The North Americans of Antiquity: Their origin, migrations, and type of civilization consideredShort, John T. (John Thomas)
History
The North Americans of Antiquity: Their origin, migrations, and type of civilization considered
Short, John T. (John Thomas)
Indians -- Origin; Indians of Mexico -- Antiquities; Indians of North America -- Antiquities
The second class of military works, which are exceedingly numerous on
all the watercourses—existing not only on the Ohio and Mississippi, but
on all their tributaries, especially on the Muskingum, Scioto, Miami,
Wabash, Illinois, Kentucky, and minor streams—are mounds which served
as outlooks. These were always placed in positions to command extended
views, and from which signals could be given to still others of the
same character, or probably to settlements remote from the watercourses.
[Illustration: Square Mound, Marietta.]
A system of these works no doubt formerly existed on the Great Miami
River extending north of Dayton, Ohio, southward to the Ohio River,
and connected with the great settlement on the site of Cincinnati
and with the high bluffs on the Kentucky shore. The great Mound
at Miamisburgh, ten miles south of Dayton, formed a part of this
chain. This monster mound is sixty-eight feet high and 852 feet in
circumference, and may have served the double purpose of a signal
station and the base of a small edifice devoted to astronomical or
religious purposes. There is little doubt that the Mound-builders in
the latter period of their occupancy of this region, when apprehensive
of danger from their enemies, employed a system of signal telegraph
by which communication was had, through means of the watch-fire or
the torch, between localities as distant as those now occupied by
Cincinnati and Dayton. Only a few minutes were necessary by means of
such a perfected system in which to transmit a signal fifty or one
hundred miles. Squier and Davis remark on this subject: “There seems
to have existed a system of defences extending from the sources of the
Alleghany and Susquehanna in New York, diagonally across the country,
through Central and Northern Ohio to the Wabash. Within this range the
works which are regarded as defensive are largest and most numerous.”
The signal system we have reason to believe was employed throughout the
entire extent of this range of works. The majority of the enclosures
found in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys are presumed not to have
been designed for military purposes, since the trench is usually
_inside_ of the embankment. However, instances of the trench being
outside of the parapet occur in Southern Ohio.[34] The most magnificent
Mound-builder remains in Ohio are the extensive and intricate works
near Newark in Licking County. The survey made by Col. Whittlesey and
published in the _Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley_, is
the most reliable as well as the fullest source of our information
concerning their magnitude, though the plan has been corrected
considerably by more recent surveys. These works occupy an area of two
miles square, and formerly consisted of twelve miles of embankment.
The spacious gateways—one of which has embankments on both sides
measuring thirty-five feet in height from the bottom of the interior
trench—the labyrinthine system of avenues, the strangely-shaped mounds,
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