Part 5 The Ancient Giants Who Ruled America ... Pyramids & Pictorial Mounds

The Ancient Giants Who Ruled America

by Richard J Dewhurst

TWO 

Sophisticated Cultures 

of the Ancient Giants

5 

PYRAMIDS AND PICTORIAL MOUNDS

At the turn of the twentieth century there was a national awareness of the mound builders and their extensive earthworks that far exceeded contemporary consciousness on the subject. Since the majority of the country still lived an agrarian lifestyle, awareness of the mounds was reinforced by daily contact with the actual sites themselves. Current estimates put the number of known American mounds at well over one hundred thousand. They ranged in shape from the great pyramids of Illinois to the fantastic pictorial mounds of Wisconsin. It seemed to be common knowledge that giants were found buried in many of these mounds and that these giants were not related to the present-day American Indians living in the region. 

THE GREAT PYRAMID MOUNDS OF ILLINOIS 

One of the largest of the mound builder sites in North America is located in southwestern Illinois, near Collinsville. It is commonly called the Cahokia site. The Cahokia mound complex has been compared in scope and grandeur to the Great Pyramid. The site is located at the confluence of the Mississippi, Missouri, and Illinois Rivers, directly across the Mississippi River from present-day St. Louis. During the Middle Ages, Cahokia was a larger city than London, with an estimated population of forty to fifty thousand, yet today it is an abandoned place about which we know almost nothing. Centuries ago, there were more than 120 mounds at the Cahokia site, though the locations of only 106 have been recorded. Many of them have been destroyed or altered because of modern farming and construction, although sixtyeight have been preserved inside of the boundaries of the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site. 

Lawyer and writer H. M. Brackenridge captured the awe of seeing the Cahokia complex in 1811. He crossed the Mississippi at St. Louis and after making his way through the woods along the Cahokia Creek, passed over the plain to the mounds. He referred to them as “resembling enormous haystacks scattered through a meadow.” 

Journal of a Voyage up the Mississippi River in 1811 

BY HENRI MARIE BRACKENRIDGE 

When I reached the foot of the principle mound, I was struck with a degree of astonishment not unlike that which is experienced in contemplating the Egyptian Pyramids. What a stupendous pile of earth! To heap up such a mass must have required years, and labors of thousands. 

Pursuing my walk along the bank of the Cahokia, I passed eight other mounds, in the distance of three miles, before I arrived at the largest assemblage. When I reached the foot of the principle mound, I was struck with a degree of astonishment not unlike that which is experienced in contemplating the Egyptian Pyramids. What a stupendous pile of earth! To heap up such a mass must have required years, and labors of thousands. It stands immediately on the banks of the Cahokia, and on the side next to it is covered with lofty trees. Were it not for the regularity and design it manifests, the circumstances of it being on alluvial ground, and the other mounds scattered around it, we would scarcely believe it be the work of human hands. 

The site is named after a tribe of Illiniwek Indians, the Cahokia, who lived in the area when the French arrived in the late 1600s. What the actual name of the city may have been in ancient times is unknown. The modern archaeological site is believed to have existed from AD 700 until its decline in 1300. By 1500, it is thought to have been completely abandoned. 

As is the case with many of the ancient mound builder sites, a true accounting of the ancient history of the mounds is almost impossible due to the destruction of over half the mounds at the site, coupled with the lack of any modern excavation work that could dig down to the earlier construction at Cahokia, which may be thousands of years earlier than the dates currently assigned by conventional archaeology. 

MONKS MOUND 

The largest earthwork in the Cahokia complex is a stepped pyramid, which covers about 16 acres. It is often called Monks Mound after Trappist monks who farmed the terraces in the early 1800s. It was apparently rebuilt several times in the distant past. At the summit of the mound are the buried remains of some sort of temple, further adding to the mystery of the site. Monks Mound measures 100 feet tall, with an original base of 1,000 feet. These even measurements in feet have raised the interest of alternative historians, as well as its numerous astronomical alignments that show great similarities to alignments at Stonehenge and Teotihuacan, among numerous significant ancient sites. 

Fig. 5.1. Monks Mound, built circa 950–1100 CE and located at the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, near Collinsville, Illinois. Image courtesy of Skubasteve 834. 

MYSTERIOUS MOUND 72 

In addition, during the excavation of Mound 72, a ridge-top burial mound south of Monks Mound, archaeologists found the remains of a man in his forties buried on a bed of more than twenty thousand marine-shell disc beads arranged in the shape of a falcon, with the bird’s head appearing beneath and beside the man’s head, and its wings and tail beneath his arms and legs. Archaeologists also recovered more than 250 other skeletons from Mound 72. Scholars believe almost 62 percent of these were sacrificial victims, based on signs of ritual execution and method of burial. 

CIRCULAR WOODEN SUN 

CALENDARS CALLED “WOODHENGE” 

Some archaeologists believe the last survivors of the mound builders were the Natchez Indians of the Lower Mississippi Valley. These Indians were known for being devout worshippers of the sun, which may explain the uses of the mounds at Cahokia and the so-called “Woodhenge” at the site. These fortyeight wooden posts make up a 410-foot-diameter circle, and by lining up the central observation posts with specific perimeter posts at sunrise, the exact date of all four equinoxes can be determined. Entire books have been written about the many geological and astral alignments associated with the Cahokia complex. Although these studies are dismissed by conventional archaeologists as the wishful thinking of wild-eyed amateurs, what cannot be denied is the amazing similarity between the Woodhenge construction found at Cahokia and the similarly constructed Woodhenge found next to Stonehenge in England. 

Although these were the finds revealed to the public after the official 1922 excavation, a previous, unofficial dig at the site uncovered hundreds more skeletons, some giant in nature, which have all disappeared from the historical record. 

ONLY FORTY OUT OF 120 MOUNDS 

SURVIVE AT CAHOKIA 

The wholesale destruction of the Cahokia complex is one of the greatest tragedies in the history of modern archaeology in the United States. Although the site was recognized as highly important as early as the seventeenth century, no official efforts were made to preserve and study the site. As a result, well over half the site was destroyed by farmers and city planners from St. Louis. Despite national efforts to preserve the site at the turn of the century, Cahokia was not given National Historic Landmark status until the 1960s. 

EXPERTS SHOW RACISM BY DISMISSING THE MOUNDS

CHICAGO TRIBUNE, AUGUST 10, 1892 

“Racism and prejudice said ‘the lazy Indian’ couldn’t have made the mounds,” says archaeologist James Anderson. “That meant excavation of the site—about ten miles east of St. Louis and named Cahokia after a group of Indians that lived in the area in the seventeenth century—was slow in starting, in part, because early ‘experts’ refused to believe that Indians had built the majestic earthen pyramids that still stand today.” 

CAHOKIA WAS 6.5 SQUARE MILES IN AREA 

Covering some 6.5 square miles, Cahokia boasted streets, warehouses, man-made lakes, docks, crude but workable astronomical observatories, walled fortifications, and scores of earthen mounds as tall as 10 stories. Flourishing between 900 and 1300 CE, the city dominated the American Bottoms, a fertile 175- square-mile valley near the confluences of the Mississippi, Illinois, and Missouri rivers. 

“We know it was a great city,” said Anderson, director of the Cahokia Mounds Museum. “But we may be short-changing it. It may have been an empire.” 

Excavations have revealed that Cahokian commerce reached from the Great Lakes to the Gulf Coast and from the Western plains to the Appalachian Mountains, and controlled such raw materials as copper, mica, sea shells, and flint. 

MONKS MOUND TEMPLE 

Monks Mound, a flat-topped pyramid named for Trappist monks who lived nearby in the nineteenth century, has a base covering some fourteen acres, rises in four terraces to a height of a hundred feet and is estimated to contain some 22 million cubic feet of earth. 

It is thought to have supported a building at least fifty feet high that was the residence of a leader who held both political and religious power in Cahokia. 

THREE-MILE-LONG STOCKADE 

While Monks Mound dominated the city center, which was enclosed by a 15-foot-high wooden stockade almost three miles long, other mounds—conical, ridge- and flat-topped—dotted the countryside. The functions of the mounds are not known but there is evidence they were used for burials and as boundary markers. 

THREE HUNDRED BURIAL SACRIFICES, 

TWENTY THOUSAND BEADS 

“The excavation of one ridge-topped mound revealed some three hundred ceremonial and sacrificial burials, mostly young women in mass graves, and the body of what appears to be a male ruler, about forty-five years old on a blanket of more than twenty thousand seashell beads, and surrounded by the bodies of attendants. The extensive public works and human sacrifices are evidence of a class society in which rulers held sway over life and death and labor,” explained Anderson. 

Outside the city center were four circular sun calendars of large, evenly-spaced log posts, called “Woodhenges” because of their similarity to Stonehenge in Britain. Probably used to predict the changing of the seasons, they are the most advanced scientific achievement found at Cahokia. 

“Of some 120 mounds built at Cahokia—the Indians carried earth in 60-pound basket loads from pits as far as a mile away—only 40 are preserved within a 750-acre state park. The rest are on private lands and have been mostly plowed over by farmers or covered with asphalt in the name of progress,” said Anderson, bitterly observing a growing urban sprawl at the foot of the most spectacular of the earthen pyramids, Monks Mound. 

ATTEMPTS TO SAVE THE MOUNDS 

In 1905, Congress was petitioned to save the mound builder sites from destruction. Although Congress made noises about saving these mound sites from further destruction, funds were not forthcoming. In the case of Cahokia, it took until 1964 for that complex to receive official protection as a National Historic Landmark. Similar tales were told across the nation, since the majority of these sites were on private lands and the government offered no compensation for preservation of the mounds. To compound matters, the mound builders still have no official standing as an indigenous Native American people, as no official descendants of the mound builders have ever been recognized by the courts of the United States. 

EARLY BILL CALLS FOR MOUNDS PRESERVATION 

GALVESTON DAILY NEWS, AUGUST 20, 1905 

A bill now before Congress, having for its objective the preserving and protecting from despoliation, the historic and prehistoric ruins or monuments on the public lands of the United States, especially Colorado and Utah, where the cliff-dweller once dwelt and placing them under the care and custody of the Secretary of the Interior, has served somewhat to revive popular interest in a subject that has been, heretofore, largely dormant except among scientists. While the bill in question applies only to the preservation of monuments on Public Land and particularly to the ruins scattered over the semi-arid regions of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado that have left many evidences of their occupancy of the so-called Pueblo region, it is conceivable that the movement may soon extend and take the form of legislative action looking to similar enclosures with reference to the numerous prehistoric remains of the Mississippi and Ohio valleys. 

PRIVATE LANDS, PUBLIC DESTRUCTION 

These mound builder sites are located almost invariably on private lands, and though it is true in some few cases the owners have for sentimental reasons maintained the integrity of the mounds and earthworks allotted on their property, in the vast majority of cases the commercial instinct has prevailed, and the original outlines are fast obliterated by time and the abrading wear of the white man’s plow. Archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, indeed patriotic Americans of every class, have interest in preserving these relics of bygone days. 

Every state in the Union from Wisconsin to the Gulf and from Virginia to Nebraska has more or fewer of the mounds and earthworks, which were built hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years ago. In Mississippi and elsewhere they can be seen from the car windows of railroad trains or from carriages on the highways. These mounds are mostly terraced and truncated pyramids, in shape usually square or rectangular, but sometimes hexagonal or octagonal. They differ greatly in size. One in West Virginia is 70 feet high and 1,000 feet in circumference. 

The Cahokia Mound, in Illinois, opposite the northern section of the city of St. Louis, is the largest of them all, rising in terraces from a base of 1,150 feet by 700 feet to a height of 100 feet and covering an area larger than that occupied by the Great Pyramid of Egypt. In Ohio and other states there are mounds approaching these in magnitude, but generally they range from six to thirty feet in height. 

The Fort Ancient earthwork on the Little Miami River, in the contour roughly of a Figure 8, and about 22 feet above the surface at its highest, is now enthroned by a public park and watched over by the Ohio Historical Society. 

Cahokia was once one of the grandest capitals of this extremely ancient mound-building culture and the artistry of the site alone should have given it supreme protection, but as will be seen in the following shocking exposé of criminal neglect on the part of the Smithsonian and the Parks Division, as early as 1828, these ancient mound sites were already in peril of total destruction. 

The following story appeared as a lavishly illustrated Sunday feature in the Frederick News Post in Virginia, but this article was also nationally syndicated. Again, the following are the actual headlines and in-depth quotes from this very provocative piece of historical muckraking on behalf of protecting these mound sites from eventual sure destruction. 

THE GREAT CAHOKIA MOUND, WHICH SHOULD BE A NATIONAL MONUMENT, IN DANGER OF DESTRUCTION WORKS OF PREHISTORIC MOUND BUILDERS ARE SCATTERED ACROSS THE UNITED STATES. 

BY RENE BACHE FREDERICK NEWS POST, 

JANUARY 20, 1928 

The largest and most impressive memorial of the prehistoric mound builders is in danger of destruction, and the U.S. Bureau of Ethnology is anxious that it be declared a National monument and thereby preserved. 

It is the great Cahokia Mound, across the river from St. Louis, in Illinois. Rising in the midst of a level plain, and rectangular in shape, it is ninety-nine feet high and 998 feet long (100 feet by 1000 feet more likely), an artificial hill that may be seen from the railroad approaching St. Louis from the east. 

COMPARED TO THE PYRAMIDS 

Students of antiquity regard it as comparable in archaeological interest to the pyramids of Egypt. It is believed to have been, in prehistoric times, the site of a temple, which may have been comparable in size and grandeur to the ancient Sun Temple whose ruins were recently discovered in the far southwest. That structure built of cut stone was 400 feet long. It had only one narrow door and a curious detail that has been preserved is a peephole through which a watcher could inspect persons wishing to enter. 

PLEA TO SAVE THE MOUNDS 

Here is another of the many public pleas to save the mounds from destruction. In this case from the 1960s, it is a large mound complex located in Whitewater that was scheduled for a suburban subdivision. 

RESIDENTS TRY TO SAVE MOUNDS 

JANESVILLE GAZETTE, AUGUST 13, 1965 

The mounds, covering about 6½ acres of land, range in height from about 1½ to five feet. All have holes or pits on their tops and sides. Formerly situated in lands comprising the Town of Whitewater, the mounds, came under City of Whitewater jurisdiction in 1964 with the annexation of former Tratt Farm property, purchased by Buckingham Developers. Dr. Cummings has urged local acquisition of this land from the Buckingham firm, which presently “owes” the city space in the subdivision equivalent to two lots, having agreed to a planning commission proposal whereby developers of new sub-divisions within the city would allocate a certain amount of space to playground usage. Numerous other groups have sent letters either to Dr. Cummings or City Manager Ronald DeMaad to save the mounds as a historical park site. 

CEREMONIAL COPPER-HELMETED AND ARMORED MEN 

This report from Cahokia is indicative of the poor quality of the official reports from excavations at the site. As opposed to the detailed descriptions of copper armor found elsewhere in this book (see Many Skeletons of an..., Indiana’s Eight-Foot...), this “official” description merely notes that helmeted and copper-armored men were found, with no description of the finds under discussion. 

ON THE CASE OF THE SEVENTY DESTROYED MOUNDS 

In this report it is noted that seventy mounds that once surrounded a great mound were destroyed in the construction of the city of St. Louis. With this kind of rampant, wholesale destruction, it is easy to understand why the true history of this site remains obscured to the present day. 

HUNDREDS OF MISSING SKELETONS 

A true accounting of the number of skeletons found at Cahokia is also shrouded in the same mystery as the destroyed mounds at the site. Officially, there is almost no discussion of the hundreds of skeletons exhumed from this site. The details and physical descriptions of the finds made during the 1922 dig led by archaeologist Warren K. Morehead of Phillips Academy, in Andover, Massachusetts, are not very detailed and are downright evasive when it comes to the skeletons unearthed during his dig. One might even go so far as to say that Morehead was there to bury evidence, not uncover it. 

ANOTHER PYRAMID FOUND 

ELISBURG JOURNAL, 1886 

W. H. Scoville of Allegheny, and his brother-in-law from Connecticut, while hunting squirrels in the woods towards Irish settlement, found a pyramidal mound 18 or 20 feet long, walled at the base with stone. Growing on it were several trees, some of which were six inches through. Mr. Scoville, and son Esca, exhumed two skeletons, one of a dog and one of a tall man, about 8 feet in length. Most of the bones perished away when exposed to the air and handled, but the jaw bone as yet is in Mr. Scoville’s possession and is large enough to fit outside his own. 

Within the last few months excavations made in the Cahokia Mound have brought to light a number of objects made of sheet copper and representing helmeted and armored men. They were presumably used for some ceremonial purpose and, fashioned very artistically. . . . 

The great mound was formerly surrounded by about seventy lesser mounds, some of them forty feet high, which have been destroyed by the plow. . . . 

There was a GIGANTIC EARTHWORK of the kind, 319 feet long and 158 feet wide, close to St. Louis, but in the later sixties [i.e., 1860s] the city grew over it and wiped it out. 

Digging at the time of the destruction, disclosed inside of it a huge burial chamber seventy feet long, built of logs, which contained 

HUNDREDS OF SKELETONS. . . . CAHOKIA 

ORIGINALLY HAD OVER 150 MOUNDS 

APPLETON POST-CRESCENT, SEPTEMBER 20, 1921 

Appleton, Wisconsin: Large earthworks, constructed by the mound builders in the prehistoric past, rise conspicuously in the Illinois lowlands, about ten miles from St. Louis. In several groups, there are about 150 mounds, the largest known as Cahokia Mound, being 1080 feet long, 702 feet wide, and 102 feet high, containing 107,000 cubic yards of earth. The background to these structures built by an unknown race, in the unknown long ago, is a high and sweeping limestone ridge. 

Scientists are now opening the smaller mounds in an endeavor to learn of the people who formed them. Of all the prehistoric remnants in North America, the mounds of these groups are the largest, and it is believed, the oldest. As the earthworks seem to have been undisturbed by the Indians, French, Spaniards, and Americans, the scientists hope to dig up skeletons, utensils, and relics that will identify the race that inhabited parts of America before the Redskins. 

The exploration of one of the smallest mounds has uncovered what may have been a burial place. Several skeletons have been found in it; next to them red pottery of the mound builders’ period. Dr. Warren K. Morehead, of Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass., who is in charge of the research, expects to dig up a complete skeleton. 

NO RECORDED SKELETON FINDS 

FROM MAIN CAHOKIA MOUND? 

Despite the fact that one of the main St. Louis mounds, with more than one hundred human skeletons, was publicly destroyed and desecrated, we are asked to believe that no one has ever made any examination of the nation’s largest mound, which has been compared in size to the Great Pyramid. This is despite the fact that every other main mound in the country seems to have been breached at one time or the other in the past. 

LITTLE CHANCE OF FURTHER EXPLORATION EDWARDSVILLE INTELLIGENCER, NOVEMBER 14, 1937 

No extensive explorations have been made into the mound at Cahokia. Some years ago members of the Ramey family, former owners, dug a tunnel 90 feet toward the center of the mound. A piece of lead ore was the only article of interest found. Since the entire area has been converted into a state park, there is little probability that any future explorations will be made in any of the mounds. 

THE HONEYWELL MOUNDS NEXT LARGEST 

The next largest mounds at Honeywell, Ohio, were excavated about thirty years ago. Relics taken from the Cahokia group, at the city limits of East St. Louis, indicated that the Ohio residents traded with those of Illinois. Much interest attaches to the present investigation, as there is a prospect that things of great historic significance will be unearthed. It is proposed to preserve the largest mounds in a state or national park. 

CAHOKIA NAMED BY THE FRENCH EXPLORER LA SALLE 

Monks Mound with the exception of several smaller ones, is the farthest north of a group of 72 (a very significant number). Years ago the mound was given the name Cahokia Mound. It was named for a tribe of Indians encountered by La Salle, a Frenchman, in his early explorations. 

On the southern side of the mound, is a terrace, about 30 feet above the base. The terrace contains an area of over two acres. This is the plateau which may have been used for religious purposes. 

Monks Mound is a parallelogram, the longer dimensions extending north and south. The other mounds in the group are of various formations. The bottom of one is circular while another is almost perfectly square. A third along the highway has the longer dimensions extending from east and west. 

A HOLLOW METAL BIRD FOUND 

OAKLAND TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 20, 1925 

Many objects of strange form, of undoubted aboriginal manufacture, have been found in the mounds. For instance, a hollow metal bird with many perforations, and small vessels of odd shapes with numerous holes bored through them. For what purpose could such things be meant? From a mound near Chillicothe came a carving in soft serpentine representing in really exquisite detail a duck riding on a fish. This, however, was a pipe. The pre-Columbian Indians were all of them smokers of tobacco and the mounds yield great numbers of pipes. 

In one group of mounds were found hundreds of jaw bones of human beings, bears, and other animals, cut in a most curious way, so as to leave in each case a thin slice of the alveolar structure holding a row of teeth. The work must have been done with a saw so exceedingly thin and sharp that it is a puzzle to know how the Indians could have obtained such a tool. But a more important question is, why should the jaws have been cut that way? 

The United States Geological Survey has made a map of the eastern half of the United States showing the entire area sprinkled with red dots, each one standing for an ancient mound or group of mounds. Such mounds are found all over the country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the Canadian border to the Gulf. About 10 percent of them have been more or less excavated, yielding numerous articles of white manufacture, such as knives, brass kettles, beads, and so forth. Nearly all of the other objects unearthed are similar to those in use by the Indians today. 

Some of the mounds were domiciliary; the old-time Indians lived on top of them because the elevation was an advantage for defense. Thus, a large mound might be a village site. Others were used for purposes of religious ceremonies, yet others were cemeteries. A dead man was buried in a small tumulus, usually in a sitting posture. When another died he was interred in the same place, more earth being added. At every interment the mound grew bigger, and thus in the course of centuries it attained huge size. The usual form of a mound was that of a broad, low-topped cone, which might be eighty or ninety feet high and three hundred feet in diameter at the base. Others were rectangular. Yet others were built like walls, twenty to forty feet wide. The purpose of these last is a mystery; they were not used for burial, and the use to which they were put is likely to remain forever unknown. 

MYSTERIOUS EFFIGY MOUNDS FOUND IN MANY PLACES 

Although the Cahokia complex stands out because of its size, many other finds of mounds and their contents that are no less fascinating have been made around the United States. Perhaps the most intriguing are the many mounds built in the shape of animals. 

SKELETON FOUND IN MOUND NEAR ALTON REVIVES HOPE OF FACTS ON ANCIENT RACE MAY HAVE BEEN ABODE OF PEOPLE ANTEDATING THE INDIANS 

ALTON EVENING TELEGRAPH, NOVEMBER 10, 1933 

Archeological interest in the Alton vicinity is being revived since excavations on the Charles Oerson farm, located on the Newbern road west of the Alton-Jerseyville road have indicated that the several mounds located there are ruins of that race of pre-American Indian dwellers on this continent the mound builders. 

ONE-FOOT THICK MIDDEN OF MUSSEL SHELLS 

It was the curiosity of Charles Gerson and Ray Smith that led to the investigation of the dirt formations. Tuesday and Wednesday of this week their curiosity was appeased when a skeleton was unearthed several feet from the surface. Digging deeper more bones and pottery were found. The most interesting, and perhaps the most valuable, of the relics found by two men was a large collection of mussel shells, placed one upon the other to the thickness of a foot. The shells crumbled when exposed to the air, but the fact that they did so may be the factor to determine the antiquity of the mounds as they have been in previous discoveries. 

THE DEVIL BIRD PAINTING OF ALTON BLUFF 

Should the mounds prove to be as ancient as the mussel shells indicate there would be a possibility that from the ruins on the Gerson farm aid would be derived to establish the antiquity of the time-honored and be-legended Plasa devil bird painting that for centuries graced the Alton bluffs. 

Paleolithic ruins are the most ancient to be found in America and come from the early glacial period. Even at this time the trace of the mongoloid type is found, giving rise to the theory of the immigrants to America over the land bridge that existed between Europe and America and, Alaska and Siberia. Then centuries or perhaps ages later came the mound builders who were neither a Neolithic race nor American Indians. 

THE GREAT FRASER SHELL MIDDEN 

Mound Builders were also builders of shell-heaps. The Great Fraser Midden in British Columbia is the greatest known discovery of the shell-heap builders; it is built on the glacial gravel before the postglacial vegetation had started, and when discovered was covered by a forest from 680 to 700 years old. The shells found crumbled when exposed, but the later mound builders also left mussel shells behind, showing there was a connection between them. 

FIVE TYPES OF MOUNDS BUILT 

There were five distinct types of mounds built; the effigy or animal-shaped ones, burial and ground work ones combined, burial mounds for that purpose alone, the stockade type, and the pyramidal type, of which the Cahokia mound at East St. Louis is the best known example. 

This newly found group of mounds might be of the latter type. But before a label is put on this discovery there is the possibility that it is a burial place of the roving men who succeeded the Mound Builders in this territory. Though no great importance may be placed on the excavation near Alton should it be proved to belong to the American Indian burial ground division, the wealth and beauty of the American Indian relics taken from this vicinity prior to this time will be augmented. 

A LINK WITH THE PYRAMIDS 

On the other hand, should the discovery be found to correspond with Cahokia and be of the same class, all theories and the romances connected with East St. Louis will be extended to here. Between Cahokia and the early pyramid builders of Central America there is a connecting link. Should the Alton findings be found to be cousins to the Cahokia cluster, it may become a link in the prehistory record of the American continent, a chain of records that stretches from Asia to Alaska, British Columbia, Rio Grande, Guatemala, Yucatan, Florida, and is as near to us as East St. Louis, and has relics ranging from mussel shell heaps to the casa grandes and pueblos of the southwest, down to the more modern calendars and sculptures of the Mayas, and the heavy gold and earth-work of the Itzas, Quiches, and Aztecs. It all depends upon the importance of the slim stratum of mussel shells. To date, mussel shells have not figured as relics found in the graves of the red American Indian, but are a characteristic of the mound builders. 

The account that follows describes a particularly stunning serpent mound found in Quincy, Illinois. Inside the mound skeletons were found buried with the skeleton of a snake covering them. 

HUGE SERPENT MOUND 

HISTORICAL RECORD, QUINCY, ILLINOIS, 1892 

A huge serpent mound was recently discovered near Quincy, Illinois, in Adams County. This mound was built by a class of prehistoric people now known as the serpent worshippers. In the mound were found skeletons upon which the bones of a snake reposed. 

THE GREAT SERPENT MOUND OF OHIO ENCHANTS RALEIGH REGISTER, JUNE 19, 1963 

The Great Serpent Mound of Ohio, appeals peculiarly to the imagination. It measures from the upper jaw to the tip of the tail 1254 feet, rising at the head to a height of five feet from the surface and extending in graceful and perfect convolutions, but with receding height to the tail. 

The serpent’s mouth is open and within the arc of the jaws is a monumental earthwork shaped like an egg, as if about to be swallowed. This striking example of the mound builders’ art about which the fancy of the twentieth century weaves traditions of serpent worship in a forgotten civilization is fortunate to be preserved from the ravages of time and vandalism. This is as reported in a feature story about a bill introduced in 1905 to save the mounds from immediate destruction. 

As is the case with Michigan’s copper mines, the most stunning aspect of Wisconsin’s mound building culture is not the plethora of giants unearthed in the area, but the amazing animal effigy mounds that covered the state like a blanket of woodland imagery. It has been estimated that in one county alone in Wisconsin, there were originally over ten thousand effigy mounds. It is no exaggeration to say that Wisconsin was an ancient version of the Nazca plateau in South America, which is famous worldwide for the thousands of animal images cut into the bedrock there. The images that covered Wisconsin were endless and ran the gamut from human forms to snakes, lizards, foxes, rabbits, fish, and mammoths. Unfortunately no official attempt has ever been made to save these mounds from destruction, and at this point in time the vast majority of mounds that once blanketed the state have been destroyed. 

In one notable case, it was reported that an eight-foot-tall giant was unearthed near Pelican Lake, while in another report from Westport, giant burials were found in association with ten-pound axes and an eight foot-high wall, which was fifteen-feet thick and ran along a river embankment for 1,500 feet. It was noted that the wall was made from hard red bricks, some of an immense size. In the woods near the shore, a mound was opened that contained a giant buried with several rolls of textiles and a finely finished grooved stone ax. 

EFFIGY MOUNDS A WOODLAND WONDERLAND OAKLAND TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 20, 1925 

The so-called “effigy mounds” are confined almost wholly to Wisconsin and a small part of Iowa. The entire valley of Prairie du Chien Township is dotted with these mounds, shaped to represent bears, deer, rabbits, antlered elks, and other animals. They form veritable droves, all headed, like the river, to the southwest. The existence of these mounds in such numbers and of so great a magnitude proves that there must formerly have been in that region a large population permanently resident and settled. 

They doubtless depended for a livelihood chiefly on farming, as did the eastern tribes until the whites disturbed them. It is worth mentioning that some of their mounds, representing birds, have a spread of 250 feet from wing tip to wing tip, and a remarkable feature of most of them is the imitative curving and rounding of the bodies of the sculptured animals. There are hundreds of these effigy mounds overlooking the Mississippi River, located on bluffs, and hundreds more across the river in Iowa. They are thought to represent the heraldic “totems” of various clans. Thus the Bear clan built mounds in the shape of a bear, the Lizard clan in the form of a lizard, the Snake clan in the likeness of a serpent, and so on. 

STRANGE, ANCIENT, SUPERIOR ARROWHEADS FOUND 

Around the mound sites in various parts of La Crosse County, archaeologists and parties of Boy Scouts have found many arrow heads of strange design. These points range from the battle or war points to slender points, evidently used for the purpose of shooting small game. Some of the points, which had been found in the area of West Salem, are of obsidian while others found south of La Crosse near the junction of highways 35 and 14, are of flint. While some are of Indian manufacture, others have been identified as being of mound builder construction, and a study of the symmetry and design of both works immediately shows the superiority of the mound builders in manufacturing these artifacts. Scrapers, axes, and pottery have also been found, together with occasional skeleton remains. Beaded ware and middens (refuse from food stuffs) have also been found in La Crosse County. 

GIANT SKELETON FOUND 

MASSIVE HUMAN BONES AND INDIAN 

RELICS UNEARTHED NEAR PELICAN LAKE 

NEW NORTH WISCONSIN, JULY 23, 1908 

That human beings of enormous size inhabited this section of this country ages ago was proven last Sunday, when the massive skeleton of an Indian was unearthed near Pelican Lake. The interesting discovery was made by George Patton and L. H. Eaton, two Chicago tourists, who are spending the summer there. 

For several days the men noticed a mound on their travels through the woods, and, at last led by curiosity, decided to excavate it. Procuring spades they fell to work and after digging down to a depth of about four feet were surprised to find the bones of a large human foot protruding through the earth. 

Digging further, they gradually uncovered the perfect form of a giant. The skeleton was nearly 8 feet in height and the arms extended several inches below the hips. Buried with the bones were numerous stone weapons and trinkets. Among these were a curious stone hatchet, a copper knife, several strange copper rings, and a necklace made of the tusks of some prehistoric animal. 

The skeleton is no doubt that of an Indian who was one of a tribe of giants who roamed this part of the state over one thousand years ago.

RAILROAD WORKERS UNEARTH GIANT 

AN INDIAN MOUND OPENED 

EAU CLAIRE DAILY FREE PRESS, OCTOBER 7, 1873 

A few days ago the men engaged in building the road bed of the Green Bay and Winona railroad, struck an Indian mound near Arcadia. It had been in view for some days, and no little speculation was indulged in as to what the excavation would develop from this cemetery of the red man. 

The discovery exceeded all anticipations. The skeleton of an Indian was found of such dimensions as to indicate that the frame must have been that of a giant. The jaw bone easily enclosed the face of the largest laborer to be found on the work. The thigh bones were more like those of a horse than a man, hair heavy and remarkably well-preserved. 

Pieces of blanket in which the body had been wrapped were taken out in a tolerable state of preservation. A number of Mexican coins were also found. 

The unusual size of the skeleton has excited considerable interest, and the curiosities will be carefully preserved for exhibition. 

PERFECT MAN-SHAPED MOUND 

SHEBOYGAN PRESS, NOVEMBER 10, 1913 

WAUPACA HAS AN ALMOST PERFECT 

MAN-SHAPED MOUND 

Destruction of this was threatened by the street car companies, but the various women’s clubs rallied to the rescue with a fund which has ensured the preservation of the prehistoric relic. 

ONE WISCONSIN COUNTY HAS 

OVER 500 ANIMAL EFFIGY MOUNDS

On Doty Island, near Menasha, several mounds have been found of well-defined animal shapes, while in Crawford County are 500 of these tumuli, 100 of which are located in Prairie du Chien and Wauzeka. 

The recent discovery in Portage County, by W. A. Titus of the Wisconsin Archaeology Society, of a number of Indian mounds, which have yielded a number of interesting relics, has called to the minds of the members of the state society a large number of tumuli in effigy shape that have been placed on official record in late years. It is of interest to note that, as of now, all known effigy mounds are within the boundaries of Wisconsin. 

734 MOUNDS NEAR DEVIL'S LAKE 

In seven townships lying about Devil’s Lake there are 734 mounds. Best known of these is a bird with outstretched wings, extending 150 feet, tail forked, and wings bent near the tip. The bird seems to be flying toward the lake, the shore of which is but a few rods distant. The head, breast, and body are several feet in height. 

WISCONSIN EFFIGY MOUND CAPITAL OF THE WORLD 

According to Dr. Cummings, “at one time, probably 20,000 mounds existed in the north-central, Midwest area” and of all effigies constructed, about 95 per cent were built in the territorial limits of Wisconsin, making the state the “effigy mounds capital of the world.” Cummings estimated the mounds in Whitewater were built between AD 200 and 1200 and were different from Aztalan mounds in that the local mounds are burial mounds, lacking deposits of artifacts of any significance. 

THE BIG FIND IN WISCONSIN 

Here is an inventory of the largest effigy and shaped mounds found in Wisconsin. They are in the shapes of a mink, panther, turtle, several massive birds, and several geometric figures. 

The earthwork mounds resemble various shapes of varying sizes: mink, 348 long; panther, 120 feet long; bird, body, 57 feet wide, and wings, 69 feet long; conical, 32 feet wide; oval, 32 by 90 feet; conical, 38 feet wide; bird, body, 60 feet wide, 94 feet long; turtle, 143 feet wide, l00 feet long; tapering, 145 feet long; oval, 37 by 60 feet; and tapering, 195 feet long. 

In the area around the Dells in Kilbourn, Wisconsin, the discovery of a two-hundred-foot-long giant lizard mound was reported. At an adjacent mound complex consisting of eight to twelve conical mounds as tall as twelve feet, another effigy mound in the shape of a deer was noted. 

Mounds Depict Deer and Lizards 

One of the mounds at the Dells, near Kilbourn, represents a giant lizard, 200 feet long, the head pointing to the west. 

A few miles from the city is a curious group. It occupies a plot of ground five rods wide and 18 rods long. Near the southwest corner is the figure of a deer. To the north is a lizard, several rods long; while around its head are a series of eight or ten conical mounds, some 12 feet in height. 

NO TRADITION FOR THE MOUNDS AMONG THE SIOUX 

It is evident that the handiwork of the builders of these mounds dates far back into the history of the west, as the Sioux Indians have known the soil for 300 years, and they have no traditions concerning mound building within that range of time. 

MOST NORTHWESTERN SITE OF THE MOUND BUILDERS 

The Ross Lake mound group in Wisconsin was the most northwestern site in the continental United States at the time it was investigated and reported in 1935, but since then numerous other mounds have been found farther north in the western United States and Canada. 

SUPERIOR QUALITY OF WORKMANSHIP 

The researchers at the Ross Lake site noted that extremely ancient pottery of superior workmanship was found in association with the later and much cruder pottery of the modern American Indian tribes in the area. The earliest form of cord-design pottery can be traced to the Jomon culture in Japan and has been dated as early as 14,000 to 10,000 BCE. The Caucasian origin of the Jomon people is still under debate, but cord-design pottery has been discovered in Wales as well as in the United States, and the swirling design patterns on early Jomon jars resemble the spirals found in later Celtic designs. 

EVIDENCE FOR THE WISCONSIN MAMMOTH 

Not only have mammoth and mastodon remains been found in Wisconsin, but bones, tusks, and teeth have been found in association with mound builder burials. In Minnesota, an effigy mound in the shape of an elephant or mastodon has also been reported. 

THIRTY-ONE MOUNDS OPENED AT ROSS LAKE IN 1931 BY CECIL L. MUNSON 

WISCONSIN TRIBUNE, FEBRUARY 2, 1935 

During excavations recently conducted by Philleo Nash at the site of the Indian Mounds at Ross Lake, three miles south of Nekoosa, many illuminating evidences of fact concerning early Indian life in this area were discovered. 

An excellent group of mounds, built by the ancient forebears of the teepee-builders, may be seen in a fine state of preservation on the shores of Ross Lake, three miles south of the city of Nekoosa and about one mile back from the eastern bank of the Wisconsin River. Mr. Nash was majoring in social anthropology at the University of Wisconsin when, in the summer of 1931, he spent four weeks excavating some of these mounds as work preliminary to writing a university thesis in which he hoped to classify the group in its proper anthropological category. 

AS A BOY, NASH SAW ANIMAL MOUNDS IN THE WOODS 

As a boy he had seen and wondered about these same Ross Lake Mounds, and he knew that, while most mounds found in groups in southeastern Wisconsin rise above the general contour of the earth to a height of little more than 2 feet as an average, their shape and distribution is of historical import. 

The mounds at Ross Lake, classified by Mr. Nash as effigy mounds because of the presence of one mound outlined in the shape of an animal, possibly a beaver, were of special interest to him as a student of early Indian mound building because of the presence in the neighborhood of this effigy, of a number of more or less circular and conical mounds averaging 25 inches high by 18 feet in diameter. In the part of the mound area at Ross Lake, still untouched by the plow, or by the spades of marauders, he found 28 such round-topped mounds and three others of various types. 

Furthermore, the effigy mound proved to be of special interest to Mr. Nash when he found that it had not been entered and that, as an original deposit of earth over 95 feet long and 33 feet thick through from the haunch-part to the tail, it was as fine an example of the effigy-type mound as could be found in Wisconsin. 

ALREADY PARTIALLY DESTROYED 

Mr. Nash ascertained that the 31 mounds extant in the group today are but part of the original work of the mound builders on this site. Crops under cultivation for the last 70 years have doubtless made erosions through the southern part of the original group, obliterating a large number of mounds. 

The 31 extant mounds are protected against erosion by a good stand of small timber that has overgrown the mound site, preventing the heavy rains from doing damage to their contours. Being in this dense corner of wooded land, the mounds are hardly visible to the untrained eye. Stretching but a few inches over 2 feet above the sod line of the lake shore at most points, these hummocks of earth have become covered with a dense growth of grass, and that has contributed to hiding the mound builder’s work from random relic hunters. 

Another characteristic of the group at Ross Lake was made by Mr. Nash on the basis of the external appearance of the mound number 23, called the pointed lineal. This mound, the largest at Ross Lake, over 495 feet long and with an ovoid head, has the characteristics of many other smaller mounds in Wisconsin, but in size it is matched by only one other mound in the United States, the Great Serpent Mound in Ohio. 

In a map that he made of the Ross Lake shoreline showing the shape of the 31 mounds, Mr. Nash shows that the most outstanding mound of the group is the long needle-like mound numbered 23, having a bulbous head end fully 25 feet in diameter, and a body that tapers off gradually into the surrounding sod floor to a length of 495 feet. 

Using the most approved methods and exercising every care, Mr. Nash found during his excavation of 16,000 cubic feet of earth, that the material used in constructing the mounds was in some cases a kind of red-black sand of a type similar to the subsoil strata of earth found in this vicinity, indicating that the builders had in some cases gone to a considerable depth to find mound material that suited their work. 

The most consistently general characteristic of the Ross Lake Mound Group, according to Mr. Nash, is the presence of colored sand in saucer-like pits in almost all of the entrances. Often he found this sand surrounding some bone deposit, although no human bone was unearthed in any of the mounds at the Ross Lake mounds. 

It became known through the Nash investigation that the Ross Lake Mound Group locates the point of farthest northwest dispersion of the culture type of the mound-building predecessors of the teepee building Indians. 

Mr. Nash also discovered fragments of a type of native pottery that offered interesting possibilities for exhaustive study. It is well known that the ordinary clay pottery-work done by the teepee-dwellers at the time of the white man’s coming was always crude and rarely if ever serviceable. 

In the Ross Lake Mounds, however, Mr. Nash discovered a type of pottery far superior to the usual run of later Indian clay products. 

To begin with it is evident that upon examining the fragments, that the mound builders were careful in the mixing and molding of their materials. Probably using wooden paddles, wound about with wood or grass, the pottery makers produced strange “cord-imprint” designs on their baked-clay products. 

This cord-imprint effect is found only in rare cases in Indian pottery work. On one broken piece of pottery, these strange cord imprints were found to be present both on the inside and outside surfaces, revealing a great amount of skill and patience in the men who made the pottery. Mr. Nash’s discovery of cord-imprint pottery at the Ross Lake Mounds sets off the mound builders of that locality as craftsmen far superior to the pottery-making mound builders of the southeastern Wisconsin group. 

After the discoveries so far mentioned, Mr. Nash made a study of the mound builders from another angle. He began by making classifications of the mound builders’ habits on the basis of the shapes of the various mounds and the relation of those shapes to the shapes of similar mounds found in other areas. 

By this method the mound marked number 3 and classified as an effigy mound, was found to be related in general type of contour and surface appearance of burial pits within the mound, to other groups of mounds of the effigy type in the Shawno, Oconto, and Kraniz Creek areas of Wisconsin. 

As the evidence, which has been found in the gravel deposits of La Crosse county, shows in the form of teeth, portions of ivory tusks, etc., large herds of hairy mammoths, which we will call scientifically “Elphius Americanum Wisconsinatis,” roamed what is today La Crosse county. These giant mammals were about nine to ten feet in height and possessed enormous curved tusks, which were very formidable weapons of offense or defense, whatever the case might have been. Teeth are usually well-preserved, and from studies made on teeth, which have been found in different parts of Wisconsin, including La Crosse county, it appears that moss and lichen composed the diet of these long-vanished brutes. Dental trouble was no doubt unknown among the hairy mammoths and their teeth are in a most excellent state of preservation. 

MAMMOTH-SHAPED MOUND IN MINNESOTA 

Here is a report of mammoth-shaped mounds being found along the Mississippi River in Wabasha, Minnesota. 

MAMMOTH IMAGE DEBATED 

BY CECIL L. MUNSON 

WISCONSIN TRIBUNE, FEBRUARY 2, 1935 

While several pictoglyph's evidently left by the mound builders have been found farther up the Mississippi river in the Wabasha, Minnesota area, showing images of the mammoths, yet, it can hardly be assumed on this basis, that the mammoths were still here when man came. This of course is open to debate. 

Erroneously “dubbed” as Indian mounds, several artificial earth tumuli in the form of burial, effigy, fortification, and ceremonial mounds, are to be found in La Crosse county. These mounds appear in the topographical plane in such areas as La Crosse, Onalaska, and West Salem, and only the trained eye of the archaeologist is able to distinguish these mounds from ordinary uplifts of earth and rock. 

PANTHERS AND ALTARS 

Here is an account of the rare opening of one of Wisconsin’s main altar mound complexes, which has earthworks of animal-shaped mounds surrounding it. 

WISCONSIN PANTHER MOUND OPENED 

WEEKLY WISCONSIN, DECEMBER 26, 1891 

Some 30 miles west of Milwaukee, on the banks of the Fox River, are interesting earth works. The high bluffs on the banks of the river offer excellent views of the surrounding country for miles around. At the site of an ancient village, a long neck of land extends into a marsh containing vast quantities of wild rice. Along this high neck of land are found many observation and sacrificial mounds, also a few effigy mounds. 

One of the most prominent and imposing of the effigy mounds represents a panther. Near the head of this mound a number of quite remarkable depressions were discovered, having evidently been used for the purpose of storing away whatever valuables the inhabitants of this village may have possessed in case of any threatened danger. 

On the summit of one of the high hills overlooking this ancient valley is an altar mound surrounded by groups of effigies. One of its peculiarities is that it is composed of two large burial mounds connected by an oblong mound. Two massive burial mounds by the lowlands nearby, upon being excavated, yielded up large quantities of bones and numerous fragments of rudely ornamented pottery. 

INDIAN LEGENDS OF GIANTS 

The skeleton was nearly eight feet in height, and the arms extended several inches below the hips. The skeleton is no doubt that of an Indian who was one of a tribe of giants who roamed this part of the state over one thousand years ago. 

The Chippewa Indians of our present day tell many legends regarding the prowess and strength of the members of their tribe moons back. One tale was of a giant warrior, who was over ten arrow lengths high and had sufficient strength to uplift tall trees by the roots and hurl huge boulders through the air. 

MOUND USED FOR GAME DRIVES 

A number of long narrow mounds are placed in such a position as to enclose a large area of land, and this enclosure, it would seem, was used as a game drive. The game was driven from the plateau, down between the lines of the two long mounds, and into this enclosure, where it became an easy prey for the hunter. 

The mounds at that distant date were quite high, and the opening between them may have been palisaded. Thus the inhabitants of this village were amply supplied with food from the forest, the prairie, and the river. 

THUNDERBIRD EFFIGY MOUND VISITED 

Near the city of Waukeesha, another village has been identified by the late Dr. Lapham, and this place was next visited. 

It is situated on the high bluffs overlooking a giant swamp. The swamp is even in the present day almost completely over grown with wild rice. It is worthy of note that a tribe of Indians is encamped upon the site of this ancient village at the present time, thus showing the desirability of the location. 

The place is guarded by observation and effigy mounds. At the southern extremity of the line of artwork, is an interesting effigy mound of imposing appearance, evidently intended to represent a bird with the wings spread in the act of flying. The head is directed to the south. The wings are long and narrow, and measure 112 feet each way from the body to the extremities. The body and neck are small and the length of the tail is 72 feet. [For other significant instances of the number 72, see the sections about the Monks Mound, and Mound 72.] It is quite a large and well-formed effigy, and is different from the other bird mounds in having an angle in the wings. 

FOXES AND SQUIRRELS DOT THE LANDSCAPE 

On the high bluffs many beautiful effigies were discovered, a large majority of them being in the shape of squirrels. The squirrels, some of them large of size, were in every conceivable attitude. One interesting effigy mound represented a fox running, with his head turned around and looking behind him. 

The groups on the bottom lands and bluffs adjoining seem to form connecting links. There are three or four lines of effigies on the bluffs, and three or four groups of parallel mounds on the bottom lands. They were arranged in a large circle enclosing an area of some twenty or thirty acres. 

THE STRANGE SUGAR-LOAF MOUNDS 

In the town of Westport a strange departure from the usual method of building mounds was noticed. The mounds referred to are of the usual conical or “sugar-loaf” form. They are six in number and are situated on the level prairie surrounded by the river and marshes. At the base of each a large perfectly circular pit was excavated and the soil thus obtained was used in the construction of the mound next to it. It was noticeable that great care had been taken to have the base of the mounds of the same size as the circular pits. 

Upon excavating one of these mounds the remains of a skeleton that had apparently been cremated was discovered. All the bones, which had not been burned by the fire, had kept their original position standing upright and apparently quite undisturbed in a kind of grayish-colored clay, whereas those portions, which had extended above the clay, had been consumed by the fire, and the surface of the clay was, as far as the fire had extended, covered by a layer of wood ashes, mingled with a layer of small pieces of charred wood and burned bones, together with bones belonging to the spine, ribs, and other parts of the body that had been more or less injured by the fire. 

TEN-POUND AXES AND LIMESTONE SLABS 

A short distance to the north a very peculiar mound covered with flat lime stones was discovered. The stones had evidently been placed over the mound for the purpose of preventing the wild beasts from penetrating it. Upon excavating this mound it was found to contain a number of charred bones, finely ornamented pottery, and several implements of stone, very unique and cunning in their design. 

Several axes of stone were found, varying in weight from four ounces to ten pounds, with grooves to admit the width for a handle. Also wedges ten inches in length, a double-bitted curved bark peeler, flint flakes for removing dirt, from 5 to 15 inches in length, stone hammers without grooves, perforated ceremonial stones of different sizes, and different types of arrow heads for shooting game in a tree, and those of a keener point for animals of a tougher skin and the small, keen, unextractable ones for war purposes only. 

SPECIAL ARROWS FOR SHOOTING FISH 

Some of the arrow points were evidently manufactured for the purpose of shooting fish. These points show great ingenuity in their construction and are finely finished. They are barbed, and from a straight base the point inclines at an angle of exactly 45 degrees, which angle would, when the point was shot in the ordinary manner, cause it to deviate the distance required to strike any object under the water. 

EIGHT-FEET-HIGH AND FIFTEEN-FEET-THICK 

WALLS OF THE GIANTS FOUND 

About one mile up the river from this place we discovered what appeared to be the remains of an entrenched camp on the west bank of the stream. The northern or upper portion is at the present time in the best state of preservation. It also lies higher, the ground sloping both eastward toward the river bank, which forms the fourth side of the camp and toward the south. The north embankment, starting from the river, at a distance of 600 feet, reaches the end of the western embankment, which has a length of 1500 feet and, at its southern extremity, meets another embankment that runs another 700 feet to the river. The enclosure has no wall on the water side, as the river is a sufficient protection. 

The bank is steep and rises at once 20 to 30 feet. The observations, or look-out towers, are thirty-six in number. The area of this enclosure is nearly twenty acres. The thickness of the wall is about fifteen feet, and its height varies from three to eight feet but has been plowed down in many places. A large number of mounds are found without the walls, and residents of the neighborhood say that many within have been plowed down. 

HARD RED BRICKS USED IN GIANT WALL 

One curious feature is that the walls are made of a kind of brick. After building and shaping the walls of clay, they were then burned into brick by means of wood piled up on each side of the structures. 

These bricks are of a red color and are quite hard and of irregular forms. The soil is still full of brick fragments, many of them of large size. In the middle of one was a stick one inch thick burned to charcoal. In nearly all of them were holes where the sedge from the river bank had been mixed with the clay and the shape of each stalk and blade was plainly visible. It seemed clear that the soil, a kind of loam, had been thrown up into a rampart and that the whole was treated with clay, matted and massed together with bushes and sedge, that all over was heaped a vast quantity of prairie grass, with perhaps huge trees, and the whole set on fire. Yet it would not have been necessary to burn trees for turning clay to brick. That transformation is wrought in Nebraska, where wood is scarce, with prairie grass alone. 

GIANT FOUND SEATED IN STONE BURIAL VAULT 

In the tangled woods near the shore was discovered a mound, which, though small, gave evidence from its great age for across the center lay a giant of the forest, prostrated by the elements that for ages it had defied. 

The work in question was conical in shape and very difficult to excavate. On removing the outer layer, which was composed of black vegetable mold, a layer of stones entirely covering the top was found. Underneath this came a layer of yellowish dirt about six inches in thickness. In this a finely-finished, grooved stone axe was unearthed. About a foot below this axe was a large flat stone, which, upon being removed, disclosed a cavity. 

In this cavity was found the skeleton of an adult mound builder, seated on the floor of clay, baked very hard. Around it were ashes and fragments of pottery, many of which exhibited great artistic skill in their various patterns. Several arrow heads, together with a number of small disks ground from fresh water clam shells, and a number of perfectly round polished stones, some of which have small grooves running completely around both ways, thus quartering the spheres were discovered. The grooves are so slight as to be used only by a small cord. 

STONE AXES AND TEXTILES THAT FELL TO DUST 

One of the large conical mounds on the outside of the fortification was next opened. After digging through a number of strata of sand, loam, and small pebbles a solid and compact layer of hard clay was reached. Underneath this layer was a number of human bones and fragments of pottery, but no ashes, nor anything to show that any fire had been used. Near the center of this bone depository were several rollers of textile fabric, preserved in shape by the moisture of the earth, but in coming in contact with the air, they were wafted away by the slightest breeze. 

Several stone axes, a spearhead, and numerous arrowheads of various types were unearthed. The excavation was continued for several feet through a kind of hard, sandy soil, but nothing being of further interest was discovered. 

TWO EFFIGY MOUNDS AT THE UNIVERSITY 

OF WISCONSIN AT MADISON 

In the north the earthworks took more frequently the form of animals, the serpent being the favorite design. Ohio and Wisconsin have several important effigy mounds, and these states have already undertaken the care of them. 

Two bird-shaped mounds, rising to a height of between two and a half to three feet above the surface, one forty-three feet long from beak to tail, the other sixty-six feet over all, have been preserved on the college campus of the University of Wisconsin at Madison. 

A WISCONSIN CEMETERY CONTAINING 

ANCIENT GIANTS 

Nearly one mile inland from this village the remains of an ancient cemetery were found. A number of cone-shaped mounds of earth were scattered promiscuously over an area of several acres. Two of the most promising then in appearance were next opened. Strata of earth, sand, and cinders were removed to a depth of over ten feet before any remains were found. 

Underneath the lowest level of cinders a large number of bones were found, and judging from the different jawbones, at least eight bodies must have been interred in the mound. The excavation was continued through alternate layers of clay, sand, and pebbles until a depth of about ten feet was reached when a large number of bones and pottery were brought to light. The pottery was highly ornamented. 

Antiquities of the Badger State, 1855 

At the village of Merton are a number of circular and oblong elevations and one called “The Cross.” This last is certainly entitled to the name from its striking resemblance to the cross as emblematically used and represented by the Roman Church in every part of the world. And yet there can be no doubt that this mound was erected long before the first Jesuits visited this country and presented the emblem of the Christian faith. An excavation has been made in the mound at the intersection of the arms, and bones of a very large size have been found. 

HUNDREDS OF MOUNDS, EMBALMED 

NINE-FOOT GIANT, AND DAMS 

SYRACUSE DAILY STANDARD, JULY 23, 1897 

While men were excavating with a steam shovel near Mora Minnesota, they found an old copper spear with a point measuring 10 inches in length and tapering to a very fine and tempered point. The weapon shows the maker to have been an adept in working copper metal. Archaeologists believe that at some prehistoric time the country surrounding Mora was densely inhabited by a race of people who were much further advanced in civilization than the Indians. 

The many mounds around Fish Lake show that a mighty race of people lies slumbering there, whose history is as yet unwritten—from the mounds of earth, which were used as sepultures for their dead, and which demonstrate beyond a doubt that they were a numerous as well as powerful people. 

EVIDENCE OF DAMS 

Two investigators excavating a mound found a skeleton apparently embalmed in a kind of cement, which seemed to be prepared for embalming the dead. The skeleton appeared to be in a perfect state of preservation and showed by measurement a height of nine feet for the individual, who was built in good proportion. As soon as the air struck it, the bones crumbled and disappeared. 

Taking the country northeast from Fish Lake, where there is a group of 97 mounds, one finds a regular system of dams extending clear to Lake Superior, 100 miles, in which one can see that prehistoric man had a regular means of travel by water from their great city around Fish Lake to Lake Superior, and going south by Snake River to the Gulf of Mexico.

next-122s

CITIES IN CIRCLES AND LINES

FAIR USE NOTICE

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. As a journalist, I am making such material available in my efforts to advance understanding of artistic, cultural, historic, religious and political issues. I believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Copyrighted material can be removed on the request of the owner.