Ohio History Journal

142      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

 

 

LAST EDITORIAL.

The following from The Columbus Evening Dispatch of

September 2, 1919, is believed to be the last editorial contribution

from Mr. Randall to that paper. It may be considered his final

word on a subject to which he had given much thought and on

which he had frequently written:

 

WHO WERE THE MOUND BUILDERS?

The remarkable discoveries, recently unearthed by the ex-

ploring department of the Ohio State Archaeological and Histor-

ical Society, in the Hazlett mound, Licking county, revives the

unsolved query, Who were the people that erected these myster-

ious earthen structures ? They must have been a populous and vig-

orous race, for their forts, walled enclosures and isolated mounds,

no less than half a century ago in Ohio, if placed in a single

straight line would have reached from Cincinnati to Cleveland.

With no mechanical means of assistance, these numerous artificial

earthen and stone productions must have required the population,

if sparse, a very long period of time for completion of the works,

or a countless number of people must have simultaneously occu-

pied the territory and engaged in the work.

More than ever the problem arises, Who were they? It sur-

passes the riddle of the Sphinx. The Mound Builders, so-called

for want of a better name, had no written language and left no

inscriptions, hieroglyphics, symbols or records of any kind save

the earthen temples, graves, village sites and forts. The Ohio

Mound Builders seem to have belonged to the neolithic or later

stone age, giving evidence to some extent of representing the

mesolithic period - the twilight zone between the two - a tran-

sition age from pure stone articles to the most primitive use of

metal, for while no iron implements are found, some beaten cop-

per ornaments and utensils are discovered.

Until a generation ago the general opinion of the archaeolo-

gists was that these peculiar workmen were a distinct and sepa-

rate race from the American Indian and that the skilful and in-

genious architects of these earthen structures inhabited the coun-

try previous to the red men, or at their coming, and perhaps were

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Emilius Oviatt Randall.             148

conquered and driven out or exterminated by the latter. More

recent, thorough and scientific investigations, conducted in part by

the national and state governments, of the mounds and their con-

tents, have led the archaeologists and ethnologists to revise their

former theory and today they largely favor the theory that the

Mound Builder was the ancestor or remote progenitor of the

American Indian, the remoteness of the relationship, however,

being undetermined. This progenitor theory is supported by the

similarity of the artifacts, found in the prehistoric mounds, to the

implements made by the historic Indian. The reply to this un-

doubted resemblance is the fact that the first products of man's

primitive handiwork are much the same the world over. The

peace and war stone implements exhumed by Schliemann from

the ruins of Troy, cannot be distinguished, when placed side by

side, from those found in the mounds of Ohio.

The historic Indian, that is, the post Columbian aborigine,

rarely built mounds, though they used those built by others for

burial purposes; intrusive burials, they are called, hence the com-

mon name, "Indian Mound," given these earthen sepulchres.

There is no evidence that the Ohio Indian tribes retained any tra-

ditions even, much less knowledge, of the origin or history of the

mounds that could throw any light upon the obscurity of the sub-

ject.

If the Indian ancestral theory be correct, it must be admitted

that the historic Indian, who was discovered by the invading

European, must be a deteriorated and unworthy descendant of

his distant forebear, who built the mounds. "A broad chasm is to

be spanned before we can link the Mound Builders to the North

American Indians," says a leading scholar on the American races,

"for the Indian, as we know him, never displayed an engineering

or architectural talent, an artistic ingenuity or a trait of industry

at all comparable to those characteristics so unquestionably the

possession of the Mound Builders."

Speculation has run riot, and many volumes have been writ-

ten, on the identity of the Mound Builder. Arguments have

been advanced to the effect that he came from the lost tribes of

Israel; the Book of Mormon is largely founded upon the narra-

tive of the overseas transportation about 600 B. C., of two lines

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144      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

of immigration to the western hemisphere, respectively from

Palestine and Babylonia, the precursors of both the Mound Build-

ers and the Indians in North America. Other authorities trace

him back to the dawn of ancient history, in Japan, China and other

oriental centers; few regions of the earth escape the claim of being

the cradle whence sprang the stock producing the Mound Build-

ers; so to speak, every race has aspired to the honor of being the

forebear; ethnologists also attribute his ancestry to the Toltecs,

whose children went north, up the Mississippi and the Ohio, and

the Scioto, and as they passed built the mounds; on the contrary,

scholars there are who maintain the Toltecs were the descendants

of the Mound Builders, who originated in the north and traveling

south became more skilled, as generations came on and produced

the monumental structures of the high civilization of ancient

Mexico; again that he was the kin of the Aztecs, with reversible

genealogical termini; and very late discoveries in Mexico sug-

gest the origin in that country of a race finally developing into the

Mound Builders. To put it irreverently, the Mound Builders,

like Topsy, just grew up in North America without parentage.

It is a case of when doctors disagree, who shall decide? Perhaps

the best guess is that the Mound Builders and the American

Indians are collateral descendants from a common, very remote

origin; certain it is that the two peoples, whoever they were, have

a decidedly different culture and civilization, so far as modern

knowledge goes. At present the Mound Builder's identity as to

whence he came, the length of his sojourn and the whither he

went, all belong to the realm of the unknown, all of which adds

to the romance and fascination of the subject.

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