Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines/Chapter 9

by Lewis Henry Morgan

 

CHAPTER IX.

HOUSES OF THE MOUND-BUILDERS.

The general view of the house-life and houses of the Indian tribes thus far presented will tend to strengthen the hypothesis about to be stated concerning the earth-works of the Mound-Builders. Apart from the explanation that the long-houses of the Northern Tribes and the joint-tenement house of the Sedentary Indians are capable of affording, they are wholly inexplicable. The Mound-Builders worked native copper, cultivated maize and plants, manufactured pottery and stone implements of higher grade than the tribes of the Lower Status of barbarism; and they raised earthworks of great magnitude, superior to any works of the former tribes. They fairly belong to the class of Sedentary Village Indians, though not in all respects of an equal grade of culture and development. Their embankments, which inclosed a rectangular space, were in all probability, the foundations upon which they erected their houses. It is proposed to consider these embankments under this hypothesis.

Under the name of Mound-Builders certain unknown tribes of the American aborigines are recognized, who formerly inhabited as their chief area the valley of the Ohio and its tributary streams. Traces of their occupation have been found in other places, from the Gulf of Mexico to Lakes Erie and Superior, and from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, and in some localities west of this river.

Without entering upon a discussion of these works, this chapter will be confined to four principal questions:

I. The house-life of the American aborigines, in the usages of which the Mound-Builders were necessarily involved.
II. The probable center from which the Mound-Builders emigrated into these areas.

III. The uses for which their principal earth-works were designed, with a conjectural restoration of one of their pueblos; and,
IV. The probable numbers of the people.

The Mound-Builders have disappeared, or, at least, have fallen out of human knowledge, leaving these works and their fabrics as the only evidence of their existence. Consequently the proposed questions, excepting the first, are incapable of specific answers; but they are not beyond the reach of approximate solutions. The mystery in which these tribes are enshrouded, and the unique character of their earth-works, will lead to deceptive inferences, unless facts and principles are carefully considered and rigorously applied, and such deductions only are made as they will fairly warrant. It is easy to magnify the significance of these remains and to form extravagant conclusions concerning them; but neither will advance the truth. They represent a status of human advancement forming a connecting link in the progressive development of man. If, then, the nature of their arts, and more especially the character of their institutions, can be determined with reasonable certainty, the true position of the Mound-Builders can be assigned to them in the scale of human progress, and what was possible and what impossible on their part can be known.

 

THE HOUSE-LIFE OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES, IN THE USAGES OF WHICH THE MOUND-BUILDERS WERE NECESSARILY INVOLVED.

 

It will be assumed that the tribes who constructed the earth-works of the Ohio Valley were American Indians. No other supposition is tenable. The implements and utensils found in the mounds indicate very plainly that they had attained to the Middle Status of barbarism. They do not fully answer the tests of this condition, since they neither cultivated by irrigation, so far as is known, nor constructed houses of adobe bricks or of stone; but, in addition to the earth-works to be considered, they mined native copper and wrought it into implements and utensils—acts performed by none of the tribes in the Lower Status of barbarism; and they depended chiefly upon horticulture for subsistence. They had also carried the art of pottery to the ornamental stage, and manufactured textile fabrics of cotton or flax, remains of which have been found wrapped around copper chisels. These facts, with others that will appear, justify their recognition as in the same status with the Village Indians of New and Old Mexico and Central America. They occupied areas free from lakes as a rule, and, therefore, the poorest for a fish subsistence. This shows of itself that their chief reliance was upon horticulture. The principal places where their villages were situated were unoccupied areas at the epoch of European discovery, because unadapted to tribes in the Lower Status of barbarism, who depended upon fish and game as well as upon maize and plants.

A knowledge of the general character of the houses of the American aborigines will enable us to infer what must have been the general character of those of the Mound-Builders. This, again, was influenced by the condition of the family. Among the Indian tribes, in whatever stage of advancement, the family was found in the pairing form, with separation at the option of either party. It was founded upon marriage between single pairs, but it fell below the monogamian family of civilized society. In their condition it was too weak an organization to face alone the struggle of life, and it sought shelter in large households, formed on the basis of kin, with communism in living as an incident of their plan of life. While exceptional cases of single families living by themselves existed among all the tribes, it did not break the general rule of large households, and the practice in them of communism in living. These usages entered into and determined the character of their house architecture. In all parts of North and South America, at the period of European discovery, were found communal or joint-tenement houses, from those large enough to accommodate five, ten, and twenty families, to those large enough for fifty, a hundred, and in some cases two hundred or more, families. These houses differed among themselves in their plan and structure as well as size; but a common principle ran through them which was revealed by their adaptation to communistic uses. They reflect their condition and their plan of life with such singular distinctness as to afford practical hints concerning the houses of the Mound-Builders.

 

THE PROBABLE CENTER FROM WHICH THE MOUND-BUILDERS EMIGRATED INTO THESE AREAS.

 

It is well known that the highest type of Village Indian life was found in Yucatan, Chiapas, and Guatemala, and that the standard declines with the advance of the type northward into Mexico and New Mexico, thus tending to show that it was best adapted to a warm climate; but it does not follow that we must look to these distant regions for the original home of the Mound-Builders. The nearest point from which they could have been derived was New Mexico, and that is rendered the probable point from physical considerations, and still more from their greater nearness in condition to the Village Indians of New Mexico, below whom they must be ranked. The migrations of the American Indian tribes were gradual movements under the operation of physical causes, occupying long periods of time and with slow progress. There is no reason for supposing, in any number of cases, that they were deliberate migrations with a definite destination. With maize, beans, and squashes (the staples of an established horticulture), the Village Indians were independent of fish and game as primary means of subsistence, and with the former they possessed superior resources for migrating over the wide expanses of open prairies between New Mexico and the Mississippi. The movement of the tribes who constructed the earth-works in question can be explained as a natural spread of Village Indians from the valley of the Rio Grande, or the San Juan, to the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, and thence northward to the valley of the Ohio, which was both easy and feasible. Its successful extension for any considerable distance north of the gulf was rendered improbable, by reason of the increasing severity of the climate. There are some reasons for supposing that climate delayed the movement for centuries, and finally defeated the attempt to transplant permanently even the New Mexican type of village life into a northern temperature so much lower during the greater part of the year.

A number of archæologists, who have considered the question of the probable anterior home of the Mound-Builders, are inclined to derive them from Central America. The ground for this opinion seems to be the fact that horticulture must have originated in a semi-tropical region, where this type of village life was first developed, and, therefore, that all the forms of this life were derived from thence. It would be a mistake, as it seems to the writer, to adopt the track of horticulture as that of Indian migration. In its first spread horticulture would be more apt to return upon the line of the latter than wait to be carried, by actual migrations, with the people. Moreover it is unnecessary to invoke such an argument, for the reason that New Mexico had been for ages the seat of horticultural and Village Indians, and was necessarily occupied by them long before the country east of the Mississippi. Every presumption is in favor of their derivation from New Mexico as their immediate anterior home, where they were accustomed to snow and to a moderate degree of cold.^[1]

 

THE USES FOR WHICH THEIR PRINCIPAL EARTHWORKS WERE DESIGNED, WITH A CONJECTURAL RESTORATION OF ONE OF THEIR PUEBLOS.

 

A brief reference to the character and extent of these works is necessary as a means of understanding their uses. The authors of the volume "The Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley" remark, in their preface, that "the ancient inclosures and groups of works personally examined and surveyed are upwards of one hundred. * * * About two hundred mounds of all forms and sizes, and occupying every variety of position, have also been excavated."^[2] Out of ninety-five earthworks, exclusive of mounds, figured and described in this valuable memoir, and which probably mark the sites of Indian villages, forty-seven are of the same type and may unhesitatingly be assigned to the Mound-Builders; fourteen are groups of emblematical earthworks, mostly in Wisconsin, and may also be assigned to them; but the remaining thirty-four are very inferior as well as different in character. They are not above the works of the Indians in the Lower Status of barbarism, and, therefore, do not probably belong to the Village Indians who constructed the works in the Scioto Valley. If to those first named are added the emblematical earth-works figured and described by Lapham,^[3] and a few other works not known to Squier and Davis, and since described by other persons, there are something more than one hundred works, large and small, indicating the sites of Indian villages, of which perhaps three quarters were occupied at the same time.^[4] The conical mounds raised over Indian graves, which are numerous, are not included.

"A large, perhaps the larger portion of these works," observe the same authors, "are regular in outline, the square and circle predominating. * * * The regular works are almost invariably erected on level river terraces. * * * The square and the circle often occur in combination, frequently connecting with each other.* * * Most of the circular works are small, varying from two hundred and fifty to three hundred feet in diameter, while others are a mile or more in circuit."^[5] These embankments are, for the most part, slight, varying from two feet to six, eight, ten, and twelve feet in height, with a broad base, caused by the washing down of the banks in the course of centuries. These facts are shown by numerous cross-sections furnished with the ground-plans by the authors But the circular embankments are usually about half as high as the rectangular.

Some idea of the size of Indian villages, and of their nearness to each other, is necessary to form an impression of their plan of life and mode of settlement. The illustrations should be drawn from the Village Indians, to which class the Mound-Builders undoubtedly belonged. Not knowing the use of wells, they established their settlements on the margins of rivers and small streams, which afforded alluvial land for cultivation, and often within a few miles of each other. In the valley of the Rio Chaco, in New Mexico, there were several pueblos within an extent of twelve miles, each consisting of a single joint-tenement house, constructed usually upon three sides of a court; and westward of the Chaco Valley were, and still are, the seven Moki pueblos, within an extent of twenty-five miles. At the present time, in the valley of the Rio Grande, a single pueblo house, accommodating five hundred persons, makes an Indian village. Two or three such houses, as at Taos and Santo Domingo, form a large pueblo; and a group of several such houses, as at Zuñi, a pueblo of the largest size, which once contained perhaps five thousand persons, now reduced to fifteen hundred. There are no reasons for supposing that any pueblo in Yucatan or Central America contained as high a number as ten thousand inhabitants at the period of the Spanish conquest, although these countries were extremely favorable for an increase of Indian population. Their villages were numerous and small. Castañeda, who accompanied the expedition of Coronado to New Mexico in 1 540-1542, estimated the population of the seventy villages visited by detachments and situated between the Colorado River, Zuñi, and the Arkansas at twenty thousand men, which would give a total population in this wide area of a hundred thousand Indians.^[6] There were seven villages each of Cibola, Tusayan, Quivira, and Hemes, and twelve of Tiguex; it would give an average of about fourteen hundred and fifty persons to each village. In all probability these are fair samples as to the number of inhabitants of the villages of the Mound-Builders, with exceptional cases, as the village on the site of Marietta, in Ohio, where there may have been five thousand, if an impression may be formed from the extent of the earth-works occupied in the manner hereafter suggested. Where several villages were found near each other on the same stream, as in New Mexico, the people usually spoke the same dialect, which tends to show that those in each group were colonists from one original village.

The earth-works of the Mound-Builders must be regarded as the sites of their villages. The question then recurs, for what purpose did they raise these embankments at an expenditure of so much labor? They must have lived somewhere, in, upon, or around them. No answer has been given to this question, and no serious attempt has been made to explain their uses. They have been called "defensive enclosures"; but it is not supposable that they lived in houses within the embankments, for this would turn the places into slaughter-pens in case of an attack. Some of them have been called "sacred enclosures", but this goes for nothing apart from some knowledge of their uses. They were constructed for a practical, intelligent purpose, and that purpose must be sought in the needs and mode of life of the Mound-Builders as Village Indians; and it should be expressed in the works themselves. If a sensible use for these embankments can be found, its acceptance will relieve us from the delusive inferences which are certain to be drawn from them so long as they are allowed to remain in the category of the mysteries.

It is proposed to submit a conjectural explanation of the objects and uses of the principal embankments, and to advocate its acceptance on the ground of inherent probability. It will be founded on the assumption that the Mound-Builders were horticultural Village Indians who had immigrated from beyond the Mississippi; that as such they had been accustomed to live in houses of adobe bricks, like those found in New Mexico; that they had become habituated to living upon their roof terraces as elevated platforms, and in large households; and that their houses were in the nature of fortresses, in consequence of the insecurity in which they lived. Further than this, that before they emigrated to the valley of the Ohio they were accustomed to snow, and to a moderate degree of winter cold; wore skin garments, and possibly woven mantles of cotton, as the Cibolans of New Mexico did at the time of Coronado's expedition.^[7] The food of the New Mexicans, at this time, consisted of maize, beans, and squashes, and a limited amount of game, which was doubtless the food of the Mound-Builders. Captain Juan Jaramillo, who accompanied the same expedition, remarks in his relation that the Cibolans "had hardly provisions enough for themselves; what they had consisted of maize, beans, and squashes (maiz, des haricots, et des courges). * * * The Indians clothe themselves with deer skins, very well prepared. They have also buffalo-skins, tanned, in which they wrap themselves."^[8] Although several centuries earlier in time, the MoundBuilders, with habits of life similar to those of the Cibolans, in 1540, would understand, besides horticulture, the use of adobe bricks, and the art of constructing' long joint-tenement houses, closed up in the first story for defensive reasons, and built in the terraced form two, three, and four stories high, the ascent to the roof of the first story being made by ladders.

If, then, a tribe of Village Indians, with such habits and experience, emigrated centuries ago in search of new homes, and in course of time they, or their descendants, reached the Scioto Valley, in Ohio, they would find it impossible to construct houses of adobe bricks able to resist the rains and frosts of that climate, even if they found adobe soil. Some modification of their house architecture would be forced upon them through climatic reasons. They might have used stone, if possessed of sufficient skill to quarry it and construct walls of stone; but they did not produce such houses. Or they might have fallen back upon a house of inferior grade, located upon the level ground, such as the timber-framed houses of the Minnitarees and Mandans, in which case there would have been no necessity for the embankments in question. Or, they might have raised these embankments of earth, inclosing rectangles or squares, and constructed long houses upon them, which, it is submitted, is precisely what they did. Such houses would agree in general character and in plan, and in the uses to which they were adapted, with those of the aborigines found in all parts of America

The elevated platform of earth as a house-site is an element in Indian architecture which reappears in a conspicuous manner in the solid pyramidal platforms upon which the great stone structures in Yucatan and Central America were erected, and which sprang from the defensive and the communal principles in living. This latter principle required large houses for the accommodation-of a number of families in the Lower Status of barbarism, and large enough in some cases, when the people were in the Middle Status, to accommodate an entire tribe. When adobe bricks were used the house was usually a single structure, three or four rooms deep and three or four stories high, constructed in a block, and in the nature of a fortress. The ground story was little used, except for storage, and they lived, practically, upon the roof terraces. When the use of stone came in, the structure often consisted of a main building four or five hundred feet long, and two wings two and three hundred feet in length, inclosing three sides of an open court, the fourth side being protected by a low stone wall. Such were the pueblos now in ruins upon the Rio Chaco in New Mexico.

In the highest form of this architecture in Yucatan and Chiapas, the pyramidal elevation appears faced with dry stone walls. The buildings upon its summit were often in the form of a quadrangle, with an open court in the center; but the buildings were generally disconnected at the four angles, as in the House of the Nuns at Uxmal. All of these forms are parts of one system of indigenous architecture; and the several parts are susceptible of articulation in a series representing a progressive development of a common thought, that of joint residence, with the practice of communism in living in large groups in the same house, or in one group consisting of the entire household.

Let us, then, inquire whether the principal embankments of the Mound-Builders were adapted, as raised platforms of earth, for the sites of long houses constructed on the communistic principle, and in the general style of the houses of the American aborigines.

In the valley of the Scioto, in Ohio, and within an extent of twelve miles, were found the remains of seven villages of the Mound-Builders, four upon the east and three upon the west side of the river. They are among the best of their works, and furnish fair examples of the whole. One of the number, the High Bank Pueblo, is shown in ground-plan in the engraving. Fig. 46 It is the only one in which the inclosure is octagonal instead of square. The remains of each of the seven consist principally of embankments like railway grades several feet high and correspondingly broad at the base, inclosing a square or slightly irregular area, the embankment on each of the four sides being about a thousand feet long, with an opening or gateway in the middle and at the four angles of the square. Attached to or quite near to five of the seven are large circular inclosures, each formed by a similar though lower embankment of earth and inclosing a space somewhat larger than the squares. The respective heights of the embankments, forming four of the rectangles, are given at four, six, ten, and twelve feet; and of three of the circular embankments, at five and six feet, respectively.

The embankments inclosing the squares were probably the sites of their houses; since, as the highest, and because they are straight, they were best adapted to the purpose. The situations of these pueblos at short distances from each other on the same stream accords with the usages of the Village Indians of New and Old Mexico and Central America in locating their villages These pueblos were probably occupied by Mound-Builders of the same tribe, and were not unlikely under a common government, consisting of a council of chiefs. It is probable, also, that they were constructed, one after the other, by colonists from an original village.

In the engraving, Fig. 40, the form and relations of the embankments are shown, with cross-sections indicating their elevation and present grounddimensions. It was taken from the work of Squier and Davis.^[9] These authors remark that "the principal work consists of an octagon and circle, the former measuring nine hundred and fifty feet, the latter ten hundred and fifty feet in diameter. * * * The Nvalls of the octagon are very bold, and, where they have been least subject to cultivation, are now between eleven and twelve feet in height by about fifty feet base. The wall of the circle is much less, nowhere measuring over four or five feet in altitude. In all these respects, as in the absence of a ditch and the presence of the two small circles, this work resembles the Hopeton Works."^[10] Of the latter, which is nine miles above on the Scioto, they remark that "the walls of the rectangular work are composed of a clayey loam twelve feet high by fifty feet base * * * They resemble the heavy grading of a railway, and are broad enough on the top to admit of the passage of a coach."^[11]

It will be noticed that the octagonal work shown in the engraving consists of seven distinct embankments. Six of these are about four hundred and fifty feet long, and the remaining one, which once consisted of two equal sections, as shown by the mound to face an original opening in the center, now forms one continuous embankment facing one side of the inclosed area. If these embankments were reformed, with the materials washed down and now spread over a base of fifty feet, with sloping sides and a level summit, they would form new embankments thirty-seven feet wide at base, ten feet high, and with a summit platform twenty-two feet wide. If a surface coating of clay were used, the sides. could be made

Fig. 46.— Ground plan of High Bank Pueblo.

steeper and the summit platform broader. On embankments thus reformed out of their original materials respectable as well as sufficient sites would be provided for long-joint-tenement houses, comparted into chambers like stalls opening upon a central passage way through the structure from end to end, as in the long-houses of the Iroquois. Such embankments were strikingly adapted to houses of the aboriginal American model, the characteristic feature of which was sufficient length to afford a number of apartments. This feature became more marked in the houses of the Village Indians, among whom houses three hundred, four hundred, and even five hundred feet in length have been found, as elsewhere stated.

These embankments answered as a substitute for the first story of the house constructed of adobe bricks, which was usually from ten to twelve feet high, and closed up solid on the ground, externally. The gateways entering the square were protected, it may be supposed, with palisades of round timber set in the ground, each row of stakes commencing at the opposite ends of the embankments and contracting after passing each other to a narrow opening on the inside, which might be permanently closed. Indian tribes in a lower condition than the Mound-Builders were familiar with palisades. The inclosed square was thus completely protected by the long-houses standing upon these embankments and the gateways guarding the several entrances. The pueblo, externally, would present continuous ramparts of earth ten feet high, around an inclosed area, surmounted with timber-framed houses with walls sloping like the embankments, and coated with earth mixed with clay and gravel, rising ten or twelve feet above their summits; the two forming a sloping wall of earth twenty feet high. It seems extremely probable, for the reasons stated, that they raised these embankments as foundations, and planted their long-houses upon them, thus uniting the defensive principle with that of communism in living. Such houses would harmonize with the general plan of life of the American aborigines, and with the general type of their house architecture.

It is not necessary to know the exact form or internal plan of these houses in order to establish this hypothesis. It is sufficient to show that these embankments as restored were not only adapted, but admirably adapted, to joint-tenement houses of the aboriginal American type. The restoration, Fig. 47, was drawn by my friend James G. Cutler, esq., of Rochester, architect, in accordance with the foregoing suggestions. It shows not only the feasibility of occupying these embankments with long houses, but also that each pueblo was designed by the Mound-Builders to be a fortress, able to resist assault with the appliances of Indian warfare. From the defensive character of the great houses of the Village Indian in general, this feature might have been expected to appear in the houses of the Mound-Builders.

In this restoration the houses are nearly triangular and of simple construction. Indians much ruder than they are supposed to have been, as the Minnitarees and Mandans, walled their houses with slabs of wood standing on a slope, and roofed them at a lower angle, covering both the sloping external walls and the roof with a "concrete of tough clay and gravel," a foot or more thick. Long triangular houses of the width of the summit of these embankments, with their doorways opening upon the square, and with the interior comparted in the form of stalls upon each side of a central passage way, would realize, with the inclosed court, some of the features and nearly all the advantages of the New Mexican pueblo houses. Occupying to the edge of the embankments, these of the Mound-Builders could not be successfully assailed from without either by Indian weapons or by fire; and within, their apartments would be as secure and capacious as those of the Village Indians in general at the period of their discovery. The inclosed court, which is of unusual size, is one of the remarkable features of the plan. It afforded a protected place for the villagers and a place of recreation for their children, as well as room for their drying-scaffolds, of which Mr. Cutler has introduced a number of the Minnitaree and Mandan model, and for gardens if they chose to use a part of the area for that purpose. They would also require room for a large accumulation of fuel for winter use. The only assailable points are the gateways, of which the embankments show seven. These undoubtedly were protected by rows of round timber set in the ground, and passing each other in such a manner as to leave a narrow opening, with a mound back of each, upon which archers could stand and shoot their arrows over the heads of those between them

Fig. 47.—Restoration of High Bank Pueblo.

Fig. 48.—Ground plan and sections of House, High Bank Pueblo.

and the gateway in front. Such at least is the object which the presence of the mound in each case suggests.

In the engraving, Fig. 48, there is a ground plan of a section of one of the long-houses resting upon the restored embankment. It shows eight apartments upon opposite sides of the central passage, each nine feet wide by six feet deep, and surrounded by raised bunks used both for seats and beds. The passage is eight feet wide and runs through the house from end to end, with fire-pits in the center for each four apartments. In interior plan it is an exact transcript of the long-house of the Iroquois, and therefore adapted to the joint habitation of a large number of related families, and to the practice of communism.

Another section shows the embankment below the line A-B, which, as stated, is ten feet high upon a base thirty-seven feet wide, and with a summit platform twenty-two feet wide, which forms the floor of the house. Above this is a cross-section of the structure Round posts six inches in diameter are set in the ground upon the lines of the central passage, defining also the several stalls. These posts, which rise eight feet above the level of the floor and are forked at the top, support string-pieces which run the length of the house. Against these, planks of split timber are placed so as to form a sloping external wall, and these are covered with clay and gravel a foot or more thick. A simpler method would be the use of poles set close together and sunk in the ground, afterwards coated in the same manner. Cross-pieces of round timber rest upon the stringers over each pair of posts. The roof over the central passage is formed independently of poles bracing against each other at the center from opposite sides. This is also covered with concrete or mud mortar. Openings through the roof are left over the fire-pits for the exit of the smoke. The principle of construction adopted is that employed in the dirt lodges of the Minnitarees and Mandans of the Upper Missouri.^[12] As thus restored, this pueblo of the Mound-Builders is not superior in the mechanism of the houses to those of the tribes named.

An elevation of a portion of one of the houses, on the court side, is also furnished, showing the embankment with a ladder resting upon it used as steps, and which could be taken up at night; also one of the doors by which the house was entered.

It is not necessary, as before suggested, that the actual form and structure of the houses of the Mound-Builders should be shown to establish the hypothesis that these embankments were the veritable sites of their houses. If it is made evident that the summit platforms of these embankments, when reformed from their own materials, would afford practicable sites for houses, which when constructed would have been comfortable dwellings adapted to the climate and to Indian life in the Middle Status of barbarism, this is all that can be required. The restoration of this pueblo establishes the affirmative of this proposition, with the superadded confirmation of that defensive character which marks all the house architecture of the Village Indians in New and Old Mexico and Central America.

With their undoubted advancement beyond the Iroquois and Minnitarees, the Mound-Builders may have constructed better houses upon these platform elevations than the plans indicate. No remains of adobes have been found in connection with these embankments, and nothing to indicate that walls of such brick had ever been raised upon them. The disintegrated mass would have shown itself in the form of the embankment after the lapse of many centuries. On the contrary, they were found in the precise form they would have assumed, under atmospheric influences, after structures of the kind described had perished, and the embankments had been abandoned for centuries.

These embankments, therefore, require triangular houses of the kind described, and long-houses, as well, covering their entire length. But the interior plan might have been different; for example, the passage way might have been along the exterior wall, and the stalls or apartments on the court side, and but half as many in number; and, instead of one continuous house in the interior, four hundred and fifty feet in length, it might have been divided into several, separated from each other by cross partitions. The plan of life, however, which we are justified in ascribing to them, from known usages of Indian tribes in a similar condition of advancement, would lead us to expect large households formed on the basis of kin, with the practice of communism in living in each household, whether large or small. There is a direct connection in principle between the platform elevations inclosing a large square on which the High Bank Pueblo was constructed, and the pyramidal platforms in Yucatan, smaller in diameter but higher in elevation, upon which were erected the most artistic houses constructed by the American aborigines. In the latter cases the central area rises to the common level of the embankments upon which the houses were constructed. The former has the security gained by a house-site above the level of the surrounding ground; and it represents about all the advance made by the Village Indians in the art of war above the tribe§ in a lower condition of barbarism. They placed their houses and homes in a position unassailable by the methods of Indian warfare.

There is some diversity, as would be expected, in the size of the squares inclosed by these embankments. They range from four hundred and fifty to seventeen hundred feet, the majority measuring between eight hundred and fifty and a thousand feet. Gateways are usually found at the four angles and at the center of each side. A comparison of the dimensions of twenty of these squares, figured in the "Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley," gives for the average nine hundred and thirty-seven feet. The aggregate length of the embankments shown in Fig. 46 is three thousand six hundred feet, which, at an average of ten feet for each apartment, would give three hundred and sixty upon each side of the passage way, or seven hundred and twenty in all. From this number should be deducted such as were used for storage, for doorways, and for public uses. Allowing two.apartments for each family of five persons, the High Bank Pueblo would have accommodated from fifteen hundred to two thousand persons, living in the fashion of Indians, which is about the number of an average pueblo of the Village Indians. This result may be strengthened by comparing houses of existing Indian tribes. The Seneca-Iroquois village of Tiotohatton, two centuries ago, was estimated at a hundred and twenty houses. Taking the number at one hundred, with an average length of fifty feet, and it would give a lineal length of house-room of five thousand feet It was the largest of the Seneca, and the largest of the Iroquois villages, and contained about two thousand inhabitants. A similar result is obtained by another comparison. The aggregate length of the apartments in the pueblo of Chetro Kettle, in New Mexico, now in ruins, including those in the several stories, is four thousand seven hundred feet. It contained probably about the same number of inhabitants.

The foregoing explanation of the uses of these embankments rests upon the defensive principle in the house architecture of the Village Indians, and upon a state of the family requiring joint-tenement houses communistic in character. To both of these requirements this conjectural restoration of one of the pueblos of the Mound-Builders responds in a remarkable manner. In the diversified forms of the houses of the Village Indians, in all parts of America, the defensive principle is a constant feature. Among the Mound-Builders a rampart of earth ten feet high around a village would afford no protection; but surmounted with long-houses, the walls of which rose continuous with the embankments, the strength of these walls, though of timber coated with earth, would render a rampart thus surmounted and doubled in height a formidable barrier against Indian assault. The second principle, that of communism in living in joint-tenement houses, which is impressed not less clearly upon the houses of the Village Indians in general than upon the supposed houses of the Mound-Builders, harmonized completely with the first. From the two together sprang the house architecture of the American aborigines, with its diversities of form, and they seem sufficient for its interpretation. The Mound-Builders in their new area east of the Mississippi, finding it impossible to construct joint-tenement houses of adobe bricks to which they had been accustomed, substituted solid embankments of earth in the place of the first story closed up on the ground, and erected triangular houses upon them covered with earth. When circumstances compelled a change of plan, the second is not a violent departure from the first. There is a natural connection between them. Finally, it is deemed quite sufficient to sustain the interpretation given, that these embankments were eminently adapted to the uses indicated; and that the pueblo as restored, and with its inclosed court, would have afforded to its inhabitants pleasant, protected, and attractive homes.

With respect to the large circular inclosures, adjacent to and communicating with the squares, it is not necessary that we should know their object. The one attached to the High Bank Pueblo contains twenty acres of land, and doubtless subserved some useful purpose in their plan of life. The first suggestion which presents itself is, that as a substitute for a fence it surrounded the garden of the village in which they cultivated their maize, beans, squashes, and tobacco. At the Minnitaree village a similar inclosure may now be seen by the side of the village surrounding their cultivated land, consisting partly of hedge and partly of stakes, the open prairie stretching out beyond. We cannot know all the necessities that attended their mode of life; although houses, gardens, food, and raiment were among those which must have existed.

There is another class of circular embankments, about two hundred and fifty feet in diameter, connected with each other in some cases by long and low parallel embankments, as may be seen in Fig. 46. Undoubtedly they were for some useful purpose, which may or may not be divined correctly, but a knowledge of which is not necessary to our hypothesis respecting the principal embankments. It may be suggested as probable that the Mound-Builders were organized in gentes, phratries, and tribes. If this were the case, the phratries would need separate places for holding their councils and for performing their religious observances. These ring embankments suggest the circular estufas found in connection with the New Mexican pueblos, two, four, and sometimes five at one pueblo. The circles were adapted to open-air councils, after the fashion of the American Indian tribes. As there are two of these connected with each other, and two not connected, it is not improbable that the Mound-Builders at this village were organized in two and perhaps four phratries, and that they performed their religious ceremonies and public business in these open estufas.^[13]

Practice of Cremation.—Among other works are the conical mounds, which are numerous, found in or near circular embankments. They vary in height from five to ten and twenty feet; with one, the Grave Creek Mound, seventy feet high. They are classified by Squier and Davis, who surveyed and examined them, into "Mounds of Sacrifice," "Mounds of Sepulture," and "Mounds of Observation" The first kind only, in which the so-called "altars" are found, will be noticed.

At the center of each of the mounds of this class, and on the ground level, there was found a bed of clay, artificially formed into a shallow basin, and then hardened by fire. These basins have been termed "altars" by Squier and Davis in their work on the "Ancient Monuments of the Missis-

Fig. 49.—Mound, Artificial Clay Basin.

sippi Valley." Mr. Squier remarks in a résumé of this work, published separately, that "some are round, others elliptical, and others square or parallelograms. * * * The usual dimensions are from five to eight feet."^[14]

At Mound City, on the Scioto River, there is a group of twenty-six mounds in one inclosure, an engraving of one of which, taken from Mr. Squier's paper, is shown in Fig. 49. It is seven feet high by fifty-five feet base, and contained the artificial clay basin in question. F F is the basin, which is round, and measures from c to d nine feet, and from a to c five feet. The height from b to c is twenty inches, and the dip of the curve, a to e, is nine inches. "The body of the altar," Mr Squier remarks, "is burned throughout, though in a greater degree within the basin, where it was so hard as to resist the blow of a heavy hatchet, the instrument rebounding as if struck upon a rock. The basin, or hollow of the altar, was filled up even full with dry ashes, intermingled with which were some fragments of pottery. * * * Que of the vases, taken in fragments from the mound, has been very nearly restored. The sketch B presents its outlines and the character of its ornaments. Its height is six, and its greatest diameter eight inches * * * Above the deposit of ashes, and covering the entire basin, was a layer of silvery or opaque mica in sheets overlapping each other; and immediately over the center of the basin was heaped a quantity of human bones, probably the amount of a single skeleton, in fragments. The position of these is indicated by O in the section. The layer of mica and calcined bones, it should be remarked to prevent misapprehension, was peculiar to this individual mound, and not found in any other of the class."^[15] Calcined bones, however, were found in three out of some twenty mounds of this class examined.^[16]

The question now recurs, what was the use of the basin of clay, and what the object of the mound itself I The terms "altars" and "mounds of sacrifice," employed in describing them, imply that human sacrifices were offered on these "altars," "upon which glowed the sacrificial fires."^[17] There is no propriety, I respectfully submit, in the use of either of these terms, or in the conclusions they would force us to adopt.

Human sacrifices were unknown in the Lower Status of barbarism; but they were introduced in the Middle Status, when the first organized priesthood, distinguished by their apparel, appears. In parts of Mexico, and, it is claimed, in parts of Central America, these atrocious rites were performed; but they were unknown in New Mexico, and, without better evidence than these miscalled altars afford, they cannot be fastened upon the Mound-Builders. Moreover, these clay beds were not adapted to the barbarous work. Wherever human sacrifices are known to have occurred among the American aborigines, the place was an elevated mound platform, in the nature of a temple, as the Teocalli of Mexico, and the raised altar or sacrificial stone stood before the idol in whose worship the rites were performed. There is neither a temple nor an idol; but a hollow bed of clay covered by a mound raised in honor over the ashes of a deceased chief, for assuredly such a mound would not have been raised over the ashes of a victim. Indians never exchanged prisoners-of war. Adoption or burning at the stake was the alternative of capture; but no mound was ever raised over the burned remains. Human sacrifices seem to have originated in an attempt to utilize the predetermined death of prisoners of war in the service of the gods, until slavery finally offered a profitable substitute, in the Upper Status of barbarism.

Another use suggests itself for this artificial basin more in accordance with Indian usages and customs, namely, that cremation of the body of a deceased chief was performed upon it, after which the mound in question was raised over his ashes in accordance with Indian custom.

Cremation was practiced by the Village Indians only among the American aborigines. It was not general even among them, burial in the ground being the common usage; but it was more or less general in the case of chiefs. The mode of cremation varied in different areas, but the full particulars are not given in any instance. In Nicarauga the body of a deceased chief of the highest grade was wrapped in clothes and suspended by ropes before a fire until the body was baked to dryness; then, after keeping it a year, it was taken to the market-place, where they burned it, believing that the smoke went "to the place where the dead man's soul was."^[18] From this or some similar conceit the practice of cremation probably originated.

 

THE PROBABLE NUMBERS OF THE MOUND-BUILDERS.

 

There are no reasons for supposing, from the number of their villages, that the Mound-Builders were a numerous people. My friend, Prof Charles Whittlesey, in a discussion of the rate of increase of the human race, estimates them at 500,000.^[19] With thanks for the moderateness of the estimate, one-third of that number would have been more satisfactory. Dense populations, an expression sometimes applied to the Mound-Builders, have never existed without either flocks and herds, or field agriculture with the use of the plow. In some favored areas, where the facilities for irrigation were unusual, a considerable population has been developed upon horticulture; but no traces of irrigating canals have been found in connection with the works of the Mound-Builders. Furthermore, it was unnecessary in their areas. Transplanted from a comparatively mild to a cold climate, they must have found the struggle for existence intensified. Like the Cibolans in 1540, it was doubtless at all times equally true of them, that "they had barely provisions enough for themselves." And yet there is no cereal equal to maize in the rich reward it returns even for poor cultivation. It grows in the hill, can be eaten green as well as ripe, and is hardy and prolific. At the same time, while it can be made the basis of human subsistence, it is not sufficient of itself for the maintenance of vigorous, healthful life. Vegetables and game were requisite to complete the supply of food. The difficulties in the way of production set a limit to their numbers. These also explain the small number of their settlements in the large areas over which they spread. Although they found native copper on the south shore of Lake Superior, and beat it into chisels and a species of pointed spade, the number of copper tools found is small, much too small to lead to the supposition that it sensibly influenced their cultivation. A pick pointed with a stone chisel, a spade of wood, and a triangular piece of flint set in a wooden handle and used as a knife, were as perfect implements as they were able to command. Horticulture practiced thus rudely was necessarily of limited productiveness.

The idea has been advanced that "the condition of society among the Mound-Builders was not that of freemen, or, in other words, that the state possessed absolute power over the lives and fortunes of its subjects."^[20] It is a sufficient answer to this remarkable passage that a people unable to dig a well or build a dry stone wall must have been unable to establish political society, which was necessary to the existence of a state.

From the absence of all traditionary knowledge of the Mound-Builders among the tribes found east of the Mississippi, an inference arises that the period of their occupation was ancient. Their withdrawal was probably gradual, and completed before the advent of the ancestors of the present tribes, or simultaneous with their arrival. It seems more likely that their retirement from the country was voluntary than that they were expelled by an influx of wild tribes. If their expulsion had been the result of a protracted warfare, all remembrance of so remarkable an event would scarcely have been lost among the tribes by whom they were displaced. A warm climate was necessary for the successful maintenance of the highest form of Village Indian life. In the struggle for existence in this cold climate Indian arts and ingenuity must have been taxed quite as heavily to provide clothing as food. It is therefore not improbable that the attempt to transplant the New Mexican type of village life into the valley of the Ohio proved a failure, and that after great efforts, continued through centuries of time, it was finally abandoned by their withdrawal, first into the gulf region through which they entered, and, lastly, from the country altogether.

The Tlascalans practiced cremation, but it was generally limited to the chiefs.^[21] It was the same among the Aztecs. "Others were burnt and the ashes buried in the temples, but they were all interred with whatever things of value they possessed.^[22] The Mayas of Yucatan came nearer the Romans in the practice, for they preserved the ashes in earthen vessels. "The dead were much lamented," remarks Herrera, "in silence by day and with dismal shrieks by night * * * filling their mouths with ground wheat [maize] that they might not want food in the other world. * * * The bodies of their lords were burnt and their ashes put into large vessels, over which temples were built. Some made wooden statues of their parents, and leaving an hollow in the necks of them, put in their ashes and kept them among their idols with great veneration."^[23] In New Mexico cremation is occasionally practiced at the present time.

That the Mound-Builders should have had this custom, in view of its prevalence among the Village Indians, would afford no cause of surprise. I think we may, not without reason, recognize in this artificial basin of clay a cremation bed, upon which the body was placed in a sitting posture, covered with fuel, and then burned—in some cases partially, and in others until every vestige of the body had been burned to ashes—after which, or even before the burning, a mound was raised over them as a mark of honor and respect. These mounds have yielded a large number of copper and stone implements, pipes, fragments of water jars, and other articles usually entombed with the remains of the dead. It seems to have been their method of cremation; and it must be admitted to be quite as respectable as any known form of this strange practice of a large portion of the human race.

 

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1. At a recent meeting of the National Academy of Science at Washington, where this subject was presented, Prof. O. C. Marsh remarked, in confirmation of this suggestion, that "in a series of comparisons of Indian skulls, he had been struck with the similarity between those of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and of the Mound-Builders. As the shape of the Mound-Builder's skull is very peculiar, the coincidence is a very striking one."
2. Smithsonian Cont. to Knowledge, Preface, XXXIV.
3. Smithsonian Cont. to Knowledge, Vol. V.
4. When a calamity befalls an Indian settlement it is usually abandoned.
5. Smithsonian Cont. to Knowledge, I, pp. 6 and 8.
6. Coll. Ternaux-Compans, vol. ix, pp. 181-183.
7. "The snow and cold are wont to be great," Coronado remarks in his relation, "for so say the inhabitants of the country; and it is very likely so to be, both in respect of the manner of the country and of the fashion of their houses, and their furs and other things, which the people have to defend them from cold. * * * They have no cotton-wool growing, because the country is cold, yet they wear mantles thereof, as your honor may see by the show thereof; and true it is that there was found in their houses certain yarn made of cotton-wool. * * * In this country there are certain skins, well dressed, and they dress them and paint them when they kill their oxen [buffaloes], for so they say themselves."—Hakluyt's Coll. of Voyages, Lond. ed., 1600, iii, 377.
8. Coll. Ternaux-Compans, ix, 369.
9. Smith Con., vol. i, pi. xvi.
10. Ib., p. 50.
11. Ib., p. 51.
12. There are some reasons for supposing that the Minnitarees are descendants of the Mound-Builders.
13. The solid rectangular platforms found at Marietta, Ohio, and at several places in the Gulf region, are analogous to those in Yucatan. They are an advance upon the ring inclosures, and were probably designed for religious uses.   That the Mound-Builders were at one time accustomed to adobe brick is proven by their presence at Seltzertown, in the State of Mississippi, forming a part of the wall of a mound. (See Foster's Pre-Historic Races of the U. S., p. 112.)
14. Observations, etc., Trans. Am. Eth. Soc., ii, 158.
15. Observations, etc., Trans. Am. Eth. Soc, ii, p. 161.
16. Anc. Mon., etc., pp. 157, 159.
17. Ib., p. 155.
18. Herrera's Hist. America, ii, 133.
19. Trans. Am. Ass. for the Adv. of Science, 1873, p. 320.
20. Foster's Pre-historic Races, etc., p. 386.
21. Herrera's Hist. America., ii, 302.
22. Ib., iii, 220.
23. Ib., iv, 175.