Preble County, Ohio - Chapter 3: Mound Builders and Indians, 1915

Chapter 3: Mound Builders and Indians

These two races of men, if they are two races, are treated together because the Indian race seems like the sequel of the Mound Builder, if it be not the same.

There are about one hundred of the Mound Builders* mounds in Preble county, and one fortification attributed to them. The mounds are chiefly found along Twin creek, Seven Mile creek and Four Mile creek, the largest being in Harrison and Israel townships, and being what are% known as cd> servation mounds and burial mounds, or tumuli.

As observation mounds, the three mouhds near Lewisburg are the clearest illustrations in the county, one mound being about a mile south of the village, near the track of the Cincinnati Northern railroad : another is about a mile and a half east of the village, while the third mound is some two miles or more northeast of the village on the slope of Miller's Fork, and from the top of any one mound the other mounds may be seen, and from the tops of the three the watchmen could look for long distances up and down Twin creek and Miller's Fork, and signal to the other watchmen. That use, of course, is a guess only, but it seems that they might have been so used on account of their situation.

About a mile northeast of Fair Haven is a mound of considerable size, located on the bottom land of Four Mile, which has been found to be composed largely of gravel, and many loads have been hauled away and used for road purposes, and in excavating some minor stone and flint implements were found.

A Prehistoric Man Disinterred

The mound seems to be an isolated one, and may have been a burial mound or a sacrificial mound - so-called. The mound at the Eaton cemetery was a burial mound, and it has been made doubly so by white men. Samuel Clear, the father of Hawkins Clear, who has been one of the sextons of the Eaton cemetery so long that it may almost be said the "memory of man runneth not to the contrary," helped dig the grave and prepare the foundation for the monument to Lieutenant Lowery and his men in 1847, and to his son, my informant, he gave the following statement : That the mound was originally some two and one-half to three feet higher than now, but they cut the top down to have space for the monument, and dug the grave about the center of the mound, and soon came upon a skull, and as they dug deeper they uncovered the bones of an entire human skeleton, that of a large man, who had apparently been buried in nearly a standing position and at about the original surface of the ground they found ashes and burnt wood and charcoal, and they burrowed under the earth below the northwest corner of the monument and deposited the bones and skull therein ; then, depositing the box containing the bones of Lowery and his men in the center, and built the foundation of the monument around and over the box, and the modem soldier and the ancient warrior peacefully sleep side by side, awaiting eternity's dawn. Mr. Hawkins Clear has been employed at the cemetery so long that his memory of many things connected with it is more reliable than the records and always has been found trustworthy, and I think full reliance should be given his statement, getting it as he did from his father.

There is but one known fortification work of those ancient peoples in Preble county, and I add a survey thereof. It is located in Lanier township at the junction and between the streams of Twin creek and Banta Fork.

James L. Street was county surveyor of the county between 1840 and 1848 and was one of the most careful and skillful surveyors of the county, so much so that if the surveyors of the present day, who, in tracing old lines, strike one of his lines or surveys, feel justified in resting their decisions on the statements of Uncle Jimmie Street, as he is called by all.

A Personal Reminiscence

Some twenty-five years ago the writer was employed by the county commissioners to copy into the surveyor's records the field notes left by Mr. Street of his surveys in books small enough that he carried them in his pocket, and among them I found the survey and description of the old fort, and copied it into the surveyor's record that it might not be lost. It is as follows, verbatim :

"Ancient Fortification on the point between Banta Creek and Twin Creek at their Junction, Surveyed July 28th 1846. The ditch begins at 8 rods from Banta Fork on the N. E. bank of the creek, which bears S. 40 E. The Works are on the S. W. *4 of the S. E. of Sec. 10 T. 5 R. 3 Thence took bearings for the ditch from the above mentioned 8 rod point, N. 230 E. 10.80 poles to a point on E. side of the ditch, Thence N. 35 i-3°

E 16 poles to a point on E. side of ditch, Thence N, 6o° E. 6 poles to a point on the ditch to which an ancient wall bears S. 180 E. At about 30 rods from Banta Fork and bears N. 180 W (S. 180 E) runs what appears to be a fragment of a wall composed of granite boulders, of which the Sotfth and South East of the inclosure abounds. Thence same 4 poles to E. side of ditch; Thence N. 71^° E. 14 poles to a gateway; Thence same 4 poles to a point on S. bank of ditch; Thence N. 77 J20 E 8 poles to S. bank of ditch;

- Thence S. 85 0 E. 10 poles to Do; Thence S. 56^2°. 10 poles to a gateway; Thence S. 30° E. 10 poles to a point on S. W. bank of the ditch; Thence S. 8° E. 8 poles to the S. end of the ditch, thence N. 85° E. 7 poles to W. bank of Twin creek, which bank is here nearly perpendicular and about 40 feet high; Thence S. io° E. 13 poles to an angle in the bank; Thence S 470 W. 28 poles to a point in the curve of the bank. The Creek is now 30 poles from this point, but no doubt formerly ran at the foot of the bluff, which at this curve lies at an angle of almost 45°; Thence S. io° W. 20 poles to an angle in the bluff. This point appears to have been thrown out 25 or 30 feet, and is composed of a conglomeration of limestone, gravel, granite, gravel and clay which has become very hard and has been detached in large masses, the bluff being now some 30 feet perpendicular and is washed by the creek. Thence S. 41 0 W. 28 poles to the apex of the angle formed by Banta Fork and the Main branch of Twin Creek. - James L. Street Co. Sur. Preble County, Ohio."

Trails And Tales Of The Indians

Are they an extinct race? Before we ask too many questions let us deal with the Indian in Ohio, so far as our information can be said to have reasonable authenticity. The Erie or Cat nation of Indians dwelt along the eastern and southeastern shores of Lake Erie extending west to near Sandusky, and between them and the great Iroquois nation a long war was waged, and finally, the Iroquois chiefs related to !the early French explorers, about 1650 the Eries built a stockade fort near Erie, Pennsylvania, and the Iroquois raised a great army of several thousands and besieged, stormed and took the fort and killed over two thousand Erie warriors, besides those killed outside, and pursued and scattered the outer villagers until they fled the state and took refuge and became a part of the tribes farther north and west. Thence for a period of fifty years there were no permanent Indian tribes residing in Ohio, but it became simply a hunting ground for the terrible Iroquois and the southern, western and northern tribes.

The Wyandots or Hurons formerly occupied the western St. Lawrence basin, but, although of the same blood, a war caused by an Indian Helen of Troy broke out with the Iroquois tribes, called the Five Nations and later the Six Nations, and the Wyandots were driven west and settled along the eastern shore of Lake Huron, where they were found by the early French explorers; but the enmity of the Five Nations finally pursued them, and after a long war they were driven across the rivers and took refuge among the Michigan tribes, and finally drifted down and settled in Ohio, south of western part of Lake. Erie, some time previous to 1740, having their chief village at Upper Sandusky.

The Senecas and Tuscarawas and Mingoes, a part of the Iroquois, about the same time arrived and settled (if we can say an Indian tribe ever settled) in northeastern Ohio. While the Miamis came crowding in from Indiana and claimed by occupation the valleys of the Miami, of the lake, and the Great and Little Miami rivers, and as far east as the Scioto. The Ottawas settled along the western and southwestern shores of Lake Erie. The Cherokees from the south had crowded north and quite a tribe of them settled along the Ohio river in eastern Ohio, but were driven away by the Iroquois. The Delawares had a shadowy tradition that they originally started from the Pacific shores south of Puget Sound, and in about one hundred years crossed the continent, and when white men came they were found on the Delaware river. They called themselves leni-lenapes, meaning "men." After having some trouble with wfttfei men, they moved west through Pennsylvania and finally settled along the Muskingum valley and the upper valley of the Scioto and the Oleantangy river, on which last they had two villages at Delaware, Ohio, whence the name.

The only remaining Indian tribe found in Ohio by the early white men is the Shawnees, or Sbawanoes or Shawnese, who were the wandering Arabs of America. It is claimed some of them were in Virginia at the time of Capt. John Smith, and they seem to be mentioned as being in Illinois at the time of the earliest explorers and were later found in Tennessee and Alabama, and were driven out by the Cherokees, Creeks and Choctaws for their arrogance and quarrelsome disposition, and moved into Ohio and stopped on the Scioto and in the Mad river valley during the first half of the eighteenth century.

and that the northern Indians finally won to the Ohio river, but Kentucky ever remained a battleground and had no permanent Indian settlement, and into that unoccupied territory the white man, under Boone and Jiis companions, drove the entering wedge for the settlement of the Ohio valley.

The mounds of the Mound Builders extended perhaps no farther north than central Wisconsin and from the Kocky mountains on the west to western New York and Pennsylvania, thence south through West Virginia and the western part of the Carolinas, and south to the Gulf of Mexico, and southwest into Mexico, and they are much more numerous in the Ohio valley, and especially in Ohio. It must not be forgotten that the largest mounds and pyramids of the world, except in Egypt, are found in Mexico. And it must be remembered that there are thousands of mounds similar in Europe and Asia, and some even in Africa.

The greatest mounds and pyramids of Mexico and Central America were built by a race called Toltecs, that preceded the Aztecs and vanished before the coming hordes of Aztecs and it is not certain that any known race today represents them. Did they become the Peruvians? The mounds and works of those ancient peoples, whoever they were, were plainly not built with reference to any one period of events, but it seems to be conceded by all investigators thereof, that some were built many years, perhaps centuries, before others were built. Some are plainly effigy works, having something to do with their religious rites, as the Great Serpent Mound of Adams county.

Primitive Cutlery

It is an admitted fact that some Indians of the United States built stockades and heaped up ridges of earth about them to protect the barriers and many were the fortresses built by the Indians of Mexico, Central America and Peru, who are reported to have had a tradition that they came originally from the North. The Northern Indians, when white men first came, had no knowledge of iron or its manufacture or use nor of any useful metal, but a few copper ornaments and simple tools that had been hammered out from nuggets of copper with stone hammers. Their knives were stone or flint knives made by chipping with stone hammers, a tedious process, and many of the knives and spear heads were very effective in war and in the chase. All the mound Builder, works were built of earth and gravel, or of stone of such size that they could be handled by men, because, so far as we know, neither they nor the Indians had domesticated any

That copper is found in northern Michigan and Wisconsin in nuggets of ounces to chunks weighing hundreds of pounds, in a very pure state, and mica is also found along the Allegheny mountain chain from Georgia to Pennsylvania and could be picked up and carried and traded among themselves by those peoples is obvious, because the Indians are the original Yankee traders of America. Then, there were several tribes of Indians of the United States that were known to have been Mound Builders and to have built what the white man would call rude fortifications. Many writers claim that there must have been a great empire and a dense population to have built all the works. A regular mound one hundred feet in diameter and twenty feet high contains a little less than two thousand cubic yards, and a worker could readily carry a cubic foot of dirt and it was gathered right around the mounds usually, so that it can be readily seen that it took no large body of workers to build a mound that size, which is larger than three-fourths of the known mounds. The stone walls were simply loose stone piled on each other, no mortar or cement of any kind, and no dressing of the stone. The Mound Builders had no alphabet, knew nothing of manufacture or use of metals, no beasts of burden, never dug a well, nor even walled up a spring, and so far as we know did not have even hand mills to crush corn, only mortar and pestle. The claimed mathematic exactness of some of the ancient works and fortifications has been badly shattered by modern examination.

Conjecture On Indian Origin

Does it seem unreasonable to suppose that the Indian has been an inhabitant of this continent for some thousands of years and as the tribe became more numerous a part sloughed off and sought new lands and that such process kept up through the centuries that the people were shifting from place to place, as compelled by necessity or driven by their enemies or occupying land conquered, taking with them their ideals, building new mounds or fortifications, either for defense or to hold a position gained? These things going on for ages would fully account for the different ages of the old works and mounds and for their number; and would it not be a good answer when we know of the many and various races sprung from the same ancestry, that have swept over and changed western Asia and southeastern Europe and northern Africa?

The Indian race has produced some men of most remarkable ability, such as Red Jacket and Joseph Brant of the Iroquois, Pontiac of the Ottowas, Little Turtle of the Miamis, Tecumseh of the Shawnees, Chief Joseph of the Nest Perce, Osceola of the Seminoles, Logan of the Mongoes and Tarhe, the Crane of the Wyandots, and others, who have shown most remarkable abilities as leaders, warriors and statesmen, and they were only beaten by the bravest and best leaders of the white race. Now, with a race that produced such men, why does it seem improbable that they were capable of piling up stone or building a bank and stockade to protect themselves pr of piling up dirt to make a mound? But it is said that the Ohio Indians have no traditions that any tribes built the mounds and works. It has been shown above that all the tribes of Ohio were new comers themselves, that they had driven away former tribes, to be themselves driven away by the all-conquering white man.

When it is remembered that the Indians had no written language and all knowledge gained was handed down from father to son, and from the pressure of enemies or of necessity the tribes were moving about much of the time, it would seem that the tradition that existed more than a century must have been of some event very important and vital to the tribe. It is now about one hundred and forty years since the outbreak of the Revolution and let the reader try to trace the history and traditions of his own family tree, step by step to that time without referring to any writing or documents, and he will be convinced that traditions are quickly dimmed and rendered unreliable without writing to make them enduring.

The white men found the Iroquois and Indians of the Gulf States and the Mandans of the northwest, all built mounds and used wood and timber to build their houses and forts, and the latter tribe even plastered their houses with clay to keep the wind away. Both the Mound Builders and the Indians made rude pottery and knew how to boil down salt spring water and get salt, and the Indians taught the white man how to make maple sap into sugar.

The Iroquois and kindred tribes are classed by ethnologists dolicocephalic, or long-headed race, while practically all the other tribes of the United States called Algonquins, are styled bracyhcephalic or short-headed or round-headed race, but both kind of skulls have been found in the mounds opened.

Place Of Origin Still Unsettled

The Indian and the Mound Builder hunted with the same kind of weapons, had similar tools and similar methods of burial, and raised similar crops so far as known. I do not say that the Mound Builders of the Ohio

Valley were the ancestors of the Indians, nor do I say that they were not The facts in outline are given that each may judge for himself. All I can say is that from all the information I have been able to gather, personally and by reading, the evidence so far known leads me to believe that they were the same race. But, as a certainty, everyone must admit that the identity of the Mound Builders and the place of origin of the Indian race are unknown, and. probably will always remain so. Many writers employ pages to show how the Indians must have migrated from Asia into America and that they belong to the Tartar race, or Jewish race, or a . mixture of those races with other Asiatic races ; or that they are remnants of a race of people who inhabited the fabled Atlantis when some earth convulsion buried nearly all of that continent, if it was one, beneath the waves of the .Atlantic ocean, leaving only the Canary and West Indies, as islands, but such are only guesses. As far as evidence is concerned, there is not more evidence that the Indians came from Asia than there is that the Asiatics came from America, and that the differences are the result of selection, environment and climate producing their slow effects through the long ages of the human race until the accumulated effects seem to be irreconcilable with the theory that they are one race of people. The Creator holds the secret and we shall probably never know until that time when "We know even as we are known."

Of the Indian tribes of Ohio each had certain characteristics that distinguished it from other tribes. The Wyandpts refused to acknowledge any superior and preferred death to surrender, hence very few were ever prisoners. The Delawares were the most friendly to the white men and the sacredness with which they kept their promises to the white men proves that they regarded honor as a quality of "men-" The Iroquois have been called the Romans of America, because they combined and conquered and brought under subjection nearly all the surrounding tribes and such as refused to bow the neck to their sway, were either exterminated or driven entirely away. The Miamis occupied this county and were the most agricultural people of all the tribes and the most forehanded in providing for their future wants, and seemed to have a clearer vision of the future of their race. While the Shawnees were the warriors par excellence, among the tribes, and while having fewer, warriors than a number of other tribes, they could put up a harder fight and lose fewer men than any ; and it is claimed that in every battle they had with the white men, and they were many, the white men suffered a greater loss than the Indians, except two battles, Fallen Timbers and Battle of the Thames.

The Survival Of The Fittest

As to the origin of the Indians let me offer a question : It is claimed by our geologists that just after the recession of the glacial period, there existed a race of men in both Europe and America and that they have found remains of skeletons in the loess of that distant epoch that clearly establishes that fact and that the peoples of Europe and Asia are probably the evolutionary descendants of that prehistoric race grown to their present state by the process of the survival of the fittest. Granting their starting premise, I ask, will not the same process of reasoning just; as firmly establish the Indian as the descendant of that primeval race of post-glacial men who existed and had their being in America? I do not expect that either theory will be proven effectually until the location of the Garden of Eden is established to a certainty. The Pottawattamies and Chippewas were closely related to the Miami tribe and some bands wandered into Ohio for a short time and a band of some one hundred or more Pottawattamies camped for a number of years along Twin creek, even after white men began to settle in the county and they stated to the early settlers that the Twin Valley was the healthiest location their tribe had ever known. It has been handed down as a family tradition from the early white settlers of the county that there were several Indian villages in the county. One near Camden along Paint creek and one on Whitewater near New Paris, and one along Twin creek near its crossing of the east county line, and that these were all Miamis. While along Twin creek above West Alexandria, it is certain there was quite a large village of Pottawattamies and higher up some Chippewas.

Cornelius Van Ausdall started a general store in 1808 in Eaton and kept for sale nearly everything called for in those days, and he related to men yet living that Tecumseh and his Shawnees, and Little Turtle and his Miamis and Captain John and Indian John and Pottawattamies and Chippewas, all had traded at his store, buying such implements of war and chase and ammunition as they needed, together with salt and the coarser and more durable fabrics of cloth. There were some of these Indians who lingered in the county until several years after the close of the 1812 war.

That the Indians were right or wrong in their acts, I do not say. They were sometimes sinners and sometimes sinned against. There were bad men among them, as there are among the whites, but they had many noble men among them, men who prized their honor and who loved and hated, and fought and died for what they thought was right. And I close by saying that I believe that most white men today wish that more of Penn's Quaker policies with the Indians of Pennsylvania had been tried on the tribes east of the Mississippi. I have read with avidity every work on the Mound Builders that I have been able to find, and I must say I admire the ingenuity of some of the writers when they argue that a mighty, numerous and prosperous people have become a vanished race; but when I sought for proven facts to establish such a human calamity there was only:

It is stated above that the Mound Builders' work extended west to the Rocky Mountains and I do not wish to be understood that there are none beyond, for I am aware that there are said to be some of them scattered over the great western plateaus, but they appear to be isolated and not nearly so numerous or important, or so extensive as in the territory described. It is also a fact that iron implements are claimed to have been found in some of our eastern mounds, but I think it will be conceded by all critics that in every case that afforded a means of examination, it has been shown that in all probability they were deposited subsequent to the advent of white men on this continent, while, some cases have been shown to be pure fakes, buried and resurrected like Barnum's Cardiff Giant.

I know it may be said a lawver wants the evidence to be clear and convincing, but I believe that a careful cross-examination will come nearer establishing the facts devoid of all local coloring than any other method, and I ask the reader to do a little cross-examination for himself in reading eloquent descriptions of the Mound Builders and the sometimes sympathetic and sometimes vituperative descriptions of our American Indians. The mounds seem to be from the stone age of the human race in America and keen and inquiring men are seeking to read the signs that have been left by that race of builders. Whether they succeed or not must be left for the future historian.

Penultimate Conclusions

To sum up the whole matter, it can be asserted that there was a race of men that preceded the Indians as the white men first knew the Indians, that built extensive works and mounds much more so than the Indians of our knowledge, and that both races, if they were two races, inhabited all of our county and our state, but whether the so-called mound builders were the progenitors of the Indian race, we do not know for a certainty; each for himself must examine the evidence, and then can only say, "I believe they were, or they were not, the same race."

That some of the Mound Builders* works are very old I submit the following: On a shale and slate bluff nearly one hundred feet high, on the east bank of the Oleantangy river about fourteen miles north of Columbus, Ohio, is an old fort, semi-circular, visited by the writer, a boy then nearly fourteen years old, in i860. Its banks were some five feet or more high, with a ditch outside so deep that in one place the head of an ordinary man just came to the surface, and on the embankment grew a number of large trees, one an oak, so large that myself and my companion about my age stood up to it and tried together to span it with our arms, but could not by a foot or more. On a number of beech trees were cut the names of many visitors. Among them I remember Tom Corwin, S. P. Chase, W. Shannon, H. Stansberry, Tom Ewing and a number of others. There I first learned their names. That white oak tree might have been growing when Columbus began his voyage.