J J. AMPERE'S JOURNEY THROUGH OHIO
A Translation from His Promenade en
Amerique
by MILDRED
CREW
Jean-Jacques Ampere (1800-1864) was
born in the village of
Polimieux, near Lyons, in the house
where his father was born and
where his grandfather had lived. This
grandfather was a merchant
and also a justice of the peace who had
remained at his post during
his government's attempt to suppress
the Jacobins, and when the
city of Lyons fell to the terrorists in
1793, was thrown into prison
and eventually paid for his fidelity
with his head. Henry James, in
his essay "The Two Amperes"
(1878), indicates the character of this
victim of the guillotine:
In prison, before his death, he wrote
his wife a letter, which we regret
not having the space to quote; it gives
one a better opinion of human nature.
"Do not speak to Josephine,"
he says at the end, "of her father's mis-
fortune; take good care that she does
not know it; as for my son, there
is nothing I do not expect from him. So
long as you possess them and they
possess you, embrace each other in
memory of me. I leave my heart to all
of you." For so pure an old stoic
as this to say on the edge of the scaffold
that there was nothing he did not
expect from his only son, left the sole
support of two desolate women-this was
a great deal.
This son, Andre-Marie Ampere
(1775-1836), for whom his
father's trust in his future conduct
and industry is so simply ex-
pressed, along with an implied
confidence in his abilities, became
a distinguished physicist who laid the
foundation of the science of
electrodynamics. His name, in lower
case, is known in every Amer-
ican household as the unit of electric
current.
To return to our Ampere, his
tastes early led him to the study
of philology and history. His father,
who had suffered from the
straightened circumstances of the
family, had hoped his son would
follow some lucrative occupation, but
it soon became obvious
that Jean-Jacques was a born man of
letters, just as his father had
been a born man of science. Upon his
return from an extended
64
J. J. Ampere's Journey Through
Ohio 65
tour of northern Europe he was
appointed to the faculty of the
newly founded Athenaeum at Marseilles.
In 1833 he accepted the
chair of foreign literature at the
University of Paris, where he was
the first to draw the attention of the
French public to the ancient
sagas and mythology of Germany and
Scandinavia.
In Paris Ampere frequented literary
salons where he met such
representatives of French letters as
Chateaubriand, Sainte-Beuve,
De Tocqueville, Guizot, and Merimee.
When he was only twenty
years of age he went with his father to
meet Madame Recamier at
one of her salons. This meeting proved
to be the commencement of
his lifelong love for Madame Recamier,
who was then more than
twice his age. His affection was
received by her but never recipro-
cated. Ampere idealized her, called her
his Muse. She, on her
part, conversed with him daily as long
as he was in Paris, and en-
couraged all his intellectual labors,
but being already married,
maintained a strict and praiseworthy
regard for propriety.
Instead of confining himself to a
research library Ampere
became an indefatigable traveler,
making travel an integral part
of an intellectual life. At home in all
the capitals of Europe, he
met distinguished contemporaries of
many countries. While travel-
ing in Germany he heard Niebuhr at Bonn
lecturing on Roman
history; he had long conversations with
Goethe at Weimar and
with Humboldt at Berlin. Language was
no barrier to him: he
mastered whatever tongue he had need
of, even Chinese and
Sanskrit.
Ampere's travels took him as far east
as Egypt and Greece,
and as far west as Mexico and the
prairies of Illinois. In 1851
he made a visit to the new world.
Sailing from Havre in late
August on the S. S. Franklin, he
arrived in New York the following
month. Traveling by boat, stagecoach,
and train, he made a rapid
tour of New England, went up to Quebec
and Montreal, thence to
Buffalo, Detroit, and Chicago. A short
excursion out from Chicago,
by rail, gave him a lasting impression
of the "empty and limitless
space of the prairies," after
which he was quite ready to turn
eastward. Being a trained
archaeologist, he visited some Indian
mounds in Ohio on his return trip to
New York. Being an in-
defatigable traveler, he did not end
his trip at New York but
66 Ohio State
Archaeological and Historical Quarterly
continued on to Washington, Charleston,
and New Orleans. He
then visited Mexico and Cuba before
returning to France.
One may well ask why a Frenchman,
accustomed to the upper
levels of Parisian society, fifty years
of age, and in limited cir-
cumstances, would choose to encounter
the hazards and hardships
of such a journey. To Ampere the answer
was plain. He had been
inspired by reading De Tocqueville's Democratie
en Amerique
(1835) to visit the new world and see
it for himself. He was a
close friend and admirer of De
Tocqueville and he wished, he
said, to be able to substantiate all
which that famous writer had
said of America.
Ampere's account of this trip was first
published serially in
the Revue des Deux Mondes in
1853 under the title Promenade en
Amerique; Etats-Unis . . . Cuba . .
. Mexique. Two years later this
work was published under the same
title, in two volumes, by Michel
Levy at Paris. In 1856, and again in
1860, new printings of this
work were issued. In 1874 Michel Levy
published a new, illustrated
edition of it, containing an
appreciation of Ampere by Sainte-Beuve.
This is the edition from which the
following translation of its
chapters XV through XIX was made. These
chapters cover Ampere's
visit to the Indian mounds and his
visit in New York with Edwin
H. Davis, who with E. G. Squier had
surveyed a great number of
the mounds and published their findings
in 1848 in their Ancient
Monuments of the Mississippi Valley,
a classic of American archae-
ology.
Ampere spent the last years of his life
at Pau, the sheltered
winter resort in the southwest corner
of France. There he wrote his
chef-d'oeuvre--his L'Histoire
romaine a Rome--and there he died
in 1864.
CHAPTER XV
Lack of information and American
free and easy manner. Cin-
cinnati. New democracies in the
West.
This traveling without respite, which
has continued for almost two
months, begins to fatigue me. My health
is impaired, otherwise I would
have gone on to St. Louis, following
the Illinois canal and the Illinois
River across the prairie; as it is, I
believe it wiser to think about getting
J. J. Ampere's Journey Through
Ohio 67
back to New York, from which I am still
far away. I do not advise anyone
to fall ill in the United States,
especially when far from the large cities:
everyone is so busy, so pressed for
time, that he does not have a moment
to take notice of you. However, I do not
wish to have come out to the
West without seeing Cincinnati, the
banks of the Ohio, and something at
least of the Indian antiquities which
have been discovered in the Ohio
Valley. So I am going to return to
Detroit and, crossing the end of Lake
Erie, go to Sandusky and there take the
train for Cincinnati; then, from
Cincinnati, return to New York, after
having visited the Indian antiquities
of the Ohio Valley.
18 September [1851]
I take a steamer, cross Lake Michigan
again, and arrive at New Buffalo
too late to be able to set out that same
evening by railroad for Detroit. Our
baggage was delivered at once at the
station, and tomorrow at six o'clock
in the morning we shall start off with
it for Detroit.
It is not possible to secure a bed or
even a mattress for tonight. We
are crowded together in an immense
dining room, we and the passengers
from another steamer which leaves
tomorrow morning for the West. These
latter are for the most part immigrants,
making noisy and far-from-cultivated
sleeping companions. As for me, I put my
small leather case, containing
notes and books, on a table below a lamp
suspended from the ceiling and
use this as a pillow; I take from my
gripsack an English novel and start
to read, lying upon this rather hard
bed, until the men have ceased to
talk, the women to scold their children,
and the children to cry, and then
I fall asleep. I am awakened rather
rudely by the tavern boy, who throws
a table napkin across me, crying,
"Come, comrade, wake up!" The fact
was, he had to serve the coffee upon the
very table where I was established,
and everyone else had been up for a long
time.
Chafing a little under the rudeness of
servants in the United States,
I started to walk toward the railway
station, where our luggage had been
deposited the night before. On the way
an example of American negligence
was nearly fatal to me: a trunk, hurled
upon a ramp without the slightest
customary warning, happened to pass
within two inches of my legs, which
would have been broken had it struck
them. It was a day of mishaps: I
found at the station neither a locomotive
nor any appearance of the train's
departure. I asked if the train would
leave shortly and was told that it
would leave in twenty minutes, without
further explanation. Americans
hesitate to make explanations.
The time passed and I saw nothing come.
I spied some travelers who
were walking along hurriedly. I
questioned them and learned that the
68 Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly
trains started, not from where they had
stopped four days ago when we
came from Detroit, but from a point
situated a mile or so away. The rail-
road had received our luggage without
any idea of informing us of its
disposition, thanks to which it would
have required only a minute for
me to miss the train which was to carry
my trunks on to the shore of
Lake Erie. I relate these trifling
incidents which may possibly interest the
reader, and I shall describe all the
annoyances of this kind which happen
to me, for they illustrate national
character, which displays itself in the
most trifling as well as in the most
important events. In the United States
it is a rule in politics and in society
that everyone manages for himself as
best he can. One is allowed entire
liberty of action in anything which does
not shock the opinions or feelings of
the majority; but this liberty of action
is enjoyed by the individual at his own
risk and peril. No one directs him
or advises him. It is up to him to
inform himself as to where the trains
start, and to take care that a trunk is
not hurled against his legs. This
policy is summed up in the sacramental
phrase, "Help yourself," which is
sometimes translated: "God help
everybody, forward, and the devil take
the hindmost!"
If these pages fall under the eyes of
any Americans, I shall not be
displeased at having made them a little
chagrined at their neglect of
matters which pertain to the comfort of
travelers. Among the people with
whom I have had any dealings, I have not
found any trace of that grossness
of manners with which they have been so
reproached. One meets it only
among the lower classes. What I have noticed
above all is the lack of
signs, warnings, and directions for
travelers, which is extremely incon-
venient. I would like to stimulate in
Americans a desire to reform this
abuse, which is not at all a necessary
consequence to self-government.
I do not believe that this matter is at
all irremediable. Americans have
benefited by the most violent, and often
the most unjust, diatribes. Mrs.
Trollope,1 whose business enterprise
(which was not at all in keeping with
her disposition and character) would not
admit her to the best homes, has
written an insulting book on America, a
book which in Europe has charmed
the vain aristocrats in whose service,
oddly enough, she finds herself en-
rolled. Oh well! Americans have the good
sense to make the best of these
insults, in which there is doubtless
some truth. When a man in a theater
used to place his feet on a level with
his head, people would laugh at him
and shout, "Trollope!
Trollope!" and now that
unpleasant habit has
1 Frances Milton Trollope (1780-1863).
Her Domestic Manners of the Americans
was published in England in 1832. It is
an account of her three and a half years
in the United States, two of which were
spent in Cincinnati.
J. J. Ampere's Journey Through
Ohio 69
passed. I am convinced that American
manners have improved very much
in recent years, for it cannot be that everything
is false in these grotesque
pictures by Mrs. Trollope, almost no
trace of which have I seen in actual
life. The fact remains, however, that
some measures of kind attention and
concern for travelers ought to be taken,
measures which one has the right
to expect from all civilized nations,
and which one almost never meets
in the United States.
My health, which has not improved in the
least, accounts perhaps
for my peevish disposition. I have spent
this entire day on the train without
eating, for I recalled too well the
abominable fare which I had had in the
stations where we had stopped for meals.
It is true that the railroads cross
forests which are scarcely cleared, and
for this very reason it would
appear that provision ought to be made
for something to eat.
At Detroit I had only time to go aboad
the Arrow, a steamer whose
name might have been suggested by some
traveler in the United States.
At dawn I disembarked at Sandusky and
took almost immediately
the train for Cincinnati, where I
arrived at nightfall. I have covered some
four hundred miles since yesterday
morning and find myself feeling no
better.
Cincinnati, 20 September [1851]
I get up late, a little weak and
woebegone, and walk aimlessly along
the straight and spacious streets of the
Queen City of the West. The
season is rather cold, the wind sharp,
the sky grey; my first impression is
not flattering. I go down to the banks
of the Ohio. The river water is
low; on both shores extend wide beaches
which are ordinarily inundated
by the river and have that marshy,
half-dry appearance which the ocean
beach presents at low tide. No wharf at
the edge of the river, and too few
bridges. Here the bridges are the
numerous steamers which ply incessantly
from one bank to the other, breaking the
Sabbath stillness with their
exhausts. I ascend to the city again.
The streets carry the names of trees:
the names of the chestnut, the walnut,
the pine, which seem like souvenirs
of the forest which they replace. Many
of the streets are beautifully
landscaped. The citizens have omitted
the word "Street" on the signposts:
they dread doing anything unnecessarily,
and shorten labor wherever
they can. The pavements, made of
flagstones, now and then end abruptly;
one senses a capital city being built in
haste and not yet finished. I go
down behind the town and there I find
factories under construction, and
beyond the factories are the plundered
hills where half-charred tree trunks
remain, such as one sees in the
clearings. There are only a few trees which
the axe has spared: a sad sight and
distressing to see. It is no longer
70 Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly
countryside and will soon be a city.
Cincinnati, a city of 116,000 souls,
allows about one-half year for the
addition of each thousand inhabitants.
city of what was, twenty years ago, the
Far West. The Far West has now
than doubled in ten years. In
communication with the Great Lakes by
railroad, with the Mississippi by the
Ohio, it is the commercial center of
the interior of the United States.
Cincinnati is called "Queen City of
the West"; it is the principal
city of what was, twenty years ago, the
Far West. The Far West has now
receded as settlement has advanced.
Since I am in Ohio, one of the last
states to enter the Union, and today one
of the most flourishing, this is
perhaps the place to say something of
the manner in which new states
are formed and something of their
political constitution. I borrow these
details mostly from the interesting work
of James Hall2 entitled Sketches
of the West.
Before being raised to the rank of
state, these newly settled lands,
whose population is not yet sufficient
to let them be represented in con-
gress, are called territories, and are
governed during this interval by some
peculiar and cleverly combined plans. It
is like a gradual initiation which
they must undergo before being admitted
to equal status. As soon as they
are recognized, the territories are
directed by a governor, a senate, and a
court composed of three judges. The
governor and a majority of the judges
adopt and promulgate some of the laws of
the other states which are
appropriate for a new state. These are
referred to congress, which has the
right to annul a decision of the
territorial government. The governor ap-
points the civil employees and all the
minor officials. The higher officials
are appointed by congress.
The first step of existence, or rather,
the political infancy, is succeeded
by a second step when the territory
attains a population of 5,000 free
men-of-age. Then a chamber of
representatives is conceded to the territory.
There is one representative for each
five hundred citizens, up to a limit
of twenty-five; beyond that the number
of representatives is governed by
the legislature, which is composed of
the governor, his cabinet, and the
chamber of representatives. The cabinet
is made up of five members ap-
pointed for five years each, unless
congress limits their authority to a
lesser period of time. This cabinet is appointed
by congress upon a petition
made by the representatives of the
territory. The candidates must own
property to the extent of five hundred
acres. All bills passed by the chamber
of representatives or by the cabinet
must be approved by the governor,
2 James Hall (1793-1863) was one of the leading writers
and editors of the
West and at this time a resident of
Cincinnati.
J. J. Ampere's Journey Through
Ohio 71
who convokes, prorogues, and dissolves
the assembly. The representatives
and members of the cabinet appoint
jointly a delegate to congress, who
has the right to take part in debate but
not to vote.
All these measures seem to me to bear
the imprint of great wisdom.
The administration of the territories is
based upon principles entirely
different from those which guide the
government of the states. Intervention
of congress, the right of the governor
to prorogue or dissolve the chamber
of representatives, provisions for
elections, which are based on property,
all these are in opposition to the
general spirit of American institutions;
but American common sense understands
that one cannot apply the form
of government used in the original
states, whose political education was
accomplished through one hundred and
fifty years of struggle with the
mother country and which have long been
accustomed to govern themselves,
to the new states without political
education, without a past, and made up
of heterogeneous elements of every grade
and origin. This latter group
needs a provisional guardianship which
will prepare it gradually for the
role of independent statehood and for
complete equality of rights.
Furthermore, the western territories
increased in population so rapidly
that they quickly attained the number
which elevated them to statehood.
At that moment everything changed. Being
their own masters, they gave
themselves a constitution of their own
choice, and these constitutions are
in general very democratic. The fact
that the political impulse everywhere
is in this direction cannot be
concealed. In the constitutions of Ohio, Indiana,
and Illinois the democratic principle
prevails much more than in the con-
stitutions of the original states. The
preponderance of this principle mani-
fests itself (1) by the short terms of
public office (in Indiana the repre-
sentatives are elected for only one
year); (2) through the mistrust of the
military (in this same state the army
men and even their relatives are not
allowed to vote); (3) through a facility
in revising the constitution (every
twelve years they deliberate upon the
advisability of calling a constitutional
convention); (4) through the sharp
distinction between the functions of
a representative and those of an
employee appointed either by the individual
state or by the federal government. In
the new state divorce is, in general,
very easy to obtain. In Illinois it is
granted by the judge upon the testimony
of the plaintiff, without giving notice
to the other party concerned. Drunken-
ness, or an absence of two years, is
considered sufficient grounds for divorce.
The laws against debtors are very mild,
as is the case whenever democratic
influences prevail. The distrustful
anxiety of democracies is carried to such
extremes in the new state, that it
attacks even voluntary associations. For
example, the establishment of banks has
been forbidden, as though they
72 Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly
feared oppression of the individual by a
combination of capital. Likewise,
authorization of associations formed for
religious purposes or for establishing
schools, is often refused; they are
forbidden to own land for the purpose of
building a church or laying out a
cemetery, always through the unreasonable
fear of establishing something more
powerful than the individual, through
the dread of a single aristocracy which
might arise in a country of equality
and liberty, that collective aristocracy
which association legally constitutes.
Arriving at this extreme point of view,
the government has deprived the
individual, instead of protecting him,
of his right to freedom of action.
Americans must refrain from this extreme
tendency which is so noticeable
in the new states and which is contrary
to that which, above all, contributes
to the power and the grandeur of their
country, the voluntary accord of
individual effort for a common end.
CHAPTER XVI
The pork industry of Cincinnati. A
walk along the banks of
the Ohio. American sculpture and
architecture.
The importance of Cincinnati's pork
trade is well known through the
humorous treatment which it has received
at the hands of Mrs. Trollope.
In this present state of business when
prosperity and power are determined
by trade, it is perhaps not wise to
ridicule the tremendous development of
any branch of commerce, whatever it may
be. It is true that many hogs are
killed and packed in Cincinnati, and it
is partly for this very fact that after
half a century one finds on the banks of
the Ohio, instead of Indians who
used to scalp the travelers, a city of
one hundred thousand people, churches,
schools, theaters, and even an
observatory. I am not, however, in agree-
ment with an American author who writes
thus: "The stranger who comes
here during the packing
season-especially when pork is being shipped out
-is bewildered when he tries, by
observation and memory, to keep himself
informed about the various processes
which he has successively witnessed
as he has followed the different steps
in the preparation of pork, right up
to the last stage when it is sold, and
has beheld the endless stream of
wagons which seem, at this juncture, to
use the principal streets, going and
coming in continuous files for the
length of a mile or more, excluding
all other use of the street from dawn to
dusk." There is a sentence worthy
of Cicero, for its length at least. It
is almost lyrical and recalls, in fact,
(pardon the comparison!) the verse of
Dante's picturing the numberless
files of pilgrims going and coming from
St. Peter's to the bridge of Hadrian
J. J. Ampere's Journey Through Ohio 73
and from the bridge to St. Peter's
during the celebration of the jubilee.
The author continues with the same
enthusiasm: "The astonishment of the
stranger is not diminished when he sees
this tremendous quantity of
barreled pork and kegs of bacon which,
since there is no more room on the
floors of the warehouses, extensive
though they are, are scattered along the
river bank and encumber whatever free
space remains upon the pavements,
within the streets, and even in the
adjacent and normally vacant fields."
Without being deeply impressed by the
admiration which has prompted
the song of praise which you have just
read, it is impossible not to be
struck by the truly gigantic development
of the pork industry in this
country. One establishment alone, which
goes by the name of "Mammoth,"
has shipped within a single season
almost 12,000 hogs. The average pork
trade for Cincinnati is more than
300,000 hogs a year; one year this figure
was raised to 725,000, and for the whole
Mississippi Valley to several
millions. These tremendous figures
always stagger the imagination, whether
it be a question of time, of distance,
or of individuals of any kind, even
when the individuals are hogs!
After dinner I started out in much
better weather than that of the
morning, feeling in better health and in
a better humor. I followed the
banks of the Ohio upstream, and this
time I found charm in its waters
and its shores. I had to pass through a
suburb full of warehouses and
sheds used in the operations which the
above-mentioned writer admired so
much; then I reached the bank of the
river and there commenced my
delight. Gliding at the foot of the
dome-like hills covered with fine trees
whose autumn colors emitted a very soft
glow, the Ohio described a
graceful blue curve.
At some distance on my right other hills
arose quite abruptly. On their
summit I beheld the city bathed in the
splendors of the setting sun,
stretching out in the form of an
amphitheater, from which gleamed some
slender white steeples looking like the
minarets of an Asiatic city. This
radiant mass stood out against a dark
background. A heavy cloud hovered
over a part of the city flooded by sunlight.
I went downstream again along
the bank of the river; the clouds
disappeared and I no longer saw those
golden colors flashing upon the foliage
and mottling the sunlight at my
feet. The evening was serene and the
countryside quiet. A towboat drawn
by horses on the bank was moving
noiselessly upon the smooth and
transparent water. Some handsome open
carriages with light wheels were
bringing home to the city some families
returning from a drive into the
country. Everyone seemed imbued with
that quiet contentment which an
easy means of livelihood, polite
manners, comfort without luxury, wealth
74 Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly
without ostentation, and uniformity of
well-being, give, for all the carriages,
all the horses, I might even say all the
families, seemed very much alike.
I should like always to progress through
life on the banks of this charming
river, at the foot of these hills, in
the shadow of these splendid trees, among
these people who seem to me to be very
happy. Nightfall forced me to
return to the city, and on my way back I
said to myself: And yet it is the
hogs which have made all this possible!
21 September [1851]
I am ill again. My exaltation of
yesterday evening has somewhat
abated. I read in the work from which I
have already quoted: "Cincinnati
is regarded as the artistic and
scientific center of our Republic, as the
center of culture and taste in the arts,
and consequently the center of the
most enlightened people of our
continent." This is saying a good deal:
Boston and Philadelphia are in a
position to protest. However, there is, I
believe, some truth in what he says
concerning the arts; landscape painting
is particularly attempted in this
already somewhat southern city, in this
country whose beautiful twilight I was
admiring yesterday. Mr. Powers,3
the sculptor whose statue of the Greek
Slave has attracted notice at the
Crystal Palace in London, is from
Cincinnati. But as someone has remarked,
it is odd that the sample of American
sculpture represented a slave. For the
free states it was a mistake; for the
slave-holding states a well-deserved
piece of wit. The statue is graceful, in
spite of certain defects. If there
is one art in which the Americans have
succeeded, it is in sculpture.
Besides Mr. Powers there is Mr.
Greenough,4 whose atelier I have
seen in Florence, and Mr. Crawford,5
who lives in Rome; these are men of
talent. The fact that they live abroad
can, I think, be explained. Sculpture
is an art somewhat outside of the usual.
It is almost always more or less
an imitation of ancient art. Now Europe
no more resembles antiquity than
does America. For both continents the
ideal in sculpture is a tradition
which they share. The artistic
inferiority of the United States reveals itself
principally in architecture, where it is
necessary to create new types to
meet new needs. Here invention is
indispensable; but there is no reason
why a man born on the banks of the Ohio
River should not be just as
inspired as a man born on the Seine or
on the Rhine, when face to face
with the same models. To attain this a
trip to Italy is necessary. Steamers
are accessible to make this trip easy
even for an inhabitant of Cincinnati.
It is at Rome that Mr. Powers has
improved himself; he was poor, and his
3 Hiram Powers (1805-1873).
4 Horatio Greenough (1805-1852).
5 Thomas Crawford (1813-1857).
J. J. Ampere's Journey Through
Ohio 75
first work done in early youth was
bizarre and most incredible. The story
is worth the trouble of telling.
Americans have the bad habit of giving
very pompous names to things,
especially to those in which they least
excel. In this country where a high
degree of literary culture is especially
lacking, there are many academies,
but they are called schools and
colleges, while a museum is often a collection
of bric-a-brac where shows are given
featuring mountebanks and rope-
dancers. There is a museum in
Cincinnati. This museum contains, it is
true, besides a thousand unimportant
objects, some curious antiquities,
unearthed in the mounds of which I shall
soon speak. I have seen there
even a little Egyptian figure which is
said to have been found in the Mexican
pyramids; this would be very curious if
it were true, but I do not hesitate
to declare it impossible. Unfortunately
within this museum is seen a grotesque
and perfectly ludicrous collection.
There is a skeleton which goes through
contortions; a stuffed lion dragged out
of his cave by a string while a man
behind the scenes howls with rage; a dog
Cerberus which barks; a stuffed
serpent which appears to crawl; and
other farces for making sailors laugh
and children cry. Well, it was in
arranging such spectacles of the market
place that the budding talent of the
young Powers was employed. Happily,
within this industrial city was a
wealthy gentleman--one Mr. Longworth6--
who realized that Powers' talent was
good for something better. Here a
man in civil life did what in Europe is
usually done by the government.
At his expense he sent Mr. Powers to
Rome to study for several years. This
same Mr. Longworth gave the land upon
which the observatory stands,
built, as they say here, by the people;
that is to say, by voluntary sub-
scription of the citizens. There is also
an astronomical society in Cincinnati.
The composition of this society is
unusual: it includes 25 physicians, 33
lawyers, 39 wholesale grocers, 15 retail
grocers, 5 ministers, 16 pork
merchants, and 23 carpenters and
joiners. Evidently the members of this
society do not make great astronomical
discoveries, but they contribute
through their purses to the study of
astronomy. Dr. Locke7 of Cincinnati
contributed more directly to the
advancement of the science through his
electric clock which, combined with the
electric telegraph, has furnished a
most perfect means of determining
longitudes. Apropos of this, the dis-
tinguished director of the Washington
Observatory, Mr. Maury,8 was able
to say in his official report:
"This problem which has tormented astronomers
and navigators for centuries, has been
practically solved by American
6 Nicholas Longworth (1782-1863).
7 John Locke (1792-1856).
8 Matthew Fontaine Maury (1806-1873).
76 Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly
cleverness, employing a method which is
at once simple and exact. Now,
thanks to this process, longitudes can
be determined by this method in a
single night, with much more precision
than after years of observation by
previous methods."
I have been informing myself as to the
best means of seeing the
antiquities of the Ohio Valley. I am
assured that at the town of Chillicothe
I shall find a Mr. Davis who has
published important work on this subject.
I hesitate about making this trip, which
takes me out of reach of the rail-
road line; but feeling in better health,
I have decided to stop at Columbus,
the capital of the state, and go from
there as best I can to Chillicothe.
CHAPTER XVII
The capital of the state of Ohio.
Concerning architecture in
the United States. Public
instruction.
22 September [1851], Columbus
In the United States the seat of
government is almost never in the
principal city of the state. Thus the
capital of the state of Ohio is not in
Cincinnati at all, but at Columbus,
whose population is only one-twelfth
that of Cincinnati. It is wise to thus
place the executive power and the
deliberative assemblies outside of the
great centers of population. The
federal government does not reside in
one of the great cities nor in one
of the large states of the Union, but in
the small District of Columbia and
in the city of Washington, which numbers
only 40,000 souls. At Columbus
the town is little more than one street,
but this street is about a mile long
and as wide as the Rue de la Paix. At
the end of it one finds a forest.
To the right and to the left are some
other streets, but here the houses are
in general small and still widely
scattered, as in a village. In the middle
of this town there is being erected an
immense monument which will be
the capitol, a symbol of a society in
which the individual is small and the
community large.
All along the rustic streets of Columbus
one hears hammers resounding
and pulleys screeching. Here is the
spectacle of a city lifting itself up. One
can say along with Virgil, when he
describes, through the lips of Dido, the
city of Carthage as it is commencing to
be built:
Instant ardentes Tyrii; pars ducere
muros
Molirique arcem et manibus subvolvere
saxa.9
9 The toiling Tyrians on each other call
To ply their labor: some extend the
wall;
Some build the citadel; the brawny
throng
Or dig, or push unwieldly stones along.
--Aeneid, Bk. I, DRYDEN TRANSLATION
J. J. Ampere's Journey Through Ohio 77
I do not know what the capitol of
Columbus will be like. What I
have seen so far of architecture in the
United States has not pleased me,
excepting the great works for public
utility such as the reservoirs of Boston
which are built with a simplicity and a
solidity worthy of the Romans.
I have not yet visited those of New
York. The Americans progress as we
do from the Classic to the Gothic not
only for churches but for custom
houses, banks, and colleges. Their
classical architecture is not as good as
that of the Bourse or the Madeleine;
they do not know how to use the
Gothic as do the English, who now and
then use it very well; and when
they wish to invent something new they
fall into the baroque. If sculpture
be the art in which they do best, I find
architecture to be the art in which
they least excel. The same principle, I
believe, accounts for their success in
one of these arts and their lack of it
in the other. If sculpture is an art
unrelated to modern life, an art in
which the imitation of antiquity is
nowadays more prevalent than the
imitation of nature, and if consequently
there is no reason why one should not
excel in it in one country as well as
in another, architecture is, on the
contrary, an art essentially associated with
the actual life, habits, and needs of
the people in whose midst it is
produced. To combine the laws of beauty
with the ultimate purpose of
a building is a problem for the
architect to solve. It is necessary therefore
to create new forms to fit new
functions. Now there is the difficulty; even
in Europe one rarely attains this goal.
It is even more difficult to attain
such a result in this country, where, in
the midst of incessant and domineer-
ing preoccupation with utility, the
feeling for beauty has not yet had time
to develop enough to progress without
guidance, and where, in everyday
architecture, one cannot use a style
copied from antiquity or the middle
ages. In complying with conditions
imposed by circumstances, it is necessary
to find beauty and combine it with
utility. One might expect that, in the
United States, utility would be the law
of architecture, and that the architects
there would be the disciples of that
school which counts some adepts
among us. One of them, Mr. Durand, has
set forth the principles of this
school with such assurance that he
presents a plan for restoring St. Peter's
according to his system. In order to
demonstate this system, he gives the
precise number of the millions of
dollars and of men who might have
been spared had they followed this
system in the sixteenth century. Accord-
ing to this author, Protestantism would
thus have been avoided and, con-
sequently, so would the religious wars,
the only cause of which was, as
everyone knows, the sale of indulgences
by the pope to help finance the
building of St. Peter's. The Americans,
utilitarians though they are, do not
carry the fanaticism of utility so far.
Far from subordinating everything
78 Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly
architectural to the conditions of
utility, far from prohibiting the quest
for beauty, they seek it; but
unfortunately, being uninspired, they almost
never find it. Also they are frequently
ambitious to be original and novel.
Now architecture, of all the arts, is
one in which, except in certain special
cases, it is most unusual to create new
forms. Americans aspire, by com-
bining forms in a most unfortunate
manner, to attain different styles of
architecture, and they also combine
ornamentations according to their
whims, usually without any regard for
the ultimate purpose of the monu-
ment which they are constructing. These
reflections were suggested to me
today by an edifice which I came across
in a street in Columbus. This edifice
was constructed of brick with a large
hexagonal tower and a mass of turrets
and doors and windows of white marble,
having a very false likeness to the
Alhambra. I inquired of a passer-by what
this strange building might be.
He replied, smiling with an air of
satisfaction: "It's like a chateau." And
this bizarre chateau turned out to be a
school of medicine.
Here is something worth more than this
feudal construction in honor
of Hippocrates. I read in a newspaper
published in Scioto, a little town of
11,000 souls, that one thousand workmen
there are following a course in
chemistry while the wives and daughters
of these townsmen sit among them,
knitting. This exceeds what I have
watched with admiration in the
Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers in
Paris: the families of craftsmen coming
to attend the course given by Mr.
Pouillet,10 whose remarkable ability as a
teacher is now lost forever to the
world. One thousand workers in a city
of 11,000 souls following a course in
chemistry while knitting stockings!
One must come to the United States to
find among the populace an equal
love of learning.
CHAPTER XVIII
Monuments of an unknown people. The
Germans in the United
States. A corner of the forest
primeval.
23 September [1851], Chillicothe
To go from Columbus to Chillicothe one
has to take a stagecoach.
I am pleased to learn from experience
how one travels in the United
States other than by railway, so that I
may think better of the benefits and
be more indulgent of the inconveniences
of this latter mode of travel.
The stagecoach which I took is well
adapted to make one appreciate it and
also regret it. It is a vehicle poorly
enclosed by leather curtains. The road
10 Claude Servais Mathais Pouillet
(1791-1868).
J. J. Ampere's Journey Through
Ohio 79
is bad and the jolting very rough. I
admire more than I envy those who
crossed this country before the
development of railroads. Twenty years
ago one traveled in no other way than as
I am traveling tonight. It is
unfortunate that this discomfort falls
to my lot just at this time when I need
a rest, but I must go on to Chillicothe,
where I hope to find some Indian
monuments and also Mr. Davis' collection
of antiquities.
Unfortunately for me Mr. Davis is in New
York. I wrote to his
father-in-law, who, with perfect
courtesy and a cordial promptness, lent
me his son-in-law's book to use in
orienting myself in my studies, and he
put me in touch with a young German
physician who is acquainted with
this locality and who has often
accompanied Mr. Davis on his archaeological
excursions. This Mr. Rominger, with whom
I had the pleasure of speaking
both in German and of Germany, received
me with great cordiality and
took me in his carriage to visit several
of these great mounds and extensive
fortifications which attest the
existence of a population more numerous
and of a tribe more powerful than the
Indians which one meets nowadays
in that portion of North America
occupied by the United States. Over
this vast area extending from the Great
Lakes to beyond the Mississippi
there have been found some very
important earthworks and some mounds
containing antiquities of a special
character, not resembling any other kinds
of relics. In the collections at
Cincinnati I have seen only a small number
of these relics: some pottery, some
remarkably well-sculptured figures of
animals, etc., and I am carried over, so
to speak, to the time when I shall
have visited Mr. Davis' collection,
which is, like himself, in New York.
As to the mounds and the walls, some
seem to have been enclosures for
the purpose of worship; others were
certainly fortifications, of which I have
seen many in the environs of Chillicothe.
They are either quadrangular
or circular and always form perfect
circles and squares. Some of these
square enclosures are a thousand feet on
each side. Those which have been
constructed for defense purposes are
surrounded by a ditch. The rampart,
which is inside the ditch, is usually
made of earth. One finds some walls,
however, made of stones, and sometimes
these stones appear to have been
carried from quite a distance. They
represent considerable labor, and
indicate a population too numerous to have
been able to live otherwise
than by agriculture. The weak and less
populous tribes discovered by the
first explorers of this country, would
not have been able to exterminate
them. Moreover, it is certain that these
earthworks and these artificial
mounds which accompany them go back to a
very remote period. Some of
the trees which covered them have been
cut down, and in counting the
annual rings of their trunks, it has
been estimated that some of them
80 Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly
were at least 800 years old. As many of
these trees were probably not seeded
until sometime after the construction of
the monuments, one can without
exaggeration place the age of the latter
at one thousand years; consequently
they are of an origin well prior to the
discovery of America. The enclosures
which I have seen were square or
circular, but in other parts of the Ohio
Valley there are some mounds which have
the shapes of animals. One of
these represents a great serpent 150
feet in length, with an egg placed in
front of its head. This figure is
especially curious inasmuch as something
similar is seen in England near the
famous Stonehenge at Salisbury Plain.
Mr. Squier, a collaborator with Mr.
Davis, in reconciling these facts with
the role which the serpent has played in
the ancient religions of the Orient,
has drawn up an historic system on the
cult of the serpent. It seems to me
that Mr. Squier confuses, as do so many
other authors of systems of
mythology, unrelated facts. The facts in
themselves are none the less curious
nor are the comparisons less strange.
But, apart from all comparisons, it
remains established that certain
kinds of monuments, all of the same
origin, containing relics of the same
sort, extending over an area of several
hundred square miles in the western
part of the United States, attest the
presence in this immense region of a
tribe superior to all other tribes in
this country and dating back to a
period at least six hundred years before
the discovery of America. This
tribe has entirely disappeared and has
left no other vestiges of itself than
these gigantic mounds representing those
birds and lizards whose species
are extinct and whose existence is
attested only by their footprints preserved
in the wet sand. The name of these
people is not known and we have been
obliged to designate those who have
raised these monuments and con-
structed these ramparts as
"moundbuilders." It is quite remarkable that
one does not find any traces of the
presence of these people east of the
Alleghenies, a chain of mountains which
they evidently did not cross.
Thus one is able to devise, after a
fashion, a map of the regions which
they occupied. Such a map has been
prepared by Mr. Davis, who, without
corroboration, has considerably advanced
the studies of antiquities in the
Ohio Valley, and with it begins a new
era in these researches. It would
be well if some European government
should decide to send an expedition
to study these antiquities in the
various regions where they are found.
Guided by Mr. Davis' map, they would be
able to make excavations with
some degree of certainty.
At Chillicothe I took down some definite
information: one could
find all the necessary directions right
here from a distinguished merchant of
this town, one Mr. Clemensen. The work
of excavating would cost five
J. J. Ampere's Journey Through
Ohio 81
francs per day for each man. It would be
necessary to do it soon, because
each day new mounds, enclosures, and
fortifications disappear under the
plough of the settler. Twenty years
hence there will be no vestiges left
of this unknown tribe. Would it not be
desirable to save from destruction
the relics of what one might call a
relative civilization, one which seems
to have been intermediate between the
more advanced culture of the
Mexicans and the barbarism of the
savages? One can only make conjectures
concerning the powerful tribe which has
built ramparts and raised altars11
and tombs in the western regions. The
Indians of the prairies say that this
great tribe antedates their traditions;
they attribute them to the great spirit
Manitou. Heckewelder,12 a Moravian
missionary who has long lived among
savages, speaks of a people whom he
calls Talligewi or Alligewi, who,
he says, used to live east of the
Mississippi River and along the banks of
the Ohio River. "These men,"
adds Heckewelder, "who built the ramparts
and the earthworks which still exist,
were remarkably large and strong
and some of them had the stature of giants."
This may be an Indian
tradition picked up by the Moravian
missionary, but it is probably not of
much importance, because it is natural
that the savages would suppose
the existence of a race of giants in
order to explain the presence of monu-
ments of whose origin they are ignorant,
and after having imagined this
race of giants, they may have attributed
to their ancestors the honor of
having vanquished it.
When one sees these monuments extending
all the way from the
shores of the St. Lawrence River to Mexico,
one is not able to refrain
from a conjecture which naturally comes
to mind. Cannot the unknown
people which has built them be the
people which the Mexican prehistoric
paintings portray as migrating from
north to south, as an Asiatic emigration
entering America at the northern
extremity of the continent? There is a
certain analogy between the defensive
earthworks of these unknown people
and those of the Mexicans, between the
truncated pyramids, if they may be so
called, of the Ohio Valley or the Mississippi
Valley and the temples on the
truncated pyramids of the Mexicans. The
monuments which I have visited
and their analogies could be the first
efforts of a still imperfect civilization,
which would develop more completely on
the plateau of Mexico. One might
thus explain the presence of a nameless
people in this country during a
prehistoric era, and their
disappearance.
11 What Ampere describes here as altars
were mounds built upon human cre-
mations. He uses the term later also to
mean crematory basins found in some of the
mounds. Ampere was following the terminology of Squier
and Davis, who believed
that the crematory basins were used for sacrifices.
12 John Gottlieb Ernestus Heckewelder
(1743-1823).
82 Ohio State
Archaeological and Historical Quarterly
Perhaps to this tribe which has
disappeared from the face of the
earth we can attribute certain traces of
a half civilization, such as these
ancient cultures which seem to have been
abandoned and which have been
traced over an expanse of more than one
hundred miles across the prairie
from the source of the Wabash to the
valley of the Grand River in Michigan,
and especially those vestiges of copper
mining near Lake Superior, which
seem to antedate the arrival of the
white man. An observer, who seems to
be reliable and who visited these mines
in 1849, has given some curious
details. He found some wide trenches ten
to fifteen feet long and varying
in depth from five to twenty-five feet,
a natural pillar employed within
the interior of the earth to support a
roof, as is done in coal mines, and
lastly, a mass of native copper lying
upon a wooden framework, which the
prehistoric miners had tried to lift but
which they had been obliged to
abandon because of its great weight of
about twelve thousand pounds.
All around it were piles of charcoal and
ashes, giving evidence of the use
of fire. A very hard cliff had been
opened all along a line of formation
several miles in length. What proves the
antiquity of these works is the
absence of metal instruments and, in
their stead, a great quantity of stone
axes found here and there, and lastly,
the presence, above the mass of
copper, of a tree whose branches covered
it over entirely. This tree,
according to the annual rings of its
trunk, could not have been less
than 290 years old, proving that the
project was already abandoned during
an era well antedating the first
European settlements around Lake Superior.
These indications of an extensive
agriculture, these exploitations of
mines which far surpass what could be
done by the Indian tribes such
as were found in the American forests,
together with the great earthworks, and
the art objects found within the mounds
near the earthworks, do they not
indicate the existence of a race more
numerous and less barbarous than
the American Indian? Does not this
utterly vanished race offer an historic
mystery of extraordinary interest?
Finally, would not this race have com-
municated to the wandering tribes which
have survived it, perhaps after
having suppressed it, some ideas of a
true religion and a morale high enough
to contrast strikingly with their savage
sentiments and their gross super-
stitions, just as it had left within the
wilderness some vestiges of a more
advanced society and a less imperfect
art? This journey has been well worth
the effort, and although my trip to
Chillicothe was chiefly for the purpose
of inspecting the collection of
antiquities assembled by Mr. Davis, whom
I shall not see until I reach New York,
I do not regard my effort lost if I
can promote the idea of a simple
exploration, at little cost, the results of
J. J. Ampere's
Journey Through Ohio 83
which would be almost certain, and
which would introduce an entirely new
element into the history of the human
race.
While occupying myself with the study
of these unknown generations
who have built these curious monuments
at Chillicothe, I discover some-
thing more in a small town in the West
as I become acquainted, in the
home of Mr. Davis' father-in-law, with
their courtesy and kind attention.
I am told that most of the inhabitants
have no regard for knowledge.
They are unable to understand why a
doctor should leave Europe if he
has any ability; here they are often
dupes of a quack who has an advantage
over them because he is an American. I
was shown a new home and was
told it was the property of a house
painter who was advised to become
a physician and who has thus made a
fortune.
One of the greatest interests in a trip
to the United States is ob-
serving the results and peculiarities
which circumstances have brought to
these shores which are open to all
kinds of enterprise. Mr. Rominger, who
had kindly offered to be my guide, had
come to America to make some
geological studies, but was induced to
postpone his plans, to remain in
Chillicothe, and to give himself up for
some years to the practice of
medicine. He invited me to come in and
see his curious collection of shells
from the Ohio Valley and to taste some
Catawba wine, the American
champagne, which still tastes a bit
wild but which can be improved in time.
There on his shelves I found the Animaux
fossiles of Cuvier, the Chimie of
Berzelius, some books on geology and
also some books of poetry, including
Gray and Shakespeare, and a human skull
placed, by chance, above the
works of Lord Byron.
Nowhere under the sun are there two
natures more different than the
Yankee and the German: the one a man of
action, practical, positive, full
of energy, almost always with some
material aim; the other a man of
speculation, intellectual, an idealist,
sometimes a dreamer, devoted to science
and thought. It is not surprising that
these two peoples, so different, although
both of the same Teutonic origin,
should have much difficulty in under-
standing and in agreeing with one
another. Nevertheless the population
of the United States receives each year
a large contribution of German
emigrants. The Germans now in the
United States number in millions,
and they form a class of people who are
generally industrious and highly
respectable farmers. These immigrants
have little trouble in adopting
American nationalism and culture, and
yet it is noticeable that they volun-
tarily band together into societies and
preserve as long as they can their
own language and their own customs. It
is in the cities especially that
segregation and antipathy exist. I read
the other day in a newspaper that
84 Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly
in New York a troupe of rough fellows
whom they call rowdies and who
create disorder and violence in the less
frequented quarters of that city,
swore vengeance upon the Germans and
killed several of them.
In searching for prehistoric relics I
came across a small section of a
forest which, more than any other place
I have seen so far, gave me an
appreciation of that wild and tranquil
beauty so characteristic of the
primeval forests. The trees which grew
upon the knolls had not been
felled, and around these straight and
magnificent trees wound in and out
and interlaced itself the woody stems of
the Virginia creeper, often fifty
feet in height. When I stand still the
silence around me is complete. A few
steps away, deep-set between two wide
expanses of verdure, the green
waters of the Scioto River flow through
the forest. This river, without
sound and apparently without banks,
seems lost in the solitude; one might
say that it is sleeping and dreaming.
This section of the forest is indeed a
remnant of the forest primeval;
no axe has ever touched these trees
around which entwine the creeper and
other wild vines, but man, who has not
yet cultivated it, has already taken
possession of it; he has surrounded it
by a barrier which one must scale
before penetrating this wilderness. A
remarkable piece of statuary by Mr.
Greenough, an American sculptor, represents
the Anglo-Saxon race re-
straining and disarming the Indian race.
Here in the same way civilization
surrounds, so to speak, the uninhabited
region which it is causing to
disappear.
I am indebted to the antiquities of the
Ohio Valley for having enjoyed
as I never have before, the silent charm
of the American rivers and forests.
The country is ravishing: in every
direction I can see dome-like hills
covered with splendid forests, at this
moment adorned with all the splendors
of autumn. Nowhere in the world are the
colors of the foliage at this time
of year so bright and varied as they are
in North America; the diversity
of the trees in the forests is very
great, and many of these trees in autumn
are dyed the most brilliant colors,
blood-red, orange, golden brown, blazing
there beside each other in the midst of
a verdure so sombre, so luminous.
One's eyes are really dazzled by this
rainbow of vegetation, though it is not
always satisfying. Sometimes these vivid
tones are not harmoniously
blended, and they clash with one
another, but at times one meets, on the
contrary, the most harmonious and at the
same time the most brilliant com-
binations. At such times it is a
spectacle which has, I believe, no equal in
any country, and, to borrow the
expression of an American poet, "the
colors which the maples display are like
the bud which opens or the rose
which pales, or as varied as the colors
of the clouds at sunset."
J. J. Ampere's Journey Through Ohio 85
CHAPTER XIX
Return to New York. Collection of
American antiquities. Re-
ligious origin of the pipe.
26 September [1851], New York
From Cincinnati I returned directly to
New York, by way of Cleveland,
Lake Erie, and Dunkirk. Again I traveled
by railroad through great forest
areas, the expanse of which seemed
greater than ever when I considered the
speed at which we were crossing them.
Traveling like lightning for thirty-
six hours, seeing nothing but trees,
with here and there a town, a village, or
a clearing, and repeating this all of
the next day, gives one an idea of the
magnitude of the forests. On the way
from Lake Erie to New York the
railroad crosses the Allegheny
Mountains: on either side of the railroad one
sees mountains covered with forests and
valleys filled with them. Even in
the region adjoining that part of the
country settled long ago, how much
land there is still to be cleared, how
large an area still to become populated!
I reach New York on Sunday. The usual
dreariness of a Sunday in the
United States is augmented by a chilly,
overcast day. How different is this
day from the bright, sunny day when I
first came here. Another season
brings another sky. I am far from well,
quite ill in fact. While in this state
I receive news which distresses me
profoundly. There are difficult days in the
life of a traveler....13
For several days I have not stepped
outside nor tried to get in touch
with anyone. I should not give way to
this despondency; I must endeavor to
be more cheerful, to regain courage.
Study can at times be a very unsatis-
factory diversion and yet the only one
which is acceptable. Work is some-
times the only consolation which we can
endure.
My first impulse, after this unhappy
interlude, was to look up Mr.
Davis and his collection of antiquities
found in those peculiar mounds
which I visited on my way back to
Cincinnati. Mr. Davis was most obliging
in showing me his collection in minute
detail and in taking the trouble to
unpack for me the principal objects in
it, and in conveying to me a mass of
information as valuable as the objects
themselves. Pipes are the dominating
feature of the collection, and very
curious pipes they are. The bowl usually
represents an animal, though sometimes a
human figure. The animals are
sculptured remarkably well; the
expression of the features is generally as
well executed as any seen in ancient
Egyptian sculpture, and as well as any
I have observed at Leyden, in Mr.
Siebold's fine Japanese collection. The
animal figure is easier to reproduce
than the human figure. In this collection
13 The ellipsis marks are in the
original and indicate a lapse of several days.
86 Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly
the Indian artists have succeeded
admirably in reproducing the likeness of
birds and other animals in actions
conforming with their habits: the eagle
tears its prey to pieces, an otter
seizes a fish with great reality of action and
expression; the eagle really tears, the
otter really bites. The heron, his long
neck a handle to his long beak, has been
as naturally and faithfully por-
trayed by an unknown artist as by a
great poet. The articulation of its
long legs, the scales and the gills of
the fish which it has seized, are
expressed with extreme delicacy. This is
true of the reptiles also: the shape
of the rattlesnake's head and the
wrinkled skin of the toad. One finds in this
collection a veritable American
menagerie: the squirrel, the turtle, the
beaver, the eagle, the swallow, the
parrot, the toucan, the seal, etcetera. It
is not a fantastic sculpture like the
Mexican, nor coarse like the irregular
designs of the redskins; it is a
distinct and superior art, following nature
closely and reproducing it without
distortion. There are also some human
heads carved with remarkable skill; one
of these has very individual
features and represents a chief whose
face is tattooed; another appears to
be the figure of death. One man, down on
all fours and shedding tears, is
presumably meant to represent an enemy,
so designed that his victor may
indulge in the pleasure of smoking through
an image of his foe, as a sign
of victory.
This large number of pipes proves that
the custom of smoking dates
back, as do the mounds in which they
were found, at least a thousand years.
This surprising number of pipes may be
explained if one reflects that the
art of smoking has been a religious
ceremony among many different tribes
in America, and that it forms, even to
this day, the most essential part of
the ceremonies in assemblies where
treaties are drawn up and ratified. I have
collected a sufficient number of
statements to show that smoking tobacco
was an act of piety, and burning it a
sign of homage to the Great Spirit.
Strange as it may seem, tobacco was also
used as an incense. Even today
there are still tribes in the Southwest
who are in the habit of climbing a
knoll at sunrise and sending forth a
cloud of smoke, first toward the
Zenith and then toward each of the four
cardinal points of the compass.
Other tribes claim to have received tobacco, as they did maize,
from a
celestial messenger of the Great Spirit
to whom they offer the smoke of their
pipes at the beginning of all of their
solemnities.
One peculiar tradition is still extant
among the savages who dwell
between the upper Mississippi and the
upper Missouri. There, along the
divide, is found a red rock which is
used for making pipes. All the tribes
of the region assemble here in times of
war as well as in times of peace,
because, they say, the Great Spirit
watches over this place. A member of the
J. J. Ampere's Journey Through
Ohio 87
Sioux tribe tells that "the Great
Spirit sent out his messengers one day to
summon all the tribes to assemble at
this red rock quarry; he took a piece
of this rock, shaped it into a pipe,
smoked it over the heads of the assembled
Indians. He told them that even though
they waged war with one another,
they ought always be at peace at this
particular spot because it was common
property, and that each of them should
make his pipes from this rock.
Having spoken in this manner, an
enormous cloud from his pipe rolled over
their heads, and he disappeared into a
cloud. The rocks then became en-
veloped in a torrent of fire, so that
their surfaces were fused by it. Two
women, overtaken by the flames, fell
into rocks, and from then on no one
could remove any of the red rock without
their consent." Several things
should be noticed in this legend: a sort
of truce of God, and the remembrance
of some volcanic eruption. I call your
attention only to the religious
character of their attributing the
action of smoke to the Great Spirit himself.
After this story, one is not surprised
that pipes are found in such abundance
in the mounds of the Ohio Valley, for
their purpose seems to have been
religious quite as much as funereal. In
fact, one finds altars in a great
number of these mounds, but human
remains in only a few of them.
In Mr. Davis' collection is an Indian
skull, taken from a large mound
which is built upon a hill a few miles
out of Chillicothe, and which seems
to dominate the entire landscape. This
was probably the tomb of a celebrated
chief of these unknown people. According
to Mr. Morton, who is a good
judge in such matters, this skull
represents the most perfect type of the
American race.
Besides pipes and altars, Mr. Davis has
brought together in his
collection other interesting articles
from the same source. First of all,
there are weapons of warfare, arrowheads
and spears pointed with quartz,
such as are found in many countries. The
feature which makes these arrow-
heads characteristically American is the
fact that they are made of a quartz
which is milky white. They seem to be an
imitation of a model found in
nature, in the teeth of fossil sharks.
These sharks' teeth, as well as teeth
of bears and alligators, were found in
great numbers in the Indian mounds:
they appear to have been used for making
a kind of necklace, such as
certain native tribes make even today.
Some tools in the collection seem to
indicate that the people who used them
had acquired a certain degree of
skill. There are chisels made of stone
and polished with sand; a kind of
wheel with a groove on the outside which
apparently held a thread-
probably a metallic thread-to operate a
drill; some metallic threads used
for repairing broken stone objects; some
plates pierced with graduated
holes, which were perhaps used as
drawplates. There is pottery of various
88 Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly
shapes, some of which is decorated and
quite graceful. This pottery, like
their pipes, is much superior to that
made by the native tribes who subse-
quently lived in the Ohio Valley. There
are some shells which were found
placed together in the mounds in such a
way as to indicate that they may
have been used as money. We know that
shells are so used in India, and
also among certain savage tribes of North
America. Neither gold nor iron
are found in this collection. Iron came
into use later than copper. The
weapons of the Homeric heroes are
bronze, and so far very few iron objects
have been found in the tombs of the
Egyptians. The order of the legendary
ages of man correspond with the
chronological order of the discovery of
metals from which the ages derive their
names. First comes the age of
gold: this metal is found near the
earth's surface, and in river beds.
Silver is more deeply imbedded and the
mining of it more difficult. The
ancient Egyptians, in their
hieroglyphics, refer to it as white gold. The age
of bronze, or copper, follows the age of
silver. Then comes the iron age.
The moundbuilders had not yet reached
the iron age. They used mostly
copper and a small amount of silver,
which was often found in the copper
veins. Mr. Davis believes he has
identified, in a mass of compact sand-
stone, a kind of anvil upon which the
copper was hammered out. Like
several other races of antiquity, this
nameless tribe had almost hit upon
the discovery of printing, if it is
true, as Mr. Davis believes, that it had
traced designs in relief, which, when
coated with oxide of pulverized iron,
were used for printing various
decorations upon skins; but Mr. Davis
does not believe that this tribe made a
kind of tube to be used, as someone
has suggested, for making astronomical
observations. These were more
likely just stems of pipes. These
objects of antiquity have one characteristic
in common: usually in each mound there
was hoarded one type of object
to the exclusion of all others: here
some pipes, there some quartz, and
elsewhere a mass of mica plates which
doubtless served as ornaments or
insignia. Mr. Davis believes that each
type of object, as well as each mound
and altar, was dedicated to a special
deity, and that the bones which were
sometimes found with these objects
belonged to a chief or priest devoted
to the veneration of this deity.
Altars were found buried in the mounds.
Many objects formerly
placed upon the altars, convey plainly
the marks of fire. How is this fact
to be explained? Did these objects serve
as offerings? Had these altars
been buried in the earth so as not to
fall into the hands of a victorious
enemy when these unknown people fled
before a more barbarous people
who would have destroyed them? One thing
is certain. These people, who-
ever they were, were in touch with very
different and distant parts of the
J. J. Ampere's Journey Through
Ohio 89
North American continent. They made
ornaments of bones and shells and
covered them with bronze and silver;
they had knives made of obsidian,
very hard volcanic stone used by the
ancient inhabitants of Mexico and
Peru; the eyes of the animals which they
carved were often made of pearls.
Now the copper which they used could
hardly have come from elsewhere
than the shores of Lake Superior, the
obsidian from Mexico, and the pearls
from the gulf to which Mexico has given
its name.
In conclusion, Mr. Davis' collection,
unique of its kind-since no col-
lection in Europe possesses anything
belonging to this class of antiquities-
would be a priceless acquisition for any
European museum. Would I could
acquire it for France!
J J. AMPERE'S JOURNEY THROUGH OHIO
A Translation from His Promenade en
Amerique
by MILDRED
CREW
Jean-Jacques Ampere (1800-1864) was
born in the village of
Polimieux, near Lyons, in the house
where his father was born and
where his grandfather had lived. This
grandfather was a merchant
and also a justice of the peace who had
remained at his post during
his government's attempt to suppress
the Jacobins, and when the
city of Lyons fell to the terrorists in
1793, was thrown into prison
and eventually paid for his fidelity
with his head. Henry James, in
his essay "The Two Amperes"
(1878), indicates the character of this
victim of the guillotine:
In prison, before his death, he wrote
his wife a letter, which we regret
not having the space to quote; it gives
one a better opinion of human nature.
"Do not speak to Josephine,"
he says at the end, "of her father's mis-
fortune; take good care that she does
not know it; as for my son, there
is nothing I do not expect from him. So
long as you possess them and they
possess you, embrace each other in
memory of me. I leave my heart to all
of you." For so pure an old stoic
as this to say on the edge of the scaffold
that there was nothing he did not
expect from his only son, left the sole
support of two desolate women-this was
a great deal.
This son, Andre-Marie Ampere
(1775-1836), for whom his
father's trust in his future conduct
and industry is so simply ex-
pressed, along with an implied
confidence in his abilities, became
a distinguished physicist who laid the
foundation of the science of
electrodynamics. His name, in lower
case, is known in every Amer-
ican household as the unit of electric
current.
To return to our Ampere, his
tastes early led him to the study
of philology and history. His father,
who had suffered from the
straightened circumstances of the
family, had hoped his son would
follow some lucrative occupation, but
it soon became obvious
that Jean-Jacques was a born man of
letters, just as his father had
been a born man of science. Upon his
return from an extended
64