32] An article in the Salt Lake Telegraph is the only other authority that I find on these mounds, and this does not specify their locality. "The mounds, as they exist to-day, do not exhibit much uniformity, but this can be accounted for by the disintegrating action of rains and winds, to which they have been so long subject. Immediately north, south and west of the largest barrow, traces can be seen of others now all but obliterated, and the locality bears unmistakable evidences of once being the site of very extensive earthworks. In one mound or barrow only, the largest, were remains found, and they were exposed on or very near the surface of the sandy soil, in one or two large hollows near the centre. The other barrows were destitute, at least on the surface, but what there may be below it is hard to say. Of all the relics, except those of charred bone, which are comparatively plentiful, and some in a state of petrifaction, that of pottery is the most abundant, and to this day some of it retains a very perfect glaze. Much of it, however, is rough, and from the specimens we saw, the art does not appear to have attained to so high a degree of perfection as among the ancient nations that inhabited the Mississippi and Ohio valleys. The largest piece of pottery seen was not above three inches square, and it appeared, as did all the other pieces, to have formed a portion of some rounded vessel, probably a cinerary urn or something of that kind. Other articles were seen, such as a fragment of pearly shell, several other shells, a white cylindrical bead, a small ring probably a bead also, and a stone knife." There were also several nicely shaped arrow-heads, of obsidian, agate, rock-crystal, carnelian, and flint. Granite mills are mentioned in addition to the other relics.[XII-33] The same authority speaks of an extensive fortification or entrenched camp at the head of Coon's Cañon, about twenty miles south-west of Salt Lake City. The works are now from four to eight feet high, and the places of entrance are distinctly marked.

[Sidenote: ROCK-INSCRIPTIONS.]

Remy and Brenchley note the finding of colored pottery at Cedar City, indicating "that the Mormon city is built on the site of a considerable city belonging to the Aztecs," for there is no state anywhere in the north where the Aztecs did not live at some time or other. Whole specimens of pottery are not found, but the fragments are said to show a high degree of perfection; the same authors claim that furnaces for the manufacture of pottery are still seen, and further say: "At some miles to the north as well as to the south of Cedar,--to the north near Little Salt Lake, to the south near Harmony,--are to be seen great rocks covered over with glyphic inscriptions, some portions of which, sketched at random, are accurately represented in our engraving. These inscriptions or figures are coarsely executed; but they all represent objects easy of recognition, and for the most part copied from nature."[XII-34] From Carvalho I quote that "on Red Creek cañon, six miles north of Parowan there are very massive, abrupt granite rocks, which rise perpendicularly out of the valley to the height of many hundred feet. On the surface of many of them, apparently engraved with some steel instrument, to the depth of an inch, are numerous hieroglyphics, representing the human hand and foot, horses, dogs, rabbits, birds and also a sort of zodiac. These engravings present the same time-worn appearance as the rest of the rocks; the most elaborately engraved figures were thirty feet from the ground. I had to clamber up the rocks to make a drawing of them. These engravings evidently display prolonged and continued labor, and I judge them to have been executed by a different class of persons than the Indians, who now inhabit these valleys and mountains--ages seem to have passed since they were done. When we take into consideration the compact nature of the blue granite and the depth of the engravings, years must have been spent in their execution. For what purpose were they made? and by whom, and at what period of time? It seems physically impossible that those I have mentioned as being thirty feet from the valley, could have been worked in the present position of the rocks. Some great convulsion of nature may have thrown them up as they now are. Some of the figures are as large as life, many of them about one-fourth size." The same author reports the remains of an adobe town a mile further down the cañon, with implements--remains said to have been found there by the first Mormons that came to the valley.[XII-35] Mr Foster quotes from a Denver paper an item recording the discovery of a mound in southern Utah, which yielded relics displaying great artistic skill;[XII-36] and finally I take from Mr Schoolcraft's work cuts showing inscriptions on a cliff in a locality not clearly specified.[XII-37] Some remains in the south-eastern corner of the state I shall mention in connection with those of Colorado.

* * * * *

About half a mile west of Golden City, Jefferson County, Colorado, Mr Berthoud reports to the Smithsonian Institution the existence of some ancient remains, at the junction of two ravines. They consist of a central mound of granitic sand not over twelve inches high, with traces of five or six shallow pits about it; all surrounded by traces of a wall consisting of a circle of moss-covered rough stones partially imbedded in the soil. South of the central mound is also a saucer-shaped pit, measuring twelve feet in width and from fifteen to eighteen inches in depth. At this point buffalo-bones and fragments of antlers are plentiful, and pieces of flint with plates of mica have also been discovered.[XII-38] Mr Farnham speaks of a ruined city covering an area of one mile by three fourths of a mile, with streets crossing at right angles, buildings of rough trap rock in cement, a mound in the centre, and much glazed pottery--all this on the north bank of the Colorado, four hundred miles up the river, and as likely to be in the territory of Colorado as anywhere.[XII-39] Mr Foster quotes from a Denver newspaper a report of large granite blocks, of the nature of 'dolmens' standing in an upright position, on the summit of the Snowy Range;[XII-40] and Taylor had heard through the newspapers of pyramids and bridges in this territory.[XII-41]

* * * * *

There remain to be described in this part of the country only the remains of aboriginal structures in the south-western corner of Colorado and the south-eastern corner of Utah, remains which, although made known to the world only through a three or four days' exploration by a party of three men, are of the greatest interest and importance. They are found in the valleys or cañons of the rivers Mancos and McElmo, northern tributaries of the San Juan, on the southern tributaries of which river are the ruins, already described, of the Chaco and Chelly cañons.

[Sidenote: JACKSON'S EXPEDITION.]

In September, 1874, Mr W. H. Jackson and Mr Ingersoll, connected with the United States Geological and Geographical Survey party, guided by Capt. John Moss, an old resident perfectly familiar with the country and its natives, descended both the cañons referred to, for the express purpose of examining ancient structures reported to exist there. Notwithstanding the brief duration of their exploration, as they understood their business and had a photographic apparatus along, their accounts are extremely complete and satisfactory. Mr Ingersoll published an account of the trip in the New York Tribune of Nov. 3, 1874; and Mr Jackson in the Bulletin of the Survey, printed by government.[XII-42] The latter account was accompanied by fourteen illustrations, and Prof. J. V. Hayden, Geologist in charge of the Survey, has had the kindness to furnish me also with the original photographs made during the expedition.

The Rio Mancos rises in the Sierra La Plata, and flows south-westward, at first through a park-like valley, then cuts a deep cañon through the Mesa Verde, and finally traverses an open plain to join the San Juan. In the valley between the mountains and the mesa, there are abundant shapeless mounds of débris, which on examination are found to represent blocks of square buildings and circular enclosures all of adobe, very similar apparently to what we have seen in the Salado valley of Arizona. There is another resemblance to the southern remains in the shape of indented and painted pottery, strewn in great abundance about every mound, in fragments rarely larger than a dollar,--not a greenback, but a silver dollar, the former being no standard for archæological comparisons. I shall make no further mention of pottery; the reader may understand that in this whole region, as in Arizona and New Mexico, it is found in great quantities about every ruin that is to be mentioned.

[Sidenote: RIO DE LOS MANCOS.]

The cañon through the Mesa Verde is on an average two hundred yards wide, and from six hundred to a thousand feet deep, with sides presenting, as Mr Jackson says, "a succession of benches, one above the other, and connected by the steep slopes of the talus. Side-cañons penetrate the mesa, and ramify it in every direction, always presenting a perpendicular face, so that it is only at very rare intervals that the top can be reached." Mr Ingersoll says: "Imagine East River a thousand or twelve hundred feet deep, and drained dry, the piers and slips on both sides made of red sandstone, and extending down to that depth, and yourself at the bottom, gazing up for human habitations far above you. In such a picture you would have a tolerable idea of this Cañon of the Rio Mancos." For four or five miles after entering the cañon, the shapeless heaps of adobe débris were of frequent occurrence on the banks of the stream. The general characteristic was "a central mass considerably higher and more massive than the surrounding lines of subdivided squares. Small buildings, not more than eight feet square, were often found standing alone apparently." The high central portion suggests a terraced structure like the Casa Grande of the Gila. One of the buildings on the bottom, measuring eight by ten feet, was of sandstone blocks, about seven by twelve inches, and four inches thick, laid in what seemed to be adobe mortar. Somewhat further down the adobe ruins were found often on projecting benches, or promontories of the cliff, some fifty feet above the stream. Here they were circular, with a depression in the centre, and generally in pairs. Cave-like crevices along the seams were often walled up in front, so as to enclose a space sometimes twelve feet long, but oftener forming "cupboard-like inclosures of about the size of a bushel-basket." A small square, formed by rough stone slabs, set up endways in the earth, was also noticed.

The first stone building particularly described, and one of the most wonderful found during the trip, is that shown in the cut. The most wonderful thing about it was its position in the face of the cliff several hundred feet above the bottom, on a ledge ten feet wide and twenty feet long, accessible only by hard climbing with fingers and toes inserted in crevices, or during the upper part of the ascent by steps cut in the steep slope by the aborigines. The cliff above overhangs the ledge, leaving a vertical space of fifteen feet. The building occupies only half the length of the ledge, and is now twelve feet high in front, leaving it uncertain whether it originally reached the overhanging cliff, or had an independent roof. The ground plan shows a front room six by nine feet, and two rear rooms each five by seven, projecting on one side so as to form an L. There were two stories, as is shown by the holes in the walls and fragments of floor-timbers. A doorway, twenty by thirty inches and two feet above the floor, led from one side of the front room to the esplanade, and there was also a window about a foot square in the lower story, and a window or doorway in the second story corresponding to that below. Opposite this upper opening was a smaller one opening into a reservoir holding about two hogsheads and a half, and formed by a semicircular wall joining the cliff and the main wall of the house. A line of projecting wooden pegs led from the window down into the cistern. Small doorways afforded communication between the apartments. The front portion was built of square and smoothly faced sandstone blocks of different sizes, up to fifteen inches long and eight inches thick, laid in a hard grayish-white mortar, very compact and hard, but cracked on the surface like adobe mortars. The rear portions were of rough stones in mortar, and the partition walls were like the exterior front ones, and seemed to have been rubbed smooth after they were laid.

The interior of the front rooms was plastered with a coating of a firm cement an eighth of an inch thick, colored red, and having a white band eight inches wide extending round the bottom like a base-board. There were no other signs of decoration. The floor was the natural rock of the ledge, evened up in some places with cement. The lintel of the upper doorway or window was of small straight cedar sticks laid close together, and supporting the masonry above; the other lintels seem to be of stone. A very wonderful feature of this structure was that the front wall rests on the rounded edge of the precipice, sloping at an angle of forty-five degrees, and the esplanade, or platform, at the side of the house was also leveled up by three abutments resting on this slope, where "it would seem that a pound's weight might slide them off."

[Sidenote: TOWERS ON THE RIO MANCOS.]

The cut shows the ground plan of a round stone tower of peculiar form. The diameter is twenty-five feet, and that of the inner circle twelve feet,[XII-43] the walls being eighteen and twelve inches thick, standing in places fifteen feet high on the outside and eight feet on the inside. This tower stands in the centre of a group of faintly traced remains extending twenty rods in every direction. The stones of which it was built are irregular in size, laid in mortar, and chinked with small pieces. The cut presents a view of this tower. The next cut illustrates the small cliff-houses very common in the walls of the cañon. This and its companions are from fifty to a hundred feet above the trail; it is five by fifteen feet and six feet high, the blocks composing the walls being very regular and well laid. Some of these houses were mere walls in front of crevices in the cliff. So strong are the structures that in one place a part of the cliff had become detached by some convulsion, and stood inclined at quite an angle, taking with it a part of one of the walls, but without overthrowing it. Small apertures are so placed in all these cliff-structures as to afford a look-out far up and down the valley. Rude inscriptions are scratched on the cliff in many places, bearing a general resemblance to those farther south, of which I have given many illustrations.

One of the most inaccessible of the cliff-buildings is shown in the cut. It is eight hundred feet high, and can only be reached by climbing to the top of the mesa, and creeping on hands and knees down a ledge only twenty inches wide. The masonry was very perfect, the blocks sixteen by three inches, ground perfectly smooth on the inside so as to require no plaster. The dimensions were about five by fifteen feet, and seven feet high. The aperture serving as doorway and window was twenty by thirty inches and had a stone lintel. Near by but higher on the ledge was another ruder building. These raised structures were invariably on the western side of the cañon, but those on the bottom were scattered on both sides of the river.

On the bottom "the majority of the buildings were square, but many round, and one sort of ruin always showed two square buildings with very deep cellars under them and a round tower between them, seemingly for watch and defence. In several cases a large part of this tower was still standing." One of these typical structures is shown in the following cut. It is twelve feet in diameter, twenty feet high, with walls sixteen inches thick. The window facing northward is eighteen by twenty-four inches. The two apartments adjoining the tower, the remains of which are shown in the cut, are about fifteen feet square. They seem to have been originally underground structures, or at least partially so.

At the outlet of the cañon the river turns westward, flowing for a time nearly parallel with the San Juan, which it joins very nearly at the corner of the four territories. Many groups of walls and heaps were visible in the distance down the valley, but the explorers left the river at this point and bore away to the right along the foot of the mesa until they reached Aztec Spring, very near the boundary line. "Immediately adjoining the spring, on the right, as we face it from below, is the ruin of a great massive structure of some kind, about one hundred feet square in exterior dimensions; a portion only of the wall upon the northern face remaining in its original position. The débris of the ruin now forms a great mound of crumbling rock, from twelve to twenty feet in height, overgrown with artimisia, but showing clearly, however, its rectangular structure, adjusted approximately to the four points of the compass. Inside this square was a circle, about sixty feet in diameter, deeply depressed in the centre, and walled. The space between the square and the circle appeared, upon a hasty examination, to have been filled in solidly with a sort of rubble-masonry. Cross-walls were noticed in two places; but whether they were to strengthen the walls or had divided apartments could only be conjectured. That portion of the outer wall remaining standing was some forty feet in length and fifteen in height. The stones were dressed to a uniform size and finish. Upon the same level as this ruin, and extending back, I should think, half a mile, were grouped line after line of foundations and mounds, the great mass of which was of stone, but not one remaining upon another. All the subdivisions were plainly marked, so that one might, with a little care, count every room or building in the settlement. Below the above group, some two hundred yards distant, and communicating by indistinct lines of débris, was another great wall, inclosing a space of about two hundred feet square. Only a small portion was well enough preserved to enable us to judge, with any accuracy, as to its character and dimensions; the greater portion consisting of large ridges flattened down so much as to measure some thirty or more feet across the base, and five or six feet in height. This better preserved portion was some fifty feet in length, seven or eight feet in height, and twenty feet thick, the two exterior surfaces of well-dressed and evenly-laid courses, and the centre packed in solidly with rubble-masonry, looking entirely different from those rooms which had been filled with débris, though it is difficult to assign any reason for its being so massively constructed. It was only a portion of a system extending half a mile out into the plains, of much less importance, however, and now only indistinguishable mounds. The town built about this spring was nearly a square mile in extent, the larger and more enduring buildings in the centre, while all about were scattered and grouped the remnants of smaller structures, comprising the suburbs."

[Sidenote: CAÑON OF THE McELMO.]

Four miles from the spring is the McElmo, a small stream, dry during a greater part of the year. At the point where the party struck this stream, portions of walls, and heaps of débris in rectangular order were scattered in every direction; among which two round towers were noticed, one of them with double walls, like that on the Mancos, but larger, being fifty feet in diameter. Following down the McElmo cañon aboriginal vestiges continue abundant, including cliff-dwellings like those that have been described, but only forty or fifty feet above the valley, and also the square tower shown in first cut. It stands on a square detached block of sandstone forty feet in height. The walls of this building were still fifteen feet high in some places, and there were also traces of walls about the base of the rock. Another double-walled round tower fifty feet in diameter found near the one last named is shown in the second cut.

[Sidenote: RUINS ON THE McELMO.]

Still further down the cañon, across the boundary line into Utah, ruins continue abundant. A red sandstone butte standing in the middle of the valley, one hundred feet high and three hundred long, has traces of masonry on its summit, apparently intended to form a level platform, and on one side, at mid-height, the structures shown in the cut. The upper wall is eighteen feet long and twelve feet high, and the blocks composing it are described as more regularly cut than any before seen. The only access to the summit of the butte was by climbing through the window of the building. Other remains, including many circular depressions of considerable depth, and a square tower with one round corner, are scattered about near the base of this butte, or cristone. The next cut shows one of the cave-dwellings near by, formed by walling up the front of a recess in the cliff.

[Sidenote: ABORIGINAL TRADITION]

The tradition relating to the whole, and particularly to this locality, obtained by Capt. Moss from one of the old men among the Moquis, is rendered by Mr Ingersoll as follows:--"Formerly the aborigines inhabited all this country we had been over as far west as the head waters of the San Juan, as far north as the Rio Dolores, west some distance into Utah, and south and south-west throughout Arizona, and on down into Mexico. They had lived there from time immemorial--since the earth was a small island, which augmented as its inhabitants multiplied. They cultivated the valley, fashioned whatever utensils and tools they needed, very neatly and handsomely out of clay and wood and stone, not knowing any of the useful metals, built their homes and kept their flocks and herds in the fertile river bottoms, and worshiped the sun. They were an eminently peaceful and prosperous people, living by agriculture rather than by the chase. About a thousand years ago, however, they were visited by savage strangers from the North, whom they treated hospitably. Soon these visits became more frequent and annoying. Then their troublesome neighbors--ancestors of the present Utes--began to forage upon them, and at last to massacre them and devastate their farms; so, to save their lives at least, they built houses high upon the cliffs, where they could store food and hide away till the raiders left. But one Summer the invaders did not go back to their mountains as the people expected, but brought their families with them and settled down. So driven from their homes and lands, starving in their little niches on the high cliffs, they could only steal away during the night, and wander across the cheerless uplands. To one who has traveled these steppes, such a flight seems terrible, and the mind hesitates to picture the suffering of the sad fugitives.

"At the christone they halted and probably found friends, for the rocks and caves are full of the nests of these human wrens and swallows. Here they collected, erected stone fortifications and watch-towers, dug reservoirs in the rocks to hold a supply of water, which in all cases is precarious in this latitude, and once more stood at bay. Their foes came, and for one long month fought and were beaten back, and returned day after day to the attack as merciless and inevitable as the tide. Meanwhile the families of the defenders were evacuating and moving south, and bravely did their protectors shield them till they were all safely a hundred miles away. The besiegers were beaten back and went away. But the narrative tells us that the hollows of the rocks were filled to the brim with the mingled blood of conquerors and conquered, and red veins of it ran down into the cañon. It was such a victory as they could not afford to gain again, and they were glad when the long fight was over to follow their wives and little ones to the South. There in the deserts of Arizona, on well-nigh unapproachable isolated bluffs, they built new towns, and their few descendants--the Moquis--live in them to this day, preserving more carefully and purely the history and veneration of their forefathers, than their skill or wisdom." One watch-tower in this region was built on a block of sandstone that had rolled down and lodged on the very brink of a precipice overlooking the whole valley.

[Sidenote: HOVENWEEP RUINS.]

From the McElmo Mr Jackson and his party struck off westward to a small stream called the Hovenweep, eight or ten miles distant. Here they found a ruined town, of which a general view is given in the cut. Mr Jackson's description is as follows: "The stream referred to sweeps the foot of a rocky sandstone ledge, some forty or fifty feet in height, upon which is built the highest and better-preserved portions of the settlement. Its semicircular sweep conforms to the ledge; each little house of the outer circle being built close upon its edge. Below the level of these upper houses, some ten or twelve feet, and within the semicircular sweep, were seven distinctly-marked depressions, each separated from the other by rocky débris, the lower or first series probably of a small community-house. Upon either flank, and founded upon rocks, were buildings similar in size and in other respects to the large ones on the line above. As paced off, the upper or convex surface measured one hundred yards in length. Each little apartment was small and narrow, averaging six feet in width and eight feet in length, the walls being eighteen inches in thickness. The stones of which the entire group was built were dressed to nearly uniform size and laid in mortar. A peculiar feature here was in the round corners, one at least appearing upon nearly every little house. They were turned with considerable care and skill; being two curves, all the corners were solidly bound together and resisted the destroying influences the longest." The following cut presents a ground plan of this Hovenweep Pueblo town, and terminates the account of one of the most interesting antiquarian explorations of modern times.

I append a few brief quotations from the diary of Padres Dominguez and Escalante, who penetrated probably as far as Utah Lake in early times, referring to three places where ruins were seen, two of which cannot readily be located. On the Dolores River "on the southern bank of the river, on a height, there was anciently a small settlement of the same plan as those of the Indians of New Mexico, as is shown by the ruins which we examined." A ruin is also located on this river at the southern bend, on the U. S. map of 1868. On the Rio de San Cosme, "we saw near by a ruin of a very ancient town, in which were fragments of metates, and pottery. The form of the town was circular as shown by the ruins now almost entirely leveled to the ground." In the cañon of Santa Delfina "towards the south, there is quite a high cliff, on which we saw rudely painted three shields, and a spear-head. Lower down on the north side we saw another painting which represented in a confused manner two men fighting, for which reason we named it the Cañon Pintado."[XII-44]

* * * * *

In Idaho and Montana I have no record of ancient remains, save a cliff at Pend d'Oreille Lake, on which are painted in bright colors, images of men, beasts, and pictures of unknown import. The natives are said to regard the painted rock with feelings of great superstition and dread, regarding the figures as the work of a race that preceded their own in the country.[XII-45]

* * * * *

In Oregon aboriginal remains, so far as reported, are hardly more abundant. The artist of the U. S. Exploring Expedition sketched three specimens of cliff-inscriptions on the Columbia River, which are shown in the cut. Mr Pickering thinks that the figures present some analogies to the sculptures reported by Humboldt on the Orinoco.[XII-46] Mr Abbot noted "a few rude pictures of men and animals scratched on the rocks" of Mptolyas cañon.[XII-47] Lord speaks of little piles of stones about natural pillars of conglomerate, on Wychus Creek, but these were doubtless the work of modern Snake Indians, who left the heaps in honor of the spirits represented by the pillars.[XII-48] A gigantic human jaw is reported to have been dug up near Jacksonville in 1862;[XII-49] and finally Lewis and Clarke found a village of the Echeloots built "near a mound about thirty feet above the common level, which has some remains of houses on it, and bears every appearance of being artificial."[XII-50]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: ANTIQUITIES OF WASHINGTON.]

In Washington, besides some shell ornaments and arrow-heads of flint and other hard stone dug by Mr Lord from a gravel bank near the old Fort Walla Walla, and some rude figures mostly representing men carved and afterwards painted on a perpendicular rock between the Yakima and Pisquouse, pointed out by a native to Mr Gibbs,[XII-51] there seem to be remains of antiquity in only two localities. The first are the mounds on Bute Prairie, south of Olympia. They were first found, or mentioned, by Wilkes in the U. S. Exploring Expedition, in 1841, who describes them as thousands in number arranged in fives like the 'five spots' on a playing card, formed by scraping together the surface earth, about thirty feet in diameter and six or seven feet high. Three of them were opened, but proved to contain nothing but a pavement of round stones in the centre and at the bottom, resting on the subsoil of red gravel. The natives said that the medicine men in later times were wont to gather herbs from their surface, as being more potent to work their cures than those growing elsewhere. Since Wilkes' visit the newspapers have reported the discovery of a large mound at the south end of the prairie, twenty-five miles from Olympia, which is three hundred feet high and nine hundred feet in diameter at the base. These later reports state also that all the small mounds opened in recent times have been found to contain remains of pottery and "other curious relics, evidently the work of human hands."[XII-52]

The second locality where remains are found is on the lower Yakima River, where Mr Stephens saw an earth-work consisting of two concentric circles of earth about three feet high with a ditch between them. The outer circle is eighty yards in diameter, and within the inner one are about twenty cellars, or excavations, thirty feet across and three feet deep, like the cellars of modern native houses scattered over the country without, however, any enclosing circles. These works are located on a terrace about fifteen feet high, bounded on either side by a gulley.[XII-53]

* * * * *

In British Columbia, some sculptured stones are reported to have been found at Nootka Sound, in which a fancied resemblance to the Aztec Calendar-Stone was noticed; also during the voyage of the 'Sutil y Mexicana,' a wooden plank was found on the coast bearing painted figures, which I have copied in the cut, although I do not know that the plank has any claims to be considered a relic of antiquity.[XII-54]

[Sidenote: DEANS' EXPLORATIONS.]

Other British Columbian antiquities consist of shell mounds, burial mounds, and earth-works, chiefly confined to Vancouver Island, and known to me through the investigations and writings of Mr James Deans. Mr Deans has lived long in the country, is perfectly familiar with it and its natives, and has given particular attention to the subject of antiquities. He makes no great pretensions as a writer, but has made notes of his discoveries from time to time, and has furnished his manuscripts for my use under the title of Ancient Remains in Vancouver Island and British Columbia. Like other explorers, he has not been able to resist the temptation to theorize without sufficient data on questions of ethnology and the origin of the American aborigines, but his speculations do not diminish the value of his explorations, and are far from being as absurd as those of many authors who are much better known.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: VANCOUVER ISLAND.]

Burial mounds on Vancouver Island are of two classes, according as they are constructed chiefly of sand and gravel or of stones. One of the first class opened by Mr Deans in 1871, will illustrate the construction of all. It was located on the second terrace from the sea, the terraces having nearly perpendicular banks of fifty and sixty feet respectively. By a carefully cut drift through the centre, it was ascertained to have been made in the following manner. First, a circle sixteen feet in diameter was marked out, and the top soil cleared off within the circle; then a basin-shaped hole, six feet in diameter, smaller at the bottom than at the top, was dug in the centre, in which the skull, face down, and the larger unburned bones were placed and covered with six inches of earth. On the layer of earth rested a large flat stone, on which were heaped up loose stones, the heap extending about a foot beyond the circumference of the central hole. Outside of this heap, on the surface, a space two feet wide extending round the whole circumference was sprinkled with ashes, and contained a few bones also. Outside of this space again, large stones two or three feet long were set up in the ground like pillars, five feet apart, round the circumference; and finally the earth dug from the central hole, or receptacle for the bones, was thrown into the outer circle, and gravel and sand added to the whole until the mound was five feet high, having a rounded form. Four smaller mounds, six and ten feet in diameter, were opened in the same group, showing the same mode of construction, but somewhat less order.

The second class, or stone mounds, which are much more numerous than those of earth, differ but little from the others in their construction, except that the final additions to the mound were of stones instead of earth, and the stones about the circumference were flat and set up close together. A piece of quartz sometimes accompanies the bones, but no other relics are found. When the skeleton is deposited face down, as is usually the case, the skull is placed toward the south, or when in a sitting position, it faces the south, seeming in some cases to have been burned where it sat. In a few instances the skeleton, when it was but little burned, was lying on the left side. The human bones invariably crumbled at a touch, and the author states that this method of burial is altogether unknown to the present inhabitants, who say their ancestors found them as they are.

The mounds are often overgrown with large pine, arbutus, or oak trees; in one case an oak had forced its way up through the stones in its growth, reached its full size, decayed, and the stones had fallen back over the stump. They are often in groups, and in such cases the central one is always most carefully constructed, and a remarkable circumstance is that sometimes the surrounding heaps contain only children's bones. Of course this suggests a sacrifice of children or slaves at a chief's funeral, although there may be some other explanation. Some stones weighing a ton are found over the human remains. Traces of cedar bark or boards are found in some of the cairns, in which the bones were apparently enclosed; and in a few others a small empty chamber was formed over the flat covering stone.

Near Comox, one hundred and thirty miles north-west of Victoria, a group of mounds were examined in 1872-3, and found to be built of sea sand and black mold, mixed with some shells. They were from five to fifty yards in circumference. In one by the side of a very large skull was deposited a piece of coal; and in another with a very peculiar flattened skull was a child's tooth. Both these skulls are said to have been covered with baked clay, and are now in the collection of the Society of Natural History in Montreal. One mound in this vicinity is fifty feet high and of oval shape. In its centre only a few feet below the surface were found burnt skeletons of children not over twelve years old, which seemed to have been enclosed in a box of cedar--of which only a brown dust remains--and covered with two feet of stones and one foot of shells. There is a spring of fine water some fifty yards from this mound, of which, from superstitious motives no Indian will drink. One rectangular cairn, ten by twelve feet, was found, but even in this the central receptacle was circular. The body in this mound showed no signs of burning, the head pointed northward, and a pencil-shaped stone sharp at both ends was deposited with the human remains.

* * * * *

Shell mounds are described as very abundant throughout Vancouver Island, and also on the mainland, and all are composed of species of shells still common in the coast waters. One at Comox covers three acres, and is from two to fourteen feet deep. The relics discovered in mounds of this class include stone hammers; arrow-points of flint, slate, and of a hard green stone; spear-heads, knives, needles, and awls, of stone and bone, one of the knives being sixteen inches long and of whale-bone; bone wedges, sometimes grooved; and finally stone mortars, comparatively few in number, since acorns and seeds were not apparently a favorite article of food. Human skeletons also occur in the shell mounds. At Comox a skeleton is said to have been found with a bone knife broken off in one of the bones. A shell bracelet was taken from a mound at Esquimalt; and from another was dug a stone dish or paint-pot, carved to represent a man holding a mountain sheep. The man was the handle on one side, the sheep's head on the other, and the cup was hollowed out in the sheep's back. Mr Deans believes he can distinguish two distinct types of skulls in Vancouver Island--the 'long-headed' in the older cairns, and the 'broad-headed' in the shell mounds and modern graves: and this distinction is independent of artificial flattening, which it seems was practiced in a majority of cases on skulls of both types.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: EARTH-WORKS.]

In addition to the mounds, Mr Deans states that earth-works very similar to those found in the eastern states are found at many localities in British Columbia. Indeed, he has sent me several plans, cut from Squier's work on the antiquities of New York, which by a simple change in the names of creeks and in the scale would represent equally well the north-western works. At Beacon Hill, near Victoria, a point one hundred feet high extends three hundred feet into the sea; an embankment with a ditch still six feet deep, stretches across on the land side and protects the approach; there are low mounds on the enclosed area, the remnants of ancient dwellings, and down the steep banks are heaps of shells, with ashes, bones of sea-fowl, deer, elk, and bears, among which are some spear and arrow points, needles, etc. On the summit of Beacon Hill, near by, are burial cairns of the usual type.

Another earth-work was examined by Mr Deans at Baines Sound and Deep Bay. This was an oval embankment surrounded at the base by a ditch, close to the water on the bay side, but now seventy yards from high-water mark on the side next the sound, although originally at the water edge. From the bottom of the ditch to the top of the embankment or mound is forty feet, and at the summit a parapet bank now four feet high encloses an area of over an acre. On the sound side is an opening from which a road runs down the slope of the mound and across the ditch by a kind of earthen bridge. Excavation showed a depth of nine feet of shells, ashes, and black loam. Many burial mounds are scattered about which have not been opened.

I am inclined to regard Mr Deans' reports as trustworthy, although of course additional authorities are required before the accuracy of his observations respecting the burial mounds, and the existence of earthworks bearing a strong resemblance, as he claims, to those of the eastern states can be fully accepted. Respecting the mounds I quote in a note from Mr Forbes, the only other authority I have been able to find on the subject.[XII-55]

In Alaska I find no record of any antiquities whatever, although many curious specimens of aboriginal art, made by the natives still inhabiting the country since the coming of Europeans, have been brought away by travelers. Cook saw in the country several artificial stone hillocks, which seemed to him of great antiquity, but he also noted that each native added a stone to burial heaps on passing; and Schewyrin and Durnew found on one of the Aleutian Islands three round copper plates bearing letters and leaf-work, said to have been thrown up by the sea; but I suppose there is no evidence that they were of aboriginal origin.[XII-56]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: CONCLUSION.]

Thus have I gone over the whole extent of the Pacific States from the southern isthmus to Bering Strait, carefully examining, so far as written records could enable me to do so, every foot of this broad territory, in search for the handiwork of its aboriginal inhabitants. Practically I have given in the preceding pages all that has been written on the subject. Before a perfect account of all that the Native Races have left can be written, before material relics can reveal all they have to tell about the peoples whose work they are, a long and patient work of exploration and study must be performed--a work hardly commenced yet even in the thickly populated centres of old world learning, and still less advanced naturally in the broad new fields and forests of the Far West. In this volume the general reader may find an accurate and comprehensive if not a very fascinating picture of all that aboriginal art has produced; the student of ethnological topics may found his theories on all that is known respecting any particular monument here spread before him, rather than on a partial knowledge derived by long study from the accounts in works to which he has access, contradicted very likely in other works not consulted,--and many a writer has subjected himself to ridicule by resting an important part of his favorite theory on a discovery by Smith, which has been proved an error or a hoax by Jones and Brown; the antiquarian student may save himself some years of hard labor in searching between five hundred and a thousand volumes for information to which he is here guided directly, even if he be unwilling to take his information at second hand; and finally, the explorer who proposes to examine a certain section of the country, may acquaint himself by a few hours' reading with all that previous explorers have done or failed to do, and by having his attention specially called to their work will be able to correct their errors and supply what they have neglected.

If the work in this volume shall prove to have been sufficiently well done to serve, in the manner indicated above, as a safe foundation for systematic antiquarian research in the future, the author's aim will be realized and his labor amply repaid.

FOOTNOTES:

[XII-1] 'Since the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, down to the present moment, relics of a lost race have been exhumed from beneath the surface of terra firma in various parts of the continent. While every section of the United States has produced more or less of these ancient remnants, California has, perhaps, yielded more in proportion to the extent of territory, than any other part of the Union.' Carpenter, in Hesperian, vol. v., p. 357.

[XII-2] Brasseur de Bourbourg, Hist. Nat. Civ., tom. i., p. 179; San Francisco Evening Bulletin, Feb. 11, 1862; Cal. Farmer, Dec. 14, 1860.

[XII-3] Blake, in Pac. R. R. Rept., vol. v., p. 117.

[XII-4] San Francisco Evening Bulletin, Feb. 11, 1862.

[XII-5] Whipple, Ewbank, and Turner, in Pac. R. R. Rept., vol. iii., p. 42.

[XII-6] Blake, in Pac. R. R. Rept., vol. v., pp. 56-7; Cal. Farmer, March 28, 1862, Dec. 21, 1860. Also pottery, painted and carved cliff-inscriptions, and lines of large stones on the hill-tops. Alta California, July, 1860.

[XII-7] San Francisco Evening Bulletin, Feb. 11, 1862. 'On the South Tule river, twelve miles from the valley, is what is called the Painted Rock--a smooth flat rock horizontally supported by perpendicular walls on either side about seven feet from the ground, with a surface of 200 square feet smooth and level on the walled sides on which is painted in no very artistic style, representations of animals, reptiles, and birds, and rude paintings of men, women, and children. The painting has without doubt been done by the present race of Indians. None of the Indians now living, however, have any knowledge or tradition by whom or when it was done. This rock and the remains of their habitations in many localities on the different streams, are the only indications of their long occupancy of this valley.' Maltby (Indian Agent at Tule River), letter of Aug. 10, 1872, MS. Painted figures in a large cave near the hot springs of Tularcitos hills, east of Monterey; also on headwaters of the San Juan or Estrella creek. Cal. Farmer, April 5, 1860.

[XII-8] Schumacher, Some Articles found in Ancient Graves of California, MSS., presented by the author.

[XII-9] Taylor's Indianology, in Cal. Farmer, Jan. 17, 1862, March 9, 1860.

[XII-10] San Francisco Evening Bulletin, Jan. 22, 1864; _Cal. Farmer_, May 23, 1862, March 6, 1863; Carvalho's Incid. of Trav., p. 249; Saxon's Golden Gate, p. 126; Wimmel, Californien, p. 13.

[XII-11] San Francisco Evening Bulletin, Feb. 11, 1862; Cal. Farmer, March 28, 1862, March 6, 1863.

[XII-12] Lord's Nat., vol. i., p. 209. 'A quantity of round stones, evidently from the brook, was found in a passage with a number of skeletons; the destruction of life having been caused undoubtedly by the sudden caving in of the earth, burying the unskilled savages in the midst of their labors.' Pioneer, vol. ii., p. 221.

[XII-13] Taylor, in Cal. Farmer, April 20, 1860; Wimmel, Californien, pp. 27-8.

[XII-14] 'In 1857, Dr. C. F. Winslow sent to the Boston Natural History Society, the fragment of a human cranium found in the "pay-dirt" in connection with the bones of the mastodon and elephant, one hundred and eighty feet below the surface of Table Mountain, California. Dr. Winslow has described to me all the particulars in reference to this "find," and there is no doubt in his mind, that the remains of man and the great quadrupeds were deposited contemporaneously.' Foster's Pre-Hist. Races, pp. 52-4.

[XII-15] Elephant's tusk five or six feet long, found in 1860, ten feet below the surface, and fifteen inches above the ledge in auriferous sand; also, five years before, many human skeletons, one of which was twice the usual size, with stone mortars and pestles. Sonora Democrat, Dec. 1860; Cal. Farmer, Dec. 21, 1860; San Francisco Evening Bulletin, Jan. 22, 1864.

[XII-16] Other reported relics in Tuolumne county are as follows:--A tooth of an animal of the elephant specie, twelve feet below surface, under an oak three feet in diameter, at Twist's Ranch, near Mormon Creek, found in 1851. Hutchings' Cal. Mag., vol. ii., p. 248, with cut. 'A tolerably well executed representation of a deer's foot, about six inches long, cut out of slate, and a tube about an inch in diameter, and five inches in length, made of the same material, and a small, flat, rounded piece of some very hard flinty rock, with a square hole in the center. They are all highly polished, and perfectly black with age. What gives a peculiar interest to these relics is the fact that they were found thirty feet below the surface, and over the spot where they were found a huge pine, the growth of centuries, has reared its lofty head.' These relics were found at Don Pedro's Bar in 1861. Cal. Farmer, June 14, 1861, from Columbia Times, May, 1861. 'An Indian arrow-head, made of stone, as at the present day, was lately picked up from the solid cement at Buckeye Hill, at a depth of 80 feet from the surface, and about one foot from the bed-rock.' Taylor, in Cal. Farmer, Nov. 9, 1860; Hist. Mag., vol. v., p. 52; San Francisco Evening Bulletin, Oct. 6, 1864.

[XII-17] 'An immense number of skulls were found by Captain Moraga in the vicinity of a creek, which, from that circumstance, was called Calaveras, or the river of skulls. The story was, that the tribes from the Sierras came down to the valley to fish for Salmon. To this the Valley Indians objected, and, as the conflict was irrepressible, a bloody battle was fought, and three thousand dead bodies were left to whiten the banks with their bones. The county in which the river rises assumed its name.' Tuthill's Hist. Cal., p. 303.

[XII-18] 1, Black lava, 40 feet; 2, gravel, 3 feet; 3, light lava, 30 feet; 4, gravel, 5 feet; 5, light lava, 15 feet; 6, gravel, 25 feet; 7, dark brown lava, 9 feet; 8, (in which the skull was found) gravel, 5 feet; 9, red lava, 4 feet; 10, red gravel, 17 feet. Cal. Acad. Nat. Sciences, vol. iii., pp. 277-8. 'This skull, admitting its authenticity, carries back the advent of man to the Pliocene Epoch, and is therefore older than the stone implements of the drift-gravel of Abbeville and Amiens, or the relics furnished by the cave-dirt of Belgium and France.' Foster's Pre-Hist. Races, pp. 52-4.

[XII-19] 'It was late in the month of August (the 19th), 1849, that the gold diggers at one of the mountain diggings called Murphy's, were surprised, in examining a high barren district of mountain, to find the abandoned site of an antique mine. "It is evidently," says a writer, "the work of ancient times." The shaft discovered is two hundred and ten feet deep. Its mouth is situated on a high mountain. It was several days before preparations could be completed to descend and explore it. The bones of a human skeleton were found at the bottom. There were also found an altar for worship and other evidences of ancient labor.... No evidences have been discovered to denote the era of this ancient work. There has been nothing to determine whether it is to be regarded as the remains of the explorations of the first Spanish adventurers, or of a still earlier period. The occurrence of the remains of an altar, looks like the period of Indian worship.' Schoolcraft's Arch., vol. i., p. 105.

[XII-20] Skulls obtained from a cave in Calaveras County, by Prof. Whitney, and sent to the Smithsonian Institute. They showed no differences from the present Indians, who probably used the cave as a burial place. Smithsonian Rept., 1867, p. 406. Petrified mammoth thigh-bone, three and a half feet long, two and a quarter feet in circumference, weighing fifty-four pounds, found at a depth of thirty-five feet, at Murphy's Flat. Cal. Farmer, May 23, 1862, from San Andrés Independent. An arrastra or mill, such as is now used in grinding quartz, with a quantity of crushed stone five feet below surface near Porterfield. Id., Nov. 30, 1860, May 16, 1862. At Calaveritas large mortars two or three feet in diameter, with pestles, in the ancient bed of the river; at Vallecito human skulls in post-diluvial strata over fifty feet deep; at Mokelumne Hill obsidian spear-heads; at Murphy's mammoth bones forty feet deep. Pioneer, vol. iii., p. 41; San Francisco Herald, Nov. 24, from Calaveras Chronicle.

[XII-21] San Francisco Evening Bulletin, Jan. 22, 1864; Wimmel, Californien, p. 13.

[XII-22] 'An ancient skillet, made of lava, hard as iron, circular, with a spout and three legs, was washed out of a deep claim at Forest Hill, a few days since. It will be sent to the State Fair, as a specimen of crockery used in the mines several thousand years ago.' Grass Valley National, Sept. 1861, in San Francisco Evening Bulletin, Jan. 22, 1864. Same implement apparently found at Coloma in 1851, 15 feet below the surface, under an oak-tree not less than 1000 years old. Carpenter, in Hesperian, vol. v., p. 358.

[XII-23] 'J. E. Squire, informs me that a strange inscription is found on the rocks a short distance below Meadow Lake. The rocks appear to have been covered with a black coating, and the hieroglyphics or characters cut through the layer and into the rock. This inscription was, probably, not made by the present tribe inhabiting the lower part of Nevada County. It may have been done by Indians from the other side of the mountains, who came to the lake region near the summit to fish; or it may have still a stranger origin.' Directory Nevada, 1857. A human fore-arm bone with crystallized marrow, imbedded in a petrified cedar 63 feet deep, at Red Dog. Grass Valley National, in San Francisco Evening Bulletin, Jan. 22, 1864.

[XII-24] Two hand mills (mortars) taken from the bank of the Yuba River at a depth of 16 feet. 'They are all made from a peculiar kind of stone, which has the appearance of a combination of granite and burr-stone.' The pestles are usually of gneiss. Taylor, in Cal. Farmer, Dec. 14, 1860, May 9, 1862. At McGilvary's, Trinity Co., was discovered in 1856, 10 feet below the surface, 'an Indian skull encased in a sea shell, five by eight inches, inside of which were worked figures and representations, both singular and beautiful, inlaid with a material imperishable, resembling gold, which would not, in nice, ingenious workmanship, disgrace the sculptor's art of the present day.' San Francisco Evening Bulletin, Jan. 22, 1864, from Trinity Democrat, 1856. Slate tubes dug up near Oroville. Taylor, in Cal. Farmer, Nov. 2, 1860. A collar-bone taken from the gravel of the 'great blue lead' not less than 1000 feet below the forest-covered surface, in 1857. Hutchings' Cal. Mag., vol. ii., p. 417. Mammoth bones at Columbia, Stanislaus Co., 35 feet deep; and a hyena's tooth at Volcano, Amador Co., at a depth of 60 feet. Pioneer, vol. iii., p. 41. Some 30 different instances of the discovery of fossil remains by miners have been noted in the California papers since 1851. Cal. Farmer, May 23, 1862; also four well-known cases of giant human remains. Id., March 20, 1863. An immense block of porphyry whose sides and top are carved with rude mystic figures, in the Truckee Valley. 'I noticed one cluster of figures in a circle, having in its centre a rude representation of the sun, surrounded by about a dozen other figures, one of which exhibited a quite truthful representation of a crab, another like an anchor with a large ring, and still another representing an arrow passing through a ring.' Marysville Democrat, April, 1861, in Cal. Farmer, June 14, 1861.

[XII-25] Foster's Pre-Hist. Races, pp. 54-6.

[XII-26] In Cal. Farmer, March 6, 1863.

[XII-27] Capron's Hist. Cal., p. 75.

[XII-28] Martinez Contra Costa Gazette.

[XII-29] Smithsonian Rept., 1869, p. 36.

[XII-30] Foster's Pre-Hist. Races, pp. 163-4.

[XII-31] San Francisco Evening Bulletin, Oct. 19, 1869.

[XII-32] Rae's Westward by Rail, pp. 162-4.

[XII-33] Salt Lake Telegraph, quoted in San Francisco Evening Bulletin, Oct. 9, 1868.

[XII-34] Remy and Brenchley's Journey, vol. ii., pp. 364-5.

[XII-35] Carvalho's Incid. of Trav., pp. 206-7.

[XII-36] Foster's Pre-Hist. Races, p. 152.

[XII-37] Schoolcraft's Arch., vol. iii., p. 493.

[XII-38] Smithsonian Rept., 1867, p. 403.

[XII-39] Farnham's Life in Cal., pp. 316-17.

[XII-40] Foster's Pre-Hist. Races, p. 152.

[XII-41] Taylor, in Cal. Farmer, June 22, 1860.

[XII-42] Bulletin of the U. S. Geol. and Geog. Survey of the Territories, 2d series, No. 1., Washington, 1875.

[XII-43] Ingersoll gives these dimensions as 33 and 22 feet respectively, and speaks of three equi-distant doorways, apparently alluding to the same structure.

[XII-44] Doc. Hist. Mex., série ii., tom. i., pp. 391-2, 434-5, 444-5.

[XII-45] Stevens, in Pac. R. R. Rept., vol. xii., p. 150; Id., in Ind. Aff. Rept., 1854, p. 222.

[XII-46] Pickering's Races, in U. S. Ex. Ex., vol. ix., pp. 41-2.

[XII-47] Abbot, in Pac. R. R. Rept., vol. vi., p. 94.

[XII-48] Lord's Nat., vol. i., p. 296.

[XII-49] Taylor, in Cal. Farmer, March 20, 1863; San Francisco Evening Bulletin, Jan. 22, 1864.

[XII-50] Lewis and Clarke's Trav., p. 369.

[XII-51] Lord's Nat., vol. ii., pp. 102-3, 260; Gibbs, in Pac. R. R. Rept., vol. i., p. 411.

[XII-52] U. S. Ex. Ex., vol. iv., pp. 334, 441-2; Foster's Pre-Hist. Races, pp. 151-2; Portland Herald, Sept. 27, 1872; San Francisco Morning Call, Sept. 28, 1872.

[XII-53] Stevens, in Ind. Aff. Rept., 1854, pp. 232-3; Id., in Schoolcraft's Arch., vol. vi., pp. 612-13; Gibbs, in Pac. R. R. Rept., vol. i., pp. 408-9; Taylor, in Cal. Farmer, May 8, 1863.

[XII-54] Buschmann, Spr. N. Mex. u. der Westseite des b. Nordamer., p. 333; Sutil y Mexicana, Viage, p. 73.

[XII-55] 'In such localities, the general feature of the landscape is very similar to many parts of Devonshire, more especially to that on the eastern escarpment of Dartmoor, and the resemblance is rendered the more striking by the numerous stone circles, which lie scattered around.... These stone circles point to a period in ethnological history, which has no longer a place in the memory of man. Scattered in irregular groups of from three or four, to fifty or more, these stone circles are found, crowning the rounded promontories over all the South Eastern end of the Island. Their dimensions vary in diameter from three to eighteen feet; of some, only a simple ring of stones marking the outline now remains. In other instances the circle is not only complete in outline, but is filled in, built up as it were, to a height of three to four feet, with masses of rock and loose stones, collected from amongst the numerous erratic boulders, which cover the surface of the country, and from the gravel of the boulder drift which fills up many of the hollows. These structures are of considerable antiquity, and whatever they may have been intended for, have been long disused, for, through the centre of many, the pine, the oak, and the arbutus have shot up and attained considerable dimensions--a full growth. The Indians when questioned, can give no further account of the matter, than that, "it belonged to the old people," and an examination, by taking some of the largest circles to pieces, and digging beneath, throws no light on the subject. The only explanation to be found, is in the hypothesis, that these were the dwellings of former tribes, who have either entirely disappeared, or whose descendants have changed their mode of living, and this supposition is strengthened by the fact that a certain tribe on the Fraser River, did, till very recently live, in circular beehive shaped houses, built of loose stones, having an aperture in the arched roof for entrance and exit, and that in some localities in upper California the same remains are found, and the same origin assigned to them.' Forbes' Vanc. Isl., p. 3.

[XII-56] Cook's Voy. to Pac., vol. ii., p. 521; Neue Nachrichten, p. 33.

XIII. WORKS OF THE MOUND-BUILDERS

AMERICAN MONUMENTS BEYOND THE LIMITS OF THE PACIFIC STATES -- EASTERN ATLANTIC STATES -- REMAINS IN THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY -- THREE GEOGRAPHICAL DIVISIONS -- CLASSIFICATION OF MONUMENTS -- EMBANKMENTS AND DITCHES -- FORTIFICATIONS -- SACRED ENCLOSURES -- MOUNDS -- TEMPLE-MOUNDS, ANIMAL-MOUNDS, AND CONICAL MOUNDS -- ALTAR-MOUNDS, BURIAL MOUNDS, AND ANOMALOUS MOUNDS -- CONTENTS OF THE MOUNDS -- HUMAN REMAINS -- RELICS OF ABORIGINAL ART -- IMPLEMENTS AND ORNAMENTS OF METAL, STONE, BONE, AND SHELL -- ANCIENT COPPER MINES -- ROCK-INSCRIPTIONS -- ANTIQUITY OF THE MISSISSIPPI REMAINS -- COMPARISONS -- CONCLUSIONS.

[Sidenote: TREATMENT OF FOREIGN REMAINS.]

I announced in an introductory chapter my intention to go in this volume beyond the geographical limits of my field of labor proper, the Pacific States, and to include a sketch of eastern and southern antiquities. I am not sure that this departure from my territory is strictly more necessary or appropriate in this than in the other departments of this work;--that is, that the material relics of the Mississippi Valley and South America have a more direct bearing on the institutions and history of the Native Races of the Pacific, than do the manners and customs, mythology, and language of the South American and eastern tribes. Yet there is this difference, that to have included the whole American continent in the preceding volumes would have required a new collection of material, additional time and research, and an increase of bulk in printed pages, each equal at least to what has been done; and I believe that the original scope of my work, and the bulk of that part of it devoted to the Native Races, is already sufficiently extensive. But in the department of antiquities, making the present volume of uniform size with others of the work, I have, I think, sufficient space and material to justify me in extending my researches beyond the Pacific States; and this seems to me especially desirable by reason of the fact that all the important archæological remains outside of what I term the Pacific States, may be included in the two groups to which my closing chapters are devoted, and the present volume may consequently present some claim to be considered a comprehensive work on American Antiquities.

* * * * *

My treatment of the subject in this and the following chapter will, however, differ considerably from that in those preceding. I have hitherto proceeded geographically from south to north, placing before the reader all the information extant, be it more or less complete, respecting every relic in each locality, and giving besides in every case the source whence the information was obtained. In this manner the notes become a complete bibliographical index to the whole subject, not an unimportant feature, I believe, of this work. In the broad eastern region bordering on the Mississippi and its tributaries, a region thickly inhabited, and thoroughly explored by antiquarians, or at least comparatively so, so numerous are the relics and the localities where they have been found, that to take them up one after another for detailed description would require at least a volume; and these relics, although of great importance, present so little variety in the absence of all architectural monuments, that such a detailed account could hardly fail to become monotonous to a degree unparalleled even in the pages of the present volume. Moreover, the books and other material in my possession, while amply sufficient, I think, to furnish a clear idea of the Mississippi and South American monuments, are of course inadequate to a continuation of the bibliographical feature referred to. For these reasons I deem it best to abandon the elaborate note-system hitherto followed, and shall present a general rather than a detailed view of material relics outside the Pacific States, formed from a careful study of what I believe to be the best authorities, and illustrated by the cuts given in Mr Baldwin's work.[XIII-1]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY.]

Material relics of the aboriginal tribes are found in greater or less abundance throughout the Eastern United States and the Canadas. But those found in New England and the region east of the Alleghanies, extending southward to the Carolinas, may be dismissed in an account so general as the present with the remark that all are evidently the work of the Indian tribes found in possession of the country, many of them evidently and others probably having originated at a time subsequent to the coming of Europeans. But whatever may be decided respecting their antiquity, it may be regarded as absolutely certain that none of them point to the existence of any people of more advanced culture than the red race that came in contact with Europeans. They consist for the most part of traces of Indian villages or camps, burial grounds, small stone-heaps, scattered arrow-heads, and some other rude stone implements.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: CLASSIFICATION OF REMAINS.]

The great Mississippi Valley system of ancient works, consisting of mounds and embankments of earth and stone, erected by the race known as the Mound-builders, extends over a territory bounded in general terms as follows: on the north by the great lakes; on the east by western New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia in the north, but farther south extending to the Atlantic coast and including Florida, Georgia, and part of South Carolina; on the south by the Gulf of Mexico, including Texas according to the general statements of most writers, although I find no definite account of any remains in that state; on the west by an indefinite line extending from the head of Lake Superior through the states of Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Indian Territory, although there are reported some remains farther west, particularly on the upper Missouri, which have not been thoroughly explored. The map in the accompanying cut is intended only to show the reader at a glance the relative position of the states in the territory of the Mound-builders.

Throughout this broad extent of territory, but chiefly on the fertile river-terraces of the Mississippi and its tributaries, the works of the ancient inhabitants are found in great abundance, and may be classified for convenience in description as follows:--I. Embankments of earth or stone, and ditches, often forming enclosures, which are subdivided by their location into, 1st, fortifications, and 2d, sacred enclosures, or such as are supposed to have been connected with religious rites.

II. Mounds of earth or stone, of varying location, size, form, material, and contents; divided by their form into, 1st, 'temple mounds,' of regular outline and large dimensions, having flat summit platforms, and often terraced sides with graded ascents; 2d, 'animal-mounds,' or those resembling in their ground plan the forms of animals, birds, or even human beings; and 3d, conical mounds, which are again subdivided according to their contents into 'altar-mounds' or 'sacrificial mounds,' 'burial mounds,' and 'anomalous mounds,' or such as are of mixed or undetermined character.

III. Minor relics of aboriginal art, for the most part taken from the mounds, including implements and ornaments of metal, stone, shell, and bone.

IV. Ancient mines, and perhaps a few salt-wells which bear marks of having been worked by the aborigines.

V. Rock-inscriptions.

These different classes of remains, although sufficiently uniform in their general character to indicate that the Mound-builders were of one race, living under one grand system of institutions, still show certain variations in the relative predominance of each class in different sections of the territory. The Ohio River and its tributaries would seem to have been in a certain sense the centre of the Mound-builders' power, for here the various forms of enclosures and mounds are most abundant and extensive, and their contents show the highest advancement of aboriginal art. This section, including chiefly the state of Ohio, but also parts of Kentucky, Indiana, Tennessee, Illinois, and Missouri, was the ground embraced in the explorations of Squier and Davis, by far the best authorities on eastern antiquities. In the northern region, on the great lakes, on which Lapham and Pidgeon are the prominent authorities, chiefly in Wisconsin, but also in Michigan, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota, animal-mounds are the prominent feature, the other classes of mounds, and the enclosures, being of comparatively rare occurrence. The animal-mounds occur in the central Ohio region only in a very few instances, and never, so far as is known, in the south. In the southern or gulf states the temple-mounds are more numerous in proportion to other classes than in the north, and enclosures disappear almost altogether. The southern antiquities have, however, been comparatively little explored, Mr Jones' late work referring for the most part only to the state of Georgia.

Throughout the whole region traces of the tribes found by Europeans in possession of the country are found; and besides the three territorial divisions already indicated, it is noted that in the north-east, in western New York and Pennsylvania, the works of the Mound-builders merge so gradually into those of the later tribes, the only relics farther east, that it becomes well-nigh impossible to fix accurately the dividing line.

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[Sidenote: REMAINS IN NEW YORK.]

In many parts of western New York traces are found of Indian fortified camps, surrounded by rows of holes in the ground, which once supported palisades, and in all respects similar to those in use among the Indians of the state in their wars against the whites. There are also found low embankments of earth, or very rarely of small stones, which form enclosures or cut off the approach to the weaker side of some naturally strong position. Such embankments are always on hills, lake or river terraces, or other high places, and are often protected on one or more sides by morasses or by streams with steep banks. Their strong natural position, with due regard to the water supply, carefully planned means of exit, and in many instances graded roads to the water, leaves no doubt of their original design as fortifications, places of refuge and of protection against enemies. The slight height of the embankments would suggest that they were thrown up to support palisades; indeed, traces of these palisades have been found in some cases. The practice of throwing up an embankment at the foot of palisades, although seemingly a very natural one, does not, however, seem to have been noticed among the Indian tribes of New York. In nearly all the enclosures remains of the typical Indian caches are found, with carbonized maize, and traces of wood and bark; and in and around them the sites of Indian lodges or towns are seen, indicated by the presence of decomposed and carbonaceous matter, together with burned stones, charcoal, ashes, bones, pottery, and Indian implements. These circumstances go far to prove that all the New York works, if not built by the Indians, were at least occupied by them after their abandonment by the Mound-builders, from some of whose works they do not differ much except in dimensions and regularity of form.

The enclosures vary in extent from three to four acres, the largest being sixteen acres. The embankments are from one to four feet high, generally accompanied by an exterior ditch;--the highest is seven or eight feet from bottom of ditch to top of embankment. Many such works in a country so long under cultivation have of course disappeared. Mr Squier ascertained the locality of one hundred of them in New York, and estimates the original number at not less than two hundred and fifty.

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The works of the Mound-builders are almost exclusively confined to the fertile valleys still best fitted to support a dense population. The Mississippi and its tributaries have during the progress of the centuries worn down their valleys in three or four successive terraces, which, except the lowest, or latest formed, the ancient peoples chose as the site of their structures, giving the preference in rearing their grandest cities--for cities there must have been--to the terrace plains near the junction of the larger streams. On these plains and their surrounding heights, are found the ancient monuments, generally in groups which include all or many of the classes named above; for it is only for convenience in description that the classification is made; that is, the classification is by no means to any great extent a geographical one. I have already said that Ohio was the centre, apparently, of the Mound-builders' power. Northward, eastward, and perhaps westward from this centre, the works diminish in extent, fortifications become a more prominent feature, and the remaining monuments approximate perceptibly to those of the more barbarous and later peoples. In fact, we find the modifications that might naturally be expected in a frontier country. Southward from the Ohio region down the Mississippi Valley, it is a common remark in the various writings on the subject, that the monuments increase gradually in magnitude and numbers. This statement seems to have originated, partially at least, in the old attempt to trace the path of Aztec migration southward. The only foundation for it is the fact that the class of mounds called temple-mounds are in the south more numerous in proportion to those of the other classes. The largest mound and the most extensive groups are in the north; while the complicated arrangement of sacred enclosures appears but rarely if at all towards the gulf. It is not impossible that more extensive explorations may show that the comparative numbers and size of the large temple-mounds have been somewhat exaggerated. Yet the claims in behalf of Nahua traces in the Mississippi region are much better founded than those that have been urged in other parts of the country; although we have seen that the chain is interrupted in the New Mexican country, and I can find no definite record of temple-mounds in Texas. The total number of mounds in the state of Ohio is estimated by the best authority at ten thousand, while the enclosures were at least fifteen hundred.

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[Sidenote: FORTIFICATIONS.]

I begin with the embankments and enclosures. They are found, almost always in connection with mounds of some class, on the hills overlooking the valleys, and on the ravine-bounded terraces left by the current of rapid streams. The first, or oldest, terraces, with bold banks from fifty to a hundred feet high, furnish the sites of most of the works; on the lower intermediate terraces, whose banks range from ten to thirty feet in height, they are also found, though less frequently than above; while on the last-formed terrace below no monuments whatever have ever been discovered.

The embankments are simply earth, stones, or a mixture of the two, in their natural condition, thrown up from the material which is nearest at hand. There is no instance of walls built of stone that has been hewn or otherwise artificially prepared, of the use of mortar, of even rough stones laid with regularity, of adobes or earth otherwise prepared, or of material brought from any great distance. The material was taken from a ditch that often accompanies the embankment, from excavations or pits in the immediate vicinity, or is scraped up from the surface of the surrounding soil. There is nothing in the present appearance of these works to indicate any difference in their original form from that naturally given to earth-works thrown up from a ditch, with sides as nearly perpendicular as the nature of the material will permit. Of course, any attempt on the part of the builders to give a symmetrical superficial contour to the works would have been long since obliterated by the action of the elements; but nothing now remains to show that they attached any importance whatever to either material or contour. Stone embankments are rarely found, and only in localities where the abundance of the material would naturally suggest its use. In a few instances clay has been obtained at a little distance, or dug from beneath the surface.

[Sidenote: FORTIFIED HILLS.]

Accordingly as they are found on the level plain, or on hill-tops or other strong positions, enclosures are divided into fortifications and sacred enclosures. Of the design of the first class there can be no doubt, and very little respecting many of the second class, although it is very probable that some of the latter had a different purpose, not now understood. Naturally some works occur which have some of the features of both classes. The fortifications are always of irregular form as determined by the nature of the ground.

A fortification at Butler Hill, near Hamilton, Ohio, is shown in the cut. The summit of the hill is two hundred and fifty feet above the river, the enclosing wall is of earth and stones, five feet high, thirty-five feet thick at the base, and unaccompanied by a ditch, although there are some pits which furnished the material of the wall. Two mounds or heaps of rough stones are seen within the enclosure and one without, the stones of all showing marks of fire.

The next cut shows a work at Fort Hill, Ohio, which seems to unite the characters of the two classes of enclosures. It measures twenty-eight hundred by eighteen hundred feet, and is on the second terrace. The wall along the creek side is of stones and clay, four feet high: the other main walls are six feet high and thirty-five feet thick, with an exterior ditch. The walls of the square enclosure at the side are of clay, present some marks of fire, and have no ditch. Mr Squier concludes that this was a fortified town rather than a fort like many others. The walls of the enclosure shown in the following cut, on Paint Creek, Ohio, are of stone, thirteen hundred feet in circumference, and have no ditch. The heaps of stones connected with this work have been exposed to excessive heat, either perhaps by being used as fire signals, or by the burning of wooden structures which they supported. In the works at Fort Ancient, on a mesa two hundred and thirty feet above the Miami River, the embankment is four miles long in an irregular line round the circumference, and in some parts eighteen or twenty feet high. There are also some signs of artificial terraces on the river side of the hill. A line of these defensive works is found in northern Ohio, with which very few regular mounds or sacred enclosures are connected. Pidgeon states that a single line of embankment may be traced for seventeen miles, and that there are three hundred and six miles of embankment fortifications in the state. It is quite probable that these embankments originally bore palisades. They vary in height from three to thirty feet, reckoning from the bottom of the ditch; but this gives only a very imperfect idea of their original dimensions, since in some localities the height has been much more reduced by time than in others, owing to the nature of the material. In hill fortifications the ditch is usually inside the wall, but when the defences guard the approach to a terrace-point, the ditch is always on the outside. The entrances to this class of enclosures are governed by convenience of exit, accessibility of water, and facilities for defence. They are usually guarded by overlapping walls as shown in the cuts that have been presented. Several of the larger fortifications, however, have a large number of entrances, generally at regular intervals, which it is very difficult to account for.

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[Sidenote: SACRED ENCLOSURES.]

Other enclosures are classed as sacred, or pertaining in some way to religious rites, because no other equally satisfactory explanation of their use can be given. That they were in no sense works of defence is evident from their position, almost invariably on the most level spot that could be selected and often overlooked by neighboring elevations. Unlike the fortifications they are regular in form, the square and circle predominating and generally found in conjunction, but the ellipse, rectangle, crescent, and a great variety of other forms being frequent, and several different forms usually occurring together. A square with one or more circles is a frequent combination. The angles and curves are usually if not always perfectly accurate, and the regular, or sacred, enclosures probably outnumber by many the irregular ones, although they are of lesser extent. Enclosed areas of one to fifty acres are common. The groups are of great extent; one at Newark, Ohio, covers an area of nearly four square miles. A remarkable coincidence was noticed by Mr Squier in the dimensions of the square enclosures, five or six of these having been found at long distances from each other, which measured exactly ten hundred and eighty feet square. Circles are, as a rule, smaller than the squares with which they are connected, two hundred to two hundred and fifty feet being a common size. The largest of the enclosures, with an area of some six hundred acres, are those reported in the far west and north-west by early travelers whose reports are not confirmed.

The embankment itself differs from those already described only in being, as a rule, somewhat lower and narrower, although at Newark one is thirty feet high, and in being constructed with less exceptions without the use of stones. The material as before was taken from the surface, ditches, or from pits, which latter are often described as wells, and may in some instances have served as such.

The following cut represents a group at Liberty, Ohio, typical of a large class in the Scioto Valley. The location is on the third terrace, the embankments of earth are not over four feet high, there is no ditch, and the earth seems to have been taken exclusively from pits, which, contrary to the usual custom, are within the enclosure. The square is one of those already spoken of as agreeing exactly in dimensions with others at a distance. Additional dimensions are shown in the cut. The enclosures, both square and round, usually include several mounds. One at Mound City, square with rounded corners, covering thirteen acres, has twenty-four sacrificial mounds within its walls. At Portsmouth, there are four concentric circles, cut by four broad avenues facing, with slight variation, the cardinal points, and having a large terraced and truncated mound in the centre. The banks of one enclosure near Newark measure thirty feet in height from the bottom of the ditch; the usual height is from three to seven feet.

The circles often have an interior ditch; in some cases, as at Circleville and Salem, there are two circular embankments one within the other with a ditch between them; but there is only one instance of an exterior ditch, in the work at Bourneville, Ohio, shown in the first cut. The wall is from eight to ten feet high, and the ditch is shallow. The larger circles have generally a single entrance, which is usually, but not always, on the east. There are numerous small circles from thirty to fifty feet in diameter, found in connection with groups of large enclosures, which have very light embankments and no entrances. These may very likely be the remains of lodges or camps. The larger circles are almost invariably connected with squares or rectangles, which have similar embankments but no ditches. These have very commonly an entrance at each angle and one in the middle of each side, but the larger squares have often many more entrances.

The second cut shows a group of sacred enclosures at Hopeton, Ohio, located on the third terrace. The walls of the rectangle are of a clayey loam, fifty feet thick and twelve feet high, without a ditch. The summit is wide enough for a wagon road. The walls of the circle are somewhat lower and composed of clay differing in color from that found in the vicinity. The two smaller circles have interior ditches. The cut gives a view of the same works as they appear from the east. The parallel embankments in the south are one hundred and fifty feet apart and extend half a mile to the bank of an old river bed. Two hundred paces north of the large circle, and not shown in the cuts, is another circle two hundred and fifty feet in diameter.

The enclosure shown in the next cut is that at Cedar Bank, near Chillicothe, Ohio, and seems to partake somewhat of the nature of a fortification. The west side is naturally protected by the river bank, and the other sides are enclosed by a wall and ditch, each forty feet wide and five to six feet high or deep. The bed of a small stream forms a natural ditch for one half of the eastern side. Within the enclosure in a line with the entrances is a raised platform four feet high, measuring one hundred and fifty by two hundred and fifty feet, with graded ways thirty feet wide, leading to the summit. The parallels outside the enclosure are three or four feet high. The earth-work in Randolph County, Indiana, is sufficiently explained by the cut. This work, like the preceding, would seem to have been constructed partially with a view to defence. The work shown in the next cut is part of a group in Pike County, Ohio. The circle is three hundred feet in diameter.

[Sidenote: EARTH-WORKS.]

The different enclosures of a group are often connected by parallel embankments. Similar embankments protect the roads leading from fortified works to the river bank or other source of water. Many are not connected with any enclosures, though in their vicinity; and in such cases they are very slight, from seven hundred to eight hundred feet long, and sixty to eighty feet apart. Some of these parallels were very likely raised roads instead of enclosed ones, as on the Little Miami River, where the embankments extend about a quarter of a mile from two mounds, forming a semicircle round a third, being a rod wide and only three feet high. At Madison, Louisiana, there is a raised way three feet high, seventy-five feet wide, and two thousand seven hundred feet long, with broad excavations three feet in depth extending on both sides for about two thirds its length. Two parallel banks at Piketon, Ohio, are shown in the cut. They are ten hundred and eighty feet long, two hundred and three feet apart at one end, and two hundred and fifteen at the other; the height on the outside being from five to eleven feet, but on the inside twenty-two feet at one end. A modern carriage road now runs between the mounds. From the end of one of them a slight embankment extends twenty-five hundred and eighty feet to a group of mounds.

[Sidenote: DITCHES AND MOUNDS.]

In the north ditches seem never to occur, except with embankments; but in the south, where embankments are rarely if ever found, ditches, or moats, are sometimes employed to enclose other works, especially in Georgia. Such a moat at Carterville communicates with the river, extends to a pond perhaps artificial, and has two reservoirs, each of an acre, connected with it. The mounds and other monuments are located between the river and the moat. I have already spoken of the pits which furnished earth for the various works, sometimes called wells; some wells of another class, found in the bed of streams and supplied with round covers, were found by Mr Squier to be the natural casts of septaria, or imbedded nodules of hard clay.

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The mound or heap form is the one most common in American antiquities as in those of nearly the whole world. Mounds are found throughout the Mississippi region as before bounded, and beyond its limits in many directions they merge into the small stone heaps which are known to have been thrown up by the Indians at road-crossings and over graves. They are most numerous in the upper Mississippi and Ohio valleys, in the same region where the embankments also most abound. As I have said, the number in Ohio alone is estimated at more than ten thousand. They are almost always found in connection with embankments and other works of the different classes described, but they are also very numerous in regions where enclosures rarely or never occur, as in Wisconsin and in the gulf states. From the central region about the junction of the Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio, they gradually diminish in numbers in every direction, and also in size except perhaps towards the south. They are found in valley and plain, on hill-side and hill-top; isolated and in groups; within and without enclosures; and at long distances from other works. By their location alone no satisfactory classification could possibly be made; still, when considered in connection with their contents and other circumstances, their location assumes importance. By their forms the tumuli are classified as temple-mounds, animal-mounds, and conical mounds.

[Sidenote: TEMPLE-MOUNDS.]

Temple-mounds always have level summit platforms, and are supposed to have once supported wooden structures, although no traces of such temples remain. A graded road straight or winding, of gentler slope than the sides of the mound, often leads to the top; and in many cases the sides have one or more terraces. One in Tennessee, four hundred and fifty feet in diameter and fifty feet high, has ten clearly marked terraces, except on the east. The bases assume a variety of forms, square, rectangular, octagonal, round, oval, etc., but the curves and angles are always extremely regular. In the north they are usually within enclosures, but in the south, where they are most numerous, they have no embankments and are often arranged in groups, the smaller about a larger central mound. In size the temple-mounds vary from a height of five feet and a diameter of forty feet to ninety feet in altitude and a base-area of eight acres. In respect to form, material, structure, contents, and probable use they admit of no subdivision. Like the embankments they are made of earth, or rarely of stones, simply heaped up, with little care in the choice of material and none at all in the order of deposit.

The largest mound of this, or in fact of any, class is that at Cahokia, Illinois. Its base measures seven hundred by five hundred feet. The height is ninety feet. On one end above mid-height is a terrace platform one hundred and sixty by three hundred and fifty feet, and the summit area is two hundred by four hundred and fifty feet, or nearly two acres, the base covering over eight acres. On the top a small conical mound was found, with some human bones, a deposit of doubtful antiquity. A mound is described at Lovedale, Kentucky, as being of octagonal base, five feet high, with sides of a hundred and fifty feet, three graded ascents, and two conical mounds on its summit. Mr Jones states that parapet embankments, round the edge of the summit, sometimes occur on the southern temple-mounds.

At Marietta, Ohio, are four mounds like that shown in the cut, within a square enclosure. The height of this one is ten feet. The mound at Seltzerton, Mississippi, forty feet in height, covers nearly six acres, and has a summit area of four acres, on which are two conical mounds, also forty feet high and thirty feet in diameter. The base is surrounded with a ditch ten feet deep, an unusual feature. There are said to be large adobe blocks in the northern slope of this pyramid, and the same material is reported in other southern structures. These reports require additional confirmation.

The Messier Mound, in Early County, Georgia, differs in its location from most temple-mounds, standing on the summit of a natural hill which overlooks a broad extent of country. The artificial height is fifty-five feet, and the summit area sixty-six by one hundred and fifty-six feet. There are no traces of any means of ascent, and the slopes are very steep. A ditch extends in a semicircle from corner to corner at the southern end, and thence down the slope of the hill. An excavation of two acres, twenty-five feet deep on an average, seems to have furnished the earth for the mound. A round well, sixty feet in diameter and forty feet deep is found at one end of the excavation. A temple-mound in the Nacooche Valley, Georgia, is elliptical in form, and has a summit area of sixty by ninety feet.

An octagonal mound, forty-five feet high and one hundred and eighty feet in diameter at the top, is located on a hill-top opposite the city of Macon; it was formed of earth carried from the valley below. A temple-mound at Mason's Plantation, on the Savannah River, has been partly washed away by the water, which reveals along the natural surface of the ground a stratum a foot thick of charcoal, baked earth, ashes, broken pottery, shells, and bones of animals and birds, with a few human bones. The mound, which is of the surrounding alluvial soil, would seem to have been erected over a spot long occupied as an encampment. This mound, and another near it, were originally enclosed by a moat which communicated with the river, and widened on one side into a broad lagoon.

On Plunkett Creek, Georgia, is a mound of stones which has the appearance of a temple-mound, having a summit area forty feet in diameter. Stone is rarely used in structures of this class; perhaps this was originally a conical mound. There seem to be few large mounds in the south unaccompanied by ditches, which seem here to have been introduced where embankments would have been preferred in the north.

In a late number of the Cincinnati Quarterly Journal of Science I find described, unfortunately only on newspaper authority, a remarkable temple-mound, near Springfield, Missouri, on a hill three hundred feet high. It is of earth and stones, sixty two feet high, five hundred feet in diameter at the base and one hundred and thirty at the summit. A ditch, two hundred feet wide and five feet deep, surrounds the base, and is crossed by a causeway, opposite which a stairway of roughly hewn stones leads up the northern slope. The top is covered by a platform of stone, in the centre of which lies a stone ten by twelve feet, and eleven inches thick, hollowed in the middle. This report without further confirmation must be considered a hoax--at least so far as the stone steps, pavement, and altar are concerned.

The group of temple-mounds shown in the cut is in Washington County, Mississippi. Others similar in many respects to these are found at Madison, Louisiana.

Temple-mounds are homogeneous and never stratified in their construction, and contain no relics; that is, the object in their erection was simply to afford a raised platform, with convenient means of ascent.

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Animal-mounds, the second class, are those that assume in their ground plan various irregular forms, sometimes those of living creatures, including quadrupeds, birds, reptiles, fishes, and in a few cases men. Mounds of this class are very numerous in the north-west, particularly in Wisconsin, and rarely occur further south, although there are a few excellent specimens in Ohio. They are most abundant in fertile valleys and rarely occur on the lake shore. Nine tenths of them are simple straight, curved, or crooked embankments of irregular form, slightly raised above the surface, bearing no likeness to any natural object. In many, fancied to be like certain animals, the resemblance is imaginary. Those shaped like a tapering club, with two knobs on one side near the larger end--a very common figure--are called 'lizard-mounds;' add two other protuberances on the opposite side and we have the 'turtle-mounds.' Yet a few bear a clear resemblance to quadrupeds, birds, and serpents, and all evidently belong to the same class and were connected with the religious ideas of the builders. They are not burial mounds, contain no relics, are but a few feet at the most above the ground, and are always composed of whitish clay, or the subsoil of the country. Their dimensions on the ground are considerable; rude effigies of human form are in some cases over one hundred feet long; quadrupeds have bodies and tails each from fifty to two hundred feet long; birds have wings of a hundred feet; 'lizard-mounds' are two and even four hundred feet in length; straight and curved lines of embankment reach over a thousand feet; and serpents are equally extensive. They are grouped without any apparent order together with conical mounds, occasional embankments, and few enclosures. They often form a line extending over a large tract. In some cases the animal form is an excavation instead of a mound, the earth being thrown up on the banks. An embankment in Adams County, Ohio, on the summit of a hill much like those often occupied by fortifications, is thought to resemble a monster serpent with curved body and coiled tail, five feet high, thirty feet wide in the middle, and over one thousand feet long if uncoiled. The jaws are wide open and apparently in the act of swallowing an oval mound measuring one hundred and sixty by eighty feet. On a hill overlooking Granville, Ohio, is a mound six feet high and a hundred and fifty feet long, thought to resemble the form of an alligator. Stones are rarely used with the earth in the construction of animal-mounds, and only in a few cases has the presence of ashes or other traces of fire been reported.

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The third class of tumuli includes the conical mounds, mere heaps of earth and stones, so far as outward appearance is concerned, generally round, often oval, sometimes square with rounded corners, or even hexagonal and triangular, in their base-forms, and varying in height from a few inches to seventy feet, in diameter from three or four to three hundred feet. A height of from six to thirty feet and a diameter of forty to one hundred feet would probably include a larger part of them. Of course the height has been reduced and the base increased by the action of rains more or less in different localities according to the material employed. Mounds of this class never have summit platforms or any means of ascent. They are here as elsewhere in America much more numerous than other mounds. Although so like one to another in form, they differ widely in location and contents. They are found on hill-tops and in the level plain. In the former case they are either isolated, grouped round fortifications, or extend in long lines at irregular intervals for many miles, suggesting boundary lines or fire signals. In the valleys they stand alone, in groups, or in connection with sacred enclosures. The groups are sometimes symmetrical, as when a number of mounds are regularly arranged about a larger central one, or are so placed as to form squares, circles, and other regular figures; but often no systematic plan is observable. Also in connection with the enclosures part of them are symmetrically located with respect to entrances, angles, or temple-mounds; while others are scattered apparently without fixed order. There are few enclosures that do not have a mound opposite each entrance on the inside. A complete survey and restoration would probably show many mounds to belong to some regular system, that now appear isolated.

The material of the mounds requires no remark in addition to what has been said of other works. A large majority are simply heaps of the earth nearest at hand. Stone mounds, or those of mixed materials, are rare, and are chiefly confined to the hill-top structures. Most of the earth mounds are homogeneous in structure, but some are regularly and doubtless intentionally stratified. Some of them in the gulf states are composed of shells, in addition to the shell-mounds proper formed by the gradual deposit of refuse shells, the contents of which served as food.

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[Sidenote: CONTENTS OF THE MOUNDS.]

The contents of the mounds should be divided into two great classes; those deposited by the Mound-builders, and those of modern Indian or European origin. The distinction is important, but difficult; and in this difficulty is to be found the origin of many of the extraordinary reports and theories. The Indians have always felt a kind of veneration for the mounds as for something of mysterious origin and purpose, and have used them as burial places. The Indian habit of burying with their dead such articles as were prized by them when living, is well known; as is also the value attached by them to trinkets obtained by purchase or theft from Europeans. Consequently articles of European manufacture, such as must have been obtained long before the country was to any great extent occupied by the whites, are often dug from the mounds and found elsewhere. The discovery of silver crosses, gun-barrels, and French dials, does not, however, as Mr Squier remarks, justify the conclusion that the Mound-builders "were Catholics, used fire-arms, or spoke French." The mounds are usually opened by injudicious explorers or by treasure-seekers, who have paid little attention to the location of the relics found or the condition of the surrounding soil. Museums and private collections are full of spurious relics thus obtained. It is certain in some cases, and probable in many more, that the mounds have been 'salted' with specimens with a view to their early investigation. Yet many mounds have been opened by scientific men, who have brought to light curious relics, surely the work of the Mound-builders. Such relics are found in the centre of the mounds, on or near the original surface of the ground, with the surrounding material undisturbed. In the stratified mounds any disturbance in the soil is easily detected, but with difficulty in the others. Reports of unusual relics should be regarded as not authentic unless accompanied by most positive proof.

* * * * *

Neither the embankments of sacred enclosures, the temple-mounds, nor the animal-mounds, have been proved to contain any relics that may be attributed to the original builders. Many of the conical mounds do contain such relics, and by their contents or the lack of them, are divided into altar-mounds, burial mounds, and anomalous mounds.

Altar-mounds are always found within or near enclosures, and each one is found to contain something like an altar, made of burned clay or stone. The altars are generally of fine clay brought from some distance, burned hard sometimes to a depth of twenty inches. They were not burned before being put in place, but by the action of fires built upon or round them. Such as were very slightly burned had no relics. The stone altars are very rare, and are formed of rough slabs, and not hewn from a single block. They are square, rectangular, round, and oval; vary in size from two feet in diameter to fifteen by fifty feet, but are generally from five to eight feet; are rarely over twenty inches high; rest on or near the surface of the ground, in the centre of the mound; and have a basin-shaped concavity on the top. The basin is almost always filled with ashes, in which are the relics deposited by the Mound-builders. Relics are much more numerous in the altar than in the burial mounds, but as they are of the same class, both may best be spoken of together. These altars are probably the structures spoken of by early explorers and writers as hearths; there are reports that some of them were made of burnt bricks.

A peculiarity of the altar-mounds is that they are formed of regular strata of earth, gravel, sand, clay, etc., which are not horizontal, but follow the curve of the surface. The outer layer is commonly of gravel. This stratification renders it easy to detect any modern disturbance of the mounds, and makes the altar relics especially interesting and valuable for scientific purposes. Over the ashes in one altar-mound, were found plates of mica and some human bones. Skeletons are often found near the surface of these mounds, the strata above them being disturbed; in one case the Indians had penetrated to the centre and deposited a body on the altar itself. Sir John Lubbock inclines to the opinion that these were really sepulchral rather than sacrificial mounds, although he had not personally examined them. Whatever their use, they certainly constitute a clearly defined class distinct from all others, and the name altar-mounds is as appropriate as any other.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: BURIAL MOUNDS.]

Unstratified mounds, never within enclosures and generally at some little distance from them, containing human remains in their centres and undoubtedly erected as places of sepulture, constitute the second class, and are called burial mounds. The custom of heaping up a mound over the dead was probably imitated for a long time by the tribes that followed the Mound-builders, so that the relics from these mounds are less satisfactory than those found on the altars. In the burial mounds that may be most confidently ascribed to the Mound-builders, the human remains are found in a situation corresponding to that of the altars. They are usually enclosed in a frame-work of logs, a covering of bark or coarse matting, or a combination of these, which have left only faint traces. Of the skeleton only small fragments remain, which crumble on exposure to the air. In some cases there are indications that the body was burned before burial. Each mound contains, as a rule, a single skeleton, generally but not always placed east and west. Where several skeletons are found together, they are sometimes placed in a circle with the heads towards the centre. The mounds never contain large numbers of skeletons, and cannot be regarded as cemeteries, but only as monuments reared over the remains of personages high in rank. Very few skulls or bones are recovered sufficiently entire to give any idea of the Mound-builders' physique, and these few show no clearly defined differences from the modern Indian tribes. Four or five burial mounds are often found in a group, the smaller ones in such cases being grouped round a larger central one, generally in contact with its base. Mr Lapham sketched mounds in Wisconsin where the body is deposited in a central basin-shaped excavation in the ground very much like those in Vancouver Island already described.

Of the eastern burial deposits not connected with the mounds I shall say very little. It has already been stated that the mounds were in no sense cemeteries. Only a favored few of what must have been a dense population were honored by these sepulchral monuments. Obliged to seek elsewhere the general depositories of the dead, we find them of various classes in large numbers; but as yet very little has been done towards identifying any of them as the resting-places of the Mound-builders. There are many bone-pits, or trenches filled with human bones, in the mound region; but some of the modern Indians are well known to have periodically collected and deposited in pits the bones of their dead. Large numbers of bodies have been found in the caves of Kentucky and Tennessee, well preserved by the natural deposits of saltpetre, and wrapped in skins, bark, or feather-cloth; but the fact that such cloths were made and used by the southern tribes, renders the origin of these bodies uncertain. Besides the caves and trenches there are regular cemeteries, some of them very extensive. Seven of these are reported about Nashville, Tennessee, within a radius of ten miles, each being about a mile in extent. The graves are of flat stones, lie in ranges, and contain skeletons much decayed, with some relics. The coffins, or graves, vary from two to six feet in length, and the smallest have sometimes been mentioned as indicating a race of pigmies; it is evident, however, that in such graves bones were not deposited until the flesh had been removed. Sometimes there are traces of wooden coffins, in other cases there are only stones at the head and feet, and often there is no trace of any coffin. A few graves contain relics similar to those in the altar-mounds, and were covered with large forest trees when first seen by Europeans. Yet the comparatively well-preserved skeletons, and the presence in many cases of iron and relics clearly modern, render it well-nigh impossible to decide which, if any, of these cemeteries contain the remains of the Mound-builders.

[Sidenote: ANOMALOUS MOUNDS.]

Mounds of the third class are called anomalous, and include all that are not evidently either altar or burial mounds, or which have some of the peculiarities of both classes; for instance, in an elliptical mound an altar was found in one centre, and a skeleton in the other. Most prominent among them are the hill-top heaps of earth, or--oftener than in the plains below--of stone. These have as a rule few original burial deposits, and no relics; are often near fortifications; and in many cases bear the marks of fire. Their use cannot be accurately determined, but they are generally regarded as watch-towers and fire signal stations. Of course, comparatively few of the whole number of conical mounds have been explored, but so far as examined they seem to be about equally divided between the three classes. The mound shown in the cut is at Miamisburg, Ohio, and its class is not stated. It is sixty-eight feet high and eight hundred and fifty feet in circumference. Shell-mounds abounding in relics of aboriginal work are very numerous in the gulf states.

* * * * *

I shall pass briefly over the minor relics of aboriginal art since it is impossible in this volume to present illustrative cuts of the thousands of objects that have been found, or even of typical specimens. Such relics as are incontestably the work of the Mound-builders include articles of metal, stone, earthen ware, bone, and shell. They include implements and ornaments, besides which many are of unknown use. Most of the smaller specimens, whose use is unknown, are called by Mr Dickeson and others aboriginal coins; perhaps some of them did serve such a purpose.

The only metals found in the mounds are copper and silver, the latter only in very small quantities. A few gold trinkets have been reported, but the evidence is not conclusive that such were deposited by the Mound-builders. Iron ore and galena occur, but no iron or lead.

Copper is found in native masses, and also hammered into implements and ornaments. There is no evidence that this metal was ever obtained from ore by smelting; it was all doubtless worked cold from native masses by hammering. Concerning the locality where it was procured, there is little or no uncertainty. The abundant deposits of native copper about Lake Superior naturally suggest that region as the source of the copper supply; the discovery of anciently worked mines strengthens the supposition; and the finding among the mounds of copper mixed with silver in a manner only found at Lake Superior, makes the matter a certainty. The modern tribes also obtained some copper from the same localities. The Mound-builders were ignorant of the arts of casting, welding, and alloying. They had no means of hardening their copper tools, being in this respect less advanced than the Nahuas and Mayas. In fact copper implements are much more rare than ornaments of the same metal. The implements include axes, hatchets, adzes, knives, spear-heads, chisels, drills, etc. Ornaments are in the form of rings, gorgets, medals, bracelets, and beads, with a large variety of small articles of unknown use, some of them probably used as money. Very small models of larger implements like axes are often found, and were doubtless worn as ornaments.

Silver is of much rarer occurrence than copper, was obtained probably from the same region, and is almost invariably found in the form of sheets hammered out very thin and closely wrapped about small ornaments of copper or shell. So nicely is the wrapping done that it often resembles plating. The gold whose discovery has been reported has been in the form of beads and so-called coins. Mr Dickeson speaks confidently of gold, silver, copper, and galena money left by the Mound-builders. There is no evidence that the use of iron was known, except the extreme difficulty of clearing forests and carving stone with implements of stone and soft copper.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: ABORIGINAL POTTERY.]

Specimens of aboriginal pottery are very abundant, although much less so within the mounds than elsewhere near the surface. Mr Squier says, "various though not abundant specimens of their skill have been recorded, which in elegance of model, delicacy, and finish, as also in fineness of material, come fully up to the best Peruvian specimens, to which they bear, in many respects, a close resemblance. They far exceed anything of which the existing tribes of Indians are known to have been capable." The specimens in the mound-deposits are, with very few exceptions, broken. The material is usually a pure clay, sometimes with a slight admixture of pulverized quartz or colored flakes of mica, but such admixtures are much rarer than in modern specimens. Notwithstanding their great regularity of form and beauty of finish, none bear signs that the potter's wheel was used in their construction, and no vessels are glazed by vitrification. They are decorated with various graceful figures, including those of living animals, cut in with sharp instruments. A few crucibles, capable of withstanding intense heat, have been found, also terra-cotta images of animals and men, and ornaments or coins in small quantities. Pottery-kilns are found in the south, but that they were the work of the Mound-builders has not been satisfactorily proven. Specimens of the finer class of vases are shown in the cut. The first is of pure clay with a slight silicious mixture. It is five and a half inches high and six and a half in diameter, not over one sixth of an inch in uniform thickness, pierced with four holes in the line round the rim, dark brown or umber in color, and highly polished. The decorative lines are cut in with a sharp instrument which left no ragged edges. The second vase is of somewhat smaller size and coarser material; but more elaborately ornamented and only one eighth of an inch in thickness.

[Sidenote: STONE IMPLEMENTS.]

Stone implements are more abundant than those of any other material in the altar-mounds and elsewhere. They include arrow and spear heads, knives, axes, hatchets, chisels, and other variously formed cutting instruments, with hammers and pestles. These are made of quartz and other hard varieties of stone, all belonging to the mound region except the obsidian. There is no doubt that obsidian implements were used by the Mound-builders, and as this material is said not to be found nearer than Mexico and California, it is perhaps as likely that the implements were obtained by trade as that they were manufactured in the country. Neither the obsidian knives, nor other stone weapons, show any marked differences from those found in Mexico, Central America, and most other parts of the world. Lance and arrow heads, finished and in the rough, entire or more frequently broken by the action of fire, are taken by hundreds and thousands from the altar-mounds; several bushels of lance-heads of milky quartz were found in one mound. It is a remarkable fact, however, that no weapons whatever are found in burial mounds. Beads, rings, and other ornaments of stone are often found, with a variety of anomalous articles whose use is more or less imperfectly understood. Besides weapons and knives, pipes are the articles most abundant, and on which the Mound-builders expended most lavishly their skill, carving the bowls into a great variety of beautiful forms, at what must have been an immense outlay of labor. A remarkable peculiarity of their pipe-carvings is that accurate representations are given of different natural objects instead of the rude caricatures and monstrosities in which savage art usually delights. Nearly every beast, bird, and reptile indigenous to the country is truthfully represented, together with some creatures now only found in tropical climates, such as the lamantin and toucan. The pipes generally consist of a bowl rising from the centre of the convex side of a curved base, one end of which serves as a handle and the other is pierced for a stem. They are always cut from a single piece, the material being generally a hard porphyry, oftenest red, and strongly resembling in some cases the red pipe-stone of the Coteau des Prairies. The locality where this pipe material was obtained is unknown. Many of the sculptured figures show skillful workmanship and a high polish; I think that many of them are not inferior to the products of Nahua and Maya skill. Some rude stone images of unknown use have been found at various points, but I am not aware that any relics have been authentically reported from the altar-mounds which indicate that the ancient people were worshipers of idols. Mica is the mineral most common in both altar and burial mounds, where it occurs in plates cut into a great variety of forms. Some of them have been conjectured to have served as mirrors. Bushels are sometimes deposited in a single mound. Pieces of coal artificially formed are included by Dickeson among his aboriginal coins.

* * * * *

Bones of indigenous animals are found worked into daggers, awls, and similar implements; or as ornaments in the form of beads. Similar use was made of the teeth and talons of beasts and birds. Teeth of the bear, wolf, panther, alligator, and shark, have been found, some of the latter being fossils, together with large quantities of teeth resembling those of the whale, but not fully identified.

Five varieties of marine shells, all from the gulf shores, have been examined, with pearls whose size and numbers prove that they are not of fresh-water origin. Both are used for ornaments, chiefly in the form of beads. Pearls are also found in a few instances serving as eyes for animal and bird sculptures. Some articles of bone and shell have been mistaken for ivory and accredited with an Asiatic origin, through ignorance that their material is found on the shores of the gulf. Many articles found in the mounds, and not perhaps included in the preceding general description, are interesting, but could only be described in a detailed account, for which I have no space; but most relics not thus included are of doubtful authenticity, and a doubtful monument of antiquity should always be attributed to modern times.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: ANCIENT MINES.]

The ancient miners have left numerous traces of their work in the region of Lake Superior. At one place a piece of pure copper weighing over five tons was found fifteen feet below the surface, under trees at least four hundred years old. It had been raised on skids, bore marks of fire, and some stone implements were scattered about. There is no evidence that the tribes found in possession of the country by the first French missionaries ever worked these mines, or had any tradition of a people that had worked them, although both they and their ancestors had copper knives hammered from lumps of the metal, which are very commonly found on the surface. All the traditions and Indian stories of 'mines' may most consistently be referred to these natural superficial deposits. The ancient mines were for the most part in the same localities where the best modern mines are worked. Most of them have left as traces only slight depressions in the surface, the finding of which is regarded by prospectors as a tolerably sure indication of a rich vein of copper. The cut represents a section of one of the veins of copper-bearing rock worked by the ancient miners. The mass of copper at a weighed about six tons. At the top a portion of the stone had been left across the vein as a support. Copper implements, including wedges used in mining as 'gads,' are found in and about the old mines; with hammers of stone, mostly grooved for withe handles. Some weigh from thirty to forty pounds and have two grooves; others again are not grooved at all. In one case remains of a handle of twisted cedar-roots were found, and much-worn wooden shovels often occur. There are no enclosures, mounds, or other traces of a permanent settlement of the Mound-builders in the mining region. It is probable that the miners came each summer from the south; in fact, it would have been impossible to work the mines in winter by their methods.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: ROCK-INSCRIPTIONS.]

Nearly all the coins, medals, stone tablets, etc., that have been discovered within the region occupied by the Mound-builders, bearing inscriptions in regular apparently alphabetic characters, may be proved to be of European origin; and the few specimens that do not admit of such proof should of course be attributed to such an origin in the absence of conclusive evidence to the contrary. Rude delineations of men, animals, and other recognizable objects, together with many arbitrary, perhaps conventional, characters, are of frequent occurrence on the walls of caves, on perpendicular river-cliffs, and on detached stones. They are sometimes incised, but usually painted. Most bear a strong resemblance to the artistic efforts of modern tribes; and those which seem to bear marks of a greater antiquity, have by no means been identified as the work of the Mound-builders. These eastern rock-inscriptions do not call for additional remarks, after what has been said of similar carvings in other regions. Many of the figures have a meaning to those who make them, but that meaning, as in all writings of this class, perishes with the artist and his immediate times. Attempts by zealous antiquaries to penetrate the signification of particular inscriptions--as that on Dighton Rock, Massachusetts, and other well-known examples--have failed to convince any but the determined advocate of such theories as seem to derive support from the so-called translation. My father saw a stone tablet taken from a stone mound near Newark, covered with carved characters, which the clergyman of the town pronounced to be the ten commandments in ancient Hebrew. I have no doubt that the figures did closely resemble the ancient Hebrew in one respect at least--that is, in being equally unfamiliar to the clergyman.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: CONCLUSIONS.]

Without taking up here the various theories respecting the origin, history, and disappearance of the Mound-builders, it may be well to express in a few brief conclusions what may be learned of this people by an examination of the monuments which they have left.

They were a numerous people, as is sufficiently proved by the magnitude and geographical extent of their works. They were probably one people, that is, composed of tribes living under similar laws, religion, and other institutions. Such variations as are observed in the monuments are only those that would naturally occur between central and frontier regions, although the animals-mounds of the north-west present some difficulties. The Mound-builders were an agricultural people. Tribes that live by hunting never build extensive public works, neither would the chase support a sufficiently large population for the erection of such works. Moreover, the location of the monuments in the most fertile sections goes far to confirm this conclusion. Some of the larger enclosures have been supposed,--only by reason of their size, however,--to have been cultivated fields; and evident traces of an ancient cultivation are found, although not clearly referable to the Mound-builders.

There is nothing to show an advanced civilization in the modern sense of the word, but they were civilized in comparison with the roving hunter-tribes of later times. They knew nothing of the use of metals beyond the mere hammering of native masses of copper and silver; they built no stone structures; they had seemingly made no approach to the higher grades of hieroglyphic writing. Their civilization as recorded by its material relics consisted of a knowledge of agriculture; considerable skill in the art of fortification; much greater skill than that of the Indians in the manufacture of pottery and the carving of stone pipes; the mathematical knowledge displayed in the laying-out of perfect circles and accurate angles, and in the correspondence in size between different works. Their earth-works show more perseverance than skill; no one of them necessarily implies the use of mechanical aids to labor; there is none that a large number of men might not construct by carrying earth in simple baskets.

All traces of their architecture have disappeared. It has been suggested that were the temples yet standing on their pyramidal foundations, they might compare favorably with those of Central America and Mexico. But the construction of wooden edifices with any pretensions to grandeur and symmetry, by means of stone and soft copper tools, seems absolutely impossible; at least such structures would require infinitely greater skill than that displayed by the Nahuas and Mayas, and it is more reasonable to suppose that the temples of the Mound-builders were rude wooden buildings.

The monuments imply a wide-spread religious system under a powerful priesthood; private devotion manifests itself on a scale less magnificent, and one involving less hard work. Of their rites we know nothing. The altar-mounds suggest sacrifice; burned human bones, human sacrifice. Gateways on the east, and the east and west direction of embankments and skeletons may connect worship with the sun; but all is conjecture. No idols, known to be such, have been found; the cemeteries, if any of them belong to the Mound-builders, show no uniform usage in burial. The ancient people lived under a system of government considerably advanced, more than likely in the hands of the priesthood, but of its details we know nothing. A social condition involving some form of slavery would be most favorable for the construction of such works.

The monuments described are not the work of the Indian tribes found in the country, nor of any tribes resembling them in institutions. Those tribes had no definite tradition even of past contact with a superior people, and it is only in the south among the little-known Natchez, that slight traces of a descent from, or imitation of, the Mound-builders appear. Most and the best authorities deem it impossible that the Mound-builders were even the remote ancestors of the Indian tribes; and while inclined to be less positive than most who have written on the subject respecting the possible changes that may have been effected by a long course of centuries, I think that the evidence of a race locally extinct is much stronger here than in any other part of the continent.

The monuments are not sufficient in themselves to absolutely prove or disprove the truth of any one of the following theories: 1st. An indigenous culture springing up among the Mississippi tribes, founded on agriculture, fostered by climate and other unknown circumstances, constantly growing through long ages, driving back the surrounding walls of savagism, but afterwards weakened by unknown causes, yielding gradually to savage hordes, and finally annihilated or driven in remnants from their homes southward. 2d. A colony from the southern peoples already started in the path of civilization, growing as before in power, but at last forced to yield their homes into the possession of savages. 3d. A migrating colony from the north, dwelling long in the land, gradually increasing in power and culture, constantly extending their dominion southward, and finally abandoning voluntarily or against their will, the north for the more favored south, where they modified or originated the southern civilization.

The last theory, long a very popular one, is in itself less consistent and receives less support from the relics than the others. The second, which has some points in common with the first, is most reasonable and best supported by monumental and traditional evidence. The temple-mounds strongly resemble in their principal features the southern pyramids; at least they imply a likeness of religious ideas in the builders. The use of obsidian implements shows a connection, either through origin, war, or commerce, with the Mexican nations, or at least with nations who came in contact with the Nahuas. There are, moreover, several Nahua traditions respecting the arrival on their coasts from the north-east, of civilized strangers. There is very little evidence that the Mound-builders introduced in the south the Nahua civilization, and none whatever that the Aztec migration started from the Mississippi Valley, but I am inclined to believe that there was actually a connection between the two peoples; that the Mound-builders, or those that introduced their culture, were originally a Nahua colony, and that these people may be referred to in some of the traditions mentioned. Without claiming to be able to determine exactly the relation between the Mound-builders and Nahuas, I shall have something further to say on this subject in another volume.

[Sidenote: ANTIQUITY OF THE MONUMENTS.]

The works were not built by a migrating people, but by a race that lived long in the land. It seems unlikely that the results attained could have been accomplished in less than four or five centuries. Nothing indicates that the time did not extend to thousands of years, but it is only respecting the minimum time that there can be any grounds for reasonable conjecture. If we suppose the civilization indigenous, of course a much longer period must be assigned to its development than if it was introduced by a migration--or rather a colonization, for civilized and semi-civilized peoples do not migrate en masse. Moreover a northern origin would imply a longer duration of time than one from the south, where a degree of civilization is known to have existed.

How long a time has elapsed since the Mound-builders abandoned their works? Here again a minimum estimate only can be sought. No work is more enduring than an embankment of earth. There is no positive internal proof that they were not standing one, five, or ten thousand years ago. The evidences of an ancient abandonment of the works, or serious decline of the builders' power, are as follows:--1st, the fact that none of them stand on the last-formed terrace of the rivers, most on the oldest terrace, and that those on the second bear in some cases marks of having been invaded by water. The rate of terrace-forming varies on different streams, and there are no sufficient data for estimating in years the time required for the formation of any one of the terraces, at least scientific men are careful not to give a definite opinion in the matter; but it is evident that each required a very long period, and the last one a much longer time than any of the others, on account of the gradual longitudinal leveling of the river-beds. 2d. The complete disappearance of all wooden structures, which must have been of great solidity. 3d. The advanced state of decomposition of human bones in a soil well calculated for their preservation. Skeletons are found in Europe well preserved at a known age of eighteen hundred years. 4th. The absence of the Mound-builders from the traditions of modern tribes. Nothing would seem more likely to be preserved in mythic or historic traditions than contact with a superior people, and the mounds would serve to keep the traditions alive. 5th. The fact that the monuments were covered in the seventeenth century with primitive forests, uniform with those which covered the other parts of the country. In this latitude the age of a forest tree may be much more accurately determined than in tropical climates; and trees from four to five hundred years old have been examined in many well-authenticated cases over mounds and embankments. Equally large trees in all stages of decomposition were found at their feet on and under the ground, so that the abandonment of the works must be dated back at least twice the actual age of the standing trees. It is a fact well known to woodsmen that when cultivated land is abandoned the first growth is very unlike the original forest, both in the species and size of the trees, and that several generations would be required to restore the primitive timber. Consequently a thousand years must have passed since some of the works were abandoned. The monuments of the Mississippi present stronger internal evidence of great antiquity than any others in America, although it by no means follows that they are older than Palenque and Copan. The height of the Mound-builders' power should not, without very positive external evidence, be placed at a later date than the fifth or sixth century of our era.

FOOTNOTE:

[XIII-1] The chief authorities consulted for this chapter on the remains of the Mississippi Valley, are the following:

Squier and Davis, _Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley_. Washington, 1848. _Squier's Antiquities of the State of New York_. Id., _Observations on Aboriginal Monuments of the Mississippi Valley_. New York, 1847. Id., Serpent Symbol.

Atwater's Antiquities of Ohio, and other accounts in the Amer. Antiq. Soc., Transactions.

Schoolcraft's Archives of Aboriginal Knowledge.

Warden, _Recherches sur les Antiquités de l'Amérique du Nord_.

Jones' Antiquities of the Southern Indians.

Pidgeon's Traditions of Decoodah.

Lapham's Antiquities of Wisconsin. Washington, 1853.

_Whittlesey's Ancient Mining on the Shores of Lake Superior._

Bradford's American Antiquities.

Foster's Pre-Historic Races.

Id., Mississippi Valley.

Smithsonian Institution, Reports.

Tylor's Researches.

American Ethnological Soc., Transactions.

Dickeson's Amer. Numismatic Manual.

Bancroft, A. A., Antiquities of Licking County, Ohio. MS. The writer of this manuscript, my father, was for fifty years a resident of Licking County, where he has examined more or less carefully about forty enclosures and two hundred mounds.

XIV. PERUVIAN ANTIQUITIES

TWO EPOCHS OF PERUVIAN CIVILIZATION -- ABORIGINAL GOVERNMENT, RELIGION, AND ARTS -- CONTRASTS -- THE HUACAS -- HUMAN REMAINS -- ARTICLES OF METAL -- COPPER IMPLEMENTS -- GOLD AND SILVER VASES AND ORNAMENTS -- USE OF IRON UNKNOWN -- ABORIGINAL ENGINEERING -- PAVED ROADS -- PERUVIAN POTTERY -- RUINS OF PACHACAMAC -- MAUSOLEUM OF CUELAP -- GRAN-CHIMÚ -- HUACA OF MISA -- TEMPLE OF THE SUN -- REMAINS ON THE ISLAND OF TITICACA -- CHAVIN DE HUANTA -- HUANUCO EL VIEJO -- CUZCO -- MONUMENTS OF TIAHUANACO -- ISLAND OF COATI.

I conclude with a short chapter on Peruvian antiquities, made up for the most part from the work of Rivero and Tschudi, and illustrated with the cuts copied from that work for Mr Baldwin's account.[XIV-1] Ancient Peru included also modern Ecuador, Bolivia, and a large part of Chili; and the most remarkable monuments of antiquity are considered the works of a people preceding that found by Pizarro in possession of the country, and bearing very much the same relation to the subjects of the Incas as the ancient Mayas bore to the Quichés of Guatemala, or perhaps the Toltecs to the Aztecs. The Peruvians that came into contact with the Spaniards were superior in some respects to the Aztecs. At least equally advanced in the various mechanical and fine arts, except sculpture and architectural decoration, they lived under as perfect a system of government, and rendered homage to less bloodthirsty gods. They kept their records by means of quipus, or knotted strings, a method probably as useful practically as the Aztec picture-writing, but not so near an approach to an alphabet; while the more ancient nations have left nothing to compare with the hieroglyphic tablets of Central America, and the evidence is far from satisfactory that they possessed any advanced art in writing. It will be seen from the specimens to be presented that their architecture, though perhaps more massive than that of Mayas or Nahuas, is not on the whole of a superior character. The most marked contrasts are found in the occurrence in Peru of cyclopean structures, the use of larger blocks of stone, the comparative absence of the pyramidal foundations, of architectural and hieroglyphic sculpture, and the more extensive use of adobes as a building-material.

[Sidenote: METALLIC RELICS.]

Huaca is the Peruvian name for any venerated or holy structure, but is usually applied to the conical mounds of the country, mostly mounds of sepulture. Thousands of these have been opened and from them have been taken a great variety of relics, together with preserved mummies wrapped in native cloth. The relics include implements and ornaments of metal, stone, bone, shell, and wood. The Peruvians seem to have had a more abundant supply of metals than the civilized nations of North America, and to have been at least equally skillful in working them. The cuts show specimens of copper cutting implements, of which a great variety are found. Besides copper, they had gold and silver in much greater abundance than the northern artisans, and the arts of melting, casting, soldering, beating, inlaying, and carving these metals, were carried to a high degree of perfection. Every one has read the marvelous accounts, naturally exaggerated, but still with much foundation in truth, of the immense quantities of gold obtained by the Spaniards in Peru; of the room filled with golden utensils by the natives as a ransom for the Inca Atahuallpa. A golden vase is shown in the cut. Large quantities of gold have been taken in more modern times from the huacas, where it was doubtless placed in many cases to keep it from the hands of the conquerors. Most of the articles have of course gone to the melting-pot, but sufficient specimens have been preserved or sketched to show the degree of excellence to which the Peruvian smiths had attained. The following cut shows a silver vase. The search for treasure in the huacas still goes on, and is not always unrewarded. Tin, lead, and quicksilver are said to have been worked by the natives. Iron ore is very abundant in Peru, but the only evidence that iron was used is the difficulty of executing the native works of excavation and cutting stone without it, and the fact that the metal had a name in the native language. No traces of it have ever been found. The cut shows two copper tweezers.

[Sidenote: ABORIGINAL ROADS.]

Among the most remarkable Peruvian remains are the paved roads which crossed the country in every direction, especially from north to south. Two of the grandest highways extended from the region north of Quito southward to Cuzco, and according to some authors still farther to Chili. One runs over the mountains, the other chiefly through the plains. Their length is at least twelve hundred miles, and the grading of the mountain road presented, as Mr Baldwin believes, far greater difficulties than the Pacific Railroad. These roads are from eighteen to twenty-six feet wide, protected at the sides by a thick wall, and paved generally with stone blocks, but sometimes with a mixture of cement and fine stone--an aboriginal infringement on the 'Macadam' process. The highways followed a straight course, and turned aside for no obstacle. Ravines and marshes were filled up with masonry, and the solid rock of the mountains was cut away for many miles. But when rivers were encountered, light suspension bridges seem to have been resorted to instead of massive stone bridges. It is true that the most glowing accounts of these roads are found in the writings of the Conquistadores, and that only ruined portions now remain; but the reports of Humboldt and others, respecting the remains, leave little doubt of their former imposing character.

Articles of pottery, of which three specimens are shown in the cuts, are at least equal in material and finish to those produced by Nahua and Maya potters. The finest specimens are vases found in sepulchral deposits, and many utensils designed for more common use are preserved by the present inhabitants, and are preferred for their solidity to the work of modern potters. Small images of human and animal forms in terra cotta, as in gold and silver, are of even more frequent occurrence than utensils. There is no evidence that the images were fashioned with a different purpose here and in the north; some were simply ornaments, a few probably portraits, others miniature deities, deposited from superstitious motives with the dead.

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[Sidenote: CITY OF THE INCAS.]

About twenty miles south of Lima, in the valley of Lurin, and overlooking the sea, are the ruins of Pachacamac, shown in the cut. This was a city of the Incas, that is, it belonged to the later period of Peruvian civilization. All the structures were built of adobes, and are much dilapidated. The Temple of the Sun stands on a hill six hundred feet high, the upper portion of which shows traces of having been divided into terraces over thirty feet high and five to eight feet wide. The adobe wall which surrounds the temple is from eight to eleven feet thick, and is only standing to the height of four to five feet. The ruined structures are very numerous, and on one of the inner walls some traces of red and yellow paint are visible.

In the district of Santo Tomas in the north, at Cuelap, a grand and peculiar ruin is described by Sr Nieto in an official government report. A mass--of earth, probably, although not fully examined in the interior--is faced with a solid wall of hewn stone, and is thirty-six hundred feet long, five hundred and seventy feet wide, and one hundred and fifty feet in perpendicular height. On the summit stands another similar structure six hundred by five hundred feet and also one hundred and fifty feet high. The lower wall is pierced with three entrances to an inclined plane leading in a curved line to the summit, with sentry-boxes at intervals and on the summit. These passages are six feet wide at the base but only two at the top, and those of the second story are similar. In both stories there are chambers, in the walls of which and in the outer walls there are small niches containing skeletons. Some of the upper chambers are paved with large flat stones, on each of which lies a skeleton. The report of this immense structure is probably founded on fact but greatly exaggerated.

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[Sidenote: RUINS OF GRAN-CHIMÚ.]

The ruins of Gran-Chimú, in the vicinity of Truxillo, cover an area of three quarters of a league, and beyond these limits are seven or eight great enclosures with adobe walls, in some of which are conical mounds, or huacas, and some traces of buildings. The two principal structures, called palaces, are surrounded by walls one hundred and forty feet high, sixteen feet thick at the base, but tapering to three or four feet at the top. Round one of the palaces the wall is double, as shown by the section in the cut. The English translation of Rivero, instead of surrounding one of the palaces with a double wall like the original, represents one wall as being twice as high and thick as the other. These walls, like all the structures of Gran-Chimú, are of adobes nine by eighteen inches, resting on a foundation of rough stones laid in clay. In connection with the larger palace is a square containing apartments, the walls of which are a conglomerate of gravel and clay, smooth, and whitewashed on the interior. There are also plazas and streets regularly laid out, and a reservoir which by a subterranean aqueduct was supplied with water from the Rio Moche two miles distant. This palace--and by palace, a group of edifices within an enclosure, rather than a single edifice, seems to be meant--has two entrances, one in the middle of each long side. The second palace is one hundred and twenty five yards further east, and is also divided by squares and narrow streets. At one end is the huaca of Misa, surrounded by a low wall, pierced by galleries and rooms in which have been found mummies, cloths, gold and silver, implements, and a wooden idol with pieces of pearl-shell. All the inner walls are built of a mass of clay and gravel or of adobes. The cut shows specimens of the ornamentation, which seem to bear outwardly a slight resemblance to the mosaic work of Mitla, although the method of their construction is not explained. "Outside of these notable edifices, there is an infinite number of squares and small houses, some round and others square, which were certainly dwellings of the lower classes, and whose great extent indicates that the population must have been very large." Among the ruins are many truncated conical mounds, or huacas, of fine gravel, from some of which interesting relics and large quantities of gold have been taken. The so-called Temple of the Sun is three quarters of a league east of the city near Moche, in connection with which are several adobe structures, one of them, perhaps the temple itself, so far as may be determined by Rivero's vague account, made worse than vague in the English translation, is a regular pyramid of adobes. It is four hundred and fourteen by four hundred and thirty feet at the base, three hundred and forty-five feet wide on the summit, and over eighty feet high, built in terraces, pierced with a gallery through the centre, and affording a fine view of the sea and the city of Truxillo.

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[Sidenote: RUINS OF HUANUCO.]

The cut represents a ruin on the Island of Titicaca in the lake of the same name. These island remains are among the oldest of Peruvian antiquities, and all the structures are built of hewn stone. Respecting these ruins we only learn from the explorers that "though not very imposing" they are well preserved, "with windows and doors, with posts and thresholds of hewn stone also, these being wider below than above." Another ruin on the same island is shown in the cut on the following page.

At Chavin de Huanta the structures are built of hewn stone very accurately joined without any mortar in sight on the outside, and a rubble of rough stones and clay on the inside. In a building spoken of as a fortress there is a covered way with rooms at its sides, all covered with sandstone blocks about twelve feet long. The walls are six feet thick, and in the interior is the opening to a subterranean passage which is said to lead under the river to another building. In the gallery human bones and some relics were found. The modern town is built mostly over the ruins of an ancient aqueduct, and a bridge over the stream is built of three immense stones, each over twenty feet long, taken from the fort. The ancient people were especially skillful in the construction of aqueducts, some of which were reported by the early writers as several hundred miles in length, and a few of which of less extent are still in actual use.

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[Sidenote: RUINS OF HUANUCO.]

The cut represents the Mirador, or look-out, at Huanuco el Viejo. This structure measures about one hundred by one hundred and sixty feet at the base, and is about fifteen feet high, in a pyramidal form without terraces and furnished with a parapet wall enclosing the summit platform. The foundation is of rough stones, which form two steps projecting four or five feet, not clearly indicated in the cut. The walls or facings are of hewn blocks of limestone about four feet and a half long by a foot and a half thick. The blocks are very accurately cut and laid in cement. The interior is filled with gravel and clay, with a concavity in the centre popularly supposed to communicate by means of a subterranean gallery with the palace some half a mile distant. From a doorway in the parapet wall on the south an inclined plane--which seems often to have taken the place of a stairway in Peru--leads down to the ground. On the wall at each side of the entrance crouches an animal in stone, so much damaged that its kind cannot be determined.

Another noted ruin at Huanuco is that whose entrance is shown in the cut. The walls are of round stones irregularly laid in mortar, a kind of rubble called by the Peruvians pirca, but the gateway, shown in the cut, is built of hewn blocks three varas--as Rivero says, probably meaning feet--by one and a half. The lintel is one stone block eleven feet long, and the inclined posts are said to be of one piece, although the cut indicates that each is composed of four. The animals sculptured over the gateway at the sides are called monkeys by Rivero. Within the structure there are five similar gateways shown in the preceding cut and in the following ground plan. In the interior are rooms of cut stone, with niches in the walls, an aqueduct, and a reservoir. The quarries that supplied the stone for the Huanuco structures are still seen about half a mile away. Many traces of buildings of round stones in clay are found in the same vicinity.

Near Chupan, a tower is mentioned on the verge of a precipice overhanging the Rio Marañon. In the district of Junin there is a line or system of fortifications on the precipitous cliffs of a ravine, built mostly of micaceous slate. At Cuzco are some remains of the city of the Incas, and there is said to be some evidence that this city was founded on the ruins of another of an earlier epoch; the latter including part of the fortification of Ollantaytambo, built of stones cut in irregular forms, some of them of great size, and very neatly joined.

[Sidenote: MONUMENTS OF TIAHUANACO.]

The ruins at Tiahuanaco, ten or twelve miles from Lake Titicaca, are considered among the most ancient in Peru. They include stones from fifteen to twenty feet high, some cut, others rough, standing in rows. All the structures were in a very dilapidated condition when the Spaniards came, and some very large stone statues in human form were found, with stone columns. One of the most interesting monuments is the monolithic doorway shown in the cut. The opening is seventy-six inches high and thirty-eight wide. Rivero and Tschudi represent the sculptured figures in the small squares as being profiles of the human face instead of those shown in Baldwin's cut. There were several of these doorways. Several idols and some very large blocks of cut stone were dug up in 1846, and the latter used for mill-stones. The blocks are described as thirty feet long, eighteen feet wide, and six feet thick, being shaped so as to form a channel when one was placed upon another.

A building on the Island of Coati, in Lake Titicaca, is shown in the cut. Rivero gives a view and plan of another large palace, consisting for the most part of a single line of low apartments built round three sides of a rectangular court, and bearing some resemblance, as Mr Baldwin remarks, to the Central American structures, except that it does not rest on a pyramidal foundation. Rock-inscriptions of the same rude class so often mentioned in the northern continent, occur also in Peru, although somewhat less frequently, so far as may be judged by the reports of explorers.

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[Sidenote: CONCLUSION.]

The contents of the preceding pages may be sufficient to show the reader that the resemblance between the southern and northern monuments, if any resemblance exists, is very faint. The Maya and Peruvian peoples may have been one in remote antiquity; if so, the separation took place at a period long preceding any to which we are carried by the material relics of the Votanic empire, and of the most ancient epoch of the southern civilization, or even by traditional annals and the vaguest myths. There seems to be a natural tendency even among antiquarians to attribute all American civilizations to a common origin, constantly moving back the date as investigation progresses. This tendency has much in common with that which so persistently traces American civilization to the old world, old-world culture to one centre, the human race to one pair, and the first pair to a special creation, performed at a definite time and point in Asia. Be the results of the tendency referred to true or false, it is evident that superstition has contributed more than science to the zeal that has supported them.

FOOTNOTE:

[XIV-1] Rivero and Tschudi, Antigüedades Peruanas, Viena, 1851, with atlas; Rivero, Antigüedades Peruanas, Lima, 1841; Rivero and Tschudi's Peruvian Antiquities, N. Y., 1855; this translation is in many instances very faulty; Baldwin's Ancient America, pp. 226-56.

END OF THE FOURTH VOLUME.

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Transcriber's note:

Italics in the footnote citations were inconsistently applied by the typesetter.

Footnote IV-31: p. 379 is a possible typographical error.

Footnote IV-36 refers to Nebak and Nebah. One of them may be a typographical error.

Footnote V-39: linteux should possibly be linteaux.

Footnote VII-57: pp. 53, 16 is a possible typographical error.

Footnote XI-43 is missing a volume number.

Footnote XII-24: "McGilvary's" is a possible typographical error.

Footnotes V-23 and IX-64 are repeated in the text.

Page 294: to fall the trees should possibly be to fell the trees.

The text refers to both Medellin and Medelin, Vera Cruz.