Rude Stone Monuments in All Countries/Chapter 14

by James Ferguson

CHAPTER XIV.

AMERICA.

If this work had any pretension to being a complete history or statistical account of the Rude Monuments of the world, it might be necessary to describe somewhat in detail, and to illustrate those of the New World as well as those of the Old. In the form that it has now taken, however, nothing more is required than to point out as briefly as possible what the American monuments really are, with sufficient detail to show whether they have or have not any connexion with those we have been describing, and to point out what bearing — if any — their peculiarities may have on the main argument of this work.

In so far as the rude monuments of North America are concerned, there is fortunately no difficulty in speaking with confidence. In the first volume of the 'Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge,'^[1] the Americans possess a detailed description of their antiquities of this class such as no nation in Europe can boast of. The survey was carefully and scientifically carried out by Messrs. Squier and Davis, to whom it was entrusted. The text is tersely and clearly written, mere theories or speculations are avoided, and the plates are clearly and carefully engraved. If we had such a work on our own antiquities we should long ago have known all about them; but unfortunately there are no Smithsons in this country, and among our thousand and one millionaires, to whom the expense would be a flea-bite, there is not one who has the knowledge requisite to enable him to appreciate the value of such a survey, nor consequently the liberality sufficient to induce him to incur the expense necessary for its execution.

NORTH AMERICA.

With this work before us, we feel justified in making the assertion that there are no rude-stone monuments on the continent of North America. There are extensive earth works of nearly all the classes found in the Old World, and some — especially the animal forms — which are peculiar to the New.

These earthworks Messrs. Squier and Davis classify as follows (page 7):—

1. Enclosures for defence.

2. Sacred and miscellaneous enclosures.

3. Mounds of sacrifice.

4. Mounds of sepulture.

5. Temple mounds.

6. Animal mounds.

With the first we have nothing to do: they are similar to those erected everywhere and in all ages of the world. They consist of a ditch, the earth taken in forming which is thrown up on its inner side, so as to form an obstacle to the advance of an enemy, and to become a shelter to the defenders. Some of these in America are of great extent, and show not only considerable proficiency in the art of defence, but indicate the presence of an extensive and settled population.

The so-called "sacred enclosures" are not only numerous and extensive, but are unlike anything met with elsewhere. In Ross county alone our authors state that there are 100 at least of various sizes, and in the State of Ohio 1000 to 1500, some of them enclosing areas from 100 to 200 acres in extent.

227. Enclosure in Newark Works.

Their typical form will be understood from the annexed woodcut. All seem to have a forecourt either square or octagonal in form, with 4 or 8 entrances to it, and beyond this is a circle generally quite complete, and entered only by a passage or opening from the forecourt. These are enclosed by earthen mounds varying from 5 to 30 feet in height, with the ditch almost invariably on the inside.

The last peculiarity is in itself, as in the case of the English circles, quite sufficient to preclude the idea of their being fortifications or meant for defence, and they certainly are not sepulchral in any sense in which we understand the term. In the first place, because we know perfectly what the sepulchres of these people were, from the thousands and tens of thousands of tumuli which dot the plains everywhere; but also because, unlike the English circles, which are as a rule found in the most remote and barren spots, these American enclosures as generally occupy the flattest and richest spots in the country. They are most frequently situated near the rivers, and on the natural lines of communication; so much so indeed that many of the cities of the present occupants of the country stand on the same spots and within the enclosures of the earlier races who raised these mounds.

We are thus left to the choice between two hypotheses. Either they are sacred enclosures, as suggested by our authors, or they are royal residences — temples or palaces.

All the arguments, derived from its excessive size, that were urged against Avebury being a temple, apply with redoubled force to these American enclosures. Temples occupying 50 to 100 acres are certainly singular anomalies when we try to realise what these admeasurements imply. Our largest square, Lincoln's Inn Fields, occupies only 12 acres; the Green Park is 53; and all our parks together do not occupy the same space as the Newark enclosures, which, according to Messrs. Squier and Davis, cover more than four square miles.^[2] Yet all these are circles and squares with connecting lines, and all with inside ditches. Temples of these dimensions, without divisions, or enclosures, or mounds, or permanent works of any kind, are anomalies difficult to understand, and must belong to some religion of which I, at least, have no knowledge; and no one, so far as I know, has yet suggested what that religion was, nor how these vast spaces could be utilized for any religious purpose.

If we adopt the idea that they were the residences of the chiefs of the people, the mystery does not seem so great. If the circular wigwam of the chief was erected in the centre of the circles, and the wigwams of his subordinates and retainers in concentric circles around him, it would account for their dimensions, and also for the disappearance of all traces of habitation. The forecourt would thus be the place of assembly of the tribe, the exercise ground or gymnasium, and for such purposes it is admirably adapted, and both the size and the situation of these enclosures seem easily explicable.

One curious circumstance tends to render this view more tenable. On plate xxi. of Messrs. Squier and Davis's work four groups of squares with circles are delineated, situated in different parts of the country; but all the four squares are almost identical in size, each side measuring 1080 feet. Why four temples should be exactly alike is a mystery, but that a tetrarchy of chiefs should be bound down to equal dimensions for their rival residences seems reasonable from a civil point of view.

It does not seem difficult to explain the meaning of the inside ditch when fortification was not intended, as it must have been almost a necessity with a people who had not arrived at the elevation of using brick drains or drain-pipes. Without some such arrangement all the rain that fell within these solid enclosures would have remained on the surface, or in the squares could only have escaped through the openings, but a deep and broad ditch all round would drain the whole surface without inconvenience, and secure the only mode which would prevent the enclosure, be it a temple or palace, from becoming a swamp.

Messrs. Squier and Davis divide the conical mounds which they excavated into two classes. The first they call "Mounds of sacrifice," because on digging into them they found on the level of the soil what appeared to be altars — raised floors which exhibited evidence of intense heat, and what they considered a long-continued practice of burning. It is evident, however, that such results might be produced in a week as well as in years, and it is very difficult to understand why at any time that which had been an altar should be buried in a tumulus. If it had been used for years, why, and on what occasion, was it agreed to bury it? If it was the funereal pyre of some chief, and used for burning sacrifices for the time the funeral services lasted, and was then buried, the case is intelligible enough, but the other hypothesis is certainly not easy of explanation.

The true "Sepulchral mounds" are, as before mentioned, immensely numerous, and of all sizes, from a few feet up to such as the Grave Creek mound, 70 feet high and 1000 feet in circumference, or that at Miamisburgh, 68 feet high, and 852 feet in circumference at its base. The dead were buried in them apparently without coffins or cists, unless of wood, and generally in the contracted doubled-up position found so frequently in Scandinavia and in Algeria.

The "Temple mounds" are generally square or oblong truncated pyramids, with inclined planes leading up to them on three and frequently on all four sides. They are in fact in earth the same form as the Teocallis of the Mexicans, though the latter seem always to have been in stone. Whether in the one material or the other, they are of a perfectly intelligible templar form. If a human sacrifice or any great ceremonial is to take place before all the people, the first requisite is an elevated platform where the ministrants can stand above the heads of the crowd, and be seen by all; and the absence of this in the Ohio and in our English circles is one of the most fatal objections to the temple theory. In one or two instances a single earthen Teocalli is found within the circles, but this no further militates against the supposition that they were residences than the presence of a chapel or place of worship in any of our palaces would prove them to be temples also. It must, however, be borne in mind that it is always difficult to draw a hard and fast line between the House of God and the Palace of the King. In Egypt it is never possible, and in the middle ages royal monasteries and royal residences were frequently interchangeable terms. We should not therefore feel surprised if, in America, we found the one fading into the other. But, on the whole, the enormous number of these circular enclosures — 1000 and 1500 in one State — their immense size, 100 and 200 acres being not unfrequent, and the general absence of all signs of preparations for worship, seem sufficient to prove that they must be classed among civil and not among sacred erections. This seems to be the case even though sometimes three or four temple mounds are found together surrounded by a rampart just sufficient to enclose them with the necessary space for circulation all round; in which case, however, it is evident that they have passed the line separating the two divisions, and may, probably must, be classified as really sacred enclosures. These are generally found in the South, in Texas, and in the States most nearly bordering on Mexico, which looks as if they belonged to another race more nearly allied to the Toltecs or Aztecs than to the northern tribes.

The only remaining class of mounds are those representing "Animals," to which plates xxxv. to xliv. of Messrs. Squier and Davis's book are devoted. One of these, our authors have no doubt, represents a serpent 700 feet long as he lies with his tail curled up into a spiral form, and his mouth gaping to swallow an egg (?) 160 feet long by 60 feet across. This at first sight looks so like one of Stukeley's monstrous inventions that the first impulse is to reject it as an illusion on the part of the surveyors. When, however, we bear in mind that the American mound-builders did represent not only men, but animals, quadrupeds, and lizards, in the same manner, and on the same relative scale, all improbability vanishes. At the same time the simple fact that the form is so easily recognisable here is in itself sufficient to prove that our straight-lined stone rows were not erected with any such intention, and could only be converted into Dracontia by the most perverted imagination.

Though therefore we may assume that this mound really represents a serpent, it by no means follows that it was an idol or was worshipped. It seems to represent an action — the swallowing of something, but whether a globe or a grave is by no means clear, and must be left for further investigation. It is, however, only by taking it in connection with the other animal mounds in America that we can hope to arrive at a solution. They were not apparently objects of worship, and seem to have no connexion with anything found in the Old World.

The other mounds representing quadrupeds are quite unmistakable: they are a freak of this people whoever they were. But it seems difficult to explain why they should take this Brobdignagian way of representing the animals they possessed, or were surrounded by. If we knew more of the people, or of their affinities, perhaps the solution would be easy; at present it hardly interests us, as we have no analogue in Europe.^[3]

It only now remains to try and ascertain if any connexion exists or existed between these American monuments and those of the Old World ; and what light, if any, their examination may be expected to throw on the problems discussed in the preceding chapters. If it is wished to establish anything like a direct connexion between the two continents, we must go back to the far distant prehistoric times when the conformations of land and water were different from what they now are. No one, I presume, will be found to contend that, since the continents took their present shape, any migration across the Atlantic took place in such numbers as to populate the land, or to influence the manners or customs of the people previously existing there. It may be that the Scandinavians did penetrate in the tenth or eleventh centuries to Vinland, by the way of Greenland, and so anticipated the discovery of Columbus by some centuries;^[4] but this is only a part of that world-pervading energy of the Aryan races, and has nothing whatever to do with the people of the tumuli. If any connexion really existed between the Old and the New World, in anything like historic times, everything would lead us to believe that it took place viâ Behring Strait or the Aleutian Islands. It seems reasonable to suppose that the people who covered the Siberian Steppes with tumuli may have migrated across the calm waters of the Upper Pacific, and gradually extended themselves down to Wisconsin and Ohio, and there left these memorials we now find. It may also be admitted that the same Asiatic people may have spread westward from the original hive, and been the progenitors of those who covered our plains with barrows, but beyond this no connexion seems to be traceable which would account for anything we find. Nowhere, however, in America do these people ever seem to have risen to the elevation of using even rude stones to adorn their tombs or temples. Nor do they appear to have been acquainted with the use of iron or of bronze; all the tools found in their tombs being of pure unalloyed native copper — both of which circumstances seem to separate these American mound-builders entirely from our rude-stone people in anything like historic times.

Unfortunately, also, the study of the manners and customs of the Red-men, who occupied North America when we first came in contact with them, is not at all likely to throw any light on the subject. They have never risen beyond the condition of hunters, and have no settled places of abode, and possess no works of art. The mound-builders, on the contrary, were a settled people, certainly pastoral, probably to some extent even agricultural; they had fixed well chosen unfortified abodes, altogether exhibiting a higher state of civilization than we have any reason to suppose the present race of Red-men ever reached or are capable of reaching.

Although, therefore, it seems in vain to look on the Red Indians who in modern times occupied the territories of Ohio and Wisconsin as the descendants of the mound-builders, there are tribes on the west coast of America that probably are, or rather were, very closely allied to them. The Hydahs and the natives inhabiting Vancouver's Island and Queen Charlotte's Sound seem both from their physical condition, and more so from their works of art, to be just such a people as one would expect the mound-builders to have been. If this is so, it again points to Northern Asia, and not to Europe, as the country where we must look for the origin of this mysterious people; and it is there, I am convinced, if anywhere, that the solution of our difficulties with regard to this phase of North American civilization is to be found.

Central America.

When we advance a little farther south, we meet in Mexico and Yucatan with phenomena which are the exact converse of those in Ohio and Wisconsin. There everything is in stone; earth either never being used, or, if employed at all, it was only as a core to what was faced or intended to be faced with the more durable material. There is one fact, however, which takes the Mexican monuments entirely out of the category of the works contemplated in this book. All the stones in Central America are carved. So far as is known, no rude stones were ever set up there, even the obelisks which stand alone, and look most like our menhirs in outline, are, like the Babas of the Steppes, all carved, most of them elaborately; and though it may be true that they may, at some remote period, have been derived from some such rude originals as are found in Europe, still till we find some traces of these in Central America they cannot be said to belong to the class of monuments of which we are now treating; nor can they be used as affording any analogies or illustrations which it would be worth while citing in this place.

 

Peru.

The same remarks apply to what we find in Peru with equal force, but not with equal distinctness. No one will, I presume, contend that there was any direct communication between Europe and the west coast of South America before the time of Columbus. Yet there are similarities between the masonry of the Peruvian monuments and those of the Pelasgi in Greece and Tyrrheni in Italy which are most striking, and can only be accounted for, at present, on the assumption that nations in the same stage of civilization, and using similar materials, arrive nearly at the same results. Perhaps we ought to add to this, provided they have some taint of the same blood iu their veins; and that, in this case, does not seem absolutely improbable.

Be this as it may, there are, so far as I know, no rude-stone monuments in Southern America. The ruins, for instance, of Tia Huanaco, which have often been quoted for their similarity to "Druidical remains," are as far removed as possible from that category. It is true that there are rows of squared stones that now stand apart, and in imperfect drawings look like our menhirs enclosing a square or circular space. In reality, however, as we learn from photographs, they are carefully squared stones, which formed pilasters in walls constructed with Adobes, or imperfectly burned bricks, or smaller stones which have been removed.^[5] The doorways which led into this enclosure are hewn out of a single block of stone, and are more carefully cut and polished than anything else to be found anywhere out of Egypt, and there only in the best days of her great Pharaohs.

The same remarks may apply to the circles and squares illustrated by Mr. Squior.^[6] I may be mistaken, but my impression is that like Houel's Druidical circles in Gozo, above alluded to, they are only the foundation courses of square and circular buildings, the upper parts of which have perished. At all events, till they are excavated, or some traditional or real use is found for them, I should be very unwilling to base any argument on their accidental similarity with our stone circles.

There can be no doubt that these earthen mounds and primitive carved stones of the American continent form in themselves a most interesting group of monuments, well deserving more attention than has yet been bestowed upon them, and that, when properly investigated, they will throw more light on the origin and migrations of the various aboriginal races of that country than can be expected from any other source. They are not, however, of the class we are treating of, nor do they seem to have any direct connexion with those of the Old World. As, besides this, their examination does not promise to solve any of our difficulties, they do not necessarily occupy an extended space in a work devoted to the elucidation of the Use and Age of Rude-Stone Monuments.

1. 'Ancient Monuments in the Mississippi Valley;' Philadelphia, 1847.
2. 'Ancient Monuments,' &c., p. 49. Hyde Park, including Kensington Gardens, occupies about one square mile.
3. I cannot help fancying that the great animals in stone that line the avenues leading to the tombs of the emperors in China may have some affinity with the American animal sculptures, which occur principally in Wisconsin and the farther West. I am unable, however, to obtain any information with regard to the Chinese or Siberian examples sufficiently reliable to found any argument upon.
4. 'Annal. for Nordk. Oldkyndighed,' ii. p. 3 et seqq. See also C. C. Rafn, 'Antiquitates Americanæ',' &c., Hafniæ, 1837.
5. 'History of Architecture,' by the Author, vol. ii. pp. 774 et seqq.
6. 'The American Naturalist,' iv., March, 1870, figures 1, 8, and 9.