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Pre-Historic Man. / 
 
 DARWINISM AND DEITY 
 
 The Mound Builders 
 
 By M. F. FORCE. 
 
 CINCINNATI: 
 
 ROBERT CLARKE & CO 
 
 1873- 
 
Pre-Historic Man 
 
 DARWINISM AND DEITY, 
 
 The Mound Builders. 
 
 £v 
 
 >v 
 
 V 1 
 
 if* J$ 
 
 By M. F. FORCE 
 
 CINCINNATI: J 
 ROBERT CLARKE & CO 
 
 i873. 
 
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These Papers were read before the 
 
 £lJMCIJ\(JVTI ^ITERARY £uJB ! 
 
 Primitive Man — March 21, 1868 ; 
 Darwinism and Deity — January 13, 1872 ; 
 The Mound Builders — April 15, 1873. 
 
THE 
 
 PRIMITIVE INHABITANTS 
 
 Western Europe 
 
 In 1829, an excavation made in the shore of the 
 Lake of Zurich, near Meilen, brought up fragments of 
 wooden piles and other remains, which attracted no at- 
 tention at the time, and were thrown, with the mud in 
 which they were imbedded, into the deep part of the 
 lake. 
 
 In the winter of 1853-4, the water in the Swiss 
 lakes fell one foot lower than the mark of 1674, which 
 had been considered the lowest known in history. 
 Several gentlemen of Meilen took advantage of this low 
 water to extend- their land into the lake, inclosing por- 
 tions laid bare, and filling up the inclosed spaces with 
 neighboring mud. The workmen, as soon as they 
 began to excavate, found the mud, forming the bottom 
 of this portion of the lake, filled with wooden piles, 
 horns and bones of animals, implements of stone, and 
 fragments of pottery. The interest of antiquarians was 
 at once excited. Investigations were set on foot. It 
 was soon found that the shores of the Swiss lakes were 
 
The Primitive Inhabitants 
 
 dotted with abounding remains of an ancient people, 
 whose habitations were built in the water, and who 
 passed away without leaving a tradition. Further 
 research found similar remains in Germany and the 
 lakes of Northern Italy. The traces of one such set- 
 tlement were found adjoining Pliny's villa. Yet Pliny 
 seems to have had no suspicion of their existence — to 
 have heard no tradition of its builders. 
 
 The few years that have passed since the dis- 
 covery of the winter of 1853-4, have been so busily 
 used in the study of these remains, that a new chapter 
 of history has been sketched, the lake dwellers have be- 
 come a familiar name, and their epoch has become an 
 established starting point for reaching still further back 
 into the past. 
 
 Their villages were built in shoal water, in a few 
 cases within twenty feet — sometimes several hundred 
 yards — from the shore. Piles, sometimes whole trunks, 
 sometimes split, were driven within a few feet of each 
 other, and cut off at top so as to make a level surface. 
 In many cases they were filled in between, with stones, 
 for firmness. A boat has been found lying on the bot- 
 tom, still holding its load of stones, just where it cap- 
 sized some thousands of years ago. In other cases, the 
 piles were strengthened with cross-pieces. On the outer 
 edge, toward the lake, a wattling of wicker-work pre- 
 vented waves from washing in. 
 
 Over the surface was laid a floor of cross-timbers and 
 saplings ; and this being covered with clay and pebbles, 
 made the groundwork of the settlement. Huts were 
 built in rows. All the huts appear to have been square, 
 and their main timbers to be long piles projecting above 
 
Of Western Europe. 
 
 the general surface. A weather-boarding of a single 
 plank surrounded each hut at the bottom, keeping out 
 wet. So far no indications have been found of more 
 than a single row of boards being so used. Apparently, 
 each hut contained but one room ; each contained one 
 fire-place of stone slabs. Some had trunks of trees 
 with branches lopped short, as if used for hanging up 
 articles to keep them from the floor. Nearly all had 
 clay weights used in weaving. The sides of the huts 
 were made by weaving small wythes among the upright 
 supports and covering the walls so made with a thick 
 coating of clay. Where the villages were burnt, large 
 fragments are found of the clay with the impression of 
 the burnt wicker-work on the inner side. 
 
 The inhabitants kept their domestic animals out in 
 these villages. The researches have already brought up 
 whole museums full of implements of stone, bone, 
 bronze, and iron ; arrow-heads, lance-heads, swords, 
 hatchets, hammers, chisels, knives, needles, pins, hair- 
 pins, brooches, necklaces, and other ornaments ; pottery, 
 linen stuffs, and wearing apparel, and even charred frag- 
 ments of bread, and seeds of berries and fruits. 
 
 We do not yet know certainly the race, language, gov- 
 ernment, or religion of these people. The pile villages 
 only indicate a certain stage — an early one — of develop- 
 ment. Hippocrates mentions villages of this sort in 
 the river Phasis, in Colchis. Herodotus relates that the 
 inhabitants of a similar village in Lake Prasias, in 
 Thrace, escaped unharmed during the invasion of 
 Xerxes. Abulfeda described one such in the Apa- 
 mean lake, in Syria, in the thirteenth century. The 
 crannogs of Ireland — analogous structures, though used 
 
The Primitive Inhabitants 
 
 only as strongholds to withdraw to in times of danger — 
 continued in use to a later day. A village precisely 
 similar, inhabited by the Indians on the northern coast 
 of South America, was discovered by Ojeda, before 
 1500, and named by him Venezuela. It is mentioned 
 in Navarrete's account of the voyage, and described 
 more fully in the letters ascribed to Vespucius. The 
 natives of New Guinea, when discovered, dwelt in vil- 
 lages precisely like those of the Swiss lakes. These 
 habitations, therefore, have no ethnological value, but 
 are resorted to by nations in early and rude states, in 
 lake countries, just as steep hills and battlemented 
 castles are resorted to in other ages and situations. 
 
 But these people, though rude, were not entirely bar- 
 barous. If they navigated the lakes in canoes, each 
 scooped from a single trunk, they fished with hooks 
 that might be used now, and with nets. Their atten- 
 tion to agriculture is indicated by the manure which 
 seemed to have been heaped up and saved, and by their 
 sickles. Though they depended, particularly in the 
 most ancient settlements, largely upon hunting as well 
 as fishing, yet they kept domestic animals* — cattle, 
 sheep, goats, and pigs. Their mechanical skill ranged 
 from rudely chipping stone implements to casting and 
 working bronze and iron with some skill. Their pot- 
 tery, though made by the hand, not with the lathe, and 
 baked in open fires, was sometimes wrought in shapes 
 not without elegance, and ornamented with taste. Frag- 
 ments of linen cloth have been found, some of 
 which must have been made upon a simple species of 
 loom, and one, embroidered with regular designs in 
 needle-work. 
 
Of Western Europe 
 
 They had some communication with other nations. 
 They had quartz from Gaul ; some bits of amber, which 
 must have come from the Baltic; and nephrite, from 
 Asia. A small bar of pure tin has been found, and 
 some vases have thin strips of tin pressed into the sur- 
 face for ornament. This, with the glass beads found at 
 some of the older settlements, must have been brought 
 to their maritime neighbors by the Phoenicians. It was 
 taken for granted, at first, that their bronze came from 
 the same source ; but crucibles have been found with 
 dross yet adhering to the edge, and a well-constructed 
 bronze mold has been discovered. Besides, it has been 
 noticed that the bronze implements which appear most 
 ancient, are modeled after the stone implements that were 
 in use before the introduction of metal; while those 
 made when metal became more common, appear to have 
 been gradually fashioned in shapes better suited to 
 metal. Finally, chemical analysis, by Professor Von 
 Fellenberg, of Berne, has shown that much of the bronze 
 used contains nickel, which is not the case with bronze 
 found elsewhere. Now, in Switzerland, in the vale of 
 Anniviers, mines of copper and nickel are found close 
 together. Hence these early people seem to have been, 
 to some extent, miners. 
 
 The remains of food indicate that the villages were 
 inhabited throughout the year. Seeds of fruits and 
 berries mark all the months of summer; beech-nuts 
 and hazel-nuts point to autumn ; and the bones of the 
 swan, which visits the Swiss lakes only in December and 
 January, mark the winter. The stores of grain found 
 in one village destroyed by fire, show they laid up food ; 
 and the quantity of loose flax and thread indicate that 
 
{ 
 
 io The Primitive Inhabitants 
 
 they had occupation for the indoor season. They found 
 leisure to fabricate ornaments, as well as implements for 
 use. Bracelets, necklaces, brooches, are not rare, and 
 the abundance of hair-pins, ornamented as well as plain, 
 suggests that the ladies of the lakes had ample tresses, 
 and took pride in them. The identity of the grain 
 cultivated, and the weed of southern origin mingled 
 with it, indicate intercourse with southern Europe. 
 
 The duration of these settlements must have covered 
 a considerable lapse of time. The amount of remains 
 and refuse could only accumulate in centuries. The 
 settlement of Robenhausen presents proof of a different 
 sort. Here are found the ruins of three settlements, 
 one above the other; the first two apparently destroyed 
 by fire, the last abandoned. The growth of several feet 
 of peat, upon each bed of debris, between it and the 
 next succeeding, shows that a long interval elapsed be- 
 tween the destruction of the successive villages. More- 
 over, the villages belong to three different stages of 
 civilization — the ages of stone, of bronze, and of iron. 
 
 In all parts of the world stone implements appear to 
 have been used first. Then the soft metals, copper and 
 tin, were brought into use. And, finally, when the 
 less obvious iron was detected in its ore, and contriv- 
 ance for blast heat to smelt it was invented, civiliza- 
 tion took another advance. These three stages are rep- 
 resented in the lake dwellings. It is possible, indeed, 
 that three different types of civilization might exist side 
 by side, even in the narrow compass of Switzerland. 
 But they appear, in fact, to have been successive. In 
 the villages where metal is not found, the bones of wild 
 animals predominate; while those belonging to the 
 
Of Western Europe. 1 1 
 
 bronze epoch abound chiefly with bones of domestic 
 animals. In the first, fox bones are common. In the 
 others, they are few; and skeletons of a large variety of 
 dog appear. Now these different successive stages of 
 society, — though not the pure result of spontaneous ef- 
 fort and development of these people, but stimulated 
 and hastened by intercourse with more advanced nations, 
 — must still represent a period of long duration. 
 
 How long this duration was, can not, of course, be 
 determined ; but suggestions, which are something 
 more than guesses, have been made. The absence of 
 cat, mouse, or rat, and still more, the entire absence of 
 the domestic fowl, which was introduced into Greece in 
 the time of Pericles, and is first known in Italy by 
 coins struck about a hundred years before Christ, and 
 the presence of the sweet cherry, which was introduced 
 into Italy from the East by Lucullus, fix one limit. 
 These settlements did not last after about the begin- 
 ning of the Christian era. On the other hand, the re- 
 mains of birds found are precisely such as are found in 
 Switzerland now. The wild plants and trees of their 
 day are identical, in the minutest particular, with the 
 flora of the same localities at the present day. The 
 bones of only two animals are found that do not live in 
 Switzerland now: the urus, or great ox; and the au- 
 rochs, or bison. Caesar saw both of these in Germany, 
 where, indeed, they did not wholly perish till the mid- 
 dle ages ; and although the urus is now extinct, the 
 bison is still preserved in a forest in Lithuania, for the 
 special hunting sports of the Czars. Hence, whatever 
 date may be assigned to the origin of these settlements, 
 it must be within the present geological epoch. 
 
i 
 
 1 2 T/z<? Primitive Inhabitants 
 
 Professor Morlot, of Switzerland, has tried to fix 
 the date from geological data. He noticed in a rail- 
 road cut through a bank thrown up, sand and gravel 
 deposit at the mouth of a little stream emptying into 
 one of the lakes, in which, at different depths, were a 
 stratum of rubbish, containing Roman remains, another 
 containing bronze implements, and a third, containing 
 stone implements. In another lake, where, at the 
 mouth of a similar stream, made land has extended into 
 the lake, the remains of a convent, and of one of the lake 
 settlements, denote the position of the shore at the re- 
 spective dates of these two settlements. M. Morlot 
 argues from the date of the Roman remains in the one 
 case, and of the convent in the other, that the Swiss 
 lake village must have existed from six thousand to 
 seven thousand years ago. By a similar calculation 
 he fixes the date of a settlement (Yverdun) of the 
 transition period at three thousand three hundred years 
 ago. These calculations are generally not regarded as 
 based upon sufficient data; but Sir Charles Lyell, who 
 speaks more favorably of them than any one else, says 
 " they deserve notice, and appear to me to be full of 
 promise." 
 
 Calculations from other data arrive at a different 
 result. The settlement of Marin, the distinctive set- 
 tlement of the iron period, has an entirely distinctive 
 character, altogether the most modern type. When the 
 Emperor Napoleon was preparing his Life of Caesar, he 
 instituted careful explorations of the site of Alesia, 
 which was taken by Caesar after a memorable siege. 
 The iron swords found there are identical with the 
 swords found at Marin. Moreover, at this settlement 
 
Of Western Europe. 
 
 were found coins of Gaul, of Marseilles, and some Ro- 
 man coins, one as late as Claudius. This, the latest 
 village, must therefore have lasted till about the Chris- 
 tian era. No rye has been found. Their grains were the 
 small-grained, primitive wheat, and the six-rowed bar- 
 ley. The six-row barley is found upon Italian coin 
 struck about five or six hundred years before Christ. 
 Bronze, wheat, and barley are the distinctive marks of 
 Greece in the times of Hesiod and Homer. As civiliza- 
 tion traveled westward, the period of bronze, wheat, and 
 barley must have been later in Switzerland than in 
 Greece. At the settlement of Wauvyl, which belongs 
 to the stone period, and is regarded as one of the old- 
 est, were found glass beads, such as were made in Phoe- 
 nicia and Egypt, and must have come by means of 
 Phoenician commerce. This settlement must therefore S 
 Have been in existence as late as fifteen hundred years 1 
 before Christ. By this calculation, these villages would , 
 not extend back more than two thousand years before 
 our era, and this is the limit fixed by Keller, the most t 
 careful student of the whole subject. 
 
 The nationality of the lake dwellers has been much 
 discussed. The French appear to have settled in the 
 statement or assumption that the inhabitants of the 
 stone age were a primitive race; that the Celts, an Arian 
 race, acquainted with bronze, surging from the East, 
 and filling Western Europe, exterminated the original 
 settlers, took possession of their habitations, and drop- 
 ped into their mode of life. But, if this were true, the 
 lakes should have some traces of the struggle, and yield 
 human skeletons in attestation of it. Yet, in all the 
 lakes, only five human skulls and few other human 
 
14 The Primitive Inhabitants 
 
 bones have been found. There are no traces of sudden 
 change. From first to last the villages appear to have 
 been constructed upon the same plan, and the mode of 
 life in them appears to have been substantially the same. 
 The earliest bronze implements appear to have been 
 cast after the model of those of stone in use, and new 
 forms adopted with increased knowledge of the capabil- 
 ities of metal. So, too, the earliest iron weapons ap- 
 pear to have been wrought into the shape of bronze 
 castings, and only later advantage was taken of- the 
 malleable property of iron. The progress of these 
 people was gradual, and has every indication of having 
 been continuous. Hence, as we know the inhabitants 
 of these villages were, in their latter days, what is called 
 Celtic, we may reasonably infer that the lake settlements 
 were from the first of Celtic origin. 
 
 There is, however, one consideration which I have 
 not seen presented, which might be urged in favor of 
 the theory that the introduction of bronze came with a 
 new immigrant race. In many of the settlements have 
 been found horned or crescent-shaped objects, the pur- 
 pose of which is not known. Mr. Keller plausibly sug- 
 gests that they were connected with the Druidical wor- 
 ship of the moon. Now, these relics are not found in 
 the earlier settlements of the stone age; they are only 
 found where bronze instruments are also found. If 
 the supposition of Mr. Keller is correct, then these ob- 
 jects tend to indicate the presence of a new religious 
 worship cotemporaneous with the introduction of the 
 use of metal. And the cotemporaneous introduction 
 of both would favor the opinion that they were also co- 
 temporaneous with the incoming of a new race. 
 
Of Western Europe. 1 5 
 
 Groping in the dark for the history of these early 
 people, we can deal only in hypotheses and probabilities. 
 So, as to the period of the abandonment of the pile 
 dwellings, it can only be said that they were probably 
 abandoned gradually. The increasing sense of confine- 
 ment and discomfort accompanying the development of 
 new wants, which necessarily came with new acquisitions 
 and improvements; or, perhaps, the growth of confi- 
 dence and security which came with the use of metal 
 weapons, or both together, seem to have led to a grad- 
 ual abandonment of these habitations. Villages of the 
 stone age are found in all the lakes; villages of the 
 bronze age are found only in the western lakes. And 
 villages where iron is found have been discovered only 
 in two lakes. The whole system seems to have been 
 finally abandoned about the beginning of the present 
 era. Sir Charles Lyell is probably mistaken in saying 
 that such villages existed at Chavanne and Noville in 
 the sixth century, for they are not named in Sir John 
 Lubbock's later and fuller notice, or in Keller's exhaust- 
 ive account. But some faint traces have lingered to 
 our day. The fishermen in the Limmat built their huts 
 upon the same plan down to the last century, and in a 
 secluded valley in the Vorder Rhine, where an antique 
 dialect is yet heard, the cattle and sheep and pigs show 
 clear traces of the varieties whose bones are found 
 among the remains of the lake dwellings. 
 
 The lake dwellings thus lose much of their mystery. 
 Their buildings differed from their cotemporaries in 
 Western Europe only in the accident of situation. 
 They sought for security in their lakes, as those upon 
 the mainland did upon steep hills. Throughout France, 
 
The Primitive Inhabitants 
 
 the British Isles, Germany, and Denmark, the same 
 successive eras of stone, bronze, and iron prevailed. 
 The straight-bladed iron swords, the leaf-like bronze 
 swords, the metal ornaments, and the ruder implements 
 of stone, are found alike in all these countries. The 
 old monuments which have perplexed antiquaries, 
 though still without date in years, range themselves in 
 a certain order of succession. The tumuli take place 
 in the age of bronze, and the barrows in the age of 
 stone. The venerable circle of stonehenge takes its 
 place in history in the age of bronze. 
 
 On the Baltic shores of Denmark are remains which 
 belong to a ruder, if not an earlier, epoch. These are 
 simple heaps of oyster-shells, which have received an 
 unpronounceable Danish name, meaning "kitchen re- 
 fuse." The tribes now living in the Straits of Terra 
 del Fuego and the northern coast of Australia live 
 chiefly on shell fish, and the debris of their repasts ac- 
 cumulate in great masses of shells. So, in former days, 
 lived and fed an oyster-loving tribe on the shores of 
 Denmark. Bones of animals and birds, and occasional 
 stone arrow-heads and hatchets mingled in the heap, 
 have been studied as carefully as the remains found in 
 the lakes. The stone implements are very rude and 
 simple. The bones indicate no domestic animal but a 
 small dog. There are no indications of wheat, barley, 
 or other vegetable food. The bones of deep-sea fish 
 indicate that the people used boats. The different 
 stages of growth of deer's antlers found, indicate that 
 the shores were not a mere summer resort, but were the 
 permanent dwelling-place of an extremely rude people. 
 
 The only extinct animal whose bones are found there 
 
Of Western Europe. 1 7 
 
 is the urus. But the oyster is no longer found in the 
 brackish water of the Baltic, and the muscle and other 
 shell-fish now reach there only one-third of the size that 
 is shown in these refuse heaps, and which they still at- 
 tain in the ocean. But it is known that, at no remote 
 period, ocean currents swept through Denmark in straits 
 now closed, and Sweden has been gradually rising at the 
 rate of two feet in a century in the southern part, and 
 five feet in a century in the north. The shores of Den- 
 mark, however, it is said, rise only at the rate of two 
 or three inches per century. If these shores have been 
 rising at the rate of two or three inches per century, the 
 shell heaps are now so near the level of the water that 
 they can not be credited with any antiquity exceeding 
 four thousand years. Hence, though they certainly be- 
 long to an earlier type of civilization, there seems no 
 reason for making them chronologically belong to a 
 more remote date than the more advanced races who 
 built the barrows and tumuli. This view is corroborated 
 by the fact that the remains of no extinct animal but the 
 urus are found here. 
 
 One circumstance has been seized to g-ive them a 
 more venerable antiquity. Denmark has been covered 
 with beech forest as long as we have any account of it. 
 But trunks of trees found in peat beds show that it was 
 preceded by oak, which in turn was preceded by for- 
 ests of pine. In a peat bed, under the trunk of a huge 
 pine, which itself lies under superimposed oak and 
 beech, a flint arrow-head has been found. And in the 
 shell heaps are found the bones of a bird [capercailzie) 
 which is supposed to have fed on pine buds. So with 
 guessers at the unknown duration of the unknown for- 
 
The Primitive Inhabitants 
 
 ests, a remote conjectural antiquity is commonly ascribed 
 to these simple remains. 
 
 But it is not in the lake dwellings, or the shell 
 mounds, or the peat beds, that we are to look for the 
 primitive inhabitants of Western Europe. The archae- 
 ologist indeed goes no further. But the geologist, 
 peering beyond, descries a fossil man. Not every pet- 
 rifaction, however, is a fossil. We must define what is 
 properly meant by this term. 
 
 The forces of nature are still at work ceaselessly 
 changing the surface of the earth. The sea eats away 
 its shores, the waves grind up the fragments, and the 
 currents bear away the debris, deposit it, and form sub- 
 marine strata. Rivers in like manner washing away 
 the soil of their valleys, create new formations. Vol- 
 canoes still scatter their ashes and lava, and dripping 
 caves sheet their floors with stalagmite. The deposits 
 formed by erosion and transportation of currents go by 
 the general name of alluvium. This name, however, is 
 particularly given to the deposits formed by streams 
 flowing in their present beds. The older alluvium, 
 resting directly upon the tertiary strata, some geolo- 
 gists ascribe to a catastrophe different from the opera- 
 tions we now witness, and which they call the diluvium 
 of the north. Hence, they call this old deposit dilu- 
 vium, and also call the era of its formation the quater- 
 nary period. Any remains, therefore, found in the 
 proper alluvium belong to history and archaeology. 
 They must be found in the diluvium, or quaternary, to 
 be ranked as fossils. 
 
 Other geologists, noting the slow change of level 
 which is still going on in the world — some shores ris- 
 
Of Western Europe. 
 
 ing and others sinking — find existing phenomena suf- 
 ficient, if lapse of time enough is allowed, and desig- 
 nate ages by the nature of the remains found in them. 
 Sir Charles Lyell and others, noticing that different 
 strata of the tertiary formation contain different pro- 
 portions of extinct and still living species, have divided 
 that formation, accordingly, into three periods — eocene, 
 miocene, and pliocene. Giving the name post-tertiary 
 to all subsequent to the tertiary, they still find in some 
 of the post-tertiary formations remains of animals now 
 extinct. To this portion of the post-tertiary they give 
 the name of post-pliocene. The other, which contains 
 only the remains of animals now existing, they call re- 
 cent. Hence it is in this formation, by whatever name 
 we call it, whether diluvium, quaternary, drift, or post- 
 pliocene, that the geologist must find human remains 
 before he can show us fossil man. 
 
 In the museum in Paris is a petrified skeleton of a 
 woman imbedded in a calcareous rock, found in the 
 island of Guadaloupe. But this rock is still in process 
 of formation. The sea washing up shells, with detritus 
 of the rock of the island, forms a conglomerate, in 
 which all the shells are such as now live on the shore, 
 and the skeleton appears to belong to the Carib tribe, 
 which inhabited the island at a recent date. 
 
 In a peat-bog in Sweden was found the skeleton of 
 a bison, bearing marks of a wound made by a hatchet. 
 Near it was found a stone hatchet, which, on being ap- 
 plied, fitted the wound. Close at hand was a human 
 skeleton, the hunter and his prey imbedded together. 
 But the bison is not yet extinct; it still lives in* the 
 Lithuanian forest, and peat still grows. 
 
20 The Primitive Inhabitants 
 
 Messrs. Lartet and Christy, great names in these in- 
 vestigations, described, in 1861, the cave of Lombrines, 
 in the Pyrenees, where human bones were found im- 
 bedded under stalagmite, which were pronounced cotem- 
 porary with the mammoth. But Mr. Garrigou read a 
 paper before the Societe d' Anthropologic, in Paris, on the 
 15th of December, 1864, in which he stated that, upon 
 a subsequent examination of this cave and others in 
 the Pyrenees, by careful scrutiny of the way in which 
 the bones had been washed in through crevices by a 
 stream still running, he became convinced that there 
 was no proof that they were introduced at this early 
 period, but that they should be regarded as cotem- 
 porary with the lake dwellings. He added that Lartet, 
 Christy, d'Archiac, Milne Edwards, and others, con- 
 curred in this conclusion, and applied it to other caves 
 in the Pyrenees. 
 
 But there are cases which can not be so summarily 
 disposed of. Of the animals which lived in the post- 
 pliocene period, some are extinct, though the greater 
 number still survive. To fix man as belonging to that 
 period, it is necessary to show that he was cotemporary 
 with the animals now extinct. This might be done by 
 showing his remains in such juxtaposition with the ex- 
 tinct species as to exclude any hypothesis but the one 
 that they lived together; or else to show human re- 
 mains naturally inclosed in a deposit which was made 
 at that period. The post-pliocene period was marked 
 by a cold climate in Western Europe. Among the ani- 
 mals now extinct, which flourished then, are the cave bear, 
 caVe lion, cave hyena, gigantic Irish elk, the hairy ele- 
 phant or mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros, the urus or 
 
Of Western Europe. i\ 
 
 great ox ; to which may be added — as extinct in Western 
 Europe, though still surviving in colder regions — the 
 reindeer. The urus was extinct in Gaul before the 
 campaigns of Julius Caesar, though it survived in Ger- 
 many long after. The reindeer must have disappeared 
 then, at a still earlier day, and has been kept alive to 
 this day in Sweden and Norway, only by rigid game 
 laws. The mammoth and rhinoceros appear to have 
 vanished at a still more remote period, as only a few of 
 their bodies have been found in Siberia, incased in ice, 
 which enveloped them before the flesh had begun to de- 
 cay. Of the cave bear and others we have nothing but 
 fossil remains. Hence, Mr. Lartet, assuming epochs 
 of successive disappearance, divides the post-pliocene 
 age into four periods — those of the cave bear, of the 
 mammoth and rhinoceros, of the reindeer, and of the 
 urus. The proposition is, therefore, to show that man 
 was a cotemporary with the first three of these periods. 
 The caves of Perigord furnish part of the proofs. 
 These caves have yielded numerous instruments made 
 of reindeer horn. Some fragments appear to have been 
 sawed. One is fashioned into a delicate, fine-pointed 
 needle, with an eye so small it seemed impossible it 
 could be made with the rude implements of those prim- 
 itive people. But this doubt was removed when Mr. 
 Lartet, with one of the sharp-pointed pieces of quartz, 
 which seemed to have been used as awls, made a punc- 
 ture as fine. Some of the reindeer horns have designs 
 engraved upon them, representing the deer, elk, ox, 
 boar, and other animals. These are not all mere out- 
 line sketches ; some are shaded drawings. The most 
 interesting is an unfinished dagger, the handle carved to 
 
22 The Primitive Inhabitants 
 
 4- 
 
 represent a reindeer with his head thrown back, his ant- 
 lers lying along his shoulders, his fore legs drawn 
 under his belly, and hind legs extended along the mid- 
 dle of the blade. The spirit of the design, and the 
 skill with which the natural form of the horn is adapted 
 to it, make it a veritable work of art. All who have 
 seen these objects unite in saying that they obviously 
 were carved from the bones of recently killed animals, 
 not from fossils dug up. In the cave of Eyzies was 
 found embedded in breccia, part of the vertebra of a 
 young reindeer, still perforated with a flint arrow-head, 
 which, unquestionably, penetrated there when the bone 
 was soft. Man was, therefore, cotemporary with the 
 reindeer in Southern France. 
 
 Similar evidence connects him with the mammoth. 
 A tusk has been found engraved with the head of two 
 oxen. A piece of ivory has also been exhumed bearing 
 a spirited and unmistakable sketch of a mammoth. 
 The animal having been found entire, frozen in Siberia, 
 his appearance is now known,- — not merely from infer- 
 ence from the skeleton, but from actual view. And 
 here is found a portrait taken from life by a man who 
 hunted the mammoth when he ranged the valleys of 
 Southern France. A wood-cut of this can be seen in 
 the February number of the cf Salem Natural History 
 Magazine." 
 
 The cave of Aurignac, in Upper Garonne, near the 
 Pyrenees, brings man in contact with the cave bear and 
 hyena, as well as the mammoth rhinoceros and reindeer. 
 A peasant working on the highway, near Aurignac, in 
 1865, noticed that rabbits took refuge in a hole in the 
 hill-side. Putting his hand into the hole one day, he 
 
Of Western Europe. 23 
 
 drew out a human bone. He began to remove the 
 earth, and found an upright stone slab. Removing the 
 slab, he found a small cavern nearly filled with human 
 bones. The mayor of Aurignac hearing of it, removed 
 the skeletons, and buried them in the village cemetery. 
 But, being a physician, he first examined them suffi- 
 ciently to perceive that they were the bones of eighteen 
 persons, — men, women, and children. 
 
 Mr. Lartet repaired to the spot as soon as he got 
 wind of the discovery, and made a thorough explora- 
 tion. He found in the cave a level floor, apparently 
 of made earth, in which were still left a few human 
 fragments. Besides these were a flint knife which had 
 never been used, eighteen perforated disks of shell 
 which had apparently once formed a necklace, a carved 
 bear's tusk, and a few teeth of a lion. He also found 
 the skeleton of a cave bear, the bones lying in such 
 order and juxtaposition as to show that they had been 
 covered with flesh when placed in the cave. These 
 bones were all undisturbed, and suggest that with the 
 quartz and shell and carved bone, they had been left 
 there as a funeral rite with the buried dead. When the 
 earth outside the cave was removed, a hearth of flint 
 sandstone was found, laid upon a smooth surface, exca- 
 vated underneath. Upon this were evidences of fire. 
 Scattered about were the bones of seventeen animals, 
 including all the extinct species I have named. Many 
 of them were charred by fire and scraped as if by the 
 quartz knife, which had removed the meat. Scattered 
 about were more than a hundred objects of flint, knives, 
 arrow-heads, chips, a flint block from which some of 
 these had been chipped, and one of those pulley-shaped 
 
24 The Primitive Inhabitants 
 
 utensils of rough stone, which have so puzzled archae- 
 ologists, but which the Danish antiquaries take to be 
 implements used in chipping off and forming Hint im- 
 plements. The bones about this fire-place were many 
 of them gnawed by some carniverous beast, the soft 
 ends quite eaten away, and among the ashes were found 
 fossil excrements of the hyena. Here was indubitable 
 evidence that man had eaten the mammoth and rhinoc- 
 eros; that he had interred a cave bear while the bones 
 were still covered with flesh, and that the hyena had 
 banqueted on the remains of his feast. 
 
 In England, in a cave containing bones of those ex- 
 tinct animals, a well-formed flint arrow-head was found 
 lying under the entire leg of a cave bear, all the most 
 delicate bones of which were in position, showing that 
 it had been deposited there when bound together with 
 its ligaments at least, if not covered with flesh. In the 
 cave of Engis, in Belgium, a human skull was found 
 with the same surroundings, imbedded in breccia, under 
 a floor of stalagmite. 
 
 The caves are not the only repositories of evidence. 
 Strata of drift, filled with post-pliocene remains, have 
 also yielded stone arrow-heads and hatchets. M. Bou- 
 cher de Perthes first discovered them in the valley of 
 the Somme, in Northern France. Excavations made 
 to obtain earth for the fortifications of Abbeville, and 
 railway cuttings, gave him ample opportunity to explore 
 this formation. In 1841, he began to collect the im- 
 plements so found; but all his statements were met 
 with quiet skepticism, or turned off with the remark 
 that his so-called arrow-heads and hatchets were acci- 
 dental natural forms. He set about collecting all the 
 
Of Western Europe. 25 
 
 flints of natural form most resembling them; and the 
 difference between the manufactured and the natural 
 flint was obvious. After years of scientific disdain, one 
 geologist of repute, Dr. Rigollot, of Amiens, visited 
 him, saw at a glance that the collection was of manufac- 
 tured implements, and, returning to Amiens, explored 
 the same stratum there, and found the same objects of 
 stone. 
 
 It was objected that M. Boucher de Perthes might be 
 deceived ; that these implements might be given to him 
 by workmen who falsely pretended to find them in situ. 
 He followed the excavations in person, and with his 
 own hands took the hatchets from their beds. It was 
 then objected that they might have sunk through the 
 superincumbent earth to their present position long 
 after the stratum Was formed. But the soil was, in its 
 natural state, free from fissure; the implements were 
 diffused all through the drift, were found from eighteen 
 to thirty feet below the surface, and often found under- 
 neath animal fossils. 
 
 But the cave discoveries had not yet become rife, and 
 M. Boucher de Perthes could not yet find credit. In 
 1859 a party of leading English geologists visited him, 
 saw his collection, explored the excavations, found the 
 implements there in situ y published an account of their 
 visit, and the scientific world at length accepted the 
 facts. The same formation was explored where it exists 
 in England, and with the same result. 
 
 Objection still was raised that no human bones had 
 yet been found along with these implements. To this 
 it was answered by Sir Charles Lyell, by Lubbock, and 
 others, that this drift was the deposit of a rapid cur- 
 
i6 The Primitive Inhabitants 
 
 rent, and much compressed by the heavy winter ice of 
 the quaternary period, so that human bones might well 
 have been destroyed ; and, besides, that the Swiss lakes 
 and Danish shell heaps were almost devoid of human 
 bones. But, finally, at the meeting of the Societe 
 d'Anthropologie, of 13th August, 1864, M. Boucher de 
 Perthes announced that he had found fragments of hu- 
 man bones, representing all ages. Remembering the 
 captiousness which had met his former statements, he 
 had persuaded the mayor and several of the leading men 
 of Abbeville to accompany him to the excavations, 
 stand by the workmen as they dug, and receive with 
 their own hands the human fragments from their bed as 
 they were reached. 
 
 Of all the relics found, no others have excited so 
 much interest as the human skulls — one found in the 
 cave of Neanderthal, near Dusseldorf; the other in the 
 cave of Engis, in Belgium. The Neanderthal skull 
 has given rise to unusual discussion. The brain capac- 
 ity, seventy-five cubic inches, is verv near an average 
 between a Hindoo and the largest known healthy 
 European skull. But while the brain capacity is so 
 near an average, the shape and formation are the most 
 brutal of any known human skull. The extraordinary 
 prominence of the superciliary arches, the unparalleled 
 flattening of both the forehead and the occiput, and the 
 straightness of the sutures, make this the most ape-like 
 of human skulls. Learned men who claim to know, 
 say it bears no marks of having been the skull of an 
 idiot, and no marks of artificial compression. The 
 rest of the skeleton has nothing peculiar. The stout- 
 
Of Western Europe. 27 
 
 ness of the bones and the development of the muscular 
 ridges show that the man must have had great physical 
 strength. It is, of 'course, impossible to say whether 
 this remarkable skull was an individual instance, or the 
 ordinary type of some race. It is undoubtedly very 
 ancient, but nothing found in the cave with it, and 
 nothing in the manner in which it seems to have been 
 deposited there, warrants the statement that it is en- 
 titled to belong to the post-pliocene period. It may 
 have been cotemporary with the mammoth, but it may 
 be much more recent. 
 
 The Engis skull, however, was found so associated 
 with other fossils, that it is accepted as an unquestion- 
 able relic of the days of the mammoth and the cave 
 bear. This skull is in no wise peculiar. Its dimen- 
 sions are almost precisely identical with two modern 
 skulls, one Australian, and one an English skull, noted 
 in Hunterian museum as typically Caucasian. So .far 
 as the scanty human fossil remains give indication, the 
 physical structure of man has undergone no change 
 since he first appeared on earth. Like existing ani- 
 mals that have come down from the post-pliocene 
 period, his type remains the same. 
 
 During that whole era, man made little advance in 
 civilization in Western Europe. In the last few thou- 
 sand years, civilization has accelerated in a geometrical 
 ratio. But as we dimly peer into the conjectural past, 
 the advance appears to have been, with occasional fluc- 
 tuations, more sluggish, till we get back to a uniform 
 degree lasting through cycles. The data we have are 
 certainly scanty. The stone implements then used, so 
 
28 The Primitive Inhabitants 
 
 far as yet discovered, are of the ruder type, simply 
 chipped, not polished. No specimens of their pottery 
 have as yet been found. There is'-nothing yet to show 
 they knew anything of agriculture. At the same time, 
 their carvings became a lost art. During all the period 
 of the lake dwellings, no imitations of leaves, animals, 
 or other natural objects were attempted before the in- 
 troduction of iron. The attempt, even then, to intro- 
 duce animal shapes into their ornamentation, showed, in 
 that particular, very great inferiority to the cave dwell- 
 ers of Perigord. The men of the fossil time, living 
 in caves, undoubtedly were as rude as some savage 
 tribes now living; but their works and their funeral 
 rites show that infant man, a new comer upon the 
 world, dwelling among mammoths and gigantic elks, 
 from the beginning asserted his supremacy over other 
 created beings, and showed himself endowed with intel- 
 ligence, aspiration for art, and belief in his immor- 
 tality. 
 
 But I am checked in calling this the beginning of 
 man. Certain bones have been lately picked up in 
 Southern France. These bones have scratches upon 
 them. They are the bones of the tropical elephant. 
 The scratches are said to be marks made by a sharp 
 quartz implement in scraping off the meat. Hence it 
 has been intimated that the primitive inhabitants of 
 Western Europe may have been cotemporary with the 
 tropical elephant. This suggestion carries us back to 
 an epoch as remote to the time that we have been con- 
 sidering, as that is to the present day. But the sugges- 
 tion that man lived then, is based on no discovery of 
 remains of a degraded human type, or of skeleton in- 
 
Of Western Europe. 
 
 termediate between man and gorilla, but is founded 
 upon the supposed presence among the remains of that 
 day of the traces of human intelligence.* 
 
 *The recent discovery by Mr. Calvert of engraved bones in 
 strata of the miocene period, in the Dardanelles, is considered as 
 having established the fact of man's existence as early as the 
 miocene epoch. 
 
DARWINISM AND DEITY. 
 
 Darwin claims to have established the existence of a 
 law of nature, which regulates the progressive appear- 
 ance on earth of the diversified forms of life. I pro- 
 pose to say a few words about his theory, and to add 
 some suggestions about laws of nature in general. 
 
 It is accepted by all, that the first forms of life were 
 the simplest; that higher forms appeared later, and man 
 last of all. Whether we read the written account in 
 Genesis, or try to decipher the fossil record inscribed 
 on the earth's strata, this general statement is equally 
 discerned. 
 
 In trying to account for this progressive appearance 
 of diversified forms of life, the most obvious method 
 is, to ascribe -it to successive acts of creative power. 
 
 This theory of successive creation is upheld by some 
 men of science. 
 
 They say that not only was the beginning of the 
 world a creation, but there is reason for holding that 
 the creative power is not in abeyance, but is still in 
 daily exercise. It is said that the spiritual part of man, 
 the soul, the Me, is not an aggregation of particles, but 
 is an absolute, indivisible unit. It is impossible to im- 
 agine the consciousness of a person to be divided into 
 separate consciousnesses. But an absolute, indivisible 
 
Darwinism and Deity. 3 1 
 
 unit, not made up of particles, is itself an ultimate par- 
 ticle, and can not be made from anything else. Hence, 
 the soul of each person, the Me, must be an original 
 creation. 
 
 Plato held that the soul of each person, or what he 
 called the spiritual and immortal body, was brought 
 into being by a direct act of creative power; but also 
 maintained that all souls were created in the beginning, 
 and that they transmigrate from body to body. 
 
 Now, if we reject the doctrine of transmigration, but 
 agree that the birth of each human soul is an act of di- 
 rect creation, there arises an antecedent probability that 
 the coming into being of every new form of life, every 
 species, has been due to acts of specific creation. 
 
 Men of science have said that this antecedent prob- 
 ability is verified by the facts of geology. It is agreed 
 by all that the earth's surface has undergone great 
 changes ; that continents have been submerged, and 
 again elevated ; that arctic and torrid climates have suc- 
 ceeded each other in territories now lying in the tem- 
 perate zone. And it is said by some that the different 
 superimposed strata indicate that there have been breaks 
 in the continuity of life; that at times some great ca- 
 tastrophe has destroyed all life, leaving only fossil epi- 
 taphs ; and that new forms of life followed with nothing 
 to generate them, with no way of their coming into 
 being but by a new exercise of creative power. 
 
 It is further said that these successive creations are all 
 in harmony with a purpose or design ; and that this 
 same purpose or design is exhibited even in certain 
 present phases, as in the progressive stages of the hu- 
 
32 Darwinism and Deity. 
 
 man brain before birth, which resemble successively the 
 brain of various orders of animals from the lower, up. 
 
 In the same way, it has been observed that in many 
 animals, including man, there are rudimentary parts 
 which are of no use, but serve only as reminders of 
 earlier and preceding species to which such parts were 
 important, — just as the form of the earliest metal im- 
 plements (and the form of an implement bears the 
 same relation to the inventor that created things do to 
 the creator) retained peculiarities which were of use in 
 stone implements, though of no use in the new material, 
 metal. 
 
 This whole theory, however, is falling, or perhaps has 
 fallen, into disfavor among men of science. The main 
 fact on which it rests as a theory of science, is now said 
 not to exist. It is generally denied that there has been 
 any break in the continuity of life. It is said that the 
 great changes which have visited the earth's surface were 
 not due to catastrophes which destroyed life, leaving a 
 void to be filled by renewed acts of creation ; but were 
 wrought by causes which are still in operation. 
 
 Strata are still forming at the bottom of lakes and seas. 
 Rocks are still cracking and crumbling into soil. Hills 
 are washing away ; rivers are still cutting channels, and 
 forming alluvium and deltas. Land is still rising and 
 sinking. Venice has sunk fifteen inches since the 
 Doges' palace was built. Crete has tilted up since the 
 days of the Roman Empire. The ports on its western 
 shore have risen twenty feet out of the water, while the 
 cities on its eastern coast are submerged. The penin- 
 sula of Norway and Sweden has been rising and tilting 
 
 
Darwinism and Deity. 33 
 
 steadily, the southern extremity rising at the rate of 
 two feet ; North Cape at the rate of five feet per century. 
 Climates are changing. In the last four centuries there 
 has been a constant increase in the severity of the cli- 
 mate in all the region about the upper part of Baffin's 
 Bay. Deserted habitations of Esquimaux are found in 
 tracts where there are no longer inhabitants. At the 
 same time, the glaciers of Greenland have very largely 
 increased* Some of the glaciers of Switzerland are 
 steadily growing, others diminishing, others alternating. 
 Coral reefs are still forming, volcanoes are still in erup- 
 tion, and volcanic islands still at times thrust them- 
 selves above the surface of the sea. These operations 
 are precisely the same indicated by geology. It is said 
 that give time enough, allow a duration in which a mill- 
 ion years will count as a fleeting moment, these opera- 
 tions would produce all the changes that the earth's sur- 
 face is said to have undergone. 
 
 Now, if the world has always gone on as it is now 
 going on, the presumption arises, and this presumption 
 accords with what we know of the phenomena of the 
 universe, that there has always been a certain sequence 
 of events ; that every fact of nature is related to and 
 dependent on other facts, and has grown out of facts 
 which preceded it. Hence, it is said that every new 
 form of life, every new animal and plant, has been 
 evolved or developed from already existing species. 
 Darwin claims that this progressive development is de- 
 termined and regulated by a law of nature, which he has 
 eliminated, and which he calls, the law of Selection. 
 
 A great many marked varieties of domesticated ani- 
 mals and plants have been produced by the care of man. 
 
34- Darwinism and Deity. 
 
 They have not been produced by manufacture or cre- 
 ation, but by eliminating and perpetuating peculiarities 
 which have naturally appeared in individuals. A horse, 
 a bull, a dog, having some special quality, is carefully 
 mated. The best of his progeny is selected, and care- 
 fully mated. The process is repeated till a new variety 
 is introduced. This variety is not a true species, per- 
 manent and self-perpetuating; but it lasts as a determi- 
 nate variety, as long as the supervening care of man 
 preserves it. Now it is conceivable that some natural 
 cause might operate in the same manner as this care of 
 man, and by operating permanently, produce a perma- 
 nent natural difference, and so create a species. 
 
 Among men, hereditary traits are often noticed. A 
 heavy lower jaw has been a feature of the Hapsburg 
 family for centuries. And it is said that the ladies of a 
 certain English ducal family still are distinguished by 
 the beautiful form of the neck, which they inherited 
 from their ancestor, one of the ladies of the court of 
 Charles II. 
 
 Besides these minute peculiarities, climate, food, and 
 the other conditions of life affect physical traits. When 
 I was in Colorado a few years ago I was told that the 
 chests of persons and of horses that had lived several 
 years at Georgetown, some 9,000 feet above the level 
 of the sea, had become expanded. The necessity of 
 breathing a larger amount of the rarified air of that ele- 
 vated region required larger lungs. And persons who 
 follow a calling requiring especial use of particular 
 muscles or organs find those muscles and organs largely 
 develop; while, on the other hand, parts of the body 
 long disused have a tendency to shrink and diminish. 
 
Darwinism and Deity. 35 
 
 In the same way, diet and mode of life affect the body. 
 Each nation in Europe has its characteristics, and the 
 American people, though so recent, are already dis- 
 tinguishable from their ancestors. 
 
 Now two facts are quite certain. One is, that no two 
 animals, even of the same species, are precisely alike. 
 Every individual has its own peculiarities. The other 
 fact is, that vastly more are born than arrive at matu- 
 rity. If all animals born reached maturity, the world 
 would soon be heaped up with the crowd. Hence, there 
 is a continual competitive struggle for existence, and in 
 this struggle those mostly survive which are best fitted 
 to survive in the existing conditions of life. 
 
 If, for example, various species should migrate to the 
 Arctic regions, the sustenance of animal heat would be- 
 come a matter of vital importance. White is the color 
 that protects against external heat or cold. Hence, those 
 animals which should happen to have white or nearly 
 white fur would, other things being equal, have the 
 best chance of surviving. Besides, a white-furred animal 
 would be least distinguishable on the snowy surface, 
 and so would have the best chance of escaping from its 
 pursuers, and at the same time, the best chance of 
 coming unperceived upon its own prey. These con- 
 stant chances operating through cycles would tend to 
 eliminate all dark-skinned animals, leaving only the 
 white to survive. So in animals that trust to speed, 
 either for their own safety, or for overtaking their prey, 
 the swiftest would have the best chance for life, and in 
 long course of ages, the swift-footed of those species 
 would tend to predominate, and the slow to disappear. 
 
 So of an insect tribe infesting trees, if one should 
 
36 Darwinism and Deity, 
 
 happen to be born somewhat resembling the bark of the 
 tree in appearance, it would have a chance of escaping 
 unobserved the birds that snap up its brighter-colored 
 kindred. Of the progeny of this one, such as inherited 
 this peculiarity would have the same chance of preserv- 
 ing life ; and so, in the long course of time, would grow 
 of a species so closely resembling the bark of the tree 
 on which it lived, as to find its safety therein. 
 
 In the same way, if any individual should happen to 
 be born with increased facility for securing subsistence, 
 either greater efficiency in obtaining food, or greater 
 capacity for assimilating the food at hand, such indi- 
 vidual would have increased chance of surviving in the 
 struggle for life; and its progeny inheriting the same 
 peculiarity would, by having the same chance of sur- 
 viving, increase the tendency to propagate this peculiar- 
 ity of structure. 
 
 The great changes which. the earth's surface has under- 
 gone would give greater room for the display of this 
 struggle for life. Change of climate and soil would 
 change vegetation. And this change of the conditions 
 of life would impose new conditions upon the chances 
 of survivorship. It might intensify the chances of the 
 predominating varieties, or it might nullify their chances 
 and give increased chances to some new peculiarity. 
 
 Besides the law of survivorship of the fittest, which is 
 called the law of Natural Selection, there is another ele- 
 ment, somewhat analogous, called Sexual Selection, 
 The males of certain animals have a contest for the 
 possession of the female. She remains an indifferent 
 spectator, and quietly goes off with the victor. Here 
 the strongest and most agile males have progeny, while 
 
Darwinism and Deity. 37 
 
 the weaker leave no offspring. Hence there is a tend- 
 ency to produce a race of strong active males. 
 
 In other races, particularly among birds, the female 
 makes her selection. One species is carried away by 
 song. The males exercise all their vocal powers, and 
 the sweetest singer carries away the prize. Another 
 species is attracted by brilliant plumage; and here the 
 lucky male endowed with the brightest feathers succeeds. 
 This course of selection tends in the long lapse of ages 
 to increase the musical power in the one species, and the 
 brilliancy of plumage in the other. 
 
 However minute any single variation from existing 
 types might be, it is said that give time enough, time 
 without stint, time without limit, these processes of 
 natural selection, together with the changes of climate 
 and surface, would be sufficient to account for the pro- 
 duction of the various diversified forms of life which 
 have appeared since the first were brought into being. 
 
 But not only might new forms of life be so produced. 
 It is further said, there are reasons for believing they 
 have been actually so produced. 
 
 The fact that new breeds, that new temporary varieties 
 are produced in a short time by superintending human 
 care, raises the presumption that permanent changes of 
 structure, that is, new species, would be produced by 
 natural causes, operating for an indefinite duration in a 
 way analogous to human care. 
 
 Some facts strengthen this presumption. For in- 
 stance: pigs in Florida feed on an herb which rots off 
 the hoofs of all but black pigs. This cause has not 
 been operating long enough to prevent the birth of light 
 or party-colored pigs; but it prevents any but the black 
 
3 S Darwinism and Deity. 
 
 from arriving at maturity. Further it is said, that parts 
 that are serviceable in the lower orders of animals are 
 found in a rudimentary state in the higher, as if they 
 had gradually disappeared by disuse. For instance, the 
 os coccyx in man is a rudimentary tail. And the punc- 
 ture in the lower part of the os humerus, which is the 
 passage for a nerve in monkeys, is of no use in the 
 human frame. Yet it is found in one per cent, of human 
 skeletons of the present day, and in a larger per cent, of 
 human skeletons three or four thousand years old, in 
 some parts of France. 
 
 So far I have offered, not a sketch, but only a 
 rude indication of the general drift of the theory of spe- 
 cific creation and of Darwin's theory of the laws of 
 selection. As to the respective merits and probabilities 
 of these theories, I do not pretend to offer an opinion. 
 Non nostrum inter vos tantas componere lites. Men who 
 devote their lives to scientific investigations will toil to 
 a determination, and the world will accept the result. 
 
 But there are some suggestions that any of us may 
 make about Darwin's theory. He does not pretend to 
 solve the question, as to the origin of life, or the essence 
 of life, or the power that produces the initial variations 
 in the forms of life which give opportunity for selection. 
 Accepting these, his aim is to ascertain and determine 
 a law by which they produce the permanent forms of 
 life, which we call species. 
 
 His theory as to the existence of this law, is gaining 
 
 ground daily among men devoted to natural science. 
 
 • But his theory can hardly yet be called " the law" of 
 
 the development of species. For a true law of nature 
 
 explaining the phenomena of a certain class, must ex- 
 
Darwinism and Deity. 39 
 
 plain all the phenomena of that class. It can not be 
 accepted as a law of nature, if it be inconsistent with a 
 single fact of nature. And the law of selection con- 
 fessedly does not explain all the phenomena of the de- 
 velopment of species. For Darwin says, there are in 
 man, and other animals, parts which do not appear to 
 be of any present use, or to have ever been of use in 
 any previous form of life. And such parts can not be 
 accounted for by the law of selection. 
 
 Further, even so far as the law of selection is con- 
 sistent with known facts, it can not now be taken as ab- 
 solutely true, but only as provisionally true. For a 
 larger acquaintance with the facts of nature may show it 
 to be incorrect, and require it to be modified and aban- 
 doned. The Ptolemaic theory of the universe was a 
 good scientific theory in its day, for it was consistent 
 with all the facts then known of the heavenly bodies. 
 But a larger acquaintance with the movements of those 
 bodies required that theory to be dropped and sup- 
 planted by the Copernican theory. 
 
 Finally, although several species have disappeared 
 within the last two thousand years, it is not known 
 that a single new species has appeared since the last 
 fossil era. It must therefore take, so far as we know, 
 thousands of years, to produce any, even the smallest, 
 permanent change in the structure of either animal or 
 vegetable life. But though we thus know that a very 
 long period is necessary, we do not know how much 
 would be sufficient. We have not yet, therefore, 
 attained at anything like a unit of measurement of time 
 required for the workings of Darwin's law. 
 
 But late discoveries have shown that the people who 
 
40 Darwinism and Deity. 
 
 lived in southern France when the reindeer and the 
 hairy elephant abounded there, attained not only me- 
 chanical skill, but considerable artistic power in carving. 
 The skeletons found in the cave of Engis show that 
 man, just as we see him now, with well-developed skull 
 of the present type, existed in the post-pliocene periods. 
 Indications of man, flint implements made by him, have 
 indeed been found dating back to the still earlier period 
 when the tropical elephant roamed in France. Lyell, 
 speaking of changes in physical geography since those 
 skeletons were washed into the cave of Engis, says, " But 
 although we may be unable to estimate the minimum 
 required for the changes in physical geography above 
 alluded to, we can not fail to perceive that the duration 
 of the period (the post-pliocene) must have been very 
 protracted, and that other ages of comparative inaction 
 may have followed, separating the post-pliocene from 
 the historical periods, and constituting an interval no 
 less indefinite in its duration." 
 
 Then if man, the final product, existed fully devel- 
 oped, as we see him now, so early, and we are still un- 
 able to estimate the duration required by Darwin's law, 
 to produce even the slightest change of species, it may 
 be that the development from a mollusk up to man, in 
 accordance with Darwin's law, would demand even 
 greater duration than the dizzy cycles allowed by geol- 
 ogy for the formation of all the earth's crust. 
 
 While men of science are interested in investigating 
 and ferreting out the truths of nature, the world at 
 large are more concerned in the consequences of the 
 researches than in the researches themselves. More 
 people care for an accurate prediction of the weather, 
 
Darwinism and Deity. 41 
 
 than for mere meteorological investigation. The theo- 
 ries and processes of chemistry interest few compared 
 with the number who prize the practical appliances re- 
 sulting from the studies of chemists. The whole mat- 
 ter of spectrum analysis was ignored by the bulk of 
 mankind as a scientific whim, till it was found to be of 
 service in business. 
 
 So it is with any proposition of science which bears 
 upon religious dogma or theological opinion. As these 
 are matters of intense concern, any scientific theory 
 which bears upon such matters is apt in the first place 
 to meet with approval or rejection according to that 
 bearing. Now, the belief is deeply seated in men that 
 God made the world ; that all we see, is His handiwork. 
 And when it is proposed to prove that man, and the 
 beasts of the field, and all trees, were called into being 
 by some law of nature, there is an instinctive feeling, 
 that here is an attempt to withdraw the world from his 
 supervision, and substitute a laboratory in his place. 
 Whether this feeling is well-grounded or not, depends 
 somewhat upon the true meaning of the phrase "laws 
 of nature." 
 
 What are the laws of nature? In a general way it 
 may be said they are formulas, expressing the order of 
 succession, and the mode of operation of natural phe- 
 nomena. The law of light explains the phenomena of 
 light. It says the phenomena of light are produced by 
 the undulations of a subtle ether. The ether is made 
 to undulate by the appearance of a luminous body. A 
 luminous body is one which causes the ether to undu- 
 late. It causes the ether to undulate by virtue of some 
 innate force of nature. What is that force of nature? 
 
42 Darwinism and Deity. 
 
 The law of electricity explains the order and suc- 
 cession of electrical phenomena. Electrical phenomena 
 are produced by a natural force called electricity. What 
 is that natural force? 
 
 Physical science concerns itself only with phenomena 
 and their order of succession. If we ask what is the 
 nature of the force which produces phenomena, it has 
 no answer. 
 
 This can be illustrated farther, by taking a single 
 force of nature; for example, the attraction of gravita- 
 tion. I remember when in college, Prof. Pierce, the 
 chief of American mathematicians, after going over on 
 the blackboard a demonstration of the theory of uni- 
 versal gravitation, turned to the class, and said : <c Here, 
 gentlemen, is a demonstration of that law. We have 
 proved that every particle of matter tends toward every 
 other particle of matter in inverse proportion to the 
 square of the distance, etc. If you ask what makes them 
 so tend, this department has no answer; you must take 
 that question to another department of the university." 
 
 Newton had already said substantially the same 
 thing. At the close of the Principia he says: "Hith- 
 erto, I have not been able to deduce the cause of those 
 properties from phenomena, and I frame no hypothesis; 
 for whatever is deduced from phenomena, is to be called 
 an hypothesis, and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or 
 physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, 
 have no place in experimental philosophy. To us, it 
 is enough that gravity does really exist and act accord- 
 ing to the rules which we have explained." 
 
 If experimental philosophy will not tell us what is 
 this force that we call gravity or attraction of gravita- 
 
Darwinism and Deity. 43 
 
 tion, let us recur to another master mind, whose grand 
 intellect was absorbed, not in problems of experimental 
 philosophy, but in fathoming the essence of things. 
 
 Newton develops one law, the law of inertia; that is, 
 that matter is not self-moving, but remains at rest till 
 it is moved, and then continues moving in the direction 
 impelled, till it is stopped. Plato also says that matter 
 is inert, and moves only as it is moved. But he con- 
 siders farther, what is it that causes motion ? For 
 instance, in the Phaedrus, while proving the immor- 
 tality of the soul, he says; " And therefore the self- 
 moving is the beginning of motion. But if the self- 
 moving is immortal, he who affirms that self-motion is 
 the very idea and essence of the soul will not be put to 
 confusion, for the body which is moved from without is 
 soulless; but that which is moved from within has a 
 soul, and this is involved in the nature of a soul." 
 
 Holding that all motion, that is, all force, is simply 
 the exercise of a spiritual being, when he comes, in the 
 Timaeus, to explain the origin and creation and opera- 
 tion of the universe, he accounts for the forces and 
 motions of nature, by holding that the universe is a 
 living being. As the spiritual must precede the cor- 
 poreal, Plato says, c£ God first created the universe, a 
 spirit, a soul;" then adds, "Now, when the Creator 
 had framed the soul according to his will, he formed 
 within the mind the corporeal universe, and brought 
 them together and united them centre to centre. The 
 soul, interfused everywhere from centre to the circum- 
 ference of heaven, of which she is the external envelop- 
 ment, herself turning in herself, began a divine begin- 
 
44 ' Darwinism and Deity. 
 
 ning of never-ceasing and rational life, enduring through 
 all time." 
 
 Plato, then, as the result of the reflections of his 
 life, held that all the motions in nature, that is, all 
 natural phenomena, are caused directly by a spiritual 
 being which pervades the universe. Hence, it follows 
 that what we call the forces of nature are only the will 
 and direct action of that spirit. 
 
 Now what is, or rather, who is, the spiritual being 
 that pervades all space ? There can be but one answer, 
 and we can give it in the words of Newton. 
 
 The very paragraph preceding the one in which he says, 
 experimental philosophy does not pretend to say what 
 gravity is, but only how it acts, is a statement of the gov- 
 ernment of the universe ; and he wrote to Bentley that he 
 put this paragraph into the Principia as an addition and 
 mere hint, which others may develop. He says : " God 
 is omnipotent, not virtually only, but also substantially. 
 In Him are all things contained and moved. It is al- 
 lowed by all that the Supreme God exists necessarily ; 
 and by the same necessity He exists always, and every- 
 where. Whence, also, He is all similar, all eye, all ear, 
 all brain, all arm, all power to perceive, to understand, 
 to act, but in a manner not at all human, in a manner 
 not at all corporeal, in a manner utterly unknown to us." 
 
 Plato says what we call the forces of nature is only 
 the direct action of a spiritual being who pervades the 
 universe, enveloping every particle of matter. And 
 Newton adds, that being is the living God. 
 
 The last grand generalization of science, the corre- 
 lation of forces and the indestructibility of force, does 
 not in any way affect this statement. It is true that 
 
Darwinism and Deity. , 45 
 
 force in nature is sometimes in active operation, some- 
 times apparently latent; is manifested successively in 
 gravitation, cohesion, affinity, electrical attraction and 
 repulsion, heat, etc., and the aggregate of force in the 
 universe is never increased, never diminished, but re- 
 mains continually the same. But whether we suppose 
 this force to be a quality inherent in matter, or to have 
 been imparted to the universe at its original creation, 
 or to be the continual action of the omnipotent being 
 who envelops every particle in the universe, is a mat- 
 ter wholly indifferent to physical science. Its investi- 
 gations and inductions are equally consistent with either 
 hypothesis. It is not within the scope of physical 
 science to determine which is true. 
 
 It is quite supposable that in time, or at least in 
 eternity, the Omnipotent might lay aside this universe, 
 like shifting a scene, and introduce new orders of being 
 and new natural laws. 
 
 Let the imagination penetrate to the faintest nebulas, 
 to the remotest indications of matter, and as far be- 
 yond as its wearied pinions can soar; yet a sphere em- 
 bracing all it can guess at would be but a speck in in- 
 finite space. And it is supposable that beyond there 
 may be even now other universes unlike this, where 
 other forms of being, and a different natural system 
 may prevail ; where gravitation and electricity are un- 
 known. 
 
 But such speculative possibilities are outside of the 
 domain of physical science. They have nothing to do 
 with it; it has nothing to do with them. It is con- 
 cerned only with what is actually going on in this 
 
46 Darwinism and Deity. 
 
 universe, with what has happened, and with what will 
 happen so long as it shall last. 
 
 When, therefore, we use the phrase, " The Laws of 
 Nature," we only use a convenient form of speech for 
 generalizing what we see of the operations of the universe; 
 and a phrase often first cloaks a fact, then smothers 
 it. But if Plato and Newton are right in their percep- 
 tion of those things which they specially perceived best, 
 the laws of nature, in truth, are only statements of our 
 perceptions of God's continued work. Hence, as a 
 matter of theological concern, it matters not whether 
 new species are brought into being by what we call 
 "specific creation," or by what we call "the laws of 
 nature." In either case it is equally immediately God's 
 own act. 
 
 One further remark will be all. Many scientific 
 theories, when first broached, have to encounter not 
 only arguments, but also prejudices. 
 
 Darwin's law is no exception. It is, indeed, at first 
 view, at all events, sadly at war with our notions of the 
 dignity of human nature. When Shakespeare says: 
 "What a piece of work man is ! How noble in rea- 
 son ! How infinite in faculties ! In form and moving 
 how express and admirable ! In action how like an 
 angel ! In apprehension how like a God !" And 
 when the Psalmist sings, " What is man, that Thou 
 art mindful of him ? and the son of man, that Thou 
 visitest him ? 
 
 " For thou hast made him a little lower than he 
 angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor. 
 
 "Thou madest him to have dominion over the 
 
Darwinism and Deity. 47 
 
 works of Thy hands ; Thou has put all things under 
 his feet," every heart responds. 
 
 Hence, we recoil from Darwin's statement: "We 
 thus learn that man is descended from a hairy quad- 
 ruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears, prob- 
 ably arboreal in its habits, and an inhabitant of the Old 
 World. This creature, if its whole structure has been 
 examined by a naturalist, would have been classed 
 among the Quadrumana, as surely as would the com- 
 mon and still more ancient progenitor of the Old and 
 New World monkey. The Ouadrumana and all the 
 higher mammals are probably derived from an ancient 
 marsupial animal, and this, through a long line of 
 diversified forms, either from some reptile-like, or some 
 amphibian-like creature, and this again from some fish- 
 like animal. In the dim obscurity of the past, we 
 can see that the early progenitor of all the Vertebrata 
 must have been an aquatic animal, provided with 
 branchiae, with the two sexes united in the same in- 
 dividual, and with the most important organs of the 
 body (such as the brain and heart) imperfectly devel- 
 oped. This animal seems to have been more like the 
 larvas of our existing marine ascidians, than any other 
 known form." 
 
 But when the first feeling of disgust abates, two sug- 
 gestions present themselves. While it is true, there 
 must be a difficulty in determining at what period of 
 such a course of development man appeared with an 
 immortal and responsible soul, it is equally true, that 
 in the case of every individual man we are unable to 
 say just at what time a soul was united to the body. 
 
 The other suggestion is this : The theory of Darwin 
 
48 Darwinism and Deity. 
 
 is based on the supposition that each step of positive 
 improvement grows out of a struggle with the condi- 
 tions of life, in which the worthy succeed, and in which 
 each success is only a terrace and coin of vantage for 
 further progress. And further, if a mere senseless 
 shell-fish can struggle up through diversified forms to 
 such a being as man, what glorious visions of greatness 
 yet to be attained does not the fact suggest ! 
 
 The sum of these remarks, then, is this : Darwin 
 does not propose to explain the origin and essence of 
 life. He assumes that simple forms of animal life 
 were originally created with certain powers and capabil- 
 ities. He proposes to explain the manner in which 
 more complex forms have since appeared. He claims 
 that the action and reaction of these powers and capa- 
 bilities, and of the conditions of life on each other, con- 
 stitute a law of nature, which he calls the law of selec- 
 tion, and that all the diversified forms of life which 
 have appeared on earth since the origin of life, have 
 come into existence in accordance with this law. 
 
 This theory, however, can not as yet be accepted as 
 a demonstrated law since there are confessedly phenom- 
 ena which it does not account for. 
 
 Further, so far as it is consistent with actual phenom- 
 ena, it can not be accepted as absolutely true, but only 
 as provisionals true. For if true according to the 
 present state of human knowledge, a larger acquaint- 
 ance with the phenomena of nature may overthrow it, 
 and require some new theory. 
 
 And further, as the development of no new species 
 has ever yet been actually observed, there is no means of 
 determining the duration of time required to produce, 
 
Darwinism and T)eity. 49 
 
 in accordance with his theory, the slightest permanent 
 variation in the forms of life. And as man, fully de- 
 veloped, existed at least in the later fossil period, his 
 theory may require a greater immensity of time than is 
 allowed by geology for entire formation of the earth. 
 
 And, in fine, if the law of selection be a true law of 
 nature, yet it and all the laws of nature are only for- 
 mulas, expressing human apprehensions of the way in 
 which the Creator carries on the universe. 
 
SOME CONSIDERATIONS ON THE 
 MOUND BUILDERS. 
 
 The first explorers of this valley were surprised to 
 find in the solitudes of the wilderness, overgrown with 
 ancient forests, huge earthworks, concerning which the 
 Indians had not even a tradition. Interest being once 
 aroused, these Works have become the object of great ex- 
 amination and much study. 
 
 They have been found over a large part of the Mis- 
 sissippi Valley. They are so numerous that Ohio alone 
 is estimated to contain some thousands, large and small. 
 They vary greatly in magnitude. Some are trifling em- 
 bankments scarcely rising above the surface of the 
 ground, or little hillocks three or four feet high ; while 
 others, like the works of Newark and Portsmouth, in 
 this State, embrace fourteen and sixteen miles of em- 
 bankment; or, like the mound at Cahokia, Illinois, 
 have a base of six acres, a summit platform of five acres, 
 and a height of ninety feet, containing twenty million 
 cubic feet of earth. 
 
 They vary as greatly in design as in size. The pur- 
 pose of some is obvious; the intention of others has 
 not yet been divined. Some are fortifications ; some 
 lookouts or signal stations. Some, filled with bones, 
 are clearly burial mounds. The large conical mounds 
 
Some Considerations on the Mound Builders. 51 
 
 have been the subject of much speculation. The late 
 Dr. Wilson, of Newark, told me he believed they were 
 raised gradually by successive burials ; that a layer of 
 bodies or skeletons was covered with earth ; that, after 
 some time, upon this was placed another layer of bodies 
 covered with earth ; and by such repetition the mound 
 grew. Since then, Governor Hayes, who was present 
 at the opening of the great mound at Miamisburg, told 
 me that it was marked by a stratification of earth, with 
 an appearance of vegetable mold between the layers. The 
 same appearance was noted, according to the account in 
 the American Pioneer, at the removal of the large mound 
 that formerly stood in this city. And in the exploration 
 of the Gravecreek mound, besides this stratification, the 
 soil appeared mottled, as if by the decay of perishable 
 substances inclosed in it. The same stratified appear- 
 ance is described in the appearance of similar mounds 
 in S q-u ir e - and Davis' work, and in Pickett's history of 
 Alabama. In some mounds, perhaps more recent, frag- 
 ments of bones are found in the layers. This appear- 
 ance is so uniform that it is, I think, safe to agree with 
 Dr. Wilson, in ascribing the large conical mounds to a 
 gradual accretion by successive burials. 
 
 There is another class, sometimes circular, more often 
 rectangular, having flat summits. These are called 
 truncated mounds, when the height is considerable ; 
 terraces, when the surface is large compared with the 
 height. These always have a graded ascent to the sum- 
 mit, frequently one on each side. 
 
 These appear to have been constructed for the pur- 
 pose of having an elevated platform. This may have 
 
52 Some Considerations on the Mound Builders. 
 
 been for the residence of chiefs, or for the elevation of 
 temples, or for the performance of public rites. 
 
 Others are long rectangular inclosures, apparently 
 places for public games or sports. 
 
 Others comprise a vast series of embankments ; cir- 
 cles, squares, connecting avenues, and other geometrical 
 figures, as surprising by the precision of their outline 
 as by their magnitude. At these, conjecture is baffled. 
 
 Others again are simply raised figures of men, ani- 
 mals, birds, reptiles, on a gigantic scale. Here, too, 
 even guessing fails. 
 
 From the predominance of mounds in these struc- 
 tures, their unknown architects, long since extinct, are 
 called the Race of the Mound Builders. They left no 
 history but their works. The Indians who lived in 
 the last two hundred years knew nothing, and say the 
 tribes who preceded them knew nothing of them. If 
 we would learn their history we must appeal to the 
 works themselves. 
 
 The study that has been bestowed upon them is not 
 wholly without result. What I have to say of their 
 builders will be grouped under the following heads: 
 Where did they live? When did they live? How 
 did they live? Who were they? What became of 
 them ? 
 
 Upon all these points, except the last, something can 
 be said that is not pure guess-work. 
 
 WHAT ARE THE WORKS ? 
 
 The first step is to determine what are the works 
 of this distinct race — to eliminate mounds thrown up 
 by the present race of Indians. The groups of small 
 
Some Considerations on the Mound Builders. 
 
 53 
 
 mounds about four feet high about the Minnesota 
 river, have been determined to be mere ruins of the 
 earth-covered huts of the lowas, who formerly lived 
 there. Excavation has found the charred remains of 
 the tent-poles, remnants of utensils, and sometimes hu- 
 man bones. The Choctaws used to preserve the skel- 
 etons of the dead, until they became numerous, and 
 then lay them in a heap on the ground, and cover them 
 with earth, making a small mound. The numerous 
 small mounds in Oregon are similar in appearance, and 
 probably in character. The Sioux sometimes bury a 
 body on a plain, heap billets of wood over the place; 
 and the dust of the prairies, mingling with the decaying 
 wood, makes a small hillock, which is increased by the 
 growth of' rank vegetation. In special cases mounds 
 twelve feet high have been erected over noteworthy 
 graves, as over the grave of Blackbird, the Maha chief, 
 — as related by Lewis and Clark ; and one over a young 
 brave, near the red pipe-stone quarry, described by Cat- 
 lin. The recently deserted villages of the Ricarees and 
 Mandans, on the Missouri, were described by Lewis 
 and Clark as being distinguishable, at some little dis- 
 tance, by the encircling embankment, which had been 
 the base of their stockade defense. The earthworks in 
 Central and Western New York, which were at first at- 
 tributed by Squire to the Mound Builders, have been 
 ascertained by his subsequent careful examination to be 
 partly remains of the stockaded forts used by the Iro- 
 quois last century and the present century. And those 
 that are shown to be older, by the heavy forest growths 
 on them, are identical in structure and size. 
 
 The small earthworks along the southern shore of 
 
54 Some Considerations on the Mound Builders. 
 
 Lake Erie, all having a military character, were first ob- 
 served by Colonel Whittlesey to differ from the impor- 
 tant works in Southern Ohio, in being smaller, simpler, 
 and having less elevation. The embankment is so 
 slight that it would be useless as a defense, and could 
 have been useful only as the base of a stockade. These 
 might have been small frontier outposts of the mound 
 builders, or might have been the stronghold of some 
 Indian tribe, like the Eries, who lived there till they 
 were exterminated, about 1650, by the Iroquois. The 
 small mounds in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky, that are 
 found to be full of human bones, might possibly be the 
 work of Indian tribes, who buried their dead in the 
 manner of the Choctaws. 
 
 Discarding these, the territory occupied by works 
 which could not have been built by Indian tribes, such 
 as we know, is well defined. At the south they begin 
 in Eastern Texas, and extend eastward to the Atlantic. 
 Between the western border of the Mississippi and the 
 Alleghanies they extend northward to the Ohio Valley, 
 north of the river, and up into Wisconsin ; and, 
 sparsely, across the Mississippi into Minnesota. They 
 are found, also, on the upper Missouri. 
 
 Lewis and Clark describe an important work on the 
 bank of the Missouri, where the northern boundary of 
 Nebraska now lies ; and A. Barrand, in a paper in the 
 Smithsonian octavo for 1870, describes many in Dakota 
 Territory on the right bank of the Missouri, and the 
 streams flowing into it, up to the Yellowstone. The 
 main locality is, therefore, between the western borders 
 of the Mississippi river and the Alleghany Mountains. 
 
 The works are not of uniform character throughout 
 
Some Considerations on the Mound Builders. 55 
 
 this region. In the southern tier of States they are, for 
 the most part, large truncated mounds and raised plat- 
 forms of earth, generally with graded ascents, and fre- 
 quently in groups. 
 
 In the Gulf States there are but few works of a mili- 
 tary character. They are scarcely found out of Georgia. 
 One in Fayette, in Mississippi, represented by figure 2, 
 plate xxxviii, in S^we and Davis' work, published by 
 the Smithsonian Institute, has the appearance of a 
 European work. Its outline is the tracing of a bastion 
 of a regular fortification. The account mentions the 
 freshness of its appearance, and the still preserved 
 sharpness of the angles. Now, in the French campaign 
 against the Chickasaws in May, 1736, D'Artaguette re- 
 mained eleven days in a camp in that neighborhood 
 while waiting to hear of Bienville, and then, leaving his 
 baggage in the camp, marched out to attack the nearest 
 Chickasaw village. I am inclined to consider this work 
 an intrenchment about D' Artaguette's camp. But if the 
 position of this camp was, as stated in Pickett's His- 
 tory of Alabama, a few miles east of Pontotoc, then the 
 work is in just about the position where Montcherval' 
 encamped when coming up with reinforcements. In 
 any event, this work appears to be a French field work 
 of their campaign of 1736, not a work of the Mound 
 Builders. 
 
 In Georgia are several works of a military character, 
 described by Mr. Jones in his Antiquities of the South- 
 ern Indians. All but one near Macon are unimpor- 
 tant. And on the Wateree, in South Carolina, are 
 some defensive works. 
 
 In Tennessee, besides the conical, truncated, and ter- 
 
$6 Some Considerations on the Mound Builders. 
 
 race mounds, defensive works are not uncommon. One 
 of them at Savannah, on the Tennessee river, is so pe- 
 culiar that I shall speak of it separately at the close of 
 this paper. In Kentucky, fortifications mingle with the 
 simple mounds. In Central and Southern Ohio every 
 description of work is found, some of them peculiar to 
 this section. In Indiana and Illinois the remains are 
 not so numerous, but the one at Cahokia, Illinois, is the 
 giant of mounds. In Wisconsin there are no fortifica- 
 tions ; the inclosed work at Aztalan is not of a mili- 
 tary character. Conical mounds are found ; but the dis- 
 tinctive feature is the effigy mounds which dot the sur- 
 face of the State, as if the ancient race had used this 
 region, when it was a prairie, as a vast parchment 
 whereon, by the picture-writing of these effigies, they 
 inscribed their history. On the upper Missouri are 
 found conical mounds and fortifications. 
 
 The northern portion of the region inhabited by the 
 Mound Builders is, therefore, the fortified region. The 
 works of defense are found in Tennessee, Kentucky, 
 Ohio, along the upper Missouri, and on the frontier 
 between the Alleghanies and the ocean. 
 
 WHEN DID THEY LIVE? 
 
 As to the time when the Mound Builders lived, there 
 has been much discussion. From the fact that in the 
 Ohio Valley these works are not observed in the lowest 
 or last-formed river-bottoms, but only on the second 
 and higher lands, the deduction has been drawn that 
 they lived before the rivers had cut their present chan- 
 nels — before the lowest alluvium was formed. But in 
 one case, at least— in the works at Portsmouth — the 
 
Some Considerations on the Mound Builders. 57 
 
 lines of embankment were carried on to the lowest bot- 
 tom, down to the river bank. Colonel Whittlesey 
 wrote to me that high water sometimes flowed against 
 and along these embankments. And at Piqua, while 
 most of the works are on the second and third terraces, 
 a portion — a walled avenue, or covered way — extended 
 to the very water's edge. In general, the works are 
 found just where people build now, on ground above 
 the reach of freshets, leaving the lower ground for till- 
 age. Moreover, all the bones found in the mounds 
 belong to animals that lived in Ohio when it was first 
 visited by Europeans. 
 
 In the South, where, however, the rivers have not 
 the same geological history, large works are found on 
 the river banks. The great mound on the Etowah 
 stands on the river bottom surrounded by a ditch, 
 through which water flowed at high stages of the river. 
 One of the mounds on the Wateree, in South Carolina, 
 stands on land subject to overflow. And Bartram con- 
 jectured that a series of works which he discovered on 
 the Savannah, were built as places of refuge in times of 
 high water. The indications, therefore, are, that when 
 the Mound Builders lived, the river channels and river 
 bottoms were already formed as they now are. 
 
 Another theory has been recently started to prove an 
 extreme antiquity for the mounds. The Cincinnati 
 Medical News, for January of this year, gives a resume 
 of a paper read by J. W. Foster, LL. D., before the 
 Dubuque meeting of the American Association for 
 Science. He speaks of finding " three frontal bones in 
 the Kennicott mound, near Chicago, the only part of 
 the skeletons capable of preservation. The plates were 
 
58 Some Considerations on the Mound Builders. 
 
 extraordinarily thick ; the superciliary arches were mas- 
 sive, standing out like ropes ; the frontal bones of 
 great strength and sloping backward, encroaching on 
 the parietals, and giving origin to a low forehead." 
 Assuming these skulls to have belonged to Mound 
 Builders, that this was the natural shape, and that these 
 were typical skulls, he inferred that the Mound Build- 
 ers differed in their physical structure from the Indians, 
 and were a race of low intellect, but mild, inoffensive, 
 easily held in subjection, and easily conquered. 
 
 The abstract of this paper, as given in the Cincinnati 
 Medical News, does not state in what part of the 
 mound these skulls were found. Yet, as the Indians 
 frequently buried their dead in existing mounds, it is 
 always a matter of first importance to know whether ob- 
 jects found in these structures were placed there by the 
 original builders, or were subsequently inserted by a 
 disturbance of the surface. 
 
 A skeleton found on the natural surface of the 
 ground, or near it, under the centre of a mound, can be 
 taken as an original interment ; while one found near 
 the surface, on the sloping sides, must be considered a 
 subsequent intrusion, a burial by the Indians. 
 
 Very few skulls that can be certainly attributed to the 
 Mound Builders have been found which did not crum- 
 ble on being taken out. It is only when the character 
 of the soil or the circumstances of the interment have 
 kept the bones thoroughly dry that any such have been 
 found. Lapham says that only one such has been re- 
 covered in Wisconsin. All skulls now preserved that 
 indubitally belong to the Mound Builders, and all that 
 are with strong probability referred to them, are well 
 
Some Considerations on the Mound Builders. 59 
 
 developed, well rounded. The best authenticated of 
 all, the one discovered by Squire and Davis, and now 
 No. 1,512 in the collection of the Academy of Natural 
 Science of Philadelphia, is the largest and best formed. 
 It has an internal capacity of ninety cubic inches. 
 
 The "frontal bones" of the Kennicott mound may 
 have another origin. The custom of flattening the 
 forehead was common to many Indian tribes. It was 
 the usage of the Choctaws one hundred years ago, and 
 fifty years earlier, Du Pratz says it was the practice of 
 many tribes in the South. No. 1,455, * n t ^ ie Philadel- 
 phia collection, a skull artificially flattened, was taken 
 from an intrusive burial in a mound in Alabama, on 
 the shore of Perdido Bay. The mound is thirty feet 
 high. The skull was found near the summit, and a few 
 feet under the surface. 
 
 So far as can be judged from the abstract of Dr. Foster's 
 paper, therefore, the deduction that the frontal bones 
 which he describes are remains of the Mound Builders 
 at all is hasty. The assumption that thev represent 
 the normal type of the skull is wholly unwarranted, and 
 in conflict with established facts. If they really are re- 
 mains of the Mound Builders, the inference would be 
 that they were an abnormal formation, a deformity, or 
 else that some of the Mound Builders, like some of the 
 later Indians, adopted the usage of flattening the skull. 
 Indeed, in the recently published Antiquities of South- 
 ern Indians, by C. C. Jones, there is an account of a 
 skull found in Georgia which undoubtedly belonged to 
 the Mound Builders, which is artificially flattened.* 
 
 * Artificial compression was not the cause. Dr. Foster says, 
 in his very valuable work, the " Prehistoric Races of the United 
 
60 Some Considerations on the Mound Builders. 
 
 Another ground on which the great antiquity of the 
 mounds is supported, is the absence of tradition con- 
 cerning them among the Indians. But it is only fair 
 to remember that their traditions are mostly worthless; 
 that at best they extend back but a short period ; and 
 that the Indians were migratory. Ohio, Kentucky, and 
 
 States," published since this paper was read, that he has but one 
 skull showing signs of artificial compression, and that was found 
 in Indiana. He claims in this book to have discovered a special 
 type of crania, which he calls the skull of the Mound Builder : a 
 type so distinct that it must have belonged to a wholly distinct 
 race ; a type so degraded that it must have belonged to a very 
 early stage in the development of man. 
 
 This theory is based upon nearly a dozen skulls and fragments 
 in his possession. Four of them were taken by Dr. Harper from 
 the works near Merom, Indiana ; one came from a mound at 
 Dunleith, Illinois, opposite Dubuque ; the rest were found near 
 Chicago. 
 
 The statement as to these remains would be more satisfactory 
 if it were more definite as to the precise condition in which they 
 were found. It appears from Mr. Putnam's paper in the fifteenth 
 volume " Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History," 
 that besides the mounds, there are, at Merom, also some stone 
 graves, made by placing thin slabs on edge along the sides and 
 ends, and covering with flat stones; and that Dr. Hai per took 
 three skeletons from these stone graves. Now, graves of this 
 form are not uncommon near the Ohio, Cumberland, and Ten- 
 nessee rivers. But this form of burial is so unlike the mound 
 burial that it seems to be the usage of a people different from the 
 nation that constructed the mounds. And not only different, but 
 also more recent. For, as a rule, the skeletons found in these 
 superficial, slightly covered graves are in much better preserva- 
 tion than those buried under the mounds. Moreover, skeletons 
 in some of these graves, in those near Nashville, bear marks of a 
 disease introduced by the whites (Jones' Antiquities of Southern 
 Indians, p. 222). And, in fine, the Indians used this mode of 
 
Some Considerations on the Mound Builders. 61 
 
 Middle Tennessee were wholly uninhabited in the lat- 
 ter half of the seventeenth century. Though it is com- 
 monly stated that De Soto visited the Cherokees, I do 
 not find the statement supported by the original nar- 
 ratives of De Soto's expedition. The Creeks and Ala- 
 bamas arrived in the Southern States later than' De 
 
 burial down to the present century, in Illinois (lb., p. 220). It 
 would, therefore, be of some interest to know whether the skulls 
 from Merom, described by Dr. Foster, were taken from the 
 mounds, or were those taken from the stone graves. 
 
 The skulls and fragments found near Chicago were dug from 
 little mounds — the loam of the prairie heaped up two and a half 
 feet high. The Indians sometimes heaped such mounds over 
 their dead. And Dr. Foster indeed says, that some of these 
 very mounds were the burying-places of Indians and half-breeds. 
 
 As for the skull found at Dunleith, three were taken from a 
 mound there twelve feet high. Of two, we have no information. 
 The third, the one described by Dr. Foster, was buried two feet 
 under the surface, in a grave made of wood and stone. This 
 was obviously not an original, but an intrusive interment ; and 
 therefore, according to all accepted inference, was the grave, not 
 of a Mound Builder, but of a modern Indian. 
 
 There is nothing in Dr. Foster's statement, therefore, that 
 shows these crania to be relics of the Mound Builders ; and their 
 form, as he describes it, is the form of the skull of an Indian idiot. 
 
 Other investigators have been very careful in determining the 
 character of interments. Squire and Davis, in all their re- 
 searches, found but one preserved skull which they could say was 
 certainly that of a Mound Builder. This was found on the nat- 
 ural surface of the ground, under the centre of a mound that was 
 covered by the primitive forest, one of the Chillicothe system of 
 mounds. The skeleton was surrounded by burnt debris, covered 
 by a sheet of mica, and the soil of the mound was clay, impervi- 
 ous to water, and had evidently not been disturbed. Dr. Lap- 
 ham, in his exhaustive examination of the mounds of Wisconsin, 
 found only one skull which, by similar indications, he could cer- 
 
62 Some Considerations on the Mound Builders. 
 
 Soto's time. The absence of tradition among the In- 
 dians, therefore, does not prove much ; and the In- 
 dians whom De Soto found, used the truncated mounds 
 so habitually as an elevated base for the dwellings of 
 the chiefs, that it was taken for granted they were the 
 work of the Indians. Indeed, one of the narrators, 
 Garcilaso de la Vega, describes their manner of con- 
 structing them. 
 
 But some indication of the age of these monuments 
 is afforded by the forest growth which covers them. 
 Dr. Hildreth said a tree eight hundred years old was 
 felled on one of the mounds at Marietta. Squire and 
 Davis say trees six hundred years old stood on the fort 
 on Paint creek, west of Chillicothe. Mr. Barrandt 
 says he observed a tree six hundred years old upon one 
 
 tainly attribute to the people that constructed the mounds. 
 Another, found in Tennessee, was determined by similar proof. 
 Another was taken from a chamber in the centre of the Grave 
 Creek mound. 
 
 These completed the list of certainly authenticated Mound 
 Builders' skulls. As to these, Dr. Foster simply says they are 
 not like the type that he calls the Mound Builders' skull, but re- 
 semble the crania of Indians, and therefore are not of the Mound 
 Builders But Mr. Jones, in Georgia, has, with the same exacti- 
 tude, identified one more skull (Antiquities of Southern Indians, 
 p. 1 60), and to this Dr. Foster will have to make the same ob- 
 jection. And Dr. Jeffreys Wyman, of Harvard, as cited in Dr. 
 Foster's book, speaking of twenty-four crania sent to him by the 
 late S. S. Lyon, of Kentucky, as skulls of the Mound Builders, 
 says, " A comparison of these crania with those of the other and 
 later Indians, show that they have some marked peculiarities, 
 though they are better appreciated when the two kinds are placed 
 side by side, than from any table of measurement or verbal de- 
 scription." 
 
Some Considerations on the Mound Builders. 63 
 
 of the works upon the upper Missouri. These are, I 
 believe, the oldest that have been observed. 
 
 Many two hundred and four hundred years have 
 been noted. In many cases the forest appears more re- 
 cent. Judge A. H. Dunlevy, of Lebanon, in a letter 
 to the Historical Society in this city, said that he had 
 noted in the woods upon Fort Ancient an entire ab- 
 sence of the little hillocks, formed by earth about the 
 roots of a tree that is blown down and uprooted. 
 When the tree decays, the uprooted soil forms a knob 
 or hillock, and such are always seen in old forests. 
 From their absence he infers that the woods upon Fort 
 Ancient are the original growth. Professor Lapham 
 made the same observation, and drew the same inference 
 as to forest growth covering a great part of the remains 
 in Wisconsin. The very aged trees, six hundred or 
 more years old, found on some mounds are, then, prob- 
 ably the survivors of the original forest growth on 
 those mounds, and had attained respectable maturity 
 while other mounds were still bare. No long interval 
 would elapse after the abandonment of the earthworks 
 before trees would spring up. Making full allowance 
 for this interval, and for the growth and disappearance 
 of preliminary weeds and shrubs, the forest growth 
 does not indicate an abandonment of any of the mounds 
 at a period more remote tha n a tho usand years, and 
 many of them may have been occupied or used by their 
 builders up to a much later date. The extinction or 
 disappearance of the Mound Builders may, therefore, 
 reasonably be said to have begun about a thousand 
 years ago> and to have been gradual, and not to have 
 been completed until near the discovery of the conti- 
 nent by Columbus. 
 
64 Some Considerations on the Mound Builders. 
 
 HOW THEY LIVED. 
 
 In considering next how the Mound Builders lived, it 
 is not to be supposed that this race constituted one na- 
 tion, or one empire. There is no greater similarity in 
 their works, as found in different parts of the country, 
 than in the habits of the multitudinous Indian tribes 
 that subsequently inhabited the same region. Indeed, 
 it may be that several distinct tribes dwelt in this State. 
 One tolerably compact body filled the valleys of the two 
 Miamis and Mad River. Another compact body filled 
 the Scioto Valley. The country between seems not to 
 have been inhabited, but only roved over by hunters. 
 Moreover, the extensive and complex works, of geomet- 
 rical design, that abound in the Scioto Valley, are scarcely 
 found on the Miamis. The indications, therefore, are 
 that these valleys were the homes of two separate tribes. 
 
 The race of Mound Builders must have been a nu- 
 merous people. While Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa seem 
 to have been sparsely settled by them, the rest of the 
 country must have been thickly peopled along the 
 rivers. In Ohio, for example, they had large settle- 
 ments on the Ohio at Cincinnati, Portsmouth, and 
 Marietta. On the Scioto, besides Portsmouth, at Chil- 
 locothe and Circleville. In the interior were large set- 
 tlements in the neighborhood of Athens, Worthington, 
 Xenia, Springfield, Dayton, Miamisburg, Hamilton, 
 Oxford, and Eaton. In this county, besides their chief 
 town at Cincinnati, they lived on the Little Miami at 
 Columbia, Plainville, and all along the valley from be- 
 low Newtown to above Milford; in the interior of the 
 county at Norwood and Sharon ; on the Ohio at Sedams- 
 
Some Considerations on the Mound Builders. 65 
 
 villeand Delhi; and on the Great Miami at the mouth 
 of the river at Cleves, and for miles along its banks 
 about Colerain. 
 
 This race must have differed in character and mode 
 of government from the modern Indians. The con- 
 struction of their great earthworks required a species 
 and amount of labor that the Indians would not have 
 submitted to. And the method of the systems of works 
 in Ohio is quite as striking as the character of any sin- 
 gle work. 
 
 Along the Miami rivers are dotted small mounds 
 on projecting highlands, which seem to have been built 
 to carry intelligence by signals along the valleys. And 
 by the mound at Norwood, signals could be passed from 
 the valley of Millcreek to the Little Miami Valley, near 
 Newtown, and, I believe, to the valley of the Great 
 Miami, near Hamilton. A chain of mounds can be par- 
 tially traced from the old Cincinnati mound to the fort 
 at the mouth of the Great Miami ; and Judge Cox, who 
 is better acquainted than any one else with the works in 
 this country, says the chain is complete. Squireand Davis 
 says there is a series of signal mounds along the Scioto, 
 across Ross county, extending down into Pike and Pick- 
 away. Mr. Sullivant, of Columbus, told me that he 
 once traced a series of signal mounds along the Scioto, 
 from Dublin, entirely across Franklin county, to Picka- 
 way ; and added he had no doubt, though he had not 
 verified it by his own observations, that the chain was 
 so continuous that a signal could be instantaneously 
 flashed from the lines of Delaware county to Ports- 
 mouth. The controlled labor required to build the sep- 
 arate works, and their systematic combination, seem to 
 

 66 Some Considerations on the Mound Builders. 
 
 indicate that these tribes had a strongly centralized, if 
 not despotic, government. 
 
 Living, as they did, in great numbers exclusively 
 along the rich river valleys, this race must have been an 
 agricultural people. There are no traces of their having 
 had any domestic animals ; but bones in some of the 
 mounds show that they hunted game. 
 
 They had some engineering skill. The extensive 
 works of geometrical outline, in the Scioto Valley, 
 squares, octagons, circles, ellipses, often combined to- 
 gether, are executed with such precision that they must 
 have had some means of measuring angles. It would 
 be no mean task for our engineers to construct them on 
 such a scale with equal exactitude. And the number of 
 the squares that measure exactly one thousand and 
 eighty feet on each side show that they had some stand- 
 ard of measurement. 
 
 Their dwellings have disappeared, leaving no trace, 
 unless the flat mounds with graded ascents, as at Mari- 
 etta, were platforms whereon stood a temple and the 
 chief's house, as like mounds were used in the South 
 three hundred and thirty years ago ; and unless the small 
 circular embankments are the crumbled remains of mud 
 walls surrounding dwellings of the people, like the huts 
 of the Mandans in the Northwest. 
 
 Their pottery was superior in manufacture and in 
 tasteful design to the ordinary pottery of the Indians. 
 
 Their stone pipes, even of the simplest form, like the 
 one in the Historical Society collection in this city, has 
 a certain artistic feeling which is lacking in the pipes of 
 the modern Indian. Some of those found by Sej-et+pe andjy** 
 Davis have very spirited representations of birds and 
 
Some Considerations on the Mound Builders. 67 
 
 animals carved in hard stone. They carved many stone 
 implements or ornaments, the purpose of which can not 
 now be determined. Considerable skill was used in the 
 drilling of tubes of hard stone. Their stone hatchets, 
 axes, arrow-heads and lance-heads were of the same 
 character with those of the Indians. I have not been 
 able to learn that there is any means of distinguishing 
 between them ; but in looking over the large collection 
 of the Smithsonian Institution, it appeared to me that 
 those found in the region where the Mound Builders 
 lived were in general of more elaborate design and more 
 careful finish than those found in the Atlantic States, 
 north of South Carolina. 
 
 They made a limited use of metals. They had, how- 
 ever, no knowledge of the reduction of ores, or of melt- 
 ing and casting metal. They used hematite simply as a 
 hard stone, and native copper and silver as a malleable 
 stone. Of hematite, they made small wedges or chisels, 
 and plummets, that some suppose were used in weaving. 
 Native copper from Lake Superior was hammered into 
 hatchets, spear-heads, knives, and into various rude or- 
 naments. Native silver, also, probably from Lake Su- 
 perior, has been found in extremely small quantities, 
 hammered into leaf and wrapped around small copper 
 ornaments. , 
 
 A, few traces of coarse woven cloth have been sup- 
 posed to be discovered. 
 
 Though these people had nothing amounting to com- 
 merce, still there was a certain amount of enterprise, and 
 a certain amount of intercourse among the tribes. The 
 copper deposits on both the northern and southern 
 shores of Lake Superior were mined. The shafts they 
 
68 Some Considerations on the Mound Builders. 
 
 opened, the rude stone hammers they used, blocks of 
 copper they separated from the mass but found too 
 heavy to be removed, remain witnessess of their toil. 
 But the shores of Lake Superior were not inhabited. 
 Hence the residents of Ohio must have made summer 
 expeditions even to the north shore of the lake; and to 
 make a summer expedition productive, they must have 
 gone in working parties of some size. Possibly the 
 earthworks along the southern shore of Lake Erie were 
 fortified camps of these parties. That the crude native 
 copper was brought to Ohio, and then hammered into 
 implements, appears from the fact that lumps of it are 
 found in mounds and under the soil. The implements 
 so made found their way to distant points. They are 
 occasionally found in Southern mounds. 
 
 At the same time, bits of obsidian, very few, indeed, 
 but which must have come from Mexico, have been 
 found in Ohio. And some of the pipes found by 
 Squire and Davis indicate that they were made at a dis- 
 tance, or else by persons who had traveled : for one 
 represents a seal ; another a manito, which inhabits on the 
 coast of Florida; and one represents a toucan feeding 
 from a hand, and the toucan was mentioned by the early 
 Spanish discoverers as the only bird tamed by the In- 
 dians. 
 
 In fine, the Mound Builders appear to have been an 
 agricultural people, as well as hunters, capable of patient 
 toil, living under a strongly centralized or despotic gov- 
 ernment, and were somewhat more advanced than the 
 Indians, who succeeded them, in the rudiments of civil- 
 ization. They were perhaps on a level with the Zuni 
 or Pueblo Indians of Arizona. 
 
 
Some Considerations on the Mound Builders. 69 
 
 WHO WERE THEY T 
 
 So far, I have spoken of the Mound Builders, some- 
 times as distinguished from the Indians, sometimes as 
 distinguished from the modern Indians, so as not to 
 foreclose in advance the discussion of the question which 
 comes next — who were they ? Since comparative phi- 
 lology developed into science, the aboriginal American 
 dialects have been subjected to exhaustive study. After 
 a discussion lasting many years, it has been determined 
 that all the languages and dialects between the Esqui- 
 maux, on the north, and the straits of Terra del Fuego 
 on the South, differ wholly from the languages of the 
 other continents ; and that while they differ widely 
 among themselves in vocabulary, some not having a sin- 
 gle word in common with others, they still have all the 
 same organism or character. They all belong to one 
 family, have a common origin. As the formation of a 
 single language is a matter of time, the multitudinous 
 languages found among the Indians of North and South 
 America prove that this family has lived here for a very 
 long period. 
 
 The study of the physical structure, as exhibited 
 by their skeletons, has ended in the same result. 
 The skulls of all nations south of the Esquimaux, 
 ancient and modern — Patagonian, Peruvian, Aztec, 
 Mound Builders, and the Indian of the present day 
 — are said by Morton (and his views, though ably ques- 
 tioned by Dr. Wilson, of Toronto, are generally accep- 
 ted) to present the same type, to constitute one family. 
 Though occasional natives of other continents may in 
 the lapse of years have drifted to the shores of America, 
 they left no trace in the language or the physical struc- 
 
70 Some Considerations on the Mound Builders. 
 
 ture of its inhabitants. The aborigines of America 
 may therefore be considered, at least for the purposes of 
 history and archaeology, as an autocthoneous people; 
 and whatever civilization appeared before the discovery 
 of Columbus, was indigenous civilization. The Mound 
 Builders, therefore, were natives to the soil, and what- 
 ever advancement they made was their own invention, 
 or was imparted to them by neighboring natives. 
 
 Indeed, while the Mound Builders may have resem- 
 bled the Aztecs and the Peruvians in their form of gov- 
 ernment ; yet in material advancement they differed 
 much more widely from them and the extinct races of 
 Central /America, than from any of the Indian tribes that 
 were found east of the Mississippi. 
 
 The Sioux and Cheyennes, the Comanches and 
 Apaches, and other wandering tribes of the West, do 
 not represent the mode of life of the Indians that lived 
 east of the Mississippi. De Soto and his companions 
 were struck with the novelty, when, in Arkansas or Mis- 
 souri, they first encountered a tribe without fixed habi- 
 tations, living in movable tents, and subsisting wholly 
 by hunting and fishing. All the tribes east of the Mis- 
 sissippi were more or less agricultural. They all raised 
 corn, beans, squashes, and melons. They pitched their 
 camps and planted their villages on the borders of a 
 stream. Many had permanent towns. When the French 
 first landed at Montreal Island, they found Hocklehaga, 
 an Indian town, fortified with a permanent palisade. 
 The Iroquois had their villages, with corn-fields and or- 
 chards. The Cherokees and Creeks had fixed settle- 
 ments of roomy, substantial houses. The Creeks had 
 in each town an open public square, surrounded with 
 
Some Considerations on the Mound Builders. 71 
 
 their public buildings. The council-house of the Autose, 
 or Snake tribe of the Creeks, was supported on columns 
 carved to represent serpents, and the walls decorated 
 with rude paintings. The town of the Uchees, the rem- 
 nant of a tribe which the Creeks found in Georgia, 
 when they arrived, and which they adopted into their 
 confederacy, is described by Bartram, in 1773, as tc tne 
 largest, most compact, and best situated Indian town I 
 ever saw : the habitations are large and neatly built ; the 
 walls of the houses are constructedof a wooden frame,then 
 lathed and plastered inside and out with a reddish, well- 
 tempered clay, or mortar, which gives them the appear- 
 ance of red brick walls, and these houses are neatly cov- 
 ered or footed with cypress bark, or the shingles of that 
 tree. 
 
 Carver, exploring the Northwest, in 1766, described 
 the town of the Sankies (Sacs) as cc the largest and best 
 built Indian town he ever saw. It contained about 
 ninety houses, each large enough for several families, 
 built up of hewn plank neatly jointed, and covered so 
 compactly with bark as to keep out the most penetrating 
 rains. Before the doors were placed comfortable sheds 
 in which the inhabitants sat, when the weather would 
 permit, and smoked their pipes. The streets were both 
 regular and spacious, appearing more like a civilized 
 town than the abode of savages." 
 
 Though it was not common, except in the South, to 
 have their towns permanently fortified, it was common 
 to intrench themselves, in time of war, with stockade 
 defenses. 
 
 In some respects the Mound Builders and the modern 
 Indians were alike. I have already said there is no rec- 
 
72 Some Considerations on the Mound Builders. 
 
 ognized difference between the stone implements of the 
 two. Both were great smokers, and lavished all their 
 artistic skill in carving and beautifying their pipes. The 
 Mound Builders appear to have kept their infants 
 strapped to boards, as the Indians do. This inference 
 was drawn by Morton and by Squire from the flatness 
 of the occiput of the skull. The same characteristic is 
 noted by Mr. Jones in an authentic skull recently dis- 
 interred in Georgia. They appear to have had similar 
 amusements. The Natchez, Choctaws, Cherokees, and 
 other Southern tribes, and also the Mandans, in the 
 Northwest, were much addicted to a game called chungke 
 by the Choctaws and Mandans, and nettecawaw by the 
 Cherokees. 
 
 The game was played with disks of hard stone, that 
 were greatly prized on account of the labor required to 
 rub such hard stone into the required shape. These 
 same stone disks, called by Squire and Davis discoid 
 stones, were used by the Mound Builders. It is, how- 
 ever, only an inference that they were used for the same 
 purpose. 
 
 And while one great difference between the Mound 
 Builders and the modern Indians is that, among the 
 former, the men must have labored ; while among In- 
 dians labor is left to the squaws, still the difference was 
 not absolute. For the Choctaws worked habitually in 
 their corn-fields with the squaws, and even hired them- 
 selves out to the French as laborers. 
 
 WHAT BECAME OF THEM. 
 
 As to the final question, what became of the Mound 
 Builders, little can be said beyond conjecture. Civiliza- 
 tion, as a rule, radiates from a centre ; and when, from 
 
Some Considerations on the Mound Builders. 73 
 
 any cause, it fades out, it contracts upon the centre. 
 Now, the vast stone temples and palaces of Central 
 America are, at least, as old as the mounds of the 
 United States. Central America was, then, relatively 
 the birthplace and centre of aboriginal American civil- 
 ization. The influence spread northward to the Mis_ 
 sissippi and Ohio valleys. 
 
 So the Mound Builders appear to have receded from 
 the lakes to the South. The Ohio Valley, when first 
 discovered, was uninhabited. In the latter part of the 
 seventeenth century, the entire region from Lake Erie 
 to the Tennessee river was an unpeopled solitude. 
 The ancient inhabitants may have died out from pesti- 
 lence, or natural decay, or partly from some such custom 
 as prevailed among the Natchez, of killing all the at- 
 tendants of a chief upon his death. But it is more 
 probable they were driven away. 
 
 The existing remains show they had, north of the 
 Ohio river, a strong line of fortresses, along the Great 
 Miami from its mouth to Piqua, with advanced works 
 near Oxford and Eaton, and with a massive work in rear 
 of this line, on the Little Miami, at Fort Ancient. 
 There was another line crossing the Scioto Valley at 
 Chillicothe, and extending west up the valley of Paint 
 Creek. These seem to have constituted a line of per- 
 manent defense. 
 
 The situations were well chosen, were naturally very 
 strong, and were fortified with great labor and some 
 skill. Such works, if defended, could not have been 
 taken by assault by any means the natives possessed, and 
 they were so constructed as to contain a supply of water. 
 
74 Some Considerations on the Mound Builders. 
 
 They would not be abandoned until the nations that 
 held them were broken. 
 
 When these were abandoned, there was no retreat, ex- 
 cept across the Ohio. South of the Ohio, in Kentucky 
 and Tennessee, there are many works of defense, but 
 none possessing the massive character of permanent 
 works like the Ohio system. They are, comparatively, 
 temporary works, thrown up for an exigency — are more- 
 over isolated, not forming, as in Ohio, a connected sys- 
 tem. They are such works as a people capable of put- 
 ting up the Ohio forts might erect, while being gradually 
 pushed south, and fighting an invader from the north 
 or northwest. 
 
 South of the Tennessee river the indications are dif- 
 ferent. We miss there the forts that speak of prolonged 
 and obstinate conflict. And we find among the tribes, 
 as they were when first discovered, lingering traces of 
 what we have called characteristic traits of the Mound 
 Builders. The Indian tribes there, as a rule, had more 
 substantial dwellings than those of the North; their 
 towns were more permanent and better constructed ; it 
 was common in De Soto's time, and in some tribes even 
 two hundred years later, for families to have separate 
 farms ; the chiefs were treated with a deference which 
 was never seen among Northern Indians. Among the 
 Natchez so late as 1730 the Great Sun was absolute de- 
 spot ; and in the accounts of De Soto's expedition, not 
 only the romantic narrative of Garcilaso de la Vega, but 
 jn the more sober account of the Portuguese cavalier 
 and the business-like report of Biedma, we read of 
 chiefs being carried in canopied litters by their subjects; 
 and of the haughty chief Tuscalusa, sitting on a pile of 
 
Some Considerations on the Mound Builders. 75 
 
 cushions, with officers. and attendants ranged about, and 
 with a colored shield held aloft by one to screen him 
 from the sun. Some tribes, the Natchez and Tensas, 
 preserved till 1730 their temples with the holy perpetual 
 fire. In De Soto's time chiefs commonly had their 
 dwellings on the summit of the terraced mounds; and 
 later several tribes used the rectangular inclosures, like 
 the one that used to stand about where Eighth Street 
 Park now is, in Cincinnati, as ground for playing the 
 game chungke, with just such discoid stones as are found 
 among the relics of the Mound Builders. 
 
 These remaining traces of the former population in- 
 dicate that in the Southern States they were not abso- 
 lutely exterminated, and swept off, leaving a void to be 
 filled by a new unmingled race; but that rather, in the 
 interminable wars and restless emigrations of the more 
 recent Indians, the less warlike Mound Builders grad- 
 ually dwindled, and became absorbed in their conquerors. 
 The Iroquois, pushing their conquering expeditions to 
 Montreal and Mackinac, to North Carolina and the 
 Mississippi, received and adopted many individuals 
 from tribes they overcame, and remnants of tribes they 
 had substantially exterminated. The Creeks, moving 
 from their original home in the far West, came upon 
 the Alibamas ; drove them in a pursuit, which lasted 
 many years, to the Mississippi, across it, and finally into 
 Alabama, when the chase ended, and the subdued rem- 
 nant of the Alibamas was received into the Creek na- 
 tion. The Natchez, after receiving remnants of several 
 nearly extinct tribes, were so nearly exterminated by the 
 French that the few remaining families fled to the Chick- 
 asaws and were absorbed. So the Mandans, the most 
 
y6 Some Considerations on the Mound Builders. 
 
 civilized tribe of the Northwest, dwindled away under 
 the continued attacks of the Sioux, abandoned village 
 after village, shifted their homes, till there is now but a 
 feeble handful, living for safety with another tribe. 
 
 While the Mound Builders probably died out in the 
 South thus gradually, and became absorbed in the tribes 
 that overcame them, there is color for the suggestion 
 often made, that the Natchez may have been a true rem- 
 nant of that race. They stood apart from other tribes by 
 their superiority in the simple arts practiced by Indians. 
 They were so skillful making their red-stained pottery 
 that Du Pratz had them make for him a set of plates 
 for table use. But they were more distinguished from 
 the others by their rites and government. They and 
 the Tensas, an affiliated tribe, had temples where guard- 
 ians perpetually preserved the holy fire. The Great 
 Sun, their head chief, had absolute authority, and his 
 person was sacred. They had an hereditary nobility. 
 The words and phrases of address and salutation used 
 toward the nobles, were wholly different from those used 
 toward the common people. 
 
 The temple stood on a flat mound eight feet high,, 
 having a graded ascent. And at the annual corn feast 
 a flat mound two feet high was erected, on which was 
 built a house for the Sun, who was borne two miles to 
 it in a litter carried by his subjects. After being carried 
 around the gathered heap of corn, he alighted, saluted 
 the grain, commanded his subjects to eat, and then it 
 was lawful for them to touch it. 
 
 When they fled to Louisiana, in 1730, they sur- 
 rounded themselves with a fort. Pickett, in his his- 
 tory of Alabama; Squire, in his Aboriginal Monu- 
 
Some Considerations on the Mound Builders. 77 
 
 ments of New York, and other writers, say the Natchez 
 also threw up mounds here. But neither Du Pratz, 
 Charlevoix, Bossu, nor Dumont, make any such state- 
 ment, and I have not access to any other cotemporary 
 authority. Monette asserts that the works near Trinity 
 were then constructed by the Natchez. But works of 
 such magnitude could not have been constructed by the 
 Natchez in the short time they were in this, their last 
 fastness. 
 
 The Natchez claimed that in former days they had 
 five hundred villages, and their borders stretched to the 
 Ohio. But that wars and a devastating pestilence that 
 broke out in old times, when a drowsy guardian suffered 
 the holy fire to go out, had reduced them. To these 
 causes Du Pratz added their custom of killing the at- 
 tendants of a chief upon the chief's death. It is quite 
 possible that the Natchez were a remnant of the race 
 that constructed the mounds. If not, they must have 
 been long in contact with that race. 
 
 Of the works on the upper Missouri, except the one 
 described by Lewis and Clark, I have met no account, 
 except the concise statement of Mr. Barrandt of his 
 observations in 1869 and 1870. From the fact that he 
 cut down a tree six hundred years old, growing on one 
 of them, it is reasonable to suppose they were about 
 cotemporaneous with the works in Ohio. A specula- 
 tion, but a mere speculation, may be ventured as to the 
 disappearance of their builders. 
 
 Lewis and Clark, and afterward Catlin, found on the 
 upper Missouri three small neighboring tribes, who 
 Jived in towns of tolerably substantial and quite com- 
 modious mud houses, forming villages fortified with 
 
7 8 Some Considerations on the Mound Builders. 
 
 stockade and ditch. These little tribes resided in their 
 secure villages, raising corn, and selling it to Western 
 tribes for pelfries, which they sold in turn to the East, 
 and venturing out only short distances to kill buffalo; 
 while the whole region else was occupied by roving 
 tribes, without any fixed habitation, and living wholly 
 by the chase. 
 
 Of these three tribes — Rickarees, Mandans, and Min- 
 netarees — the Rickarees are a fragment of the Pawnee 
 nation ; the Minnetarees belong to the Dakota family; 
 while the Mandans have no affiliation with any other 
 known family. Morton, indeed, says they belong to 
 the Dakota race, while De Smet says, on the other hand, 
 they belong to the wholly different race, the great Chip- 
 peway family of tribes. Catlin, however, who lived 
 some time among them, says their language has no af- 
 finity with any other he was acquainted with ; that, 
 being a mere handful of a tribe, they learned to speak 
 the language of other tribes, while none learned theirs. 
 
 The Mandans ever since they were first known, have 
 enjoyed a reputation, as compared with their neighbors, 
 somewhat like that of the Natchez in the South. They 
 have been called " the polite and friendly Mandans," 
 " the white Indians." Their huts, fifty feet in diameter, 
 are described by Catlin as scrupulously neat ; the sepa- 
 rate bedsteads were screened off by curtains of dressed 
 skins ; a solid stockade and ditch defended their village, 
 which was built on a precipitous bluff projecting into 
 the river. They made a great variety of excellent pot- 
 tery, which they baked in kilns ; and manufactured a 
 sort of iridescent beads, which were highly prized for 
 ornament. They played the game called " chungke" as 
 
 
Some Considerations on the Mound Builders. 
 
 19 
 
 it was played a hundred and fifty years ago in the South, 
 and called it by the same name. Ever since they were 
 first known, they have been wasting away under the re- 
 lentless hostility of the Sioux, and are now almost 
 wholly extinct, though the ruins of their former vil- 
 lages can be seen for many miles along the river. 
 
 It is stated by Catlin, as a fact, acknowledged by ail 
 three of these little tribes, that the Rickarees and Min- 
 netarees merely adopted the habits of the Mandans 
 after settling in their neighborhood. But no explana- 
 tion has been given of the source whence the Mandans 
 acquired their mode .of life, so exceptional in that re- 
 gion. 
 
 Catlin suggests that they are descendants of the 
 Mound Builders driven from Ohio. But there is noth- 
 ing to warrant that ; and they have no tradition of having 
 come from any remote country. If we must make them 
 descendants of Mound Builders, we need not go away 
 from the valley of the upper Missouri for an ancestry. 
 All that can be said, and that is mere speculation, is, it is 
 possible that the Mandans are a lingering remnant of 
 the ancient race that constructed the works on the upper 
 Missouri, or of a tribe that by contact with that race 
 imbibed some of its modes of life. 
 
 SOME WORKS IN TENNESSEE. 
 
 Before closing I desire to say a few words about some 
 works near Savannah, Tenn., described in the Smith- 
 sonian octavo for 1871, by J. Parish Stelle. On the 
 river bluff, about two miles below Savannah, is a group 
 of mounds of the ordinary type ; but at the foot of 
 the bluff, in the swampy land between it and the river, 
 
80 Some Considerations on the Mound Builders. 
 
 is a long intrenchment, not wholly obliterated. At reg- 
 ular intervals, the tracing of this intrenchment projects 
 to the front, so as to make flank defenses, or rudiment- 
 ary bastions, eighty yards apart. On the edge of the 
 town, on the river bluff, is another group of mounds. 
 This group of mounds is inclosed on the side away from 
 the river by a double line of intrenchment, each like the 
 one just described. One of the mounds, eight feet high, 
 stands on a slope. In constructing it three trenches 
 were first dug in the surface of the ground, and then 
 arched over with tempered clay, making three furnaces. 
 Rows of upright sticks or logs appear then to have been 
 placed between these furnaces, partly for the purpose of 
 protecting them from too great pressure. The mound 
 was then made by throwing on earth. But flues of tem- 
 pered clay were made, some extending directly up to 
 the upper surface of the mound, others sinuously wind- 
 ing through it, so as to convey heat to every part. Logs 
 of green wood were interspersed thickly through the 
 mound and bits of dry wood placed about them. When 
 the mound was opened all the wood was found reduced 
 to charcoal, and the whole mound baked almost to 
 brick. In another of the group were found fragments 
 of burned clay flues and bits of charcoal. The first has 
 the appearance of an elaborately constructed charcoal 
 pit, from which the charcoal has not been removed ; the 
 other, one from which the charcoal had been taken. A 
 tree, growing on one of the mounds, was found to be 
 two hundred and fifteen years old. The other mounds 
 were found to contain some bits of pottery and a few 
 stone implements. While these last are undoubtedly 
 works of the natives, it is not easy to believe that the in- 
 
Some Considerations on the Mound Builders. 81 
 
 trenchments and charcoal mound were not made by 
 Europeans. 
 
 De Soto, marching north across Alabama, reached a 
 river which he crossed in boats that he built, in Decem- 
 ber, 1 540. He took possession of the little Indian 
 town Chicaca, and went into winter-quarters. The In- 
 dians made a sudden night attack, set fire to the town, 
 and the surprised Spaniards lost everything. De Soto 
 gathered all the fragments of metal from the ashes, 
 moved to another town half a league off, and there tem- 
 pered the sword blades and made new lances, saddles, 
 and implements. Herrera says, De Soto fortified this 
 camp of refuge. 
 
 This Chicaca has been generally supposed to have 
 been in the northern part of the present State of Mis- 
 sissippi. But it may be that the works two miles below 
 Savannah mark its site, while the group on the edge of 
 the town of Savannah, including the charcoal mound, 
 may indicate the place where De Soto repaired his 
 armament. 
 
NOTES 
 
 A. ^Native silver .... hammered into leaf, and 
 wrapped around small copper ornaments, p. 67. The silver- 
 coated copper bosses, found by Dr. Hiidreth at the bottom of one 
 of the Marietta mounds, and now in the college museum at Ma- 
 rietta, have occasioned much perplexity. Squire says, in the 
 appendix to his ''Aboriginal Monuments of New York :" " These 
 articles have been critically examined, and it is beyond doubt that 
 the copper bosses are absolutely plated, not simply overlaid, with 
 silver. Between the copper and the silver exists a connection, 
 such as, it seems to me, could only be produced by heat ; and if 
 it is admitted that these are genuine remains of the mound-build- 
 ers, it must at the same time be admitted that they possessed the 
 difficult art of plating one metal on another." 
 
 This inference may not be necessary. It may be that the two 
 metals were found naturally joined, and the compound fragments 
 were simply hammered into shape. Mr. Cyrus Mendenhall, who 
 spent many years on the shores of Lake Superior, tells me that 
 bits of native silver are sometimes found joined with the copper 
 as if welded to it ; and that the miners sometimes hammer out 
 from such fragments rings that have all the appearance of copper 
 rings plated with silver. 
 
 B. Withdrawal of the Natchez to Louisiana, p. 77. Not- 
 withstanding the amount of speculation upon the flight of the 
 Natchez to Louisiana, the locality of their retreat has not been 
 fixed and determined. And yet it seems susceptible of identifica- 
 tion. Du Pratz says the French " went up the Red River, then 
 
84 Notes. 
 
 the Black River, and from thence up the Bayouc d' Arge iz t, which 
 communicates with a small lake at no great distance from the 
 fort which the Natchez had built." 
 
 Now, Mr. Dunbar, in his account of an exploration of Black 
 River and its confluents, communicated by President Jefferson to 
 Congress, along with the report of Lewis and Clark's expedition, 
 says the Tensas, one of the confluents of the Black, " communi- 
 cates with the Mississippi lowlands by the intervention of other 
 creeks and lakes, and by one in particular, called Bayou d'Ai'gent, 
 which empties into the Mississippi about fourteen miles above 
 Natchez A large lake, called St. John's Lake, occu- 
 pies a considerable part of the passage between the Mississippi 
 and the Tensas, and has at some former period been the bed of the 
 Mississippi." 
 
 This bayou and lake can be seen on the maps of Louisiana, 
 between the parishes of Concordia and Tensas, and agree with 
 the locality inscribed " Natchez destroyed " on Du Pratz's map. 
 
 The fort constructed here by the Natchez was undoubtedly a 
 palisade. Charlevoix simply says they fortified themselves. Du 
 Pratz says they built a fort, Dumont says, " they built a fort 
 upon the model of the one from which they had been driven" — 
 and that was a palisade. Dumont further says, " the troops pil- 
 laged the fort and set fire to it." 
 
 The Natchez were not actually exterminated. A band of them, 
 escaping, crossed the country to the Red River and attacked the 
 French fort at Natchitoches. Charlevoix says that here " they in- 
 trenched themselves." Dumont says they threw up an intrench- 
 ment — " creusere?tt dans la filaine une espece de retranchcment 
 ou Us se fortifier -ant" So far for contemporary authority. But 
 Mr. John Sibley, in a letter concerning the Southern Indians, dated 
 Natchitoches, April 5, 1805, and which letter was annexed to 
 Jefferson's message already mentioned, says : "After the massa- 
 cre of the French inhabitants of Natchez, by the Natchez Indians, 
 
Notes. 85 
 
 in 172S, these Indians fled from the French, after being reinforce'd, 
 and came up Red River, and camped about six miles below the 
 town of Natchitoches, near the river, by the side of a small lake 
 of clear water, and erected a mound of considerable size, where 
 it now remains " 
 
 This statement is, I believe, the source of all the statements in 
 the books that the Natchez, on their flight into Louisiana, built 
 mounds. 
 
 C. The Mandan Language, p. 78. Lewis and Clark spent 
 a winter with the Mandan s, and Capt. Lewis' official report to 
 the president says they speak " a primitive language, with some 
 words resembling the Osages'." Prince Maximilian, of Wied, 
 who spent some months among the Mandans, in 1833, sa y s they 
 speak a distinct language, differing radically from the Rickarees 
 and Minnetarees. 
 
u I 
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 Page 17, last line, for " guessers," read " guesses." 
 
 Page 26, line 21, for "a Hindoo," read "the smallest Hindoo." 
 
 Page 40, line 6, for " periods," read "period." 
 
 Page 42, line 11, for " Pierce," read " Peirce." 
 
 Page 46, line 22, for " man is," read " is man." 
 
 Page 46, line 29, for " he," read " the." 
 
 Page 54, line 26, for "Barrand," read " Barrandt." 
 
 Page 63, line 3, after the word " years," insert the word " old." 
 
 Page 64, last line, after the word " Norwood," insert "Reading 
 
 Page 65, line 21, for " country," read " county." 
 
 Page 70, line 3, for " autocthoneous," read " autochthonous." 
 
 Page 71, line 17, for " Sankies," read "Saukies." 
 
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