Part 37 (1/2)
This is a fact which, as regards _dolmens_, has been already verified.
The sepulchral monuments of the Stone Age, which were at first believed to be peculiar to France, and, indeed, to one province of France, namely Brittany, have since been met with in almost every part of the world.
Not only have they been discovered all over Europe, but even the coasts of Africa bring to our notice numerous relics of them; also, through the whole extent of Asia, and even in the interior of India, this same form of sepulchre, bearing witness to a well determined epoch in man's history, have been pointed out and described by recent travellers.
Thus, the information which we possess on these points as regards Europe, may well be generalised and applied to the other quarters of the world--to Asia, Africa, America, and Oceania.
America, however, has been the scene of certain investigations concerning primitive man which have not been without fertile results; we shall, therefore, devote the last few pages of our work to a consideration of the pre-historic remains of America, and to giving an account of the probable conditions of man's existence there, as they have been revealed to us by these relics.
The information which has been made public on these points concerns North America only.
It would be useless to dwell on the stone and bone instruments of the New World; in their shape they differ but little from those of Europe.
They were applied to the same uses, and the only perceptible difference in them is in the substance of which they were made. We find there hatchets, knives, arrow-heads, &c., but these instruments are not so almost universally made from flint, which is to a considerable extent replaced by obsidian and other hard stones.
In the history of primitive man in North America, we shall have to invent another age of a special character; this is the _Age of Copper_.
In America, the use of copper seems to have preceded the use of bronze; native metallic copper having been largely in use among certain races.
On the sh.o.r.es of Lake Superior there are some very important mines of native copper, which must have been worked by the Indians at a very early date; in fact, the traces of the ancient workings have been distinctly recognised by various travellers.
Mr. Knapp, the agent of the Minnesota Mining Company, was the first to point out these pre-historic mines. In 1847, his researches having led him into a cavern much frequented by porcupines, he discovered, under an acc.u.mulation of heaped-up earth, a vein of native copper, containing a great number of stone hammers. A short time afterwards, some other excavations 25 to 35 feet in depth, and stretching over an extent of several miles, came under his notice. The earth dug out had been thrown on each side of the excavations; and mighty forest-trees had taken root and grown there. In the trunk of a hemlock-tree growing in this ”made ground,” Mr. Knapp counted 395 rings of growth, and this tree had probably been preceded by other forest-giants no less venerable. In the trenches themselves, which had been gradually filled up by vegetable _debris_, trees had formerly grown which, after having lived for hundreds of years, had succ.u.mbed and decayed; being then replaced by other generations of vegetation, the duration of which had been quite as long. When, therefore, we consider these workings of the native copper-mines of Lake Superior, we are compelled to ascribe the above-named excavations to a considerable antiquity.
In many of these ancient diggings stone hammers have been found, sometimes in large quant.i.ties. One of the diggings contained some great diorite hatchets which were worked by the aid of a handle, and also large cylindrical ma.s.ses of the same substance hollowed out to receive a handle. These sledges, which are too heavy to be lifted by one man alone, were doubtless used for breaking off lumps of copper, and then reducing them to fragments of a size which could easily be carried away.
If we may put faith in Professor Mather, who explored these ancient mines, some of the rocks still bore the mark of the blow they had received from these granite rollers.
The work employed in adapting the native copper was of the most simple character. The Indians hammered it cold, and, taking into account its malleable character, they were enabled with tolerable facility to give it any shape that they wished.
In America, just as in Europe, a great number of specimens of pre-historic pottery have been collected. They are, it must be confessed, superior to most of those found in the ancient world. The material of which they were made is very fine, excepting in the case of the vessels of every-day use, in which the clay is mixed with quartz reduced to powder; the shapes of the vessels are of the purest character, and the utmost care has been devoted to the workmans.h.i.+p. They do not appear to have been constructed by the aid of the potter's wheel; but Messrs. Squier and Davis, very competent American archaeologists, are of opinion that the Indians, in doing this kind of work, made use of a stick held in the middle. The workman turned this stick round and round inside the ma.s.s of clay, which an a.s.sistant kept on adding to all round the circ.u.mference.
In regard to pottery, the most interesting specimens are the pipes, which we should, indeed, expect to meet with in the native country of the tobacco plant and the cla.s.sic calumet. Many of these pipes are carved in the shape of animals, which are very faithfully represented.
These figures are very various in character, including quadrupeds and birds of all kinds. Indeed, in the state of Ohio seven pipes were found on each of which the manatee was so plainly depicted that it is impossible to mistake the sculptor's intention. This discovery is a curious one, from the fact that at the present day the manatee is not met with except in localities 300 or 400 leagues distant, as in Florida.
The pre-historic ornaments and trinkets found in North America consist of bracelets, necklaces, earrings, &c. The bracelets are copper rings bent by hammering, so that the two ends meet. The necklaces are composed of sh.e.l.l beads (of which considerable quant.i.ties have been collected) sh.e.l.ls, animals' teeth, and small flakes of mica, all perforated by a hole so as to be strung on a thread. The earrings also are made of the same material.
All these objects--weapons, implements, pottery, and ornaments--have been derived from certain gigantic works which exhibit some similarity, and occasionally even a striking resemblance, to the great earthwork constructions of the Old World. American archaeologists have arranged these works in various cla.s.ses according to the probable purpose for which they were intended; we shall now dwell for a short time on these divisions.
In the first place, we have the _sepulchral mounds_ or _tumuli_, the numbers of which may be reckoned by tens of thousands. They vary in height from 6 feet to 80 feet, and are generally of a circular form; being found either separately or in groups. Most frequently only one skeleton is found in them, either reduced almost to ashes, or--which is more rare--in its ordinary condition, and in a crouching posture. By the side of the corpse are deposited trinkets, and, in a few cases, weapons.
A practice the very contrary to this now obtains in America; and from this we may conclude that a profound modification of their ideas has taken place among the Indians since the pre-historic epochs.
It is now almost a certain fact that some of the small _tumuli_ are nothing but the remains of mud-huts, especially as they do not contain either ashes or bones. Others, on the contrary, and some of the largest, contain a quant.i.ty of bones; the latter must be allied with the _ossuaries_ or bone-pits, some of which contain the remains of several thousand individuals.
It would be difficult to explain the existence of acc.u.mulations of this kind if we did not know from the accounts of ancient authors that the Indians were in the habit of a.s.sembling every eight or ten years in some appointed spot to inter all together in one ma.s.s the bones of their dead friends, which had been previously exhumed. This singular ceremony was called ”the feast of the dead.”
We shall not say much here as to the _sacrificial mounds_, because no very precise agreement has yet been arrived at as to their exact signification. Their chief characteristics are, that, in the first place, they are nearly always found within certain sacred enclosures of which we shall have more to say further on, and also that they cover a sort of altar placed on the surface of the ground, and made of stone or baked clay. In the opinion of certain archaeologists, this supposed altar is nothing but the site of a former fire-hearth, and the mound itself a habitation converted into a tomb after the death of its proprietor. It will therefore be best to reserve our judgment as to the existence of the human sacrifices of which these places might have been the scene, until we obtain some more complete knowledge of the matter.
The _Temple-Mounds_ are hillocks in the shape of a truncated pyramid, with paths or steps leading to the summit, and sometimes with terraces at different heights. They invariably terminate in a platform of varying extent, but sometimes reaching very considerable dimensions. That of Cahokia, in Illinois, is about 100 feet in height, and at the base is 700 feet long and 500 feet wide. There is no doubt that these mounds were not exclusively used as temples, and, adopting as our authority several instances taken from Indian history, we may be permitted to think that on this upper terrace they were in the habit of building the dwelling of their chief.
The most curious of these earthworks are, beyond question, those which the American archaeologists have designated by the name of _animal-mounds_. They consist of gigantic bas-reliefs formed on the surface of the ground, and representing men, mammals, birds, reptiles, and even inanimate objects, such as crosses, pipes, &c. They exist in thousands in Wisconsin, being chiefly found between the Mississippi and Lake Michigan, and along the war-path of the Indians. Their height is never very considerable, and it is but seldom that they reach so much as 6 feet; but their length and breadth is sometimes enormously developed.
Many of these figures are copied very exactly from Nature; but there are, on the other hand, some the meaning of which it is very difficult to discover, because they have been injured by the influence of atmospheric action during a long course of ages.