CHAPTER 1

THE ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS

THE question, "What race of men first occupied the territory now embraced within the limits of Buchanan County?" is one that can be answered only by conjecture. The immediate predecessors of the present white inhabitants were the modern Indians or red men. The predecessors of the latter, here as in the whole Mississippi valley, if not throughout the entire central portion of North America, from ocean to ocean, are now supposed, by nearly all archaeologists, to have been a separate race of men; to whom has been given, on account of the works which have survived them, the name of "Mound Builders." But whether they were really a different race from the Indians; or, if they were, whether they were actually the first human beings that ever occupied the soil of our country, can never be certainly known. After having read all the leading arguments in favor of the commonly received hypothesis, we frankly confess that we have never been fully convinced that the Mound Builders were a different race from the modern Indians.

It is true that warlike instruments and domestic utensils that are not now in use by the Indians, are found in the mounds. But many of the implements found (notably the spear and arrow heads, stone axes, hammers, etc.), are the same as those used by the present race of Indians for a hundred years, or more, after the continent was discovered by Europeans; and perhaps, by certain tribes, even at the present time. And circumstances of which we can know nothing may have caused the race to give up the use of certain implements—just as many articles of household furniture in common use among the whites of this country a hundred years ago, now exist only as curiosities.

It has always seemed to us that too great stress has been laid upon alleged anatomical differences—in the matter of stature, cranial peculiarities, etc—between the Mound Builders and Indians. It is known that the modern tribes have often used the ancient mounds as places of sepulture; and hence it has often happened that exhumed skeletons which some experts have pronounced to be those of Mound Builders, have by others, equally skilful, been declared to be those of modern Indians. This, of course, proves conclusively that there are no anatomical differences between the two alleged races, which can serve as infallible tests of race identity. But even if these differences were so radical and comprehensive that no expert could ever be deceived in deciding to which people any given skeleton belonged, that would be no absolute proof that the modern Indians are not the lineal descendants of the Mound Builders; since all such differences may have been produced by natural causes—such as changes in personal habits and modes of life—operating through long periods of time.

Again, the fact that the present race of Indians have never been known to construct mounds, since the discovery of the continent by the whites; and that they have no knowledge, nor even any national tradition as to the origin of such structures, is regarded as a proof that the Indians and the Mound Builders are different races. But whoever constructed these works, ceased to construct them when there was no longer any occasion for their construction—just as log-cabins and "dug-outs" cease to be built by pioneers, as soon as the pioneer days are over. And it is entirely certain that the Indians would have been quite as likely to know something about the origin of the mounds, if their ancestors had driven out or exterminated the Builders, as they would if the mounds had been built by those ancestors themselves. But where no written records are made, and no poetic narratives are transmitted from sire to son, the memory of events soon dies out. Thus we read that "the tribes of the lake region so soon forgot the visit of the Jesuit Fathers, that their descendants, a few generations later, had no tradition of the event." And a similar fact has been put on record concerning the Indians of the Mississippi valley, who soon lost all recollection of De Soto's expedition, which, as Dr. Foster remarks "must have impressed their ancestors with dread, at the sight of horses ridden by men, and at the sound of fire-arms, which they must have likened to thunder."

It is also stated by Sir John Lubbock that "the New Zealanders, at the time of Captain Cook's landing upon their island, had forgotten altogether Tasman's visit, made less than one hundred and thirty years before". Whoever the Mound Builders were, therefore, it is not to be wondered at that the present Indians have no knowledge and no coherent traditions concerning them. For these reasons the argument in favor of the theory that the Mound Builders were of a different race from the Indians has never seemed to us conclusive.

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But there are positive objections, which shift the burden of proof, and put that theory upon the defensive. The weightiest of these objections clusters about the question, "What became of the Mound Builders?" This is a fair question, and one to which the theory is bound to give a reasonable answer. But we confess we do not see where any such answer can be found. Did they retire of their own accord, and leave their beautiful and fertile country (the fairest and richest country that the sun ever shone upon) to be taken ossession of peaceably by another race of men? Such a migration from such a region would find no parallel in history; and we cannot conceive of its taking place in prehistoric times. Were they driven out by the ancestors of the present Indians? All the relics of the Mound Builders go to show that they were much more civilized and powerful than the red men who now occupy their places. And, unless the latter are themselves the Mound builders, degenerated during the lapse of ages, there is no reason to suppose that they wre ever any more powerful than they are to-day. It is, therefore, contrary to all that we know of the results of the collisions between opposing races to suppose that the Mound Builders were conquered and driven out of their territory by the Indians. But if, contrary to all that history teaches in regard to ethnic movements, they were expelled by the Indians, or emigrated of their own accord, the question still remains: Where did they go? They have left no traces of their peculiar civilization in any other region; nor has there ever dwelt upon this continent any other known people to whom they bore a closer resemblance than to the present race of Indians. We are aware that an effort has been made (notably by Mr. John T. Short, of Columbus, Ohio, in his ingenious and very readable work, published during the present year, 1880, on "The North Americans of Antiquity") to show that the Aztecs of Mexico were the descendants of our Mound Builders. But this hypothesis presuposes that a conquered people, retiring to a region and climate less adapted (as all history shows) than the one they left to the elevation and improvement of the human race, nevertheless made a rapid advance in civilization; building immense cities and establishing a well-ordered government; while their conquerors, occupying the more favorable territory upon which they had seized, continued for untold centuries a nomadic and barbarous race, without manifesting any desire or disposition to improve their condition. Of course this is possible; but it requires some degree of boldness to pronounce it probable.

And beside all this, it is not consonant with the teachings of history to suppose that a great and powerful race, such as the Mound Builders are represented to have been, either migrated en masse, or were expelled by a foreign foe. Small tribes migrate, and great nations or races colonize foreign territory; but the latter, even when conquered in war, are never expelled or exterminated. On the contrary, if the conquerors settle in the lands they have subdued, both races ordinarily dwell together, coalesce, and eventually form a new race. Thus, when the barbarians of the north, the Goths and Vandals, overran southern Europe, the nations which they conquered, were not driven out, but became virtually the masters of their conquerors; since the latter were forced to adopt the civilization and the religion of the former, and so lost not only their national characteristics, but also, in the end, their identity. This must be the normal result when the conquering race, though superior in physical vigor and prowess, is inferior to the conquered in mental and moral development. It is only when a powerful race, highly developed morally and intellectually, takes possession of a region occupied by rude savages, that its former occupants disappear before the invaders, either by emigration or extinction. And as this is not the kind of collision that is supposed to have taken place between the Indians and the Mound Builders, it is highly improbable that the latter disappeared at the approach of the former. It therefore seems much more difficult to guess what became of the Mound Builders, than to account for the differences between them and the Indians, supposing the latter to be the lineal descendants of the former; since abundant examples might be cited of existing nations that differ as much, both in national customs and physical characteristics, from the races or tribes from which they are known to have descended within historic times, as the Indians differ from the Mound Builders.

But there is another question to which, as it seems to us, the advocates of the commonly received theory are in duty bouond to give a plausible answer, and which nevertheless, we think will be found quite as difficult to answer as the one just considered; and that is, "Where did the Indians come from?" When it is borne in mind that the Mound Builders are supposed to have occupied nearly, if not quite, all the territory now embraced within the limits of the United States, with the exception of the Pacific slope, it will be found difficult to imagine in what other part of the continent a people could have been found sufficiently numerous and sufficiently vigorous not only to defeat in war but actually to expel from this magnificent domain such a race as the Mound Builders are represented to have been. If we can imagine the present race of Mexicans invading the same territory now, and driving its inhabitants before them beyond the lakes into British America, it will perhaps seem probable that a race existed in the last named region (for, if not there, surely nowhere) capable of driving the Mound Builders out of their lands, across the Rio Grande and beyond the Mexican Gulf.

We have no theory of our own in regard to the early inhabitants of this country; but we deem it much more reasonable to supposed that the Indians are the lineal descendants of the Mound Builders, with national customs and physical peculiarities changed through the lapse of ages, by the operation of causes which we can never explain—but among which fractional or sectional wars may have played a conspicuous part—than to suppose that such a race as the Mound Builders must have been, were driven out of such a country as they occupied, by any people then living north of the Gulf of Mexico. Theories, against which insuperable objections can be urged,

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are not of much importance, whether in archaeology or any other science; but so long as such theories are advanced, and books are written in their support, the objections can never be out of order. This, we trust, will be a sufficient justification for the space given to the theory under discussion.

But whoever the Mound Builders may have been, and in whatever age of the world they may have lived, they were, so far as we have any means of knowing, the first occupants of the territory now embraced in Buchanan county. We might properly say this, even though no trace of their works had been found here. Their ancient works are scattered so generally throughout the Mississippi valley that there can be no reasonable doubt that the people who built them once occupied the entire country drained by the Father of Waters. But we are not left to a mere inference, even though it be a necessary one, to establish the fact that we here tread the soil of the Mound Builders. A good many mounds have been found in the county, which those well qualified to judge of such matters do not hesitate to pronounce the work of that ancient people. A circular mound, several feet high, was leveled in preparing the foundation for the county jail, in Independence. No relics, however, worthy of note were found in it. Two circular mounds, connected together by a straight embankment, were found on the farm now owned by Mr. James Forester, near Independence. Standing in a cultivated field, they are nearly, if not quite, obliterated by constant ploughing. Several earthworks, mostly of a circular form, have been discovered along the banks of the Wapsipinicon; but none have been found of sufficient interest to attract the notice of archaeologists. Some of the older inhabitants have even doubted that these works were really artificial. Not having seen them ourselves, and being unskilled in the science of archaeology, we express no opinion of our own, but give the facts as they have been communicated to us by those whom we regard as competent judges. As already stated, however, the question whether the soil of Buchanan county was once occupied by the Mound Builders, does not depend for its solution upon the existence here of unmistakable works of that ancient race; since the contiguity of such works along the Mississippi and elsewhere, and their general distribution throughout the western and northwestern States, must be regarded as settling that question in the affirmative.

 

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