The American Cyclopædia (1879)/American Antiquities
AMERICAN ANTIQUITIES. A large part of what are called the antiquities of America consist only of the architectural and other remains of the aboriginal tribes and nations, which were displaced or subjugated by European conquest and settlement.
Such are many of the ruined temples and other edifices of Peru, Central America, and Mexico, as well as most of the ruder monuments of New Mexico, and probably all of those still ruder earthworks and rock sculptures which are found eastward of the Alleghanies. Cartier in Canada, and Smith in Virginia, as well as the pilgrims in New England and the French in western New York, all found the Indians constructing defences, consisting of ditches, embankments, and palisades, the remains of which are still numerous, and which have been variously ascribed to Celtic, Hebrew, and Tartar origins. So too Coronado, who marched into New Mexico as early as 1540, found there in perfect condition and actual use. those singular edifices of fort-like dimensions and numerous stories, which since, abandoned and ruined, under the name of casas grandes, have been claimed as monuments of a supposed migration of the Aztecs from some undefined northern region, or from the frozen wastes of Kamtchatka, beyond the straits of Behring. Cortes in Mexico, Grijalva and Montejo in Yucatan, Alvarado in Guatemala, and Pizarro and his captains in Peru, all found vast and imposing structures, the work of the actual inhabitants, the ruins of which are almost universally confounded with those of more ancient monuments, the earlier works of the same hands or of unknown or extinct peoples. It is certain that Cholula, Uxmal, and Chichen, Quiché and Pachacamac, were all perfect and occupied at the time of the conquest. Hence their remains, however interesting and valuable as illustrating American aboriginal art, can hardly be considered as falling within the denomination of American antiquities. Under this head, in a strict sense, we can only include such monuments as were really regarded as antiquities by the aborigines themselves, concerning the origin of which they were wholly ignorant, or only possessed a traditionary knowledge. Of this character are most of the earthworks and mounds on the terraces of the Mississippi valley, and in the forests bordering on the Mexican gulf. Such also are the ruined pyramids of Teotihuacan and the crumbling edifices of Mitla, in Mexico; the still more elaborate structures and sculptured monoliths of Palenque and Copan; and the vast enigmatical monuments of Tiahuanaco on the southern shore of Lake Titicaca in Bolivia; to say nothing of the bewildering remains of Mansiche or Grand Chimu in northern Peru.—
Commencing with our own country, we find in the Mississippi valley a succession of earthworks, manifestly defensive in character, extending from the lakes southward to the gulf. They generally crown the summits of steep hills, and consist of an embankment and exterior ditch, of varying dimensions, with approaches often artfully covered. Fort Hill, on the banks of the Little Miami river in Ohio, has a line of circumvallation nearly four miles in extent, varying in height, according to the natural strength of the point protected, from 10 to 20 feet, and embracing an area of several hundred acres. When not erected near to streams, and in cases where springs are not included within their lines, we almost always find artificial reservoirs for holding water.
A large class of these defensive works consist of a line of ditch and embankment, or of several lines one within another, carried across the necks of peninsulas or bluff headlands formed within the bends of streams. Associated with these defensive works, and often included within them, are structures connected with religious ideas and ceremonies. They consist of earthworks with their ditches, when such exist, interior and not exterior to the walls, of regular outline, squares, circles, octagons, and other geometrical figures, often combined, and sometimes of great extent; as for instance at Newark, Ohio, where they cover an area of more than two miles square, and probably comprise upward of 12 miles of embankment from 2 to 20 feet in height. (See "Monuments of the Mississippi Valley," by Squier and Davis, forming the first volume of the "Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge.") Other works of a sacred or religious origin, consisting of mounds of earth and stone of various sizes, but always regular shapes, are found in connection with those above described, and are very numerous. They are oftenest square, terraced, and ascended by graded ways; sometimes hexagonal, octagonal, or truncated, and ascended by spiral paths, in most respects coinciding with the teocallis of Mexico and the topes of India—the high altars, symbolical in form, on which the priests offered up sacrifices, and paid adoration to the solar god. Some of these arrest our attention by their geometrical accuracy of form, and others by their great size, covering several acres of ground, and rising to imposing altitudes. A mound of this description, on the plain of Cahokia, Illinois, opposite the city of St. Louis, is 700 feet long by 500 feet broad at the base, and 90 feet high, covering upward of eight acres of ground, and having 20,000,000 cubic feet of contents. These mounds frequently contain skeletons. The most common monuments in the Mississippi valley, however, are those which are incontestably simple places of sepulture, memorials raised over the dead, and in their size probably bearing a certain relation to the importance when living of the personages over whom they were erected. Some of these, like that at Grave Creek near Wheeling in West Virginia, and that at Miamisburg in Ohio, the one 70 and the other 68 feet in vertical height, no doubt mark the graves of personages of high consequence among the builders of these monuments. It sometimes happens that one of these sepulchral mounds contains two or more skeletons, but they rarely cover more than one, except in cases where the later Indian tribes, with a vague notion of their sanctity, have buried their dead in them.
The early white settlers also occasionally buried in them. The notion that they contain vast heaps of slain, and are memorials of great battles, is unsupported by facts.
Still more remarkable earthworks are those commonest in Wisconsin and Iowa, but of which a few examples are found in Ohio, and which bear the outlines of men and animals, constituting huge bass-reliefs on the surface of the earth. One of these, surveyed by Squier and Davis in 1846, on the banks of Brush creek, Adams county, Ohio, is in the form of a serpent, over 1,000 feet in length, extended in graceful curves, and terminating in a triple coil at the tail.
The embankment constituting the effigy is upward of 5 feet high by 30 feet base at the centre of the body, diminishing somewhat toward the head and tail. The neck of the figure is stretched out and slightly curved, and its mouth is opened wide, as if in the act of swallowing or ejecting an oval figure, which rests partly between the distended jaws. This oval is formed by an embankment 4 feet high, and is perfectly regular in outline, its transverse and conjugate diameters being 103 and 39 feet respectively. The combined figure has been regarded by some as a representation of the oriental cosmological idea of the serpent and the egg. With the remains of the dead in the sepulchral mounds, as also within those which are believed to have been connected with the religion of their builders, many relics of art have been discovered, displaying greater skill than was known to exist among the tribes found in occupation of the country at the time of the discovery. Elaborate carvings in stone, pottery often of elegant design, articles of use and ornament in metal, silver, and native copper from Lake Superior, mica from the Alleghanies, shells from the gulf of Mexico, and obsidian, probably also porphyry, from Mexico, are found side by side in the same mound. Articles of comparatively recent date, some of them of undoubted European origin, have also been found among the later and secondary deposits in the mounds. Forged inscriptions, stones bearing mysterious characters, "Erse, ancient Greek, Phœnician, Celtiberic, and Runic," as evidences of every possible and impossible theory of American origin, have each found people credulous enough to accept and defend their authenticity, even after the authors of the various impostures have abandoned them to their fate. The facts connected with the monuments of the Mississippi valley "indicate that the ancient population was numerous and widely spread, as shown from the number and magnitude of their works, and the extensive range of their occurrence; that it was essentially homogeneous in customs, habits, religion, and government, as appears from the great uniformity which the works display, not only in respect to position and form, but in all minor particulars; and that the features common to all the remains identify them as appertaining to a single grand system, owing its origin to a family of men moving in the same general direction, acting under common impulses, and influenced by similar causes." Whatever differences the monuments display are such as might result from the progressive efforts of a people in a state of development, or from the weaker efforts of colonies, or what might be called provincial communities. It is impossible that a population for whose protection such extensive military works were necessary, and which was able to defend them, should not have been eminently agricultural; and such monuments as the mounds at Grave Creek and Cahokia indicate not only a dense agricultural population, but a state of society essentially different from that of the existing race of Indians north of the tropic. There is not, and there was not at the period of the discovery, a single tribe of Indians, north of the semi-civilized nations of Mexico and Central America, which had the means of subsistence to enable them to supply for such purposes the unproductive labor necessary for the work; nor were they in such a social state as to compel the labor of the people to be thus applied. As regards the antiquity of these monuments, apart from such facts as a total absence of any reasonable traditions as to their origin among the Indians themselves, and the existence of the largest and most ancient forest trees on the embankments and in the ditches of the various works, there are other facts which enable us to arrive at approximate conclusions upon this point. None of these works occur on the lowest formed of the river terraces which mark the subsidence of the western streams; and as there is no good reason why their builders should have avoided erecting them on that terrace, while they raised them promiscuously upon all the others, it seems to follow that this terrace has been formed since these works were erected; a conclusion supported by the important fact that some of them have been in part destroyed by streams which have since receded for half a mile and upward, and which under no present possible rise, from rains or other natural cause, could reach the works again. Upon these premises, the time since the streams have flowed in their present courses may be divided into four periods, corresponding to the four terraces which mark the eras of their subsidence, of which period the last and longest (since the excavating power of the streams diminishes as the square of their depth increases) has elapsed since the race of the mounds flourished. Another fact bearing upon the question of the age of these works is the extremely decayed condition of the human remains found in the mounds. Considering that the earth around the skeletons is for the most part wonderfully compact and dry, and that the conditions for their preservation are exceedingly favorable, while they are in fact in the last stage of decomposition, we may form some approximate estimate of their remote antiquity. In the barrows of the ancient Britons, in a moist climate and under unfavorable conditions as regards preservation, entire and well preserved skeletons are often found possessing an undoubted antiquity of at least 1,800 years. From these and other facts and circumstances equally conclusive, we may deduce an age for most of the monuments of the Mississippi valley of not less than 2,000 years. By whom built, and whether their authors migrated to remote lands under the combined attractions of a more fertile soil and more genial climate, or whether they disappeared beneath the victorious arms of an alien race, or were swept out of existence oy some direful epidemic or universal famine, are questions probably beyond the power of human investigations to answer.—The principal remains of antiquity in Mexico are the ruins of temples and of structures dedicated to defensive purposes. Those of undoubtedly high antiquity are most massive in character, and display remarkable evidences of taste and skill. It would seem that during the aboriginal rule the bulk of the inhabitants dwelt in rude structures of thatch and cane, which after a few years of abandonment would decay and leave no trace of their existence, except perhaps in the fragments of broken pottery which might surround them. Whatever of architectural skill the people possessed was dedicated to the construction of their temples and the residences of their chiefs, which were often included the one within the other. These temples were in nearly all cases pyramidal in form, terraced and truncated, and ascended by flights of steps usually built on an inclined plane running up the centre of one of the sides, generally that opposed to the rising sun. These structures perhaps better deserved the name of altars, or the Scriptural name of "high places," than of temples; an edifice built on the level summit in reality constituting the naos, or temple proper.
The great temple of Mexico, which is described by all the early writers as nearly identical in form and structure with all the temples of Anahuac, consisted of an immense square area, "surrounded by a wall of stone and lime eight feet thick, with battlements ornamented with many stone figures in the form of serpents." The extent of this enclosure, which occupied the centre of the ancient city, may be inferred from the assertion of Cortes that it might contain a town of 500 houses. It was paved with polished stones, so smooth, says Bernal Diaz, that "the horses of the Spaniards could not move over without slipping." The four walls of this enclosure corresponded with the cardinal points, and gateways opened midway upon each side, from which, according to Gomera, led off broad and elevated avenues or roads. In the centre of this grand area arose the great temple, an immense pyramidal structure of five stages, faced with stone, 300 feet square at the base and 120 feet high, truncated, with a level summit, upon which were situated two towers, the shrines of the divinities to whom it was consecrated. It was here that the sacrifices were performed and the eternal fire was maintained. One of these shrines was dedicated to Tezcatlipoca, the ether to Huitzlipochtli; which divinities sustained the same relation to each other in the Mexican mythology as Brahma and Siva in that of the Hindoos. Besides this great pyramid, according to Clavigero, there were 40 similar structures, of smaller size, consecrated to separate divinities; one was called Tezcacalli, which was covered with brilliant materials, and sacred to Tezcatlipoca, the god of light, the soul of the world, the vivifier, the spiritual sun; another to Tlaloc, the god of water, the fertilizer; another to Quetzalcoatl, said to have been the god of the air, whose shrine was distinguished by being circular, "even," says Gomera, "as the winds go round about the heavens; for that consideration made they his temple round." Besides these, there were the dwellings of the priests (amounting, according to Zarate, to 5,000) and of the attendants in the temples, seminaries for the instruction of youth, and, if we are to credit some accounts, houses of reception for strangers who came to visit the temple and see the grandeur of the court; also ponds and fountains, groves and gardens, in which flowers and "sweet-smelling herbs" were cultivated for use in certain sacred rites, and for the decoration of the altars. "And all this," says Solis, "without retracting so much from that vast square, but that 8,000 or 10,000 persons had sufficient room to dance in it, upon their solemn festivals." The area of this temple was consecrated ground; and it is related of Montezuma that he only ventured to introduce Cortes within its sacred limits after having consulted with the priests and received their permission, and then only on the condition, in the words of Solis, that the conquerors "should behave themselves with respect." The Spaniards having exhibited, in the estimation of Montezuma, a want of due reverence and ceremony, he hastily withdrew them from the temple, while he himself remained to ask the pardon of his gods for having permitted the impious intrusion. There is a general concurrence in the accounts of this great temple given by the early authorities, among whom are Cortes, Diaz, and others, who witnessed what they described. They all unite in presenting it as a type of the multitude of similar structures which existed in Anahuac. Their glowing descriptions, making due allowance for the circumstances under which they wrote, are clearly sustained by the imposing ruins of Papantla, Xoxachalco, Misantla, Quemada, and the thousand other monuments which are yet unrecorded by the antiquary. Solis speaks of eight temples in the city of Mexico of nearly equal grandeur with that above described, and estimates those of smaller size to amount to 2,000 in number, "dedicated to as many idols of different names, forms, and attributes." Torquemada estimates the number of temples in the Mexican empire at 40,000, and Clavigero places the number far higher. "The architecture," he adds, "of the great temples was for the most part the same with that of the great temple of Mexico; but there were many likewise of a different structure, composed of a single body in the form of a pyramid, with a staircase, &c." Gomera says, "They were almost all of the same form; so that what we shall say of the principal temple, will suffice to explain all the others." Cortes, in a letter to Charles V., states that he counted 400 of these pyramidal temples at Cholula. From all sources we gather that the principal temples, or rather sacred places, of Mexico consisted of large square areas, surrounded by walls, with passages midway at their sides, from which avenues or roads sometimes led off; and that within these enclosures were pyramidal structures of various sizes, dedicated to different divinities, as also the residences of the priests, with groves, walks, and fountains. It has already been said that the pyramids of Teotihuacan, which are found within eight leagues of the city of Mexico, on the plain of Otumba, are probably among the most ancient monuments of Mexico. There are two principal ones, dedicated, according to tradition, to the sun and moon respectively; each built of cut stone, square, with four stages and a level area at its summit. Humboldt says the larger is 150 feet and the smaller 145 feet high. Mr. Brantz Mayer, however, affirms that the larger is 171 feet high; Mr. Glennie, 221 feet. It is 680 feet square at the base, covering an area of 11 acres, or nearly equal to that of the great pyramid of Cheops in Egypt. The pyramid of Cholula also has four stages, and when measured by Humboldt was 160 feet high by 1,400 feet square at the base, covering an area of 45 acres.—The temples of Central America, of which so many ruins still exist, although possessing a general correspondence with those of Mexico, had nevertheless many features peculiar to themselves. The artificial terraces or pyramidal elevations seem to have been usually less in size, but crowned with more extensive buildings, upon which aboriginal art exhausted its utmost capabilities. These structures were marked by broad stairways, leading directly to their principal entrances. Upon some of these terraces a single building was erected, but upon the larger ones several (usually four) were arranged so as to form a court or area. They were massively built, the walls being in all cases of great thickness. The larger number were one story high; but there were many of two, and some of three or more stories. In these cases, each successive story was usually smaller than that below it, giving the structure the appearance of a pyramid of several stages. The fronts of these buildings, though sometimes stuccoed, were usually of stone, and covered with elaborately carved figures and ornaments, many of them without doubt symbolical. The interiors of some corresponded with the imposing character of their exteriors.
They were divided into narrow corridors and dark chambers. These were arched, or rather the roofs were supported by overlapping courses of stones—constituting a pointed arch, corresponding in type to the earliest monuments of the old world. The walls of these corridors were often stuccoed, and covered with paintings and figures in bass-relief.
Within some of the chambers, as at Palenque, have been discovered tablets clearly of a mythological character, covered with elaborate and artistic sculptures and hieroglyphics. In these chambers are still found the remains of idols and altars, and evidences of ancient sacrifices. The works of Stephens, Catherwood, Squier, Brasseur de Bourbourg, and Charney contain full accounts of these monuments.—In Honduras, at Copan, the remains of edifices are found, corresponding generally with the preceding description, but associated with grand monoliths, intricately carved, such as have been discovered nowhere else except at Quirigua, in the vicinity of Copan, and on the islands of Lake Nicaragua. They seem to have been planted in the areas, perhaps also on the steps and summits, of the ancient structures. Whether designed as statues of the gods of ancient worship, or to commemorate distinguished priests, warriors, or statesmen, can probably only be determined when the hieroglyphical inscriptions which some of them bear shall have been deciphered. To Copan we may safely assign an antiquity higher than to any of the other monuments of Central America with which we are acquainted, except those rude works of earth and uncut stone which also exist there, and which seem to have been the early types after which, as civilization and the arts advanced, the more imposing monuments of which we have spoken were modelled. It is certain that Copan was a ruin, concerning which only the vaguest traditions existed, at the period of the Spanish conquest.—In New Granada, among many minor relics of antiquity, such as figures of divinities and objects worked in gold and stone, are found a few considerable monuments, consisting of structures which seem to have been supported by columns of large size and just proportions. In Peru we find a very large number of aboriginal monuments, consisting not alone of ruined temples, but of great works of public utility—aqueducts, bridges, and paved roads hundreds of miles in length. The remains of the great temple of the sun at Cuzco are still imposing. In describing it as it existed at the time of the conquest, the early Spaniards expended every superlative of their language. It consisted of a principal building and several chapels and inferior edifices, covering a large extent of ground, in the heart of the city. Aqueducts opened within this sacred enclosure; and it contained gardens, and walks among shrubs and flowers of gold and silver, made in imitation of the productions of nature. It was attended by 4,000 priests. "The ground," says La Vega, "for 200 paces around the temple, was considered holy, and no one was allowed to pass within this boundary but with naked feet." Nor even under these restrictions were any permitted to enter except of the blood of the incas, in whom were centred the priestly and civil functions of the government. Besides the great temple of the sun, there was a large number of inferior temples in Cuzco, estimated by Herrera at 300. Numerous others are scattered over the empire, all of which seem to have corresponded very nearly in structure to that already described.
The one most celebrated, next to that of Cuzco, was that of Pachacamac, which contained a considerable town, the grand pyramidal shrine of the divinity Pachacamac, and, after the conquest of the coast by the incas, a temple of the sun and a convent of the vestals of the sun, the whole surrounded by a wall of several miles in extent. According to Roman, who speaks, however, with little authority, "the temples of Peru were built upon high grounds or the tops of hills, and were surrounded by four circular embankments of earth, one within the other. The temple stood in the centre of the enclosed area, and was quadrangular in form." A structure corresponding very nearly with this description is noticed by Humboldt, who denominates it, in accordance with local traditions, Ingapilca, "House of the Incas," and supposes it to have been a sort of fortified lodging place of the incas, in their journeys from one part of the empire to the other. It is situated at Cannar, and occupies the summit of a hill. The "citadel" is a very regular oval, the greatest axis of which is 125 feet, and consists of a wall, built of large blocks of stone, 16 feet high. Within this oval is a square edifice, containing but two rooms, which resembles the ordinary stone dwellings of the present day. Surrounding these is a much larger circular enclosure, which, from the description and plate, we infer is not far from 500 feet in diameter. This series of works possesses few military features, and it seems most likely that it was a temple of the sun. This opinion is confirmed by the fact that at the base of the hill of Cannar was formerly a famous shrine of the sun, consisting of the universal symbol of that luminary formed by nature upon the face of a great rock. Ulloa describes an ancient Peruvian temple, situated on a hill near the town of Cayambe, perfectly circular in form and open at the top. It was built of unburnt bricks, cemented together with clay. The most wonderful and probably among the most ancient monuments of Peru (or rather Bolivia, formerly Upper Peru) are those at Tiahuanaco, already referred to, on the shore of Lake Titicaca. Their origin is lost in obscurity, and they are supposed by many writers to have been the work of a race anterior to the incas, denoting perhaps a more advanced civilization than the monuments of Palenque. They have been described by a number of the, early writers, commencing with Pedro de Ceica, one of the followers of Pizarro, in whose day their ruins seem to have differed but slightly from what they are now. The latest and probably the most exact account of these enigmatical remains is that of Mr. Squier, who spent several weeks in their investigation in 1864. He describes them as situated in a broad, open, arid plain, cold in the wet and frigid in the dry season, where no cereals will ripen, the only production fit for human use being a variety of small bitter potato. The monuments consist of rows of erect stones, some of them rough or but rudely shaped by art; others accurately cut and fitted in walls of admirable workmanship; long sections of foundations with piers and portions of stairways; blocks of stones with mouldings, cornices, and niches cut with geometrical precision; vast masses of sandstone, trachyte, and basalt, but partially hewn; and great monolithic doorways, carved from single blocks of stone, and bearing symbolical ornaments in relief, besides smaller rectangular, and symmetrically shaped stones, rising on every hand or scattered in confusion over the plain. The central and most conspicuous portion of the ruins is a great rectangular mound of earth, 650 feet long, 450 wide, and now about 50 feet high. It was originally terraced, each terrace being faced by a massive wall of cut stones, artfully dovetailed and clamped together, and had on its summit various stone edifices. This mound, which is called "the fortress," has on its E. side an apron or dependent platform, 320 x 180 feet. A short distance to the N. of this mound is what is called "the temple," a rectangle of 445 by 388 feet, defined by lines of erect stones, some entirely rude, and others apparently partially shaped by art. They support a terreplein of earth, on which are traces of structures, and on the E. side of which are ten great stone pilasters, suggestive of Stonehenge, perfectly alligned, and of varying sizes; the largest being 14 feet high above ground, by 4 ft. 2 in. broad and 2 ft. 8 in. thick. Near "the temple" are the foundations of what is called "the palace," the piers which supported the walls being of hard trachyte admirably cut, in this respect equalling the finest stone work of ancient or modern times. Besides these there is an enclosure called "the hall of justice," rectangular, 420 by 370 feet, within which are the ruins of a nameless structure, "sanctum sanctorum," 131 by 23 feet, composed of massive stones beautifully cut, some of which are 2512 feet long by 14 broad, and 6 ft. 6 in. thick, held together by bronze clamps. A distinguishing and peculiar feature of the remains at Tiahuanaco are a number of monolithic doorways, the largest of which is 13 ft. 6 in. long by 7 ft. 2 in. high above ground, and 18 in. thick. Through its centre is cut a doorway 4 ft. 6 in. high above ground, and 2 ft. 9 in. wide, above which, on its S. E. front, are four lines of sculpture in low relief, and a central figure immediately over the doorway in high relief. On the reverse the doorway is surrounded by friezes or cornices, with ornamental niches, &c. Besides these remains there are innumerable others of massive proportions, covering fully a square mile, of which it would require many pages to give an intelligible description, even with the aid of cuts and plans. Mr. Squier is disposed to rank the great areas at Tiahuanaco, surrounded with upright stones, with those vast open temples like Stonehenge and Avebury in England, and of which examples are found in other parts of the world. Looking to the cold, barren region in which these remains occur, so ill adapted to the support of any considerable population, Mr. Squier fails to regard them as relics of an ancient capital or seat of dominion, but of a sacred spot or shrine, the position of which was determined by an augury, an incident, or a dream. Certain it is, they were ruins at the time the inca conquerors swept over the Collao. Mr. Squier was the first to make known the existence, in the great Andean plateau, of a class of rude lithic and megalithic monuments, generally regarded, throughout the world, as the earliest efforts of human art. These consist of circles, defined by uncut stones, which in Scandinavia, the British islands, France, and northern and central Asia, have been loosely designated as "sun" or "Druidical" circles; also of piles of rough stones coincident in style and character with the cromlechs, dolmens, &c., of the same regions. On the bare mountain tops of High Peru are hundreds and thousands of enclosures or fortresses, pucuras, antedating all history, which were built, according to Peruvian tradition, when the country was divided up into warlike and savage tribes, "before the sun shone," or the incas had established their beneficent rule. They strongly resemble the remains which in Europe are uncritically known as Pelasgic. They are held in great reverence, as the works of giants whose spirits still haunt them, and to whom offerings of various kinds are still made. The symbolic character of the stone circles may be inferred from the name they still bear, intihuatani, places where the sun is arrested or tied up. There is another class of monuments also antedating the incas, the chulpas or burial towers, presumably of the ancient Aymaras. Some of these are round, others square, of varying proportions, from 15 to 40 feet high; sometimes constructed of elaborately cut stones, in other cases of high stones stuccoed over, and all containing inner chambers in which the dead were deposited, generally in niches in the walls, or in cists beneath the foundations. The remains of inca art are numerous and imposing. A considerable portion of the gorgeous temple of the sun in Cuzco is still extant; the great cyclopean fortress of Sacsahuaman that dominates the city of the sun, and in storming which Juan Pizarro lost his life, is almost as perfect as it was three centuries ago; the mountain stronghold of Pisac challenges our admiration by the rare engineering skill it displays, as well as by its massiveness and extent, covering as it does miles of area; Ollantitambo, wrought in polished porphyry, is a marvel of aboriginal art; while the palace of the vestal virgins on the island of Coati in Lake Titicaca, the terraced mountains, the vast acequias, and the paved roads thousands of miles long, all attest the power and beneficence of the incas. The Peruvian empire was a concretion of families, tribes, or nationalities, reduced by conquest, and their monuments, especially on the Pacific coast, as Europeans found them, have few resemblances and no identities with those of the elevated interior whence the inca race descended. Among the most important of the coast nations were the Chimus, who held wide sway, with their capital, at what is now called Grand Chimu, or Mansiche, near the town of Truxillo, founded by Cortes, in what is known as northern Peru. They were subjugated by the incas at a period not easily definable, after a long and bloody struggle, and their capital given up to barbaric ravage and spoliation. But its remains exist to-day, the marvel in many respects of the southern continent, covering not less than 20 square miles. Tombs, temples, and palaces arise on every hand, ruined but still traceable. Immense huacas or pyramidal structures, some of them half a mile in circuit; vast areas shut in by massive walls, each containing its water tank, its shops, municipal edifices, and the dwellings of its inhabitants, and each a branch of a larger organization; prisons, furnaces for smelting metals, and almost every concomitant of civilization, existed in the ancient Chimu capital. One of the great huacas, or pyramidal edifices, called "the temple of the sun," is 812 feet long by 470 wide at the base, and about 150 feet high. Another, "El Obispo," is nearly equal in size. These vast structures have been ruined for centuries; but the work of their excavation is still going on. From one of them, called that of Toledo, a Spanish explorer of that name in 1577 took $4,450,284 in gold and silver.—As already observed, most of the monuments of antiquity in America seem to be the ruins of temples, places of worship, or edifices in some way connected with the religion and superstitions of their builders. Throughout they sustain many and obvious resemblances, consisting of elevated platforms or truncated pyramids, ascended directly by broad flights of steps, or circuitously by winding paths; they scarcely differ except in the materials of which they are constructed, or the greater labor and skill displayed upon them. The builders of the temple mounds of the Mississippi valley seem to have been governed by the same principles which controlled the architects of the majestic teocallis of Mexico; their ruder structures being only the evidences of their ruder or earlier state. Instead of being faced with stone, elaborately carved with the symbols of their religion, the green turf covered the high places of the mound-builders; they ascended them by graded avenues or winding paths, not by broad and imposing stairways; and the wooden temple roofed with bark supplied the place of the massive edifices which still rear their crumbling, spectral fronts amid the forests of Central America. The features of resemblance between a large part of the monuments of America and many of the most ancient of those of the old world early attracted the attention of Humboldt, who seems to have been strongly impressed with their indentity, yet, with characteristic caution, unwilling to follow the connections to their ultimate results. That the practice of erecting these colossal, montiform temples was necessarily derivative, cannot be admitted. The primitive temples of every people on the globe seem to have been constructed much upon the same plan, and consisted of great enclosures of earth or upright stones, often, if not always, symbolizing in their forms the leading conceptions connected with the worship to which they were dedicated. The primitive altars, or shrines of the heathen gods, corresponded in rudeness and size with their vast open temples, and like them sustained everywhere a general resemblance. This resemblance to a certain degree may be regarded as accidental, inasmuch as an eminence or high place would naturally suggest itself as the most fitting spot whereon to render up homage to those superior powers which were supposed to dwell above, in the skies, or among the stars. It may also have resulted in no small degree from the very general primitive superstition that mountains and hills were the abiding places of the gods.
Casa Grande, New Mexico.
Fortified Hill, Butler County, Ohio.
Ancient Works near Chillicothe, Ohio.
Conical Mound, Marietta, Ohio.
Animal-shaped Mounds, Wisconsin.
Serpent-shaped Mound, Adams County, Ohio.
Mexican Teocalli.
Pyramidal Temple, Palenque.
Monolith, Copan.
Remains of Temple of the Sun, Cuzco, Peru.