Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 July 1892 — HISTORIC PILES. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HISTORIC PILES.

*om# Kemarkable Sepulchral and Other Mound, of Our Country. All history is silent and the tones of tradition die out before those vast remains of ahtiquity that forever will perplex the antiquarian. Science furnishes us with the knowledge of the early condition of our planet, but of our ancestors who lived and died without even leaving their names how shall we learn? Perhaps their tombs may answer somewhat. Affection for the dead in one manner or another has been common among the earliest and rudest races of men, and we assume that the first, as, indeed, the most enduring, grave was a simple mound of earth, with the coffin a rough inclosure of stones, within which were placed articles peculiar to the deceased. In time the simple mound became grander and greater, as in Egypt, where the pyramids were erected—the perfected repositories of the dead. But whether pyramid, or Etruscan chamber, or Nineveh marvel, we trace backward the graves for the dead to the mounds of uncultivated times. At first small, these mounds subse-

quently became of immense size, doubtless having relation to the importance of the personage to whom erected. And these sepulchral tumuli are scattered over the globe—in the new world and In the old. They dot the Mississippi and its tributaries and the low lands of the Gulf; we meet them in the tropical forests of Mexico and Central America; the British Islands are sprinkled with them; Scandinavia knows them; Italy has them and so has Marathon; while the steppes of Russia and Tartary are sown with them as is the sky with stars. In our own country many of these mounds are repositories of the dead; others are fortifications erected by some forgotten race against the ravages of its enemies. Between the Alleghenies and the Rocky Mountains, but chiefly in Ohio, Illinois, Indiana and Missouri they abound; they reach from the Gulf to the great lakes. Some of these are of immense size. On the Ohio River, at Grave Creek, near Parkersburg, Va., stands one 90 feet high and 300 feet in diameter at the base. Another at Marietta, Ohio, is among the finest specimens of the relics of a forgotten people. Who built them? History i# silent and so is tradition. Of course, conjecture is busy and tells us the Mound Builders were the ancestors of the Natchez and other kindred tribes whom the Spaniards found along the Mississippi. That they were a religious and defensive people their works attest; that they were stationary and agricultural is equally certain; and that in their mounds on the banks of the Ohio there should be shells from the Gulf, minerals from the region of Lake Superior, obsidian from Mexico, cetacean fossils from the marl beds of New Jersey, show them to be a widely spread race with intercourse among many tribes. That they were also advanced in the mechanics is also

conclusive, owing to the many accurate engravings found in their mounds. Some of the engravings were in porphyry, the cutting of which to-day would turn the finest tempered knife-blade. Although generally supposed that the sepulchral mounds contain numerous dead bodies, this is not exactly true. The latter Indian tribes laid their dead in layers, and many of them buried in the original mounds, believing them sacred. But we have no satisfactory reason to think that the original sepulchral mounds, no matter how large, contained more than one or two dead bodies each. In some places of the world mound building is still being carried on. Not so long since the bodies of the slain ©n the field of Waterloo were gathered in a common tumulus: to-day, in some English cemeteries, the process of forming a pyramid by alternating layers of dead with layers of cement is being carried out. Really no definite meaning can be attached to mound building; it is more a fashion than a characteristic of a certain stage of civilization. But it is interesting to us as the relic of a race that has gone—whither? They have succumbed before a stronger race, they have migrated to other lands, but we are never likely to learn more of the Mound Builders of the West.

MOUND AT MARIETTA OIHO.

MOUND AT GRAVE CREEK. VIRGINIA