Cass County, Missouri - Chapter 6: Ancient Mounds, 1917

Cass County has its mounds of wonder. There are several in the northern and northwest part of the county. Just south of Harrisonville, are two mounds, the Ament Mound and the Brookhart Hill. Geol¬ ogists are practically agreed these are the result of glacial action. Prob¬ ably the most interesting mound in the county is the Round Mound, northwest of the town of Austin. It is situated in section 15, township 43, range 31, and is conical in shape. It was long thought to be the work of former Indian occupants of the county. It is beyond doubt the work of some ancient people. In it is found pottery and other articles, evidently the work of man.

It is now generally accepted that Indians were not mound builders. The Indians found by the earliest explorers elsewhere did not recognize these mounds as belonging to them either by occupying or using nor by the traditions of their people. It is admitted that these mounds have endured for centuries. Trees hundreds of years old have been found growing on some of these mounds. The quality of pottery found in them indicates some people knew the art of manufacturing pottery of a high quality centuries before the advent of the white man.

To what race the mound builders belong has been a subject of much discussion and probably will never be known. Whether they are an extinct race, or whether the noble red man is his degenerate offspring, remains a mystery not yet, if ever, solved. We do not offer an opinion

Geologists have delved into these mounds, including the one named. Here was found indubitable evidences that the mound builders had lived there and worked the soil ; spades, hoes, arrow heads and pottery were found in such mounds. Some are found to be sepulchres, others per¬ haps used as lookouts and still others are assuredly fortifications. Be that as it may, we find them and naturally it suggests to us dreams of long ago. To muse relative to things which were of peoples who pos¬ sibly were greater builders than our own race. To imagine what?

The old world peoples of today are apt to sneer at our country, say it is sterile in interest and has no ancient history. Our own people travel over Europe to visit mouldering cathedrals and look upon places and things whose history is forgotten while our own lands hold the most wonderful prehistoric relics of the whole earth. All say we have no monuments, no ruins, no massive remains of former ages; no castles, no mouldering abbeys, no baronial towers and dungeons, nothing to con¬ nect the imagination and the heart with the past, no recollection of for¬ mer ages, to associate the past with the future. Yet in Missouri alone we have upwards of 25,000, such as those of our own county, and some of still greater interest, for our amusement, instruction and wonder. Isn't it possible the scenery of Europe is but passing vision compared with the vast and multiplied wonder of our homeland.

Our prairies were the sublimest prospects of nature. See the sun rising over a boundless plain, where the blue of the heavens in all directions touches and mingles with the verdue of the flowers. The view is far more glorious than that on which the sun rises over a barren and angry waste of sea. The one is soft, cheerful, associated with life, and requires an easier effort of the imagination to travel beyond the eye. The other is grand, but dreary, desolate, always the prototype of death and destruction. On our prairie lands we have these mounds, proudly rising above the plain. At first we may only discern them as hills, on closer inspection we catch the regularity of breastworks and ditches and discover they are the labors of art and of man.

When evidences convince us that human bones mouldering in these masses, we dig about them and bring to light their domestic utensils, we are compelled to believe the busy tide of life once flowed here. We see at once the races who wrought this work were of a different char¬ acter from the present generation. We then begin to inquire, is there any tradition, is there a faint record to throw any light upon the habi¬ tation of the peoples of this other age? Is there no scope besides these mounds for imagination, for contemplation of the past? These peoples, what of their joys, their sorrows, their bones, are they all buried in these mounds? Look, there is the beautiful prairie, over which they strutted through life's poor play. These forces, hills and mounds, lift their heads in unalterable repose, and furnish the same sources of con¬ templation to us, they furnished to those of the mound builders' genera¬ tion, who passed this way.

But, were they petty tyrants, who let loose their half savage vassals to burn, plunder, enslave and despoil their neighbors? We find no re¬ mains of the vast and useless monasteries, where ignorant, lazy monks dreamed over their lusts, or meditated upon vile plans of infamy. This race on these charming plains, had every call from scenes surrounding them to a contented existence. Innocent and peaceful they probably were, for had they been reared amidst wars and quarrels, they would doubtless have maintained the land and their posterity remained. Those who have visited the tombs, seen the castles and towers of the old world, and the grandeur which our present cities display, should look upon these lonely tombs of the desert as they rise from the boundless and unpeopled plains, and here let their imaginations reach forth and ask, what of this unknown race? What were their ambitions? What their hopes? Why have not their names survived as the great of the present day? Let us go to the top of "Hall's Mound," near Austin, in this county, when the evening twilight is closing in, and there in our musings reflect and read the lines written by another nearly a century ago:

Casting their fragrance on each lonely tomb In which your tribes sleep in earth's common womb, And mingle with the clay from which they rose.