The evidences are abundant that some mysterious rites were performed at the altar mounds; cremation only may have been practised, but we fear that even more awful and heart-sickening ceremonies took place upon these altars as well as upon the high temple sites in which human victims may have been offered to appease the elements or the sun or moon by their death agonies. What splendid ceremonial, what mystic rites administered by a national priesthood in the presence of a devout multitude may have accompanied these horrible sacrifices, are beyond even the limits of conjecture. Besides cremation, inhumation was also practised extensively. Multitudes of mounds were devoted either partly or exclusively to such uses. Mr. Tomlinson, the owner of the Grave Creek Mound, who sank a shaft from its original summit to its centre, and intercepted it by a tunnel along the surface of the ground, speaking of the latter excavation, remarks: “At the distance of one hundred and eleven feet we came to a vault, which had been excavated before the mound was commenced, eight by twelve feet and seven in depth. Along each side and across the ends, upright timbers had been placed, which supported timbers thrown across the vault as a ceiling. These timbers were covered with loose unhewn stone, common to the neighborhood. The timbers had rotted and tumbled into the vault. * * * In this vault were two human skeletons, one of which had no ornaments, the other was surrounded by six hundred and fifty ivory (shell) beads, and an ivory (bone) ornament six inches long.” Thirty-five feet above the bottom vault another was found containing a skeleton decorated with copper rings, plates of mica and shell disks. The number of disks cut from the shell known as the Buscycon perversum and collected by the excavators was 2350; of mica 250 specimens, and of the little shell known as Marginella apicina, 500; all of which had been pierced and strung as beads. Ten skeletons were subsequently found together upon enlarging the horizontal tunnel. Ashes, charcoal and burnt bones were also discovered in large masses. Though this was the largest of this class of mounds, still the general characteristics of the contents are the same in all of them, and are usually disposed in the same relative position to each other.[69] One of the most interesting explorations of sepulchral mounds was that conducted in the autumn of 1865 by Professor O. C. Marsh, assisted by Mr. Geo. P. Russell, of Salem, Mass., in what is known as the “Taylor Mound,” situated two and a half miles south of Newark, Ohio. The mound was ten feet high and eighty feet in diameter, and was surmounted by a forest of oak trees ranging from two and a half to eight feet in thickness, while the decaying trunks of a former growth were lying upon the ground. The mound was excavated from the apex downward. Five feet from the surface a pipe and a tube of stone unknown in Ohio were found. Seven feet from the top, in a thin white layer of earth, a string of more than one hundred beads of native copper were found around the neck of a child about three years old. The salts of the copper had preserved the cord of vegetable fibre on which they were strung. The beads were about one-fourth of an inch in length and one-third in diameter. They evidently had been hammered out of the metal in its original state, and the workmanship displayed no inferior skill. One foot deeper the remains of two adults, male and female, were found carefully buried in layers of bark, their heads towards the east, and the body of the female resting upon that of the male skeleton. Immediately above these were found a considerable number of charred human bones and the evidences of cremation or human sacrifice in honor to the couple (probably man and wife) below. The Professor even expresses the fear that the wife—who appears to have been about thirty years of age—may have been put to death and buried above the remains of her deceased consort. A foot deeper the party found another layer of charcoal, ashes and charred bones, similar to the above, and immediately beneath it a carefully-buried skeleton, much decomposed, lying in a white layer of earth, and with its head toward the east. A few inches below this skeleton several carelessly-buried skeletons were found near the natural level of the earth. Below the natural surface a cist six feet long, three feet wide and two feet deep was found containing the remains of eight or more skeletons, which seem to have been imperfect when buried. The remains had been thrown into the grave in a careless and perhaps hasty manner. In the grave were found nine lance and arrow-heads of flint. Six small hand-axes, one of them of hematite and the others of compact greenstone or diorite, a small hatchet of hematite, a flint chisel and scraper, fine needles or bodkins made of the metatarsal bones of the common deer, a whistle made from the tooth of a young bear, and spoons cut from the shells of river mussels. A rude vessel of clay was found, but broken, while several bones of animals, all but two of existing species in Ohio at present, were discovered; though it is worthy of remark that the remains of the deer were of a size seldom attained by the species at the present day. All the skulls found in the mound were broken, and all but two so badly decayed that no effort was made to preserve them. These two were of small size showing the vertical occiput, prominent vertex and large inter-parietal diameter. There is abundant evidence that the mound had never been disturbed by Indians.[70]

One of the best evidences which we have of the systematic government and habits of the Mound-builders, together with the comparatively advanced state of the practical arts among them, is found in the ancient copper mines of the Lake Superior Region so extensively operated by them at quite a remote period.[71] These were first discovered by Mr. S. O. Knapp, agent of the Minnesota Mining Company, in 1848. One excavation explored by this gentleman was thirty feet deep, filled with clay and a mass of mouldering vegetable matter. Eighteen feet from the surface he found a mass of copper ten feet long, three feet wide and two feet thick, weighing over six tons. By digging around this great lump of metal, he observed that it was resting on “a cob-work of round logs or skids six or eight inches in diameter, the ends of which showed plainly the strokes of a small axe or cutting tool about two and a half inches in width”. The wood, from its exposure to moisture, had lost all its consistency, and opposed no more resistance to a knife-blade than would ordinary peat. After having raised the mass of copper over five feet along the foot wall of the lode on the timbers by means of wedges, the ancient miners had abandoned the task. The walls of the mine still show the marks of fire; charcoal and stone mauls were taken from this and similar excavations. The largest of these mauls weighed thirty-six pounds and was encircled by a double groove around its centre. Withes were probably wound in these grooves by which two men could wield the maul very effectively. The number of smaller hammers of greenstone and porphyry removed from these works by Mr. Knapp exceeded ten cart-loads. In one of the pits a rude oak ladder was found, made by trimming the branches of a tree at a distance from the trunk to leave a sufficient foothold. Wooden levers, preserved beneath the water, were also of frequent occurrence. A copper maul, shaped by pounding in a cold state, and weighing upwards of twenty pounds, was found in this locality, as well as many well-formed copper implements designed for various purposes. Upon a mound of rubbish near one of the excavations, Messrs. Foster and Whitney saw a pine stump ten feet in circumference—the trunk having been broken fifteen feet from the ground—which must have grown and died after the earth was thrown up. Mr. Knapp mentions a hemlock which he found growing on a heap of rubbish which had 395 rings of annual growth. Fallen and decayed trees of a previous generation were found lying across the pits. In front of the Waterbury mine are blocks of stone weighing two and three tons which had been removed by the ancient miners from the shaft, and when observed by Colonel Whittlesey, they were covered by a forest growth of the full size and kind common to the neighboring region. Under a pile of rubbish the remains of a trough of cedar bark was brought to light and had been used to carry off water baled from the mine by means of wooden bowls, some of which were preserved by water in the mines. Mr. S. W. Hill communicated to Dr. Foster in 1872 the discovery of mining pits in Isle Royal, measuring fifty feet in depth.[72] In the Ontonagon region for thirty miles traces of the ancient miners abound. The idea that the Indians formerly worked these mines was abandoned shortly after their discovery. They possess no tradition of copper mines, nor did their ancestors visited by the Jesuit Fathers in the early part of the seventeenth century obtain any intelligence of mines, though they penetrated this region in 1660. They often mention the occurrence of loose masses of copper found in the shape of boulders, but could learn nothing from the Indians as to their origin. It is quite certain that no traditions were current among them on the subject. “Instead,” says Col. Whittlesey, “of viewing copper as an object of every day use, they regarded it as a sacred Manitou, and carefully preserved pieces of it wrapped up in skin in their lodges for many years; and this custom has been continued to modern times.”[73] Father Allouez, in his Relation, has described this custom.[74] Father Dablon, who shortly afterward visited the Lake Superior tribes, has described their superstitions concerning an island where the missionaries first met with copper.[75] That the Mound-builders were these ancient miners, there is abundant evidence. Col. Whittlesey has described a collection of copper implements from Carp River containing pieces of native silver, such as have often been found in the Ohio mounds.[76] We have already referred to this peculiarity of the Lake Superior copper. The use of copper by the Mound-builders was very general all the way from Wisconsin to the Gulf, and the labor involved in a journey of a thousand miles from the Ohio Valley to the copper regions, the toil of the summer’s mining, and the tedious transportation of the metal to their homes upon their backs, and by means of an imperfect system of navigation, indicates either industry and resolution such as no savage Indian ever possessed, or a condition of servitude in which thousands occupied a position of abject slavery.

No permanent abodes were erected by the miners in this region, no mounds were constructed, but the indications all point to a summer’s residence only and a return to the south with the accumulation of their toil when the severities of winter approached. Frederick von Hellwald expresses it as his opinion that the Mexicans obtained all their copper from the Lake Superior mines, and adds that no evidences exist that copper was mined in Mexico or Central America prior to the Spanish Conquest.[77] Humboldt affirms that various metals were mined by the Mexicans, but does not specify copper.[78] Col. Whittlesey and Prof. Andrews estimate that in the ancient Lake Superior mines worked by the Mound-builders, the removed metal would aggregate a length of one hundred and fifty miles in veins of varying thickness. This fact certainly indicates that great supplies were transported southward.

This remarkable people was evidently possessed of the beginnings of science; at least if the Davenport and Cincinnati tablets are genuine, astronomy must have received considerable attention at their hands. In the former tablet we observe a cycle divided into twelve months (which, however, is so modern and coincides so strictly with our division as to excite suspicion of fraud), while in the latter we have the number 368 as the sum of the products of the longer and shorter lines, suggestive of an approximation to the number of days in a year. Other supposed astronomical instruments have been discovered in the mounds of Ohio, and several of these, antique tubes, telescope devices, were discovered in the course of excavations made in 1842 in the most easterly of the Elizabethtown group, West Virginia. Mr. Schoolcraft makes the following statement concerning them: “Several tubes of stone were disclosed, the precise object of which has been the subject of various opinions. The longest measured twelve inches, the shortest eight. Three of them were carved out of steatite, being skillfully cut and polished. The diameter of the tube externally was one inch and four-tenths; the bore eight-tenths of an inch. By placing the eye at the diminished end, the extraneous light is shut from the pupil, and distant objects are more clearly discerned.”[79] A silver figure found in Peru represents a man in the act of studying the heavens through one of these tubes, and Captain Dupaix saw a stone in Mexico bearing the figure of a man sculptured on its side in the act of using a similar tube.[80]

With reference to the civilization of the Mound-builders, however much writers may differ, we think the following conclusions may be safely accepted: That they came into the country in comparatively small numbers at first (if they were not Autochthones, and there is no substantial proof that the Mound-builders were such), and during their residence in the territory occupied by the United States they became extremely populous. Their settlements were widespread, as the extent of their remains indicate. The magnitude of their works, some of which approximate the proportions of Egyptian pyramids, testify to the architectural talent of the people and the fact that they had developed a system of government which controlled the labor of multitudes, whether of subjects or slaves. They were an agricultural people, as the extensive ancient garden-beds found in Wisconsin and Missouri indicate. Their manufactures afford proof that they had attained a respectable degree of advancement, and show that they understood the advantages of the division of labor.[81] Their domestic utensils, the cloth of which they made their clothing, and the artistic vessels met with everywhere in the mounds, point to the development of home culture and domestic industry. There is no reason for believing that the people who wrought stone and clay into perfect effigies of animals have not left us sculptures of their own faces in the images exhumed from the mounds.

They mined copper, which they wrought into implements of war, into ornaments and articles for domestic use. They quarried mica for mirrors and other purposes.[82] They furthermore worked flint and salt mines. They probably possessed some astronomical knowledge, though to what extent is unknown.

Their trade, as Dr. Rau has shown, was widespread, extending probably from Lake Superior to the Gulf, and possibly to Mexico.[83] They constructed canals by which lake systems were united, a fact which Mr. Conant has recently shown to be well established in Missouri.[84] Their defences were numerous and constructed with reference to strategic principles, while their system of signals placed on lofty summits, visible from their settlements and communicating with the great watercourses at immense distances, rival the signal systems in use at the beginning of the present century. Their religion seems to have been attended with the same ceremonies in all parts of their domain. That its rites were celebrated with great demonstrations is certain. The sun and moon probably were the all-important deities, to whom sacrifices (possibly human) were offered. We have already alluded to the development in architecture and art which marked the possible transition of this people from north to south. Here we see but the rude beginnings of a civilization which no doubt subsequently unfolded in its fuller glory in the valley of Anahuac, and spreading southward engrafted a new life upon the wreck of Xibalba. Though there is no evidence that the Mound-builders were indigenous, we must admit that their civilization was purely such—the natural product of climate and the conditions surrounding them.[85]