Indians of North America -- Ohio; Mounds -- Ohio; Ohio -- Antiquities
The importance and bearing of this evidence does not stop with
what has been stated, for it is so interlocked with other facts
relating to the works of the "veritable mound-builders" as to
leave no hiatus into which the theory of a lost race or a "Toltec
occupation" can possibly be thrust. It forms an unbroken chain
connecting the mound-builders and historical Indians which no
sophistry or reasoning can break. Not only are these graves found
in mounds of considerable size, but they are also connected with
one of the most noted groups in the United States, namely, the one
on Colonel Tumlin's place, near Cartersville, Ga., known as the
Etowah mounds, of which a full description will be found in the
Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology.
In the smallest of the three large mounds of this group were found
stone graves of precisely the type attributable, when found south
of the Ohio, to the Shawnees. They were not in a situation where
they could be ascribed to intrusive burials, but in the bottom
layer of a comparatively large mound with a thick and undisturbed
layer of hard-packed clay above them. It is also worthy of notice
that the locality is intermediate between the principal seat of
the Shawnees in the Cumberland Valley, and their extreme eastern
outposts in northeastern Georgia, where both tradition and stone
graves indicate their settlement. The tradition regarding this
settlement has been given elsewhere. [Footnote: Am. Antiq, vol. 7,
1885, p. 133]
In these graves were found the remarkable figured copper plates
and certain engraved shells, of which mention has been made by Mr.
W. H. Holmes [Footnote: Science, vol. 3, 1884, pp. 436-438.] and
by myself [Footnote: Ibid., pp. 779-785.] in Science. It is a
singular corroboration of the theory here advanced that the only
other similar copper plates were found at Lebanon, Tenn., by Prof.
F. W. Putnam; in a stone grave in a mound at Mill Creek, southern
Illinois, by Mr. Earle; in a stone grave in Jackson County, Ill.,
by Mr. Thing; in a mound of Madison County, Ill., by Mr. H. R.
Howland; and in a small mound at Peoria, Ill., by Maj. J. W.
Powell. All, except the specimens found by Professor Putnam and
Mr. Howland, were secured by the Bureau of Ethnology, and are now
in the National Museum.
There can be but little doubt that the specimens obtained from
simple stone graves by Professor Putnam and Mr. Thing are to be
attributed to Indian burials, but surely not to Indian
manufacture.
We have, therefore, two unbroken chains connecting the Indians of
historic times with the "veritable mound builders," and the facts
which form the links of these chains throw some additional light
on the history of that mysterious people, the Shawnees.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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