CHAPTER XII.

THE CHARACTER OF THE MOUND BUILDERS AND THEIR

INSTITUTIONS.

With the lapse of years, and by the increasing exactness and caution of investigation that has been noticed as a special feature of the last half-century, some indications of the mental condition of the Mound Builders have been fairly established. It required much study and care to distinguish between the skulls of the old Mound Builders and the modern Indians, who sometimes buried their dead in the mounds; but after a time these "intrusive burials," as they are called, were found to be so unlike the original ones as to be easily distinguished by a competent observer, and a very marked difference was noticed between the crania of the earlier and later race. By the persevering researches of able men many skulls, unquestionably those of the Builders of the Mounds, have been collected, and the information they convey made out.

They had a retreating forehead, and the mass of the brain was about as much less than that of the modern Indian as his is less than that of the modern European. The Mound Builders were not an intellectual race. It was long questioned whether this low forehead was not due to the fashion of applying external pressure to it in infancy, as has been practiced by the Flathead Indians and some other American tribes; but the conclusion has been reached that this was not the case. Sculpture in the ancient ruins of Central America reveals the same type of head, and various facts intimate that it was the natural form of the skull. On the other hand, the distribution of the brain, which has much to do with the tendencies and capabilities of character, were favorable. The arrange

ment of the brain in the European favors the intellectual faculties; in the Indian brain-force is more largely distributed to the animal faculties. The proportions of the skull in the Mound Builder indicate that his intelligence was not overborne by strong and fierce passions. In this respect the hints of the Mounds are fully sustained.

A mild and rather feeble character rendered him an easy prey to the influence of authority. The Indian had a strong personal will and a strength of passions that would not tolerate arbitrary control; while the race of the Mound submitted to it without resistence. This permitted a strong organization and the massing of activities and labor under the control of one will, which was indispensable to the commencement of civilization. The skull corroborates the testimony of the Mounds that they were not warlike. They were like the Peruvians, indisposed to contest but submissive to command, and when they did fight probably preferred to do so behind entrenchments.

A vigorous, progressive civilization requires vehement passions controlled by a strong intelligence. The primitive and partial culture we see here is the natural product of a quiet, inoffensive race, limited equally in their passions and intelligence, but easily held to the discipline that would result finally in considerable skill. This submissiveness and patient persistence, so contrary to the nature of the Indian, was fully competent to produce all the monuments and works of art whose remnants we find in the mounds.

For the most part they must have been of ordinary or medium size. It is not a point easy to verify, for they very often reduced the body to ashes, or nearly so, by fire during the funeral ceremony, and where this was not the case the bones were so much decayed as to crumble into dust when exposed to the air. There have, however, been few indications of variation from the usual standard of size sufficient to attract attention. In the demolition of a large mound at St. Louis bones were found indicating

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that the persons in life had been rather above the ordinary stature. In Illinois, below that city, many years ago a series of graves under low mounds were found, in which the skeletons were small, and it was supposed that a race of pigmies had been found. As in many other cases, at different points in the Valley, these bodies were protected by flat stones which were so placed as to form a coffin or sarcophagus. As no similar cases of diminutive skeletons have been discovered, except where they were evidently relics of children, it is inferred that these were not adults. The crania which have been preserved indicate ordinary size. Their choice of the most fertile localities in the Valley and their ability to devote so much labor to purposes apart from the struggle for the means of subsistence indicate that they dwelt in the midst of plenty and were possessed of abundant physical vigor.

The Peruvian mummies, preserved in large numbers, show that people to have been of small stature; but they lived mostly in the rarified air of a mountain plateau. There is much to indicate that the Mound Builders were strong and healthy, that there were many leisured classes, and that parties from the Ohio and the Lower Mississippi visited the mines of Lake Superior, the shores of the Gulf, the mountains of North Carolina and of New Mexico. The general tone of revelation by the Mounds shows us a quiet, industrious people, developing, for the most part, in undisturbed peace and plenty, whose strongest passions were connected with the religious sentiment. They had much taste in the minor arts and a good deal of personal vanity as indicated by the profusion of well-wrought ornaments found in many of the sepulchral

mounds.

The evidences of a settled government are very positive, although based only on inference. The untutored instincts of the primitive man are those of the animal. He knows no higher law than his own necessities and owns no control but that of his own willful caprice. Only outward pressure, which

he finds no adequate means of resisting, can overcome his love of leisure, when a supply of food has rendered him comfortable in body. To renounce control of himself and to accept the will of another as the law of his life requires much time and a steady pressure until submission becomes a well-settled habit. This habit is that of being governed, and it is only when a government has grown to the full proportions of an institution and all the resources of the people are unhesitatingly placed in its hand that it can lay broad plans and carry them out in detail. In this view the very existence of the mounds is proof of a strong government.

When we find fortifications, deliberately and wisely planned, requiring the painful toil of many thousands of men for months or years, we can not well escape the conclusion that they were in the habit of obeying an authority which exerted a sovereign control over the lives and property of the people. This is still more strongly the case when we see a sacred inclosure drawn around an intricate but harmonious series of immense works covering more than four square miles of surface with, square, circular, elliptical and octagonal inclosures, great mounds and long-drawn avenues included within what must, originally, have been lofty walls.

The evidence is tolerably clear that all the mounds in the Valley were built by a homogeneous people. The same ideas were plainly involved in them all. They vary in different parts, more or less, yet they intermingle and melt one into the other; no distinct line separates them. If the inclosure is chiefly characteristic of the region north of the Ohio, and the platform mound, or truncated pyramid, more prevails at the south, the inclosure is sometimes found from Mississippi to Georgia, and the elevated platform still more often appears in the Northern Valley. Only a friendly spirit, union of interests and intimate intercourse would lead them to avoid interiors and select the most accessible river valleys for their chief settlements. They certainly had nothing to fear from

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each other which could not have been the case had various governments controlled on the Scioto, the Wabash, the Upper and Lower Mississippi. Independent governments are necessary rivals in the early stages of civilization. The absolute rulers over nations of submissive slaves can not tolerate ambition in each other.

It seems probable that a peaceful union existed on a religious base, as in ancient Egypt, and that the kingly and priestly offices concentrated supreme control in one person, as in Peru. The fable of a descent from the Sun has secured a long and quiet lease of power to the royal families of various primitive nations on each continent. The indications seem to point to some similar fiction among the race of the Mounds, and this joined the Valley in a harmony and quiet unbroken till danger from the northeast, in the later days of their history, rose in formidable proportions, leading to the construction of the numerous fortifications from the Alleghany River to the Wabash. Their size and elaborate structure intimate powerful enemies and the danger of frequent attacks, while various hints of a sudden catastrophe suggest an overthrow so complete that no prolonged stand was made in the lower Valley.

It would be very natural that the seat of government should be near the meeting of the two great streams, on which were the principal masses of the people, and that the finest art relics should be found in that neighborhood. This last has actually been the case, in some lines. The signs of a dense population are numerous while the absense of fortifications intimates that no danger was apprehended, the line of the Wabash containing the nearest defensive works.

One of the pyramids of Egypt, if the ancient history is to be relied on, was built by the labor of three hundred and sixty thousand men, continued for twenty years. The great mound of Cahokia was one third the size of the great pyramid of Egypt, and several mounds in the Valley equal