The Problem of the Ohio Mounds Part 3

As proof that the people of this tribe were in the habit of making salt the following evidence is presented: Collins, in his "History of Kentucky", [Footnote: Vol. 2, p. 55.] gives an account of the capture and adventures of Mrs. Mary Ingals, the first white woman known to have visited Kentucky. In this narrative occurs the following statement:

The first white woman in Kentucky was Mrs. Mary Ingals, nee Draper, who, in 1756 with her two little boys, her sister-in-law, Mrs. Draper, and others was taken prisoner by the Shawnee Indians, from her home on the top of the great Allegheny ridge, is now Montgomery County, W. Va. The captives were taken down the Kanawha, to the salt region, and, after a few days spent in making salt, to the Indian village at the mouth of Scioto River.

By the treaty of Fort Wayne, June 7, 1803, between the Delawares, Shawnees, and other tribes and the United States, it was agreed that in consideration of the relinquishment of t.i.tle to "the great salt spring upon the Saline Creek, which falls into the Ohio below the mouth of the Wabash, with a quant.i.ty of laud surrounding it, not exceeding 4 miles square," the United States should deliver "yearly, and every year for the use of said Indians, a quant.i.ty of salt not exceeding 150 bushels." [Footnote: Treaties of United States with Indian tribes, p. 97.]

Another very significant fact in this connection is that the fragments of large earthen vessels similar in character to those found in Gallatin County, Ill., have also been found in connection with the stone graves of the c.u.mberland Valley, and, furthermore, the impressions made by the textile fabrics show the same st.i.tches as do the former. Another place where pottery of the same kind has been found is about the salt-lick near Saint Genevieve, Mo., a section inhabited for a time by Shawnees and Delawares. [Footnote: C.C. Royce in American Antiquarian, vol. 3, 1881, pp. 188, 189.]

Stone graves have been found in Washington County, Md. [Footnote: Smithsonian Report for 1882 (1884), p. 797.] History informs us that there were two Shawnee settlements in this region, one in the adjoining county of Maryland (Allegany), and another in the neighborhood of Winchester, Va. [Footnote: C. C. Royce in American Antiquarian, vol. 3, 1881, p. 186. Virginia State Papers, 1. p.

63.]

Mr. W. M. Taylor [Footnote: Smithsonian Report for 1877, p. 307.

Mentions only known instance of mound with Delaware Village.]

mentions some stone graves of the type under consideration as found on the Mahoning River, in Pennsylvania. An important item in this connection is that these graves were in a mound. He describes the mound as 35 feet in diameter and 5 feet high, having on one side a projection 35 feet long of the same height as the mound.

Near by a cache was discovered containing twenty one iron implements, such as axes, hatchets, tomahawks, hoes, and wedges.

He adds the significant statement that near the mound once stood the Indian (Delaware) village of Kush-kush-kee.

Graves of the same type have been discovered in Lee County, Va.

[Footnote: Eleventh Report of the Peabody Museum, 1878, p. 208.]

Others have been found in a mound on the Tennessee side, near the southern boundary of Scott County, Va. Allusion has already been made to the occasional presence of the Shawnees in this region. In the map of North America by John Senex, Chaonanon villages are indicated in this particular section.

The presence of these graves in any part of Ohio can easily be accounted for on the theory advanced, by the well-known fact that both Shawnees and Delawares were located at various points in the region, and during the wars in which they were engaged were moving about from place to place; but the mention of a few coincidences may not be out of place.

In the American Antiquarian for July, 1881, is the description of one of these cists found in a mound in the eastern part of Montgomery County. Mr. Royce, in the article already referred to, states that there was a Shawnee village 3 miles north of Xenia, in the adjoining county, on Mad River, which flows into the Miami a short distance above the location of the mound.

Stone graves have been found in great numbers at various points along the Ohio from Portsmouth to Ripley, a region known to have been occupied at various times by the Shawnees.

Similar graves have been discovered in Ashland County. [Footnote: Smithsonian Report for 1877, pp. 261-267.] These, as will be seen by reference to the same report (page 504), are precisely in the locality of the former Delaware villages.

The evidence is deemed sufficient to show that the Shawnees and Delawares were accustomed to bury in stone graves of the type under consideration, and to indicate that the graves found south of the Ohio are to be attributed to the former tribe and those north to both tribes.

As graves of this kind are common over the west side of southern Illinois, from the month of the Illinois to the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, attention is called to some evidence bearing on their origin.

Hunter, who traveled in the West, says that some of the Indians he met with during his captivity buried their dead in graves of this kind.

According to a statement made by Dr. Rau to Mr. C. C. Jones, and repeated to me personally, "it is a fact well remembered by many persons in this neighborhood [Monroe County, III.] that the Indians who inhabited this region during the early part of the present century (probably Kickapoos) buried their dead in stone coffins." [Footnote: Antiquities So. Indians, p. 220.]

Dr. Shoemaker, who resided on a farm near Columbia, in 1861, showed Dr. Rau, in one of his fields, the empty stone grave of an Indian who had been killed by one of his own tribe and interred there within the memory of some of the farmers of Monroe County.

An old lady in Jackson County informed one of the Bureau a.s.sistants that she had seen an Indian buried in a grave of this kind.

It is doubtful whether Dr. Rau is correct in ascribing these graves to the Kickapoos, as their most southern locality appears to have been in the region of Sangamon County. [Footnote: Reynolds's Hist. Illinois, p. 20.] It is more probable they were made by the Kaskaskias, Tamaroas, and Cahokias. Be this as it may, it is evident that they are due to some of the tribes of this section known as Illinois Indians, pertaining to the same branch of the Algonquin family as the Shawnees and Delawares.

That the stone graves of southern Illinois were made by the same people who built those of the c.u.mberland Valley, or closely allied tribes, is indicated not only by the character of the graves but by other very close and even remarkable resemblances in the construction and contents as well as in the form and size of the mounds; the presence of hut-rings in both localities, and the arrangement of the groups.

Taking all the corroborating facts together there are reasonable grounds for concluding that graves of the type now under consideration, although found in widely-separated localities, are attributable to the Shawnee Indians and their congeners, the Delawares and Illinois, and that those south of the Ohio are due entirely to the first named tribe. That they are the works of Indians must be admitted by all who are willing to be convinced by evidence.

The fact that in most cases (except when due to the Delawares, who are not known to have been mound-builders) the graves are connected with mounds, and in many instances are in mounds, sometimes in two, three, and even four tiers deep, proves beyond a doubt that the authors of these graves were mound-builders.

The importance and bearing of this evidence does not stop with what has been stated, for it is so interlocked with other facts relating to the works of the "veritable mound-builders" as to leave no hiatus into which the theory of a lost race or a "Toltec occupation" can possibly be thrust. It forms an unbroken chain connecting the mound-builders and historical Indians which no sophistry or reasoning can break. Not only are these graves found in mounds of considerable size, but they are also connected with one of the most noted groups in the United States, namely, the one on Colonel Tumlin's place, near Cartersville, Ga., known as the Etowah mounds, of which a full description will be found in the Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology.

In the smallest of the three large mounds of this group were found stone graves of precisely the type attributable, when found south of the Ohio, to the Shawnees. They were not in a situation where they could be ascribed to intrusive burials, but in the bottom layer of a comparatively large mound with a thick and undisturbed layer of hard-packed clay above them. It is also worthy of notice that the locality is intermediate between the princ.i.p.al seat of the Shawnees in the c.u.mberland Valley, and their extreme eastern outposts in northeastern Georgia, where both tradition and stone graves indicate their settlement. The tradition regarding this settlement has been given elsewhere. [Footnote: Am. Antiq, vol. 7, 1885, p. 133]

In these graves were found the remarkable figured copper plates and certain engraved sh.e.l.ls, of which mention has been made by Mr.

W. H. Holmes [Footnote: Science, vol. 3, 1884, pp. 436-438.] and by myself [Footnote: Ibid., pp. 779-785.] in Science. It is a singular corroboration of the theory here advanced that the only other similar copper plates were found at Lebanon, Tenn., by Prof.

F. W. Putnam; in a stone grave in a mound at Mill Creek, southern Illinois, by Mr. Earle; in a stone grave in Jackson County, Ill., by Mr. Thing; in a mound of Madison County, Ill., by Mr. H. R.

Howland; and in a small mound at Peoria, Ill., by Maj. J. W.

Powell. All, except the specimens found by Professor Putnam and Mr. Howland, were secured by the Bureau of Ethnology, and are now in the National Museum.

There can be but little doubt that the specimens obtained from simple stone graves by Professor Putnam and Mr. Thing are to be attributed to Indian burials, but surely not to Indian manufacture.

We have, therefore, two unbroken chains connecting the Indians of historic times with the "veritable mound builders," and the facts which form the links of these chains throw some additional light on the history of that mysterious people, the Shawnees.

It may be stated here that in the report relating to the claim of the Wabash Land Company [Footnote: American State Papers, Land Affairs, Appendix, p. 20.] is a statement giving a list of articles furnished the Indians, among which we notice nine ear wheels. These we suppose to be the same as the spool shaped ear ornaments found in stone graves and elsewhere.

The engraved sh.e.l.ls also form a link which not only connects the mound-builders with historic times but corroborates the view advanced in regard to the Shawnees, and indicates also that the Cherokees were mound-builders. But before introducing this we will give the reasons for believing that the mounds of eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina are due to the last-named tribe.

CHAPTER IV.

THE CHEROKEES AS MOUND BUILDERS.

As the evidence on this point has to a large extent been presented in my article on "Burial Mounds of the Northern Section,"

[Footnote: Fifth Ann. Rept. Bur Ethnol] also in articles published in the Magazine of American History [Footnote: May, 1884, pp. 396- 407] and in the American Naturalist, [Footnote: Vol. 18, 1884, pp.

232-240] it will be necessary here only to introduce a few additional items.

The iron implements which are alluded to in the above mentioned articles also in Science, [Footnote: Science, vol. 3, 1884, pp.

308-310] as found in a North Carolina mound, and which a.n.a.lysis shows were not meteoric, furnish conclusive evidence that the tumulus was built after the Europeans had reached America; and as it is shown in the same article that the Cherokees must have occupied the region from the time of its discovery up to its settlement by the whites it is more than probable they were the builders. A figure of one of the pieces is introduced here.

[Ill.u.s.tration with caption: Fig I Part of an iron blade from a North Carolina mound]

Additional and perhaps still stronger evidence, if stronger be needed, that the people of this tribe were the authors of most of the ancient works in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee is to be found in certain discoveries made by the Bureau a.s.sistants in Monroe County, Tenn.

A careful exploration of the valley of the Little Tennessee River, from the point where it leaves the mountains to its confluence with the Holston, was made, and the various mound groups were located and surveyed. These were found to correspond down as far as the position of Fort London and even to the island below with the arrangement of the Cherokee "over-hill towns" as given by Timberlake in his map of the Cherokee country called "Over the Hills," [Footnote: Memoirs, 1765] a group for each town, and in the only available spots the valley for this distance affords. As these mounds when explored yielded precisely the kind of ornaments and implements used by the Cherokees, it is reasonable to believe they built them.

Ramsey also gives a map, [Footnote: Annals of Tennessee, p. 376]

but his list evidently refers to a date corresponding with the close of their occupancy of this section. Bartram [Footnote: Travels, pp. 373.374.] gives a more complete list applying to an earlier date. This evidently includes some on the Holston (his "Cherokee") River and some on the Tellico plains. This corresponds precisely with the result of the explorations by the Bureau as will be seen when the report is published. Some three or four groups were discovered in the region of Tellico plains, and five or six on the Little Tennessee below Fort London and on the Holston near the junction, one large mound and a group being on the "Big Island" mentioned in Bartram's list.

The largest of these groups is situated on the Little Tennessee above Fort London and corresponds with the position of the ancient "beloved town of Chota" ("Great Chote" of Bartram) as located by tradition and on both Timberlake's and Ramsey's maps. According to Ramsey, [Footnote: Annals of Tennessee, p. 157] at the time the pioneers, following in the wake of Daniel Boone near the close of the eighteenth century, were pouring over the mountains into the valley of the Watauga, a Mrs. Bean, who was captured by the Cherokees near Watauga, was brought to their town at this place and was bound, taken to the top of one of the mounds and about to be burned, when Nancy Ward, then exercising in the nation the functions of the Beloved or Pretty Woman, interfered and p.r.o.nounced her pardon.

During the explorations of the mounds of this region a peculiar type of clay beds was found in several of the larger mounds. These were always saucer shaped, varying in diameter from 6 to 15 feet, and in thickness from 4 to 12 inches. In nearly every instance they were found in series, one above another, with a layer of coals and ashes between. The series usually consisted of from three to five beds, sometimes only two, decreasing in size from the lower one upward. These apparently marked the stages of the growth of the mound, the upper one always being near the present surface.

The large mound which is on the supposed site of Chota, and possibly the one on which Mrs. Bean was about to be burned, was thoroughly explored, and found to contain a series of these clay beds, which always showed the action of fire. In the center of some of these were found the charred remains of a stake, and about them the usual layer of coals and ashes, but, in this instance, immediately around where the stake stood were charred fragments of human bones.

As will be seen, when the report which is now in the hands of the printer is published, the burials in this mound were at various depths, and there is nothing shown to indicate separate and distinct periods, to lead to the belief that any of these were intrusive in the true sense. On the contrary, the evidence is pretty clear that all these burials were by one tribe or people.

By the side of nearly every skeleton were one or more articles, as sh.e.l.l masks, engraved sh.e.l.ls, sh.e.l.l pins, sh.e.l.l beads, perforated sh.e.l.ls, discoidal stones, polished celts, arrow-heads, spearheads, stone gorgets, bone implements, clay vessels, or copper hawkbells.