probably without any legendary knowledge or thought of the earlier worshipers at the shrine, overgrown and half hidden by a forest which seventy years ago was of the same character as that on all the hills about."

1146

While these lines are being written it is announced from Chillicothe that the form of some feline animal in gigantic outline has been traced for the first time among the ancient works of Ross County. Evidently the mystery of the mounds may yet be probed more deeply than it has heretofore been.

How shall we measure the antiquity of these works? How far back in the unwritten and unexplored history of man lies the secret of their origin? "The growth of trees upon the works," says General Force, "gives one indication. Squier and Davis mention a tree six hundred years old upon the great fort on Paint Creek. Barrandt speaks of a tree six hundred years old on one of the works in the country of the Upper Missouri. It is said that Doctor Hildreth heard of a tree eight hundred years old on one of the mounds at Marietta. Many trees three hundred and four hundred years old have been observed. Some of the works must therefore have been abandoned six or eight hundred years ago. It is quite possible they were abandoned earlier, for these surviving trees may not have been the first to spring up on the abandonment of the works. . . . It may, therefore, be fairly held with some confidence that the disappearance of the mouldbuilders did not begin further back than a thousand years ago, and that their extinction was not accomplished till centuries later."

Others who have carefully studied the subject believe the mounds have stood at least twice ten centuries. General W. H. Harrison suggested that the mixed forests which grew upon them might have been the results of several generations of trees. He believed their builders were of a race identical with the Aztecs. Many of their works, says Atwater, "had gateways and parallel walls leading down to creeks which once washed the foot of hills from whence the streams have now receded, forming extensive and newer alluvions, and worn down their channels, in some instances, ten and even fifteen feet."48 That the race of the mounds lived here a long time appears evident, thinks Mr. Atwater, because of the " very numerous cemeteries, and the vast numbers of persons of all ages who were here buried. It is highly probable that more persons were buried in these mounds than now [1833] live in this state. They lived in towns, many of which were populous, especially along the Scioto from Columbus southward. . . . Some have supposed that they were driven away by powerful foes, but appearances by no means justify this supposition. That they contended against some people to the northeast of them is evident, but that they leisurely moved down the streams is also evident from their increased numbers and their improvement in the knowledge of the arts.""

Who were the moundbuilders, whence came they, and whither did they go? These questions will perhaps never be settled conclusively. The Indian traditions which seem to touch the ancient race are very few and meager. The most tangible and interesting is that of the Delawares, who claimed to be the oldest of the Algonquin tribes and were known as grandfathers. Originally they were called Lenni Lenape, signifying men. According to a tradition transmitted by their ancestors from generation to generation they dwelt many centuries ago in the Far West, and for some reason not explained emigrated in a body toward the East. After long journeying they arrived on the Namaesi-sipu (Mississippi) where

they fell in with the Mengwe (Iroquois) who were also proceeding eastward. Before the Lenape reached the Mississippi their couriers, sent forward to reconnoitre the country, discovered that the regions east of the Mississippi were inhabited by a very powerful nation which had many large towns built beside the great rivers. These people, calling themselves Tallegwi, or Tallegewi, are said to have been wonderfully tall and strong, some of them being giants. They built intrenchments from which they sallied forth and encountered their enemies. The Lenape were denied permission to settle near them, but were given leave to pass through their country to the regions farther east. Accordingly, the Lenape began to cross the Mississippi, but while so doing were attacked by the Tallegwi who had become jealous and fearful of the emigrants. The Lenape then formed an alliance with the Mengwe, and fought numerous battles with the Tallegwi, who, after a war of many years, abandoned the country and fled down the Mississippi,

never to return.

Such, in substance, is the tradition of the Delawares as narrated by the Rev. John Heckewelder, a Moravian missionary to the Indians. Mr. Horatio Hale, who is an authority on the subject of Indian migrations, arrives at the conclusion that the country from which the Lenape emigrated was not the Far West, but the forest region north of Lake Superior; that the people who joined them in their war on the Tallegwi were not the Iroquois but the Hurons; and that the river they crossed was the Detroit, and not the Mississippi. The adaptation of the line of defensive works in Northern Ohio for resistance to an enemy approaching from the northwest seems to support this theory. But as to the identity of the race which fought behind those works we are still left mainly to conjecture. No hieroglyphics or scrap of written record remains to tell their story. That they were of a race now extinct, and had reached a degree of civilization far above that of their Indian successors, is a hypothesis strongly confirmed by evidence and stoutly maintained by many thoughtful and learned students of American antiquities. Others equally careful in their investigations insist that the builders of the mounds were Indians of the same race with tribes now living. As the subject belongs to the department of ethnology rather than to that of history, its discussion will not here be attempted.

NOTES.

1. The Glacial Period and Archæology in Ohio; Professor G. F. Wright in the Archæological and Historical Quarterly, September, 1887.

2. Ibid. Discussing the same subject from a European standpoint, Sir Archibald Geikie says: "From the height at which its transported debris has been observed on the Harz, it [the ice] is believed to have been at least 1470 feet thick there, and to have gradually risen in elevation as one vast plateau, like that which at the present time covers the interior of Greenland. Among the Alps it attained almost incredible dimensions. The present snowfields and glaciers of these mountains, large though they are, form no more than the mere shrunken remnants of the great mantle of snow and ice which then overspread Switzerland. In the Bernese Oberland, for example, the valleys were filled to the brim with ice, which, moving northwards, crossed the great plain and actually overrode a part of the Jura mountains."

3. Report of the Geological Survey of Ohio, Volume V., page 755. 1884.
4. Ibid, page 757.

5. Professor J. S. Newberry's theory of the climatic cause of this is thus stated: “At a period probably synchronous with the glacial epoch of Europe - at least corresponding to it in the sequence of events the northern half of the continent of North America had an arctic climate; so cold, indeed, that wherever there was a copious precipitation of moisture from oceanic evaporation, that moisture fell as snow; and this, when consolidated, formed glaciers which flowed by various routes toward the sea." One solution of this phenomenal condition of things has been found, says Professor Newberry, in the eccentricity of the earth's orbit. The suggestion of this explanation was first made by Sir John Herschel, but it has been subsequently advocated by Professor James Croll, of Glasgow, with so much zeal that he may almost be considered its author. By careful determinations of eccentricity, through a period of several millions of years, Professor Croll ascertained that the earth receded, at one time, eight millions of miles farther from the sun than it is now, and that this must have caused the winter in the northern hemisphere to last thirtysix days longer than the summer, the heat received during the winter being one-fifth less than now. "Hence, though the summer was one-fifth hotter, it was not sufficiently long to melt the snow and ice of winter; and thus the effects of the cold winter might be cumulative in each hemisphere through what may be called the winter half of the great year (of 21,000 years) produced by the precession of the equinoxes."-Report of the Geological Survey of Ohio, Volume II.

6. Geological Survey Report, Volume II.

7. The Ohio throughout its entire course runs in a valley which has been cut nowhere less than 150 feet below the present level of the river. The Beaver at the junction of

the Mahoning and Chenango, is flowing 150 feet above the bottom of its old trough, as is demonstrated by a large number of oil wells bored in the vicinity. . . . Borings at Toledo show that the old bed of the Maumee is at least 140 feet below its present surface level.-Professor Newberry.

8. No other agent than glacial ice, as it seems to me, is capable of excavating broad, deep, boat-shaped basins like those which hold our lakes.--Ibid.

9. The forests and flowers south of this margin [of glaciated territory] were then very different from those now covering the area. From the discoveries of Professor Orton and others, we infer that red cedar abounded over all the southern part of Ohio. Some years ago a pail factory was started in the neighborhood of Granville, Licking County, using as the material logs of red cedar which were probably of preglacial growth. There is a record of similar preglacial wood, in Highland, Clermont and Butler Counties, specimens of which can be seen in the cabinet of the State University. In a few secluded glens opening into the Ohio River above Madison, Indiana, where the conditions are favorable, arctic or northern plants. which, upon the advance of the glacial sheet had been driven southward, still remain to bear witness of the general prevalence.-Professor G. F. Wright in the Archaeological and Historical Quarterly, September, 1887.

10. Professor J. S. Newberry in Geological Survey Report, Volume II.

11. Sir Archibald Geikie, Director General of the Geological Survey of the United Kingdom.

12. Archæological and Historical Quarterly, September, 1887.

13. Ibid, December, 1887.

14. Ibid.

15. Sir Archibald Geikie.

16. Daniel Wilson, LL. D., Professor of History, University of Toronto.

17.

18.

1, 1847.

Atwater's History of Ohio.

Squier and Davis, in Smithsonian Institution Contributions to Knowledge, Volume

19. To What Race Did the Mound Builders Belong? A paper read before the Congrés International des Américanistes, by General Manning F. Force, of Cincinnati.

20. Ibid.

21. History of Franklin and Pickaway Counties; published by Williams & Company, 1880.

22. Article "America," by Charles Maclaren, Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburg, Enc. Britannica, Volume I.

44.

45.

46.

47.

Force.

48.

Squier and Davis.

Professor F. W. Putnam in the Century Magazine for April, 1890.

Smithsonian Contributions.

Century Magazine.

Western Antiquities, 1833.

CHAPTER III.

ANCIENT EARTHWORKS IN FRANKLIN COUNTY.

BY JAMES LINN RODGERS.

[James Linn Rodgers was born on Sullivant's Hill, near Columbus, September 10, 1861. He received his education in the schools of Columbus and at the Ohio State University. His chosen profession is that of journalism, in which he has been engaged during the last five years. He is now, and for some time past has been, Associate Editor of the Columbus Evening Dispatch.]

The science of geology has demonstrated that the southern half of that territory which is now Ohio offered to agriculture for centuries before positive history began a soil abounding in fertilizing elements. The researches of ethnologists have led to the conclusion that the mound builders were inclined to pastoral pursuits rather than to war. Archæologists have obtained convincing evidence that these people were also in many ways artistically inclined. Science and investigation have therefore given us a basis of fact upon which to build the general structure of knowledge of the early conditions which surrounded the ancient people who dwelt in the region about us. It will not be diverging from the line of history to say that the fertile valleys of the Muskingum, the Scioto and the Miami were undoubt edly densely inhabited by the people of that early day. Between these valleys were lands of promise, but along the water courses, the Ohio archæologist has discovered the most general evidence of a practically coextensive population. Of the traces of habitation which make the Muskingum and Miami valleys rich fields for archæological exploration, it is not necessary to write because antecedent and contemporary literature has had much to say concerning them. Of those of the Upper Scioto and the small tributary valleys something may be written that can claim to be new.

The alluvial deposits left by the floods which for centuries unnumbered swept through the central groove of the southern half of Ohio made a broad and continuous valley, from the site of Columbus, or a little north of it, to the Ohio River. When the softening influence of time had altered the aspect of the landscape, this valley could well have had great attractions for an agricultural people. That its advantages were appreciated can be seen even at this late day, for no extensive area of the Scioto Valley exists that has not some faint or pronounced trace of the works of ancient human beings. The hills which overlook what was once the broad Scioto bear evidence of the labor of ancient man; the level lands and river terraces show remnants of earthworks and mounds, and the soil itself is the repository of countless relics which contribute their testimony to the solution of the question of the