Rensselaer Journal, Volume 11, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 January 1902 — Scientists May Open Ancient Cahokia Mound, [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Scientists May Open Ancient Cahokia Mound,

It is doubtful if there is in the entire world another such artificial earthwork as the great Cahokia mound in Illinois. Situated in what is known as the American bottom, it towers above the plain to the height of ninety-nine feet. It Is 998 feet long. It is 721 feet wide. It has a volume of some 72,000,000 cubic feet, and all is mystery as to the people who built. it or the purpose it served. It would have taken a single workman 4,000 years to have built the Cahokia mound, or it would have required for one day the labor of 1,200,000 men, for students of these things are all agreed that the people who built it had no other means of carrying the dirt than by filling skin bags and bearing these upon their backs. There were no beasts of burden and the continent was still without a cart. The earth with which Cahokia was made was taken from the bottom at the southeast corner of the mound. Here may still be seen the holes made by the diggers; in the spring they are lakes, in which the water ranges from three to fifteen feet in depth. Some of these lake beds have been partially filled by cultivation, hut the deeper ones may still be ‘easily traced. They are wholly unlike the bottomland swale, for they have deep banks. The nearest ones are less than 200 yards from the mound; the farthest removed are not 400 yards away. So that the laborers who built the mound had but a short distance over which to carry their loads. Estimating that each, carrier took two cubic feet of earth at a trip and that he-could dig with his splint spade and carry to the mound six cubic feet an hour (three trips), he would con-

tribute in a day of ten. hours sixty cubic feet of earth to the mound. At this rate, working 300 days p year, Cahokia may be seen to represent the labor of one man for 4,000 years, though through 300 days of each year he made sixty trips from the digging place to the dumping place with Mis two cubic feet of earth —rather a hard day’s work. Considering the primitive means at hand, what a colossal undertaking was this, the building of Cahokia mound! If builded in a few years, as the great wall of China, what myriads of workers, like a wide belt upon pulleys, must have streamed to the plain with their empty skins! If, like Cheops and the Coliseum, it was raised with many delays, what multitudes of carriers must have been pressed into this service! If the archeologists succeed in their l desire to have the big mound opened it will be the first time it has ever been explored. Conjectures innumerable have been made as to its contents, but no man has ever delved in to see. This is because the Ramey family, which has owned the mound for forty years, i»ad guarded it closely, permitting no explorations within the mound and making none themselves except in a single instance, when Thomas T. Ramey, whose widow and children are now the owners, tunneled in some seventy feet at the northwest corner and abandoned the work because of the expense. Mr. Ramey died more than a year ago. He had prized the mound highly and his protection of it had even extended to planting grass seed upon the bare spots that the rains might not wash out ravines. After his death the Smithsonian institution offered SIO,OOO for the mound. The of-

fer was refused. Mr. Ramey had valued Cahokia at SIOO,OOO, and the family holds it at that price still. Almost all the world’s leading archeologists have climbed the steep terraces of Cahokia. They have all agreed that it is an artificial hill. They have also been unanimous in declaring it the largest and most magnificent earthwork in the World. But they have expressed many different theories as to the people who built it and the purpose it served. The majority of those who studied it have believed it to be a religious structure and that upon its height were kept continuously burning the bright fires symbolizing the sun worshiper’s undying faith. Mr. Ramey, who cared for it forty years, believed it to be the tomb of the high ruler of the ancients, even as Solomon had his temple and the greatest of the Pharoahs his Cheops. The careful exploration of the big structure may throw no light upon the mystery of who built It, but it would doubtless determine why it was built, something the scientific world is eager to know. Dr. C. A. Peterson, a student of archeology, has recently made a close study of the Cahokia mound for the purpose of reading a paper upon it before the Missouri Historical society. Dr. Peterson, speaking of the proposition to open the mound,.expressing his belief as to what, in the event of its being opened, the explorers would find: “The builders of the big mound were Indians, I am satisfied of this, because I have made an exhaustive study of the subject and have found enough evidence to convince me that mound-building was at one time a fad among the Indians, reaching its

height in the big mound opposite St Louis. I believe the Cahokia mound was built by sun worshipers. This is the popular theory and I believe It Is correct. But I do not believe that the mound was built as a temple alone. It was more likely the grave'of the great chiefs, who were buried one upon the other in succeeding generations and the summit of whose tomb supported the fires or the temple or whatever was necessary to express the national religious belief, it was too much to suppose that the mound was built within the reign of one chief. Think how Immense it is, larger in volume than even the largest of the pyramids of Egypt! There were only primitive means of building it and I have always thought it represented the work of many generations, the people adding to the height of the mound whenever they laid away In it another of the great chiefs. I would not be surprised to find -an entire Indian dynasty entombed there. “I think we are too much inclined to forget the size of Cahokia when we theorize as to the purpose for which it was made. It expressed the greatest event in the animal life of the ancients, for they built nothing else so pretentious as this. This is the reason I believe the old chiefs of the nations are buried there. “I cannot believe the ancient peoples would have built such a structure as a religious temple alone, for it was a stupendous undertaking which doubtless necessitated the labor of every able-bodied man and woman of the nation.” A comely mother, but stone-cold.— A. Lionel Westwood.,