Cooper County, Missouri - Chapter 1: Archeology, 1919

Race Of Mound Builders

History is speculative, inferential, and actual; speculative when it records conclusions based on hypothesis founded on facts, far removed; inferential when conclusions are reasonably based on facts; actual, when facts alone are recorded. The historian deals with all three, more or less, in combination one with the other. This chapter is purely speculative. The editor is not an archaeologist, and does not attempt herein to arrive at, or lead the reader to a conclusion. Houck, in his "History of Missouri," claims to have located through investigators something like twenty-eight thousand mounds in the state. These mounds are usually called Indian mounds, and he does not assert that all that existed in the state were discovered by his investigators. He mentions nine in Cooper county. There are doubtless more than ninety and nine, and probably many more leveled with the plow.

The only purpose to be conserved throughout this chapter is to open up the vista to inquiring minds, that their observations and discoveries may be preserved for the future. The casual observer sees an elevation of ground. The geologist, or archaeologist, if you please, by close and careful examination, determines to a certainty, or thinks he does, that (3) this is not caused by erosion, or by an internal upheaval of the earth. He concludes, therefore, that it has been raised by man. Here geology, paleontology, and archaeology, the three sister sciences, begin their labors hand in hand, "And the mind recoils dismayed when it undertakes the computations of thousands of years which have elapsed since the creation of man."

As our feet grope in darkness, irresistably down the ages to the night of the unknown, these three sister sciences hold aloft a torch that illuminates, in part at least, our darkened pathway through the dim vista of the vanished past.

Contents of Mounds. - By excavating these mounds we find peculiar instruments of the chase and hunt, vessels, bowls and statuary, some with peculiar markings and engravings. Such mounds have been discovered throughout the country in almost countless thousands, and they were here when the white man first set foot on American soil. The articles found in them were unlike those used by the Indians, known at the time of the first white men. The same Indians lay no claim to having built these peculiar structures of earth, and hold no tradition that those who preceded them had built them, and some of the tribes claim traditions running back thousands of years, prior to their acquaintance with the white man.

Origin of Mounds. - The scientists reason thus: first, the mounds are not of natural formation ; second, they were built by man ; third, the white man did not build them; fourth, the Indians did not build them; therefore, it follows as a logical conclusion that they were built by a race inhabiting our country long before the red man. This, in fact, is the consensus of scientific opinion, yet not all agree. Dr. C. A. Peterson, former president of the Missouri Historical Society, and a student of Missouri antiquities, uses this forcible language: "Credulity has been taxed to the utmost, and columns of crude ideas and inane arguments have been published by half-baked archaeologists, who established great antiquity for the mounds and an advanced civilization for their builders, and the extreme and ridiculous flights which the imagination has been allowed to take in building up the stories of the mythical mound builders may be well illustrated by this case. About, thirty years ago an amateur archaeologist in exploring quite a modern Indian mound reported that he had found the skeletons buried beneath it to be a proper complement in numbers and arranged in proper order and position to represent the three principal officers of the Masonic Lodge at work, each officer being equipped with the implement and insignia of his respective office. To those attracted to a contemplation of mystery, and to revelers of the occulet, it was the most marvelous and entertaining discovery ever reported in American archaeology, but there were a few incredulous, unfeeling scoffers, who would not accept the story as true, because the discoverer did not produce the bones of the candidate and the goat. In conclusion, let it be reiterated that there was never an iota of evidence in existence tending to establish the contention that some people, other than the American Indian, erected the mounds and other earthworks found in connection with them, and the physical condition of the abandoned works and their contents could not justify a belief that any of them were erected more than one thousand years ago."

The Indian mounds are especially numerous along the Missouri River, in the townships of Saline, Boonville, and Lamine, and are found in varying numbers in other sections of Cooper County. It is to be regretted that more attention has not been paid to them in the past to the end that what found therein would have been preserved for investigation and study. It is said that on the old Hopkins farm in Saline township there are five of these mounds. It is related on reliable authority that in the early seventies a young physician, fresh from college in Kentucky, and with budding honors, debonair and faultlessly attired, located in Saline township. He was smaii of stature, willowy in form, a Beau Brummel, polite and obliging. Visiting at the Hopkins home one Sunday, a balmy spring day, where were gathered a few of the local beauties of the neighborhood, his attention was directed to a large mound of earth in the yard. He thought it strange, and had never before seen such an elevation of earth in a yard. Being deeply interested, he asked one of the youn? ladies present what it was for. She replied that it was an Indian mound, and that an Indian who had been killed was buried there. The young doctor was greatly interested. She told him that if he would stand on top of the mound, and say in a loud voice, "Indian, poor Indian, what did they kill you for?" the Indian would say, "Nothing at all." The doctor valiantly essayed the mound, ascending to the top, and in a stentorian voice cried, "Indian, poor Indian, what did they kill you for?" He waited a few minutes for the response, and finally realized that the young lady was right, for the Indian said nothing at all. The young doctor felt completely sold out. Following his motto of evening up old scores, he set out energetically to do so. He courted the young lady, and eventually married her, thus evening the score.

"The pre-historic works of Missouri attracted attention from the earliest settlement of the country. Stoddard says, 'It is admitted on all hands that they have endured for centuries. The trees in their ramparts, from the number of their annulae, or radii, indicate an age of mort than four hundred years.' Holmes says that the manufacture of the pottery-ware found in the mounds 'began many centuries before the advent of the white race.' The Indians found by the first white explorers did not recognize these mounds as belonging to them, either by occupying them or using them, or by their traditions, although the surprising number of such mounds in some sections of the country, many of them very large, singular in form, and conspicuous in the landscape, must have attracted the attention of the most thoughtless of them. Marquis de Nadailic says that these 'mounds in North America are among the most remarkable known.' Featherstonehaugh was so impressed by these historic remains in Missouri that he concluded that they were to the tribes that built them what the pyramids were to the ancient Egyptians.

Probable Race of Mound-Builders. - To what particular race the mound-builders belonged has been a subject of much discussion. Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg declares that the pre-Aztec Mexicans and Toltecs were a people identical with the mound-builder. It is also said that the mound-builders were of the same cranial type as the ancient Mexicans, Peruvians, and the natives of the Pacific slope as far north as Sitka; that is to say, brachycephalic ; and Winchell thinks that 'the identity of the race of mound-builders with the races of Anahuac and Peru will become generally recognized. 'Squier supposes that they belonged to an 'extinct race.' Atwater gives it as his opinion that the 'lofty mounds' - ancient fortifications and tumuli - 'which cost so much labor in their structure.' owe their 'origin to a people much more civilized than our Indian' ; and Atwater was familiar with the capabilities and characteristics of the American Indian. Others, again, suppose that they were the same people who afterward came from the northeast into Mexico. Bancroft says that the 'claims in behalf of the Nahua traces in the Mississippi region are much better founded than those which have been urged in other parts of the country.' He asserts that the remains in the Mississippi valley 'are not the works of the Indian tribes found in the country, nor of any tribes resembling them in their institution, and that the 'best authorities deem it impossible that the mound-builders were even remote ancestors of the Indian tribes.' In his opinion, there was an actual connection, either through origin, war, or commerce, between the moundbuilders and the Nahuas. This he infers from the so-called temple mounds, a strongly resembling the pyramids of Mexico, implying a similarity of religious ideas; the use of obsidian implements; the Nahua tradition of the arrival of civilized strangers from the northeast. And Baldwin, in reviewing the various traditions recorded by many of the earliest Spanish chroniclers of Mexico, concludes by saying that it seems not improbable that the Huehue, or 'Old Tlapalan' of their tradition, was 'the country of our mound-builders' on the Mississippi. Albert Gallatin thinks that the works erected indicate 'a dense agricultural population,' a population 'eminently agricultural,' a state essentially different from that of the Iroquois or Algonquin Indians. Yet, he also expressed the opinion that the earthworks discovered might have been executed by a 'savage people.' Brinton also thinks that these earthworks were not the production 'of some mythical tribe of high civilization in remote antiquity but of the identical nations found by the whites residing in these regions.' Schoolcraft says that the Indian predecessors of the existing race 'could have executed' these works. Lewis Cass believed that the forefathers of the present Indian 'no doubt' erected these works as places of refuge and security. Jones is of the opinion that the old idea that the mound-builders were a people distinct from the Indians is 'unfounded in fact, and fanciful.' Lucian Carr in an elaborate article says there is no reason 'why the red Indians of the Mississippi valley, judging from what we know historically of their development, coukl not have thrown up these works.' Dr. C. A. Peterson, in a paper read before the Missouri Historical Society in 1902, concludes that 'there never was an iota of evidence in existence tending to establish the contention that some people, other than the American Indian, erected the mounds and earthworks found in connection with them ; and the physical condition does not justify the belief that any of them were erected more than one thousand years ago. In support of this view he says, 'an immense memorial earthwork over the body of a popular Osage chief was erected by his tribe, citing Beck's Gazeteer. But J. F. Snyder asserts that the Osages 'built no earthen mounds,' and that the mound mentioned by Dr. Beck as having been built by them near the head-waters of the Osage was the result of glacial action. Snyder also quotes Holcomb, who states that 'the mysterious races of beings, termed mound-builders never dwelt in Vernon County,' and that no fragments of pottery have ever been found there, nor noteworthy archaeological specimens,, and few, if any flint, arrow-heads, lance-heads, stone-heads, etc., although he admits that the Osages erected stone heaps occasionally over the bodies of their dead to preserve them from the ravages of wild beasts.

One remarkable discovery made by Mr. Thomas Beckwith, who has devoted many years to the careful and intelligent exploration of the mounds of the Mississippi country, would seem to tend to support the contention that the more ancient mound-builders of the Mississippi valley, at least, belonged to the Nahual race of Mexico. It should be observed that in making his explorations Mr. Beckwith always proceeds with the greatest circumspection, not, like so many others, hastily digging and burrowing into mounds, looking only for perfect pottery ware, carelessly overlooking and throwing everything else away; on the contrary, nothing is too small for his notice, and it is his invariable practice to gather up and preserve every fragment, small and insignificant though it may appear. The exploration of the mound does not always satisfy him. In some instances where the surrounding country seems to warrant it, he also explores the soil for several feet below the surface at present surrounding the mound. In making such sub-surface explorations Mr. Beckwith, at a depth three feet below the present surface, in a number of instances, found pottery balls imbedded in the clay, near mounds explored by him. During his various explorations of mounds, he has collected in this way perhaps a half-bushel of such pottery balls of various forms, some ovoids, some round, about the size of a walnut, others again lenticular; the ovoids being in the form of Roman glandes, as described by Evans ;that is, fusiform, or pointed. Such pottery balls of various shapes were in use as sling-stones among the Charrus of South America. The Marquis de Nadailicc says that the Chimecs, who were of the Nahuatl race, in their wars used bows and arrows and 'slings with which they flung little pottery balls which caused dangerous wounds.' Such artificial pottery sling-stones, being uniform in size and weight, gave a greater precision of aim, an advantage which is recognized by the barbarous tribes of New Caledonia today, where sling-stones made out of steatite are used by the natives. The sling was an offensive weapon of the Aztecs, and the stones thrown with great force and accuracy. Among the Mayas of Yucatan slings were also extensively used. But as an offensive weapon it was unknown among the North American Indians."

Egypt to have the oldest written history. Man, calling to his aid the hieroglyphic records of Egypt, as well as the inscribed bricks and cylinders of Assyria, can trace back the annals of man's history no further than fifty centuries. Egypt was schooled in the sciences and nobler arts, and rich in knowledge when Remus and Romulus were unborn and Italy inhabited by uncouth and barbarous savages, when Athens was not spoken, nor Greece begun ; when Europe, now teeming with her millions, was wilderness and sparsely inhabited by races unlettered and unlearned, yet Egypt has her ruins of unnamed cities where a people of a forgotten civilization trafficked and traded, pushed and jostled.

The prehistoric remains of Egypt are a never-ending source of historical revelation to the student of archaeology. Even the supposed myth of Troy vanished in the face of these established facts ; yet more wonderful - beneath the ruins of discovered Troy, the excavator has found the ruins of another city. It would seem that wherever the soil would support and the climate permit, there man has lived and had his being, and that practically every country produces evidence of a forgotten and prehistoric race.

In the Dark Ages, a few centuries back, ruthless might, with its accompanying wreck and ruin, effaced much of the world's gems of art, literature and architecture, and even the torch of learning was kept but faintly burning in the cloisters of the monk. The world is littered with the devastations of war; and ever, man has built and destroyed.

The years, as we know them in written history, may be but as a day in the eons upon eons of man's development. Generation after generation of men in a ceaseless flow have passed, and the earth is filled with the graves of the forgotten, above which we "strut and fret our brief hour upon the stage." Our country's history is the history of the white man. We have but filmy traditions of the Indians, and if another race preceded it, it must be discovered in what is commonly termed the Indian mounds.