Ohio History Journal

The Wisconsin Archaeological Society.            337

 

 

PROFESSOR H. B. LATHROP'S ADDRESS.

The mound of earth at our feet is the work of hands long quiet,

a memorial the meaning of which by the time our race came to this

region had been forgotten by the very aborigines themselves whose

ancestors, it is believed, here built it. On some summer's day, how

many ages ago we know not, there labored here a band of dark-skinned

men and women, bearing with them in sacks and baskets the earth,

toilsomely scooped up with blade-bones, shells, and bits of wood, of

which this figure is composed. It is not difficult to imagine the scene

about them as it must have appeared on that day. The soft homelike

contours of the hills enclosing the lake below us cannot have greatly

changed; some then as now were darkly hooded with a close growth of

trees, but on most of them the oaks stood wide apart in the midst of

an undergrowth of brambles and other rough bushes, or cast their

shadows in park-like groves on grassy slopes. The brush was thick, no

doubt, and sheltered bears and deer. The flocks of water birds on the

lakes in spring and autumn were vast and noisy. There were no neatly

painted houses ranged in order along straight white streets, and hollow

trails led from one group to another of skin tepees near the lake shores,

with great solitudes between them.

In the level meadow below us, and a few hundred yards to the

southeast, on what was then the edge of the rushy lake, was one group

of such tents, the village of the builders of this mound. The oaks still

standing in the park sheltered the village in its later days. The ground

beneath is full of the signs of the life of the inhabitants: flint imple-

ments and flakes and potsherds, the homely and pitiful wealth of the

villagers. Between the two oaks at the end of the little grove on the

west may yet be found the remnants of ancient hearthstones, cracked by

fire. The lake near by provided the inhabitants with the fish and turtles

which formed so large a part of their food and were so important in

their agriculture. Their corn-field and their burial ground have not

been discovered, but must have been not distant. These people must

have led a tolerably settled life; the region about them was rich in

all the elements of savage prosperity, and vigorous enemies pressed at

no great distance upon their borders. Why should they roam far from

so fair a home? On this earth, then grew the holy sentiments possible

only where mankind have settled habitations. Here were homes and

love, affection for the lake, the trees, the hills, for the graves of

ancestors, devotion to the commonweal - sacred feelings, however crudely

or dimly manifested, however mingled with savage folly and savage

cruelty.

Dr. Samuel Johnson says, in words which as Matthew Arnold de-

clares, should be written in letters of gold over every schoolhouse

Vol. XIX. -22.

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338        Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

 

door, "Whatever causes the past, the distant, or the future to predominate

in our minds over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking

beings." Such words will not sound strange to the members of an

archaeological society. Its very existence is a call to its members to

escape at times from  the confusion and scattering of the spirit which

come from the welter of daily business, to turn back to the simple ele-

ments of human nature in this day of many calling voices, and to

become conscious for a moment of the long stream of life, unhasting,

unresting, in which our own passes on as a drop on its way to the

ocean. But it is not the mere outer life of the past which has an

interest for us. What is the meaning of this heap of earth? With what

thoughts was it built? Were the minds of those who made it alien to

ours, or is this mound a little signal out of the past to let us know

that the thoughts of the past are still in us? To these questions no

such easy and clear answers can be given as to those concerned with

the mere externals of the past, and yet they may be answered if not with

completeness with certainty and with sufficiency.

Those who peopled the village and built the mound were Indians

of the Winnebago tribe, members of the great Siouxan family, and in the

western migration of these peoples from Virginia a band of the Win-

nebago stopped here on their way near their brethren, found the land

good, unpeopled or dispeopled as it was, and here made their home.

Those who settled this village were members of the Bear Clan; they

had an ideal unity of descent from the Bear, had the bear spirit in

them, and were all conceived of as kindred. In course of time, after

their life had become rooted in this spot, some of them formed this

image of the protecting bear spirit. The bear was their ancestor, their

guardian, at once the bond of their community and the object of their

religious devotion.  Here this image, endowed with a mystic life, the

home of the spirits of many ancestors, not a dead thing or a mere

inanimate figure, watched over their village, removed from desecrating

companionship and the disturbances of the village life, but near enough

to exercise a watchful guardianship over it.  To the west lay many

kindred villages of the Bear Clan, often marked as this one by

effigies. Rude as the mounds are, the artists who traced them were

not without imagination and delight in the pictures they drew with so

broad a stroke. The bear effigy-the black bear no doubt-is nearly

always long-bodied and heavy-footed, but he is no mere conventional

figure. Sometimes his head is lifted and he snuffs the air, sometimes it

is thrust forward and at gaze. More often, as here, the great beast

is stolidly plodding his way through the underbrush. Each effigy testifies

to the fact that the artist was drawing sincerely and with delight what

he had seen and knew intimately.

This mound is not in time so ancient as the Pyramids, but it is in

spirit more primitive and more noble. It is more noble, since it is not

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The Wisconsin Archaeological Society.             339

 

the work of drudging slaves, set to glorify the vanity and selfishness of a

despot, but of a community symbolizing its bond of communal life

and its religious devotion. It is more primitive, for it comes from

that childhood of the race when men believed that human souls

and magical intelligence dwelt in the beasts. It is more mys-

terious than the Pyramids: we know not the builders' names, or where

their dust has been laid, though of their purpose we have some inkling.

Is this symbol of the sacred past and of the community life alto-

gether strange to us? May we not find a chord in our hearts to

respond to the sentiment which raised it?

The tablet we dedicate is the gift to the Society of a generous

donor who desires his name to be kept private, and is accepted from

the Society by the City of Madison as a pledge that this memorial of

a far and dim antiquity will be preserved intact for the future. The

flag covering the tablet, which Miss Pauline Buell is now to strip off,

is a symbol of a bond of union higher, larger, and more ideal than

that of the Bear Clan, but no closer or more holy than that to its

members. Under that flag should live a union of spirit higher than a

merely political one. It should be hospitable to the sacred associations

of all the many peoples in our composite national life. We cannot

afford to lose a benediction from our soil; our life will be the richer

for realizing that this was consecrated ground ages before a white

foot was set upon it.

At the close of this impressive ceremony the pilgrimage

returned northward again to Lake Mendota, passing on its way

thither several small groups of prehistoric mounds on Univer-

sity Heights, and on the State University grounds, and pro-

ceeded for a distance of several miles over the winding pleas-

ure drive which here skirts the south shore of the lake until it

reaches the somewhat noted resort long known from its clear

springs, as Merrill Springs.     Here the party was taken in

charge by Mr. Ernest N. Warner, the owner of this fine tract

of land.

There are here several extensive groups of Indian earth-

works. The first to be inspected by the pilgrims was an inter-

esting group of three bear-shaped effigies located in a small

grassy enclosure on the lake side of the driveway. In a wooded

pasture on the opposite side of the road is an irregularly dis-

posed series of mounds consisting at this time of three long

tapering linear earthworks, three conical (burial) mounds of

small size, and two bird effigies. Most attractive of these earth-

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340       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.   works is a remarkable effigy intended to represent a goose in flight. (See Fig. 3.) Its dimensions, according to a recent sur- vey are: length of body, 50 feet; length of head and neck, 108 feet. Its wings measure about 190 feet from tip to tip. It lies on the slope of a hill with its neck stretching toward to top. Its wings are twice bent, and there is no doubt in the minds of Wis- consin archaeologists concerning its identification. It is one of only a very few examples of its type occurring in the state and its preservation is therefore sought by the society. The largest of the tapering mounds is about 240 feet in length. Passing through this pasture is also a remnant of a well-

trodden Indian trail supposed to be that followed by Black Hawk and his Sac Indians in their flight toward the Wisconsin   river, in  1832. On the adjoining farm land is the site of an early Indian camp.   Traces of the flint workshops and of fire places are still to be seen here. On the edge of this farm, along the roadside are a line of several linear mounds, two bear effigies, a bird ef-

figy, and a line of small conical mounds. A large bird, a bear, and two linear mounds are grouped upon the side and crest of a neighboring hill. After viewing these numerous works of the ancient Indians, the pilgrims returned to Madison.     THE EVENING SESSION. The evening session of the Assembly was held in the lecture hall of the State Historical Museum. The meeting was formally opened at 8 o'clock about 200 persons being in attendance. Dr. Reuben G. Thwaites, the first speaker, delivered an address en- titled, "The Four Lakes Region in Aboriginal Days." He gave an interesting account of the Indian occupation of the region

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The Wisconsin Archaeological Society.          341

 

about Madison, describing the locations of the camps, trail and

fur-trade stations, as described by early travelers. He was fol-

lowed by Mr. Emilius O. Randall, secretary of the Ohio State

Archaeological and Historical Society, who protested that he

was not a professional archaeologist, history being his bent, if

he had any bent at all, and regretted that his place on the pro-

gram was not filled by Prof. W. C. Mills, the successful and well-

known curator of the Ohio Society. Nevertheless Mr. Randall

succeeded in greatly interesting his audience with his scholarly

address, "The Preservation of Prehistoric Remains in Ohio,"' in

which he described the work of the Ohio Society in exploring

and preserving its archaeological wealth. He told of the preserva-

tion in state park reservations of the widely celebrated Great

Serpent Mound, and of Fort Ancient. He also gave an account

of the recent productive explorations of the Adena mound, the

Baum village site and of other noted remains and sites, under

state auspices. A state archaeological atlas is now in prepara-

tion. The archaeological collections in the society's museum at

Columbus are very extensive and valuable, and its publications

widely read.

Prof. William Ellery Leonard, Assistant Professor of Eng-

lish in the University of Wisconsin, followed with the reading

of a poem prepared especially for the Assembly. This is printed

here with his kind permission.

 

 

PROFESSOR LEONARD'S POEM.

The white man came and builded in these parts

His house for government, his hall for arts,

His market-place, his chimneys, and his roads,

And garden plots before his new abodes,

With fields of grain behind them planted new,

Then, turned topographer, a map he drew;

And, turned historian, a book did frame;

And gave his high achievement unto fame.

Saying: "To these four ancient lakes I came,

And saw, and conquered, and with me was born,

Amid these prairies, and these woods forlorn,

A corporate life, a commonweal, a place

By me first founded for the human race."

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342        Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

 

We con his map, his book; for they have worth

Not less than many a civic tale of earth

Of cities builded in the long ago

Where still forever other waters flow.

Yet, if we read the life of states aright,

Man never yet has built upon a site

Unknown to man before him: ancient Rome,

Long ere 'twas founded, was for man a home;

The Caesars, landing in the utmost isles

Of Briton, paved the long imperial miles

Between their military towns, among

An earlier folk whom time has left unsung.

And in still earlier days the Grecian stock,

(Their gods as yet uncarven in the rock,

Their lyres as yet dumb wood within the trees

Among the mountains o'er AEgean seas),

Settled to southward in a land even then

Alive with hardihood of sons of men

The rude Pelasgians, rearers of the stone-

In after eras to be overgrown

With weed and ivy-like at last the throne

Of marble Zeus himself. Again, they say

That fathoms deep in Egypt's oldest clay--

Fathoms beneath the sphinx and pyramid

Lie hid-or rather now no longer hid-

Proofs of man's home beside the reeds of Nile,

Ere ever those Dynasties whose numbered file

Of uncouth names we learn by rote had come,

With Isis and Osiris. Hold the thumb

Upon the map of Egypt, and then trace

With the forefinger how another race,

Making its way between the rivers twain -

Down the low Tigris and Euphrates plain-

Builds that Assyrian kingdom to the sea

Where the mysterious Sumerians be.

In short, wherever a mightier people go

To lands of promise, there's a Jericho

Before whose elder walls their trumpets first must blow.

So here: our sires who felled the forest trees

Received from dark-skinned aborigines

The lamp of life. And though we well may say,

"That lamp burns brighter in our hands today,"

We well may add, in reverence for the great

Primordial law that binds all life to fate,

"That lamp of life, though wild and wan its flame,

Still burned in other hands before we came."

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The Wisconsin Archaeological Society.            343

 

Here was a desert only in the name-

And from the view-point of that narrow pride

Which names a strange thing chiefly to deride.

Here was no desert: every hill and vale,

Each lake and watercourse, each grove and trail,

Was know to thousands who, like me and you,

Watched the great cloud-drifts in the central blue

And sun and moon and stars; like you and me,

Laughed, wept and danced and planned the thing to be.

The whole wide landscape, rock, and spring, and plain,

Lay long since chartered in the human brain,

And had its names, its legendary lore,

Which countless children from their fathers bore

Down to their children's children.

 

So man's mind

Even then was more than nature, brute and blind,

By virtue of that element of thought

Through which our own devices have been wrought.

Here in the villages by wood and shore,

With infants toddling through the wigwam door,

Were arts and crafts, in simpler form, but still

The same we practice in the shop and mill--

Here bowl and pitcher, moccasin and belt,

Mattock and spade and club and pipe and celt,

Fashioned not only for the work to do,

But often with many a tracery and hue,

To please that sense of something in the eye

We now call beauty-though we know not why.

And here was seed-time in the self-same loam

We plow today; here too was harvest home.

Here were assemblies of the counsellors;

Here unsung heroes led the hosts to wars.

Here gathered at seasons family and clan

To serve the god from whence its line began,

Or bury its chieftains; for the Gods, the dead,

Were unto them, as us, yet more than bread,

Yet more than drink and raiment, as it seems,

And they, as we do, lived in part by dreams.

And the high places round these lakes attest

The age-old mysteries of the human breast.

Thus, if you'll fill the picture out I've drawn,

Touch it with color and atmosphere of dawn,

You'll see an immemorial world of man,

Perhaps but portion of a larger plan

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344        Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

 

Of which we too may but a portion be

In that sum-total solidarity

Of human beings spread across the earth

In generations, birth succeeding birth-

The living who raise the citadels we know,

The dead whose bones earth bosomed long ago.

 

And this good company that meets today

Proves the large truth of what I've sought to say;

For why should we, whose daily tasks alone

So press upon us that we scarcely own

The present hour, still take on us to gaze

Back on the parted, the forgotten days;

Why should we leave the quest for daily bread,

To quest for relics of the savage dead;

Why should we leave our figuring for gold

To figure out a vanished world of old?-

Except that thus in human nature lurks,

Except that thus in human nature works

Some sense of common comradry and kin

With human life, wherever it has been,

And in the use of such a sense we find

Enlargement for our human heart and mind.

 

Dr. Carl Russell Fish, professor of American history in the

University of Wisconsin, furnished the final number on the pro-

gram. His very instructive address entitled, "The Relation of

Archaeology to History, is here presented.

 

 

ADDRESS OF PROFESSOR FISH.

 

The derivation of the word archaeology gives little idea of its

present use. "The study of antiquity" is at once too broad in scope

and too limited in time, for the followers of a dozen other "ologies" are

studying antiquity, while the archaeologist does not confine himself to

that period. The definition of the word in the new English dictionary

corrects the first of these errors, but emphasizes the second, for it

describes it as: "The scientific study of remains and monuments of the

prehistoric period." This obviously will not bear examination, as the

bulk of archeological endeavor falls within the period which is considered

historical, and I cannot conceive any period prehistoric, about which

archeology, or any other science, can give us information. Actually, time

has nothing whatever to do with the limitations of archaeology, and to

think of it as leaving off where history begins, is to misconceive them

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