FOR a long time it was believed by the whites that the “Indians” were incapable of doing anything beyond weaving baskets, and from this condition of ignorance much of the confusion concerning the Amerinds has arisen. The line of reasoning was based on some such syllogism as this: The “Indian” never worked; The Cliff-dweller and the Moundbuilder worked at building houses and mounds; Conclusion, The Cliff-dweller and the Moundbuilder were not “Indians.” Short, in his excellent book on the Amerinds,[296] applies unfortunately this method of reasoning to the copper-mine workers of the Lake Superior district, saying: “The labour 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.” This seems a complete misunderstanding of the people and conditions existing on this continent. Without consuming space in discussing these errors, I think my preceding pages have demonstrated that far from lacking industry and resolution, the “savage Indian” was applying himself in his way to a solution of the life problems which surrounded him. He knew nothing of the rules of commerce, book-keeping, and exchange, but there are other things in the world besides figures and accounts. The Amerind’s game-supply and clothing, and the soil about him, were not overtaxed, at least not north of Anahuac, till the whites arrived with their mania for “killing something,” and introduced on this continent the destructive practice of hunting for the fun of seeing how many animals could be killed in a certain time; or of killing for a special part of an animal, as for the tongues, or the hides and tallow, of the bison. When I first went to the Far West bison were spread over the plains by thousands. Not a single specimen can to-day be found alive outside of some private herd or the Yellowstone Park. Hunting, as before mentioned, was with the Amerind labour, not amusement, but in conjunction with their hunting most tribes carried on farming operations. It has often been asserted that the “Indian” did no work, even leaving the cultivation of the corn and squashes to the women. That the women in some of the tribes tended the crops, is true, but in others, like the Pueblos, they seldom or never touched hoe or spade. The Eastern men were hunting or building boats, or were on the warpath, hence it was necessary for the women to look after the fields.

In the Eastern regions the crops grew without watering, but in the West and South-west the soil was arid and irrigation was necessary, hence there are found to this day remnants of extensive irrigation canals built to bring rivers out on the dry land. The fact that the resident Apaches do not irrigate does not prove that these great canals were built by people who emigrated from China or India, in the absurd line of argument that has so often been advanced in discussing Amerindian affairs; it simply proves that the Apaches did not cultivate the soil, or not extensively enough to require irrigating works, and also, over again, that tribes and stocks exist in a region, in different conditions or stages of development, either at the same time or at different times. These irrigating canals are unquestionably the work of tribes similar to the Pueblos; that is now well established. They were constructed because, in an increasing population and a probable decrease of precipitation, they were found necessary. An increase of population diminishes the food-supply; in an arid country where game is not plenty this diminution is rapid. A corresponding development of a food crop is the inevitable course, unless the tribe were to migrate to more humid regions. In this case, hostile people already there might have to be met, and it would be easier to remain at the old place and invent new methods of obtaining food. In some such way irrigating and its attendant engineering developed. Irrigating canals, then, are found not where any lost or mysterious race once dwelt, nor where any particular Amerind stock were living, but where the climatic conditions and population made irrigation imperative. These conditions prevailed on this continent in Mexico and our South-west, and there consequently are found the most important works of this kind. The remains of irrigating canals in the south-western United States are numerous. There are indications of them along the fertile bottoms of the Colorado River in Glen Canyon. These bottoms are deposits of alluvial soil, generally occupying the inside of a bend at the base of the cliffs. They are of various extent, about three to eight feet above ordinary high-water mark, and are fringed with willows. I remember examining several indications of these “ditches,” but as I made no notes at the time, and it was long ago, I cannot give details. There were ruins of houses here and there, both on the cliffs and below, and the cliff faces bore pictographs. Amongst these I found, and copied, one which suggested some kind of a scaffolding and sweep for lifting water, and it is not improbable that something of this kind was utilised for raising water from the river. As there would be no opportunity to construct a canal or ditch sufficiently long to receive water by natural flow from the river owing to the shortness of the alluvial stretches, a system of lifting it into the ditches might have been devised. Water might have been obtained also in another way. The country on both sides of the river at this point is composed chiefly of barren surfaces of homogeneous sandstone which collect enormous quantities of water, like the roof of a house, during rain-storms, and pour it over the edges of the cliffs and down the alcoves and lateral canyons. This water may also have been utilised for irrigating purposes. The Mokis utilise showers by collecting and guiding the streamlets with low dams hastily thrown up by their hoes, so it is certain that all these Amerinds understood thoroughly the importance of utilising shower-water on their crops.[297]

In the Verde River region of Arizona some very large canals or “ditches” have been observed. Mindeleff has described a number of these, and I will mention one which he says is one of the finest he has seen.[298] This is “about two miles below the mouth of Limestone Creek on the opposite or eastern side of the river.” The canal extends across the northern and western part of an extent of fertile bottom land. In one place it is marked “by a very shallow trough in the grass-covered bottom, bounded on either side by a low ridge of earth and pebbles, at another it was cut through a low ridge. It is probable that the water was taken out of the river about two miles above this place, but the ditch was run on the sloping side of the mesa which has recently washed out.” It is supposed that this ancient canal irrigated nearly the whole of the bottom land mentioned, which was recently again reclaimed by another “ditch” or canal constructed by Americans. “The ancient ditch is well marked by two clearly defined lines of pebbles and small boulders.... Probably these pebbles entered into its construction, as the modern ditch, washed out at its head ... shows no trace of a similar marking.”

Farming was carried on very much as the Mokis carry it on to-day, except that the Mokis do not have to build irrigating ditches, the showers supplying by their method water enough to mature the crops. A German has recently settled south-westerly from the Mokis and, I have been told, grows good crops on his place without irrigation. Mindeleff further states that “on the southern side of Clear Creek, about a mile above its mouth, there are extensive horticultural[299] works covering a large area of the terrace or river bench.... For a distance of two miles east and west along the creek, and perhaps half a mile north and south, there are traces of former works pertaining to horticulture, including irrigating ditches, ‘reservoirs,’ farming outlooks, etc.” The reservoirs are supposed by some to have been threshing-floors, being large circular depressions lined with clay. The produce derived from these farming operations was corn, beans, squashes, and cotton, corn being the principal. Cotton was grown by some, but not all, of the south-western tribes. A great many of the tribes throughout the United States and Mexico were farmers to a greater or less extent, and many of the earthworks of the Mississippi valley were in all probability connected with agriculture. It was necessary there to protect the crops from marauding parties from wilder tribes, so, in all probability, some of the earthworks, surmounted by palisades or by watch-houses, served to guard the crops from depredations. Morgan thinks some of the square ones were foundations for communal houses,[300] and this is also probable.

On the upper Gila River in Arizona, Fewkes discovered traces of reservoirs and irrigating canals. “The large circular or elongated oval depressions,” he says, “in the immediate neighbourhood of some of the house-mounds have been identified as the sites of former reservoirs.... The reservoir at Buena Vista is one of the largest that was discovered, yet no irrigating ditches leading into it were distinctly traced.... There is abundant evidence that the ancient people of the Pueblo Viejo Valley led the water from the Gila River over the plain by means of canals for purposes of agriculture, for in many places the depressions marking the old ditches may be traced for considerable distances.... I have been informed by some of the older residents that when they came into the country, before the Montezuma and San José irrigation ditches had been constructed, the ancient aqueducts were much more conspicuous than they are to-day, and that sections of the modern ditches follow the course of the ancient waterways.”[301]

The Aztecs built long aqueducts to supply their towns, and the Mayas constructed large reservoirs. Charnay says: “According to historians of the Conquest, El Salto del Agua (a monumental fountain in the City of Mexico) and the aqueduct which it terminates replaced the ancient aqueduct of Montezuma constructed by Netzahualcoyotl, King of Tezcuco, between the years 1427 and 1440. At that time it was brought through an earthen pipe to the city, along a dyke constructed for the purpose, and that there might be no failure in so essential an article, a double course of pipes in stone and mortar was laid. In this way a column of water the size of a man’s body was conducted into the heart of the capital.”[302]

George Bancroft makes the statement that “of the labours of the Indians on the soil of Virginia, there remains nothing so respectable as would be a common ditch for the draining of lands,”[303] but in this Bancroft was somewhat mistaken, for Thomas describes[304] some mounds in West Virginia, which was Virginia when the above sentence was written, that were undoubtedly the work of some of the Amerinds formerly occupying that soil. “First the earth (unless the place selected is a bare rock) is removed to the solid rock foundation and an approximately level space from ten to thirty feet in diameter formed. Centrally on this was placed a layer of flat stones, with the edge inward, around a circle about three feet in diameter. Upon the outer edge of these, others were placed with their outer edges resting upon the prepared foundation running entirety round the circle. Then another inner layer with the best edge inward and the thinner edge resting on the outer layer, the stones of one layer breaking joints with those below, as far as the size and form would admit. Outside of the inner row, and with the edges resting on it, other circles were added until a diameter ranging from twenty to fifty feet or even more was attained, thus extending upon the sloping earth not removed in forming the foundation. The last or outer circle usually consisted of but a single layer, over which earth was thrown, being sometimes heaped up until it equalled in contents the rock pile. The height of these piles was found to vary from four to eight feet, in one or two instances reaching ten feet. But in all cases the circular space or opening in the centre continued to the top the same diameter as at the bottom, somewhat resembling the so-called ‘well-holes’ of the early western pioneers.” The stones used in these constructions were obtained by “rude quarrying in stratified cliffs one half mile distant. Some of them measure from four to six feet in length, half as wide, and of a thickness which renders them so heavy as to require from two to four stout men to handle them.” Skeletons were found in cavities of these piles “with head or feet (generally the latter) toward the central well-hole.” Coarse pottery, rude large celts, lance- and arrow-heads were also discovered, and “all the cavities of the heap not originally used for burial are filled with earth or mortar, often well baked by fire.”[305] Many mounds and other earthworks have been found in the western Virginia region, and in some of them copper articles have been brought to light.[306] In New York there are many mounds called “old forts,” of various shapes, with walls from one and one half to two feet or more high, and thence westward, throughout the Mississippi valley, mounds and earthworks of many shapes and sizes are found. They appear to be concentrated in various centres, with a sprinkling in between suggesting a number of different groups of Amerinds as their builders, which has been pretty well established by evidence was the case. Some of the mounds were of enormous size, the famous one at Cahokia, Illinois, being one of the highest and largest on the continent. Its altitude is about ninety feet, and it contains nearly 500,000 cubic yards of earth. Its purpose is, of course, not known, but it probably supported some religious structure of wood. Many of the mounds, as pointed out in the chapter on dwellings, were merely supports for buildings, religious or otherwise. Others were connected with religious rites in other ways. Doubtless the figures of birds found in Wisconsin represented the “Thunder-bird,” of which there are legends and traditions in many tribes. It was to the Amerind the cause of the thunder and lightning. These great and small earthworks were constructed in the United States by scooping up earth from the vicinity and carrying it in baskets to the designated spot. The United States mounds are, as a rule, made of earth, those of Mexico and Central America of clay or adobe brick, faced with stone or wholly of stone. “It is often the case,” says Thomas, speaking of the burial mounds of the Mississippi valley, “when a mound is carefully excavated and closely scanned as the work proceeds, especially where the material is clay or muck, that the individual loads can be readily discerned. As the earth of which the mounds is composed is usually gathered up from the surrounding surface, the interior will vary in color and character only as the soil so gathered up varies.... The places from whence material was taken to build the small or moderate-sized mounds are seldom discernible at the present day, but depressions plainly mark the points about the larger works, as the Cahokia and Etowah mounds and some of the enclosures of Ohio and elsewhere.[307] In some cases the one act has been made to serve two purposes, that is to say, the earth used to construct the mound or other work has been taken from one or two points so as to leave a basin-shaped excavation for holding water, or to form a trench to serve as a protective moat, or for drainage or other purposes.” For a long time it was believed by a great many persons, scientific and otherwise, that these piles of earth, often called pyramids quite erroneously, could not have been made by ordinary Amerinds, but as the study of the native American proceeded and the data of what he did and does actually do began to be recorded, it was perfectly plain that it was not at all necessary to look beyond the “Indian” for the origin of the mounds—that is, beyond the “Indian” as he was known in the region where the mounds occur. It was found that he had erected mounds after the arrival of the whites, and if he built one or several he might have built all. It was not a very difficult operation to dig up earth and carry it a few hundred feet and drop it on a pile. The transportation of the stones referred to above was far more laborious, and modern Amerinds do a great deal harder work. The Navajos are fairly good labourers, and the Mokis carry all their wood from forests fifteen miles away. It is work to carry water up the cliffs where the Mokis live, it is work to hoe the corn, it is work to tend and herd sheep. On full investigation it seems strange that it should ever have been thought that the mounds were not “Indian” because they represented work. Fowke has estimated that a mound a hundred feet in diameter and twenty feet high could have been erected by the “Indians” in forty-two days. I have seen Uingkaret Utes in Arizona carry on their backs with ease for twelve or fifteen miles loads that would average about thirty or forty pounds. People who can do this could carry earth in short stretches for forty or fifty days. It is probable, however, that the mounds were not built by steady and consecutive labour, but rather by intermittent effort, after the usual fashion of Amerindian work.

Many mounds and earthworks were erected for defensive purposes at points controlling river passages or trails, where the advance of foes invading a country could be checked. There were also fortification works like the so-called “hill-forts” of the eastern portion of the United States, and the “cérros trinchéras” of northern Mexico. Quoting again from Thomas,[308] one of the best authorities on mounds and “Moundbuilders”: “The most extensive example of the ‘hill-forts’ is that known as Fort Ancient, in Warren County, Ohio. This crowns a spur of the bluff some two hundred and fifty or three hundred feet high, which here overhangs the Miami River. The area embraced is only some seventy-five or eighty acres, but the length of the wall, which follows all the windings and zigzags of the margin of the bluff and of the side ravines, is a little over three miles and a half. This is one of the best-preserved monuments of the Ohio valley, the surrounding wall being uninjured save at points where the turnpike cuts through it, and at a few places where ravines have been formed since it was abandoned. This wall, which is partly of stone, but chiefly of dirt thrown up from the inner or upper side, varies in height from three or four to nineteen feet, and from twenty-five to seventy feet in width at the base. As the earth has all been taken from the inside (except along the high wall which crosses the level at the rear) and thrown outward on the crest of the slope, this has left an inside ditch. As a rule, the wall is strongest and highest at the points of easiest approach; and at some places the outside slope has been artificially steepened, proving beyond any reasonable doubt that the work was one of defence.”

The Amerinds, though not always engaged in war, were always on the defensive against stronger tribes whose warriors might appear on the scene. These stronger tribes were not necessarily Amerinds of a different stock or strangers; often, as in the South-west, defensive works were erected against relatives as much as against different tribes, just as we, in our time, have had three wars that were not with another race. In New Mexico the villages, besides being built on the communal principle, were often surrounded by a defensive wall. Such a wall can still be traced around the ruins of Pecos, as well as in parts at other ruins. The hill-forts of the Ohio kind were undoubtedly the result of circumstances similar to those that prevailed in the South-west: a desire to combine as closely as possible defence and the cultivation of the soil. They were often interdependent. If conditions changed, or a tribe grew strong enough to dominate the situation, the defences might be abandoned. These works do not necessarily imply that their builders were defeated and driven back by wilder tribes. They indicate only that the builders felt defensive works necessary at the time of the building; their circumstances then demanded them. They do not indicate difference in race or remote origin. The constructors were Amerinds, though not all one stock. There were tribes of different stocks in the Mississippi valley all the time, just as there were in other parts of the land, and the attempt that has been made by some writers to establish the idea that the Mississippi valley was once occupied by a single mysterious race that was overpowered and driven out or exterminated by the “Indians” has no good foundation.

One of the most extensive groups of these defensive village sites is that known as the Newark group, in Ohio.[309] Here are circles, squares, and straight-line mounds, all connected, covering an area of two or three square miles. There are two large circles in this group which approximate true circles, and have been the basis of much unnecessary speculation as to how “Indians” could have “done it,” with the conclusion that the “mysterious race” did it. When it is remembered how easy it is to construct a fairly accurate circle in a great many ways, it is surprising that anyone should have thought “Indians” could not do it, when they did and do so many things that require more skill. One clear-headed and accurate writer reminds the reader that people who could manufacture cloth could certainly make a rope with which to lay out a plan. Almost all Amerinds could make rope, the Pai Ute, Uingkarets, and Shevwits Utes, who cannot make cloth at all, making excellent rope and cord. But it was not necessary to make a rope of fibre. Amerinds have always been skilful at tanning deerskins, and buckskin strings braided make one of the best kind of ropes; indeed, it does not even require to be tanned, as it can be worked in the rawhide state. We should have to descend low in the scale of humanity, indeed, to find a tribe that could not make a cord long enough to lay out any circle yet discovered on this continent. There is nothing difficult about it. The largest circle at Newark has a diameter of about a thousand feet. This would require a rope only five hundred feet long, which would be nothing for any tribe on the continent to make.

Just why the Newark works have the particular arrangement they have would be impossible to say without knowing the customs of the tribe that built them and the circumstances of the time. It is probable, however, that some enclosures were farm fences. The plan suggests two communal villages, closely allied and united by a sort of runway, which, while preventing hostiles from separating the two villages in time of attack, always afforded a safe passage for the women and children from one town to the other. The builders were evidently beset by enemies at the time the works were occupied, but this does not necessarily imply that when the works were abandoned the occupants were driven out or annihilated, for their enemies may have been people of their own stock with whom they eventually became reconciled, or the enemies may have passed on to other fields, or the occupants of the works may have grown more powerful and at length have assumed the offensive. Abandoned works, I repeat, do not necessarily mean annihilation of the builders. The South-west offers countless examples of the truth of this statement. Villages and works were abandoned there for a variety of causes; sometimes it was little more than caprice. Quoting Thomas again: “Nor is the theory that, while some of the monuments are due to the Indians, others are to be ascribed to a different race, justified by the data, or reasonable, as no one is able to define the characters which distinguish the classes. If the Indians built mounds of the most advanced type and of large size, as history shows positively the natives of the Gulf States did, there is no necessity for attributing the works of the middle and northern sections to a different race. That the Moundbuilders were divided into various and often contending tribes, is shown by the works for defence and protection, as also by the evidences of varying customs. Yet there is nothing in the antiquities to indicate a higher culture than that of the southern Indians or a greater difference between the people of the different sections than existed among the natives when first encountered by the whites.” Granting this, there is still nothing to prove that some of these tribes did not come from a long distance off, for the Amerinds very often have been travellers.

Few mounds or earthworks are found east of the Alleghany Mountains, north of Tennessee and North Carolina, but to my mind this is not positive proof that the people who built earthworks in other places did not live there. The Amerind changes his methods so completely when circumstances demand, that it would not be safe to say that those who built mounds west of the Alleghany range did not live east of it. If the Mokis should have migrated to Ohio in priscan days, they certainly would not have built stone houses there. They would have erected mounds and wooden houses, for the reason that the stone would have been difficult to secure. Many tribes have readily changed from one method to another in building, as pointed out in a previous chapter. With the Amerind, it depends so much on circumstances what he will do in a given locality. For example, the traditions of the Mokis require their kiva to be under ground. This is easy in their cliff-land, but how would it be in Louisiana? Even in Zuñi surface kivas are found acceptable.

In Mexico there are numerous large mounds which, as noted before, sustained buildings, now commonly called “temples.” “At Teotihuacan” says Charnay, “the pyramid of the Sun is six hundred and eighty feet at the base by one hundred and eighty feet high.... Like all great pyramids they [the Sun and Moon pyramids] were divided into four storeys, three of which are still visible, but the intermediate gradations are almost effaced. A temple stood on the summit of the large mound, having a colossal statue of the Sun, made of one single block of stone.... The interior of the pyramid is composed of clay and volcanic pebbles, incrusted on the surface with the light porous stone, tetzontli. Over this was a thick coating of white stucco such as was used for dwellings. Where the pyramid is much defaced, its incline is from 31 to 36 degrees, and where the coatings of cement still adhere 47 degrees.”[310] One of the largest mounds in Mexico and one of the largest in North America is the Great Mound of Cholula. It is about one thousand feet square at the base, of which the approximate area is over twenty acres. It now has much the appearance of a natural hill, surmounted by a church of modern construction. There are “three distinct projections, surrounding and supporting a conical hill, and separated from each other by wide depressions. The entire mass consists of adobe bricks laid in adobe clay, undisturbed except where erosion, earthquakes, or the hand of man have mutilated it. The bricks break joints and are of various sizes.”[311] The altitude is about two hundred feet. Limestone slabs were used for steps. Bandelier does not ascribe it to the Aztec or Nahuatl stock which occupied the region at the time of the Conquest, but to some anterior tribe.

It has been called a pyramid, with other mounds in Mexico and Central America, but this is not a proper term for these Amerindian works.

They have not the character of the Egyptian pyramids, nor were they constructed with the same object. The pyramids were tombs, while the large Amerind mounds were foundations for buildings. Almost every ancient building of any consequence in Mexico and adjoining regions, as well as far up into the United States, stood on a mound of greater or less elevation. The so-called “palace” of Palenque, in which Stevens lived while studying the ruins, “stands on an artificial elevation of an oblong form, forty feet high, three hundred and ten feet in front and rear, and two hundred and sixty feet on each side. This elevation was formerly faced with stone, which has been thrown down by the growth of trees, and its form is hardly distinguishable.” See illustration of a part of this palace, page 403.

The chief ruins at Copan are all on a huge mound, and at Mitla the edifices have mound foundations, or rather platforms. A more or less elevated site for his dwelling-place or temple, whether natural or artificial, seems to have been almost universal with the Amerindian people from the Isthmus of Panama to British Columbia. The amount of labour expended in constructing the artificial foundation platforms and mounds was something prodigious.