Ohio History Journal

TERRY A. BARNHART

In Search of the Mound Builders:

The State Archaeological Association

of Ohio, 1875-1885

 

 

 

If the State Archaeological Association of Ohio is at all remembered today

it is as the forerunner of the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical

Society. That organization emerged from the wreckage of the earlier state ar-

chaeological association on March the 12th and 13th, 1885, and has been

known as the Ohio Historical Society since 1954. The significance of Ohio's

first state archaeological association is, however, far greater than its obscure

history might imply.    The association mounted the award winning

"Antiquities of Ohio" exhibit at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in

Philadelphia, sponsored the establishment of the first and equally obscure

American Anthropological Association, and conducted an investigation into

the authenticity and supposed meaning of the Grave Creek stone that remains

a model of critical inquiry. Indeed, the ardent and loosely-affiliated members

of the Ohio Association were directly involved in the leading problems and

controversies that agitated the emerging anthropological community of the

late nineteenth century. Although the importance of amateur societies in the

history of American archaeology has been noted,l the aims and activities of

the State Archaeological Association of Ohio have been largely forgotten.

 

The Origin: Brinkerhoff and Peet

 

The idea of a state archaeological association originated with Roeliff

Brinkerhoff of Mansfield and the Reverend Steven Denison Peet of Ashtabula.

Brinkerhoff and Peet first met during a state conference of Congregationalists

held at Mansfield in the summer of 1875, where they discussed their mutual

interests in archaeology and the unresolved questions concerning the origin

and identity of the Mound Builders.² The task of surveying and exploring

 

 

 

Terry A. Barnhart is Associate Professor of history at Eastern Illinois University.

 

1. See, for example, Marshall McKusick, The Davenport Conspiracy Revisited (Ames,

Iowa, 1990) and The Davenport Conspiracy (Iowa City, 1970), which examine the role played

by the Davenport Academy of Natural Sciences in the controversy surrounding the authenticity

and meaning of the Davenport tablets.

2. Roeliff Brinkerhoff, Recollections of a Lifetime (Cincinnati, 1900), 230-31.

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126                                                    OHIO HISTORY

 

Ohio's numerous mounds and earthworks had earlier begun through the field-

work of Caleb Atwater, James McBride, Charles Whittlesey, and the investi-

gations of Ephraim George Squier and Edwin Hamilton Davis, but had re-

ceived only fragmentary attention since the 1850s. Each year more sites were

lost to the farmer's plow and urban growth, while the mindless diggings of

relic hunters destroyed much valuable information that could be preserved

through systematic investigations. Archaeological collections were also leav-

ing Ohio, either by purchase or through the explorations of individuals and

organizations from outside the state.

Brinkerhoff's enthusiasm for archaeology was cultivated amidst a public life

crowded with other interests. At various times a lawyer, journalist, and

banker, he was politically one of the most influential figures in the state.

Born at Owasco, New York, June 28, 1828, he was educated in local district

schools and at the academies of Auburn and Homer, New York. After early

experiences as a school teacher and tutor in New York and Tennessee, he came

to Mansfield in 1850 to study law and was admitted to the bar in December of

1851. His interest in archaeology stemmed from his study of local history,

which he chronicled as editor and proprietor of the Mansfield Herald from

1855 to 1859. He continued that avocation as the founder and secretary of the

first Richland County Historical Society in 1869, contributing additional his-

torical sketches to the Ohio Liberal in 1873.³  Brinkerhoff recognized the

long-neglected need to systematically survey and map Ohio's prehistoric

earthworks, and the advantages to be derived from combining private archaeo-

logical collections into a state museum at Columbus.  Those interests and

connections with the press and the Ohio legislature made Brinkerhoff an effec-

tive force in the movement to establish a state archaeological association.

His partner in that enterprise came to the study of archaeology along a

much different path. Peet was born in Euclid, Ohio, December 2, 1831, and

spent most of his early life preparing for the ministry. He graduated from

Beloit College in 1851, attended Yale Divinity School from 1851 to 1853,

and graduated from the Andover Theological Seminary in 1854. His interest

in American Indians and prehistoric remains first arose as a child while ac-

companying his father on missionary tours through Wisconsin, a state rich

with effigy mounds and home to a number of American Indian communities.

But it was during Peet's theological studies that his future interest in archae-

ology became more clearly defined. His reading of ancient history and the

Bible instilled a life-long enthusiasm for the study of Egyptian, Babylonian,

 

 

 

3.  Brinkerhoff, Recollections of a Lifetime, passim; Elbert Jay Benton, "Roeliff

Brinkerhoff," Dictionary of American Biography vol. 3 (New York, 1929), 49-50; A. J.

Baughman, "General Roeliff Brinkerhoff, History of Richland County[,] Ohio from 1808-1908

Volume 1 (Chicago, 1908), 487-91; A. A. Graham, History of Richland County, Ohio

(Mansfield. 1880), [i- iii].

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In Search of the Mound Builders                                 127

Grecian, and Roman antiquities. It was but a short step from the study of Biblical archaeology to the archaeological remains of Ohio and Wisconsin, states in which he was a frequent resident and traveler. After becoming pastor of the Congregationalist church at Ashtabula, Ohio, in 1873, he became a se- rious student of local archaeology.4 Brinkerhoff, the practical man of means and influence, and Peet, the Christian scholar and romantic antiquarian, were a seemingly unlikely but effective team.       4. Warren King Moorehead, "Stephen Denison Peet, Dictionary of American Biography vol. 14 (New York, 1934), 392-93; E. O. Randall, "Stephen D. Peet," Ohio Archaeological and Historical Publications, 26 (April, 1917), 299-301; Samuel Utley, "Stephen Denison Peet," Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 26 n.s., Part 1 (April, 1916), 16-17; Stephen D. Peet, "Reminiscences of Early Green Bay, Wisconsin," The Old Northwest Genealogical Quarterly, 7 (July, 1904), 160-64; and William W. Williams, History of Ashtabula County, [Ohio] (Philadelphia, 1878), 139. Regarding Peet's knowledge of local archaeology, see Rev. S. D. Peet, "The Mound-Builders," History of Astabula County, 16-20, and his "A Double- Walled Earthwork in Ashtabula County, Ohio," Smithsonian Annual Report, 1876 (Washington, D.C., 1877), 443-44.

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128                                                         OHIO HISTORY

 

With their plan of action agreed upon, Brinkerhoff and Peet sought to re-

cruit all students of Ohio archaeology to the cause. They first enlisted the as-

sistance of James Wharton of Mansfield and Portsmouth, a newspaper man

and former resident of Wheeling, West Virginia. Wharton had contracted the

antiquarian malady years before and fully shared Brinkerhoff and Peet's interest

in bringing Ohio's prehistoric remains under further study. Over the follow-

ing months, they recruited Norton Strange Townsend of Columbus, Isaac

Smucker of Newark, and Manning Ferguson Force and Joseph Cox of

Cincinnati. Newspaper notices and printed circulars were issued calling for a

state archaeological convention at Mansfield on September 1, 1875.⁵ Peet

reported that he was receiving encouragement from all sides: "The only cold

water is that from Lake Erie at the hands of Col. Whittlesey."⁶

Charles Whittlesey of Cleveland, Ohio, an officer of the Western Reserve

and Northern Ohio Historical Society, began surveying prehistoric earthworks

as topographic engineer on the first Ohio Geological Survey in 1837. He had

made "home archaeology" a province of study since that time, having pub-

lished several accounts on the subject as Tracts of the Western Reserve and

Northern Ohio Historical Society. His seeming coolness toward the idea of a

state archaeological society was not for want of interest or passion, but re-

flected his own unsuccessful efforts at interesting the Ohio legislature in fund-

ing an archaeological survey as part of the state geological survey.

Systematic archaeological investigations of the kind proposed by Brinkerhoff

and Wharton required "money" above all else. Experience had taught him that

this was the first element of success. The proposed society "can do much by

mere labor and enthusiasm, but a thorough archaeological investigation re-

quires cash." He wrote not to discourage the movement to establish a state

archaeological society, but to advise that "raising a fund is the first object of

consideration." Annual memberships and volunteerism alone would not en-

sure success.⁷ Notwithstanding those sober-minded reservations, Whittlesey

joined the movement to establish a state association and would become one

its most active if independent-minded members.

 

 

 

 

5. Roeliff Brinkerhoff and James E. Wharton, Printed Circular, Mansfield, Ohio, July 23,

1875, The Norton Strange Townsend Papers, VFM 2168, Archives-Library Division, the Ohio

Historical Society. Hereafter, Townsend Papers, OHS. Brinkerhoff and Wharton's telegraph

notices appeared in several papers. See, for instance, "State Archaeological Society," Ohio

State Journal, July 15, 1875, [1], no pagination.

6. Peet to [Brinkerhoff], Ashtabula, July 29, 1875, Townsend Papers, OHS. Brinkerhoff

also received encouragement from several quarters of the state. See Brinkerhoff to Wharton,

Mansfield, Ohio, July 23, 1875; Joseph Cox to Brinkerhoff and Wharton, Cincinnati, July 30,

1875; A. Haines, Sr., to Brinkerhoff, Eaton, Ohio, August 12, 1875; and George Perkins to

Brinkerhoff, Chillicothe, August 30, 1875, Townsend Papers, OHS.

7. Charles Whittlesey to Brinkerhoff and Wharton, Cleveland, Ohio, July 26, 1875,

Townsend Papers, OHS.

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In Search of the Mound Builders                                129

Brinkerhoff and Wharton described the work that was to be done by the pro- posed society, revealing some of the assumptions and motives behind their ef- forts. Ohio presented a rich field for archaeological investigations, providing a copious store of "the relics of a race anterior and more cultivated than that found here during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries." Almost every county in the state had one or more persons interested in the subject and who boasted cabinets or "museums" of local archaeology. But no systematic and combined effort had been made "to elicit the truth, and settle inquiring minds upon a well sustained theory of who they were[,] or when or how long they inhabited the country we now occupy." It was a matter of regret that while great patronage was being bestowed upon archaeological investigations in Europe, government and private support of such efforts in the United States paled by comparison. While Ohio did nothing, associations in other states were gathering fine archaeological cabinets "for the instruction of their peo- ple, and the admiration of those who come after us."8       8. Roeliff Brinkerhoff and James E. Wharton, Printed Circular, Mansfield, Ohio, July 23, 1875, Townsend Papers, OHS.

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130                                                          OHIO HISTORY

 

The call for action was well met, as kindred spirits gathered themselves at

Mansfield into the Ohio State Archaeological Convention. After two days of

deliberations, the reading of papers, and the mandatory exhibition of "mound

relics," the forty-nine registered delegates enthusiastically established the State

Archaeological Association of Ohio.⁹     Brinkerhoff was elected President,

Norton Strange Townsend General Secretary, Martin Hensel of Columbus

Treasurer, and John Hancock Klippart of Columbus the Librarian and

Depository.   Vice Presidents included Charles Whittlesey     of Cleveland,

Manning Ferguson Force of Cincinnati, Giles Samuel Booth Hempstead of

Portsmouth, John Strong Newberry of Cleveland, and Ebenezer Baldwin

Andrews of Lancaster. Peet was elected a Trustee, as were Isaac Smucker of

Newark, Charles Candee Baldwin of Cleveland, Thomas Waller Kinney of

Portsmouth, William B. Sloan of Port Clinton, Edward Orton of Columbus,

and Matthew Canfield Read of Hudson.

The mission of the State Archaeological Association of Ohio was a daunt-

ing one. Its founders sought to promote archaeological knowledge through

systematic surveys, explorations, and a permanent state museum at

Columbus. Norton Strange Townsend, as General Secretary, solicited funds

for an annual publication of transactions, and sought the cooperation of all in-

terested parties in obtaining the donation of artifacts, sketches, surveys, and

photographs to the association's Librarian and Depository at the Ohio

Statehouse. The library and museum were to be permanently located at

Columbus, and donations to them were requested throughout 1875 and 1876.

Somewhat naively it was hoped that "This will make a nucleus [of a mu-

seum] until the association can select its location and erect its own build-

ings."¹⁰ The constitution of the Ohio Association provided that local scien-

tific and historical societies having archaeological collections could become

auxiliaries. It was particularly important that individuals and societies furnish

the association with accounts of the circumstances surrounding the recovery

of archaeological materials in their localities. "Our design is to form auxil-

iary societies in every county of the state, or to have collections and corre-

 

 

 

9. D. H. Moore, et al., "Call for the Convention," Mansfield, Ohio, August 5, 1875" in

Minutes of the Ohio State Archaeological Convention Held in Mansfield, O., September 1st &

2nd, 1875 (Columbus, 1875), 3-4.

10. Norton Strange Townsend, Printed Circular, Columbus, Ohio, September 4, 1875, Roeliff

Brinkerhoff Papers, MSS 31, Archives-Library Division, Ohio Historical Society. Hereafter,

Brinkerhoff Papers, OHS; Minutes of the Ohio State Archaeological Convention, 3-4, and

Roeliff Brinkerhoff and James E. Wharton, Printed Circular, Mansfield, Ohio, July 23, 1875,

Townsend Papers, OHS. A copy of the Brinkerhoff-Wharton Circular of July 23, 1875, is also

found in the Brinkerhoff Papers, OHS. Article 2 of the Constitution of the State Archaeological

Association of Ohio states that "The object of the Association shall be to promote investigation

of the mounds and earthworks of the State, to collect facts, descriptions, relics, and other evi-

dences of the pre-historic races, and to awaken an interest in the general subject of

Archaeology." Minutes of the Ohio State Archaeological Convention, 32.

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In Search of the Mound Builders                                         131

 

spondents in every county, so that nothing shall be destroyed without our

knowledge of it; hundreds are disappearing of which there is no record."1^l

It is noteworthy that the State Archaeological Association of Ohio and sim-

ilar societies in Indiana and Tennessee were all established in 1875. Their ap-

pearance in that year can partly be explained by the approach of the 1876

Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia, but more practically by the recognized

need for the establishment of state archaeological museums. The editors of

the American Naturalist hoped that the establishment of those organizations

would foster careful research, and aid in the preservation of earthworks in the

Midwest and the South.¹² Those objectives were as laudable as they were

unwieldy. The surveying of local works, the documentation of excavations

and artifacts, and the classification of archaeological materials and sites re-

quired concerted action, state and local cooperation, and sources of funding on

a scale that had not yet been seen. Nonetheless, the founders of the Ohio

Association were committed to seeing those studies carried forward. Their

purpose, Brinkerhoff noted, was "far nobler and higher than the mere gather-

ing of relics. Relics are only the letters of the archaeologist's alphabet, but

nevertheless they are the indispensable beginning of all archaeological knowl-

edge." It was urgent that the "archaeological harvest" begin as soon as possi-

ble. "Let us gather the grain into storehouses before it is utterly destroyed by

the tramping hoofs of modern utilitarianism."¹3

The delegates at the Mansfield convention left with "flattering prospects"

for the organization's future growth and usefulness. Brinkerhoff hoped that

the number, location, and character of Ohio's mounds and earthworks could

soon be determined with the assistance of local representatives in various

counties.14 An unidentified observer in the press, probably Brinkerhoff or

Peet, saw a bright future for the infant science of archaeology in Ohio.

 

Heretofore archaeology has been simply an addendum to something else, and has

been crowded into a corner in some philosophical, historical, or scientific associ-

ation. The archaeologists of Ohio have concluded that this state of affairs should

not continue any longer. They believe that archaeology is the highest department

of scientific inquiry, and that it should lead and not follow; and hence they have

 

 

 

11. Peet to "Dear Madam," Ashtabula, n.d. [1875], Stephen Dension Peet Papers, Beloit

College Archives. Hereafter, Peet Papers, BCA. Article 6 of the Constitution of the State

Archaeological Association of Ohio provided that "All Associations within the state having an

archaeological department or collection, may be auxiliaries of this [association]; provided they

furnish a list of their specimens, and a copy of their publications." Minutes of the Ohio State

Archaeological Convention, 32.

12. "Notes," American Naturalist, 9 (November, 1875),624.

13. Brinkerhoff, "Address of Welcome," Minutes of Ohio State Archaeological Convention,

10-11.

14. Brinkerhoff to Townsend, Mansfield, Ohio, September 21, 1875, Townsend Papers,

OHS, and Minutes of the Ohio State Archaeological Convention, 42.

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132                                                           OHIO HISTORY

 

established a State Association, which is to be devoted solely to archaeological

investigations. The wisdom of this movement was fully demonstrated by its aus-

picious beginnings.¹⁵

 

Expectations ran high during the heady days following the Mansfield conven-

tion.

 

The United States Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia

 

The first official task of the Ohio Association was to arrange an archaeolog-

ical exhibit at the forthcoming United States Centennial Exposition in

Philadelphia.    Receiving   an  appropriation  of $2,500    from   the  Ohio

Centennial Commission for this purpose, the Association appointed a

Centennial Committee chaired by Peet. It was Charles Whittlesey, Matthew

Canfield Read, and William B. Sloan, however, who undertook the tedious

work of obtaining loans or donations of select artifacts from archaeological

collections throughout the state. Most of that work fell to the able hands of

Read and Whittlesey, who canvassed the contents of private cabinets and those

found in historical societies and colleges.   They solicited descriptions of

stone, flint, and copper artifacts, asking contributors to distinguish between

those found within mounds and those found on the surface. Those belonging

to "the era of the mound builders" were separated from "Indian Antiquities" of

a presumably later or indeterminate date. After only two months of such

work, the committee forwarded some 5,316 artifacts to Philadelphia. The se-

lections represented forty-five private collections, appreciatively styled as

"museums of American antiquities."¹⁶ Brinkerhoff noted that the exhibit was

certain to confer recognition and status on the new association at Philadelphia

and "give us character at home."¹⁷

 

15. "The Future of Archaeology." Unidentified Press Clipping, [September, 1875], Peet

Papers, BCA. This statement was probably written by Brinkerhoff, who made similar remarks

in an address at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.  See "Archaeological,"

Philadelphia Inquirer, September 5, 1876, 2.

16. R. M. Buckland to Norton Strange Townsend, Fremont, Ohio, September 12, 1876,

Townsend Papers, OHS, "Archaeological Exhibit," Final Report of the Ohio State Board of

Centennial Managers to the General Assembly of the State of Ohio (Columbus, 1877), 15-16. A

list of exhibitors at Philadelphia is found on pages 30-32. The complete report on the associa-

tion's exhibit at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia is contained in M. C. Read and

Charles Whittlesey, "Antiquities of Ohio: Report of the Committee of the State Archaeological

Society," Ibid., 81-141. Whittlesey's leading role in organizing the archaeological exhibit is

documented in the Charles Whittlesey Papers, MSS 2872, Container 3, Folder 5. Western

Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio.

17. Brinkerhoff to John Hancock Klippart, Mansfield, Ohio, March 31, 1876, John Hancock

Klippart Papers, MSS 143, Archives-Library Division, The Ohio Historical Society.

Brinkerhoff proposed that the Ohio Association purchase some of the private collections ex-

hibited at Philadelphia as the nucleus of its proposed state museum which, he believed, would

encourage the donation of others.

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In Search of the Mound Builders                                         133

 

As illustrations of the arts and industries of pre-Columbian America, the

archaeological exhibits at the 1876 Centennial Exposition were among its

most popular features.l8 Indeed, that aspect of the Philadelphia Exposition

deserves more attention from historians than it has received. Comprised of

collections from several states and the Smithsonian Institution, the

Centennial Exposition was the largest display of American antiquities that

had yet been presented to the public. The assemblage offered an unique op-

portunity for the classification and orderly comparison of collections from

throughout the United States. The 1876 Centennial anticipated the impetus

given to archaeological investigations by the world expositions held later in

the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although known for its celebra-

tion of American industrial prowess and ingenuity, the Philadelphia

Exposition provided curious visitors and the American scientific community

an opportunity to reflect on the remote recesses of the American past and how

imperfectly it was known.       The archaeological exhibits by the     Ohio

Association and the Smithsonian Institution received particular attention.

The "Antiquities of Ohio" exhibit at Philadelphia was located in the

Mineral Annex of the Main Exhibition Building, reflecting the developmental

relationship between geology and archaeology in the nineteenth century. It

consisted of sixteen cases of artifacts, charts illustrating Ohio earth and

stoneworks, facsimiles of petroglyphs, and Charles Whittlesey's imposing

"Historical and Archaeological Map of Ohio." The map located the state's

principal mounds and earthworks, sites of historic Indian villages, and the

routes of early Euro-American explorations and military expeditions.¹⁹ The

exhibit was greatly admired for the variety and representativeness of the mate-

rials displayed. Ornaments and implements of stone, flint, and copper were

grouped separately, as were articles of bone, pottery, and sculptured stone

pipes. The exhibit, judged second in quality only to that of the Smithsonian,

was described as a "labor of love, guided by discriminative intelligence."²⁰

The stone implements received the particular notice of Charles Conrad

Abbott, whose studies of Paleolithic implements found in the glacial drift of

 

 

18. M. C. Read, "Ohio Archaeology," Tracts of the Western Reserve and Northern Ohio

Historical Society, no. 73 [1888], 8.  See also Emile Guimet, "The Stone Age at the

Philadelphia Exhibition," 30th Paper, Congress international des Americanistes, compte-rendu

de la seconde session, Luxembourg-1877 I(Luxembourg and Paris, 1878).

19. Charles Whittlesey and Thomas Mathew, "Historical and Archaeological Map of Ohio,"

Map 771, [1910], Geog. 1051, Archives-Library Division, The Ohio Historical Society. This

mural map, painted on textile, was compiled by Whittlesey and prepared at the Ohio

Agricultural and Mechanical College (later The Ohio State University) by Mathew. The im-

posing map is based on Whittlesey's earlier "Historical Map of the State of Ohio," published in

H. F. Walling and 0. W. Gray's New Topographical Atlas of the State of Ohio (Cincinnati,

1872), 17.

20. Final Report of the Ohio State Board of Centennial Managers, 16; "Antiquities of Ohio,"

Unidentified Press Clipping [October 1876], Peet Papers, BCA; and Brinkerhoff, Recollections

of a Lifetime, 230.

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134                                                           OHIO HISTORY

 

New Jersey were pushing back the chronology of man in America.  Abbott

commended the exhibit for the convenience of its arrangement, which was

"highly creditable" to those in charge. The lithic materials gave visitors "an

excellent idea of the proficiency in flint-chipping attained by the aboriginal

peoples of the State." His only criticism was to ask whether it would not

have been better to separate the "Indian relics" found on the surface from ma-

terials referable to the Mound Builders. It was in the series of stone pipes, a

particularly attractive feature of the display, that the "commingling of Indian

and mound-builders' relics" was most noticeable.²¹

 

The International Convention of Archaeologists at Philadelphia

 

Equally successful was the Ohio Association's role in convening an

International Convention of Archaeologists at Philadelphia, and the estab-

lishment of the first American Anthropological Association (not to be con-

fused with the present AAA established in 1902). Among the most signifi-

cant acts of the Ohio State Archaeological Convention at Mansfield had been

the adoption of Peet's resolution calling for an international archaeological

convention during the centennial observance at Philadelphia. The express

purpose of the convention would be the formation of "an Archaeological

Congress of America.^"22 A committee consisting of Peet, Matthew Canfield

Read, William B. Sloan of Port Clinton, Norton Strange Townsend of

Columbus, and Archibald Alexander Edward Taylor, president of Wooster

College, issued a circular announcing the Ohio Association's sponsorship of

an International Convention of Archaeologists at Philadelphia.²³

The "Ohio Committee" saw the centennial observance as an appropriate

time to reflect upon the achievements of America's prehistoric inhabitants,

and the need to preserve the fragile traces of their existence. Not only should

the mounds and earthworks be preserved, but steps should be taken so that ar-

tifacts were brought under proper study through the establishment of state ar-

chaeological societies and museums. There was further need for a journal that

 

 

21. Charles Conrad Abbott, "Stone Implements from Ohio at the Philadelphia Exposition,"

American Naturalist, 10 (August, 1876), 495-96.

22. The idea of calling a national convention of archaeologists at the 1876 Centennial

Exposition in Philadelphia and the formation of an "Archaeological Congress of America" is

clearly stated in Peet's resolutions at Mansfield. See Minutes of the Ohio State Archaeological

Convention, 36, and Peet to "Dear Madam," Ashtabula, n.d. [1875] Peet Papers, BCA.

23. "Archaeological Convention, 1776-1876," Printed Circular, Brinkerhoff Papers, OHS;

"To the Ethnologists, Archaeologists, and Philologists of America, Printed Circular," n.p., n.d.

[1876] Brinkerhoff Papers, OHS; and "The Future of Archaeology," Unidentified Press

Clipping, [September 1875], Peet Papers, BCA; "Scientific News," American Naturalist, 10

(August, 1876), 505-06. Arrangements were made for members of the Subsection of

Anthropology in the American Association for the Advancement of Science to attend the

Archaeological Convention at Philadelphia.

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In Search of the Mound Builders                                135

would promote the study of American archaeology and ethnology through ex- changes of information and by disseminating the results of original investiga- tions.24 The call for the convention was supported by Frederic Ward Putnam, curator of archaeology at Harvard's Peabody Museum; Spencer Fullerton Baird and Charles Rau of the Smithsonian Institution; Charles Conrad Abbott of Trenton, New Jersey; Daniel Garrison Brinton of Philadelphia; Samuel Stedman Haldeman of Chickies, Pennsylvania; Charles Colcock Jones of New York; and the venerable Charles Whittlesey of Cleveland.25   Such en- dorsements were as impressive as they were effective.         24. Stephen D. Peet. William B. Sloan, N. S. Townsend, A. A. E. Taylor, and M. C. Read, Untitled Printed Circular, Ashtabula, Ohio, May 10, 1876, "Committee of the State Archaeological Association of Ohio," Peet Papers, BCA. 25. "Archaeological Convention, 1776-1876," Printed Circular, Brinkerhoff Papers, OHS.

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136                                                             OHIO HISTORY

 

The convention was called to order at Philadelphia and chaired by

Brinkerhoff in the Ohio State Building on September 4, 1876. The partici-

pants received communications of support from the International Congress of

Americanists, the Geographical Society of Portugal, and from supporters

throughout the United States and Canada. Opening remarks were made by

Allessandro Castellani of Rome, a scholar of Greek and Etruscan art, and by

Dr. Heinrich Frauberger of the Museum of Industrial Art at Brunn, Austria.

Papers were read on "The Myths and Myth Makers of the Far West" by John

Wesley Powell of the U.S. Geological Survey, "Paleolithic Remains in New

Jersey" by Charles Conrad Abbott and Frederic Ward Putnam, "Ancient

Earthworks of the Mississippi Valley" by Dr. Montroville Wilson Dickeson,

"Antiquities of the Florida Tribes" by Charles Colcock Jones, Jr., and Peet's

contributions on "The Archaeology of America and Europe Compared" and

"Sources of Information Concerning the PreHistoric Races of America.^"26

 

The American Anthropological Association and the Permanent

Subsection of Anthropology of the American Association for the

Advancement of Science

 

At the conclusion of the convention, "a permanent organization" was estab-

lished named the American Anthropological Association. Its object was to

bring together all who were interested in the study of American archaeology

and ethnology. Charles Colcock Jones, Jr., was elected president of the new

entity, Whittlesey and Brinkerhoff vice presidents, Peet corresponding secre-

tary, and Read the assistant secretary. The existence of this short-lived orga-

nization is little known.²⁷ The cause of its demise was competition with the

 

26. Stephen D. Peet, "American Anthropological Association," Printed Circular, Ashtabula,

Ohio, October 1, 1876, Brinkerhoff Papers, OHS. The same circular is present in the Peet

Papers, BCA. "American Anthropological Association," Printed "Admission Ticket" to the

"Convention at [the] Ohio Building, International Exhibition, Thursday, September 7th, at 8

O'Clock, P.M. Entrance at Gate 55," Peet Papers, BCA; Stephen D. Peet, Printed Circular,

"American Antiquities," Ashtabula, Ohio, November 2, 1876, Peet Papers, BCA; and Otis T.

Mason, "Anthropological News," American Naturalist, (December, 1876), 750. Peet's paper

on the "The Archaeology of America and Europe Compared" was also given at the 25th an-

nual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, held at Buffalo,

August 23-30, 1876.   "Proceedings of Societies-The American Association for the

Advancement of Science-Anthropology," American Naturalist, 10 (October 1876), 639. His

paper on "The Sources of Information as to the Prehistoric Condition of America" was pub-

lished in the American Antiquarian, 2 (July-September, 1879), 33-48.

27.  See Franklin 0. Loveland, "Stephen Peet (1831-1914) and the First American

Anthropological Association," a paper presented before the American Anthropological

Association at Cincinnati, Ohio, November 30, 1979. A copy of this paper is among the Peet

Papers, BCA. Previous notices of the first AAA appear in Patricia Lyon, "Anthropological

Activity in the United States, 1865-1879," Kroeber Anthropoligical Society Papers, 40 (1969),

8-37, and George Stocking, "The First American Anthropological Association," History of

Anthropology Newsletter, 3 (1976), 7-10.

• 12
 

In Search of the Mound Builders                                   137

 

newly-organized Permanent Subsection of Anthropology within the American

Association for the Advancement of Science.       The Subsection    of

Anthropology was organized by Lewis Henry Morgan and Frederic Ward

Putnam at the Detroit meeting of the AAAS in 1875, and first convened at

Buffalo, New York, August 23, 1876. The committee charged with organiz-

ing the Subsection, chaired by Morgan, sought to make the annual meetings

of the AAAS the forum for the presentation of ethnological, archaeological,

and philological research.²⁸ Putnam shared the views of Otis Tufton Mason,

an anthropologist at Columbian College in Washington, D.C., who saw the

annual meetings of the AAAS as the most suitable venue for American an-

thropologists to gather and share research. Those sessions should be held,

Mason noted, "not to the disparagement of local and State societies, but as a

supplementary means of better acquaintance among workers in all parts of the

country."²⁹

That goal left little room for a rival national organization, especially one

sponsored and led by a state archaeological association. Even Peet was uncer-

tain as to how the American Anthropological Association could be launched

in the face of competition with the AAAS's Subsection of Anthropology.

Both he and Brinkerhoff were determined to keep the AAA independent of the

Subsection, yet needed its members to attend and give papers at the meetings

of the AAA if it was truly to be a national and an effective organization.

Predictably, Brinkerhoff's motion that the first annual meeting of the AAA be

held at Newark, Ohio, in conjunction with that of the Ohio Association, gave

rise to what the Philadelphia Inquirer reported to be "an animated discus-

sion."³⁰ Frederic Ward Putnam wanted the meeting to be held at Nashville,

in association with the annual meeting of the AAAS. Such arrangements

would better ensure the publication of papers and addresses, which would be

"a dangerous burden on a new and isolated society."³¹ Charles Whittlesey and

John Wesley Powell, also members of the AAAS, concurred in that opinion.

Most members of the Ohio Association rejected that suggestion. They

looked upon the AAA, understandably if provincially, as their own creation

and sought to protect it from the perceived encroachments of the enthroned an-

thropological establishment. Brinkerhoff and William B. Sloan of Port

Clinton, Ohio, were joined by Samuel Stedman Haldeman of Chickies,

 

 

 

28. Lewis Henry Morgan, et al. "To the Ethnologists, Archaeologists, and Philologists of

America," Printed Circular, n.p., n.d. [1876], Brinkerhoff Papers, OHS. Whittlesey and

Townsend were among those whose names appear on this circular. "Notes," American

Naturalist, 9 (June, 1875), 380; "Notes," Ibid., 9 (September, 1875): 525, and Otis T. Mason,

"Anthropology," American Naturalist, 10 (November 1876), 694.

29. Otis T. Mason, "Anthropology," American Naturalist, 12 (October 1878), 696.

30. "American Anthropology," Philadelphia Inquirer, September 8, 1876, 2.

31. "Centennial Prizes ... Adieu of the Relic Hunters," Philadelphia Times, September 8,

1876, 1.

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138                                                 OHIO HISTORY

 

Pennsylvania (professor of comparative philology at the University of

Pennsylvania), in arguing that "oil and water could not be mixed." If

Putnam's proposal that the annual meetings of the AAA and the AAAS be

combined were accepted it "would kill the association [the AAA] and leave its

bones to bleach with those of similar societies all over the land." The annual

meetings of the AAAS could offer "only a slice of archaeology," whereas "the

whole of it was wanted." It was better the new association "should stand on

its own merits or die at once on the spot."³² A strong statement indeed. The

Smithsonian Institution and the American Association for the Advancement

of Science had made invaluable contributions to the field of archaeology, but

the interests and pursuits of those organizations were much broader. The sub-

ject of American archaeology was too important to be "merely the addenda of

something else."³³

Brinkerhoff believed that much was to be accomplished by bringing all in-

terested parties under the leadership of a national organization devoted exclu-

sively to archaeology. Such cooperation and coordination were necessary

since pride of locality would not permit archaeological collections to be re-

moved permanently to a distant place for study. It was better to work in har-

mony with local interests. With pardonable pride of his own, Brinkerhoff

pointed to the work of the Ohio Association as an example of what was to be

accomplished through cooperative efforts. The association's archaeological

exhibit presented a collection comprised entirely of private cabinets from

throughout Ohio. State archaeological associations, on the model of those in

Ohio and Indiana, would have to be established and recruited into the move-

ment. The scope of the work to be done was so great, moreover, that both

the learned and the uninitiated should be invited into the field.³⁴ That asser-

tion is a clear expression of the tension between professional and amateur ar-

chaeologists that has been a significant part of American archaeology, past

and present.

The international archaeological convention at Philadelphia adjourned with-

out determining the time and place of the American Anthropological

Association's first annual meeting, leaving that contentious matter to the

trustees. Peet doubted whether the AAA could survive so long as it remained

in the shadow of the Subsection of Anthropology. When the Ohio Historical

and Philosophical Society and the Cincinnati Natural History Society invited

Peet to hold the annual meetings of the State Archaeological Association of

Ohio and the American Anthropological Association concurrently at

Cincinnati in 1877, he was eager to accept. Peet was convinced that certain

members of the Subsection were "disposed to kill our Assn if they can ....

 

 

32. Ibid.

33. "Archaeological," Philadelphia Inquirer, September 5, 1876, 2.

34. Ibid.

• 14
 

In Search of the Mound Builders                                           139

 

If they get us to Nashville they'll gobble us. All I want is one separate meet-

ing. If we can get a separate number of men who are not members there[,]

they wont dare to oppose us or attempt to absorb."      He believed William

Healey Dall, of the U.S. Coastal Survey and Arctic exploring fame, was hos-

tile to the association's existence and thought Putnam to be of the same

mind. He was uncertain about the opinion of John Wesley Powell.³⁵

Peet's separate meeting occurred at Cincinnati, September 4 and 5, 1877.

The    Ohio    State   Archaeological    Association    and   the   American

Anthropological Association shared the same letterhead for the event, meeting

in the rooms of the Cincinnati Natural History Society at Cincinnati College.

The meeting featured several important papers, the mandatory exhibition of

local collections, and an excursion to nearby Fort Ancient.³⁶   It was during

that excursion that Peet made "a remarkable discovery." He saw the walls and

two mounds at the entrance of the Fort Ancient enclosure as bearing a strik-

ing resemblance to two coiled serpents, which were apparently engaged in

combat; the mounds at the entrance of the enclosure formed their heads and

the exterior walls their rolling bodies. Peet's interpretation of Fort Ancient

generated some interest at the time, but opened him up to later criticism for

his pronounced theorizing tendencies. Gerard Fowke, for instance, wryly

commented on Peet's imaginative explanations of site features at Fort

Ancient that did not exist.³⁷

In issuing the call for the first annual meeting of the American

Anthropological Association, Peet reported it to be in a "vigorous condi-

tion."³⁸ It was clearly otherwise given its competition with the anthropolo-

gists within the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He

initially held out hope that those attending the meeting of the AAAS at

Nashville would attend the Cincinnati meeting, after the conclusion of the

 

 

35. Peet to Brinkerhoff, June 29, [1877], Roeliff Brinkerhoff Papers, OHS.

36. "The Antiquaries. Who Built the Mounds, and What Did They Build Them For?,"

Cincinnati Daily Gazette, September 6, 1877, 2; Archaeological.  Meeting of the

Archaeological Society of Ohio, and the American Anthropological Association," Ibid.,

September 7, 1877, 8; "Anthropological. Visit to Fort Ancient," Ibid., September 7, 1877), 8;

"Archaeological Association of Ohio," Cincinnati Commercial, September 5, 1877, 3; "Ohio

Archaeological Society," Ibid., September 6, 1877, 8; and "National Anthropological

Association," Ibid., September 6, 1877, 8.

37.  Stephen D. Peet, "Collections and Collectors in Ohio and Vicinity," American

Antiquarian, 1 (April 1878); 49-50; "The Serpent Symbol at Fort Ancient," Ibid., 52-53;

Matthew Canfield Read to Peet, Hudson, Ohio, n.d., as cited in Ibid., p. 53; and

"Anthropological. Visit to Fort Ancient," Cincinnati Daily Gazette (September 7, 1877): 8.

Peet, like other observers before and after him, thought the Portsmouth earthworks were also

representations of serpents. For Fowke's criticism of Peet's general theory of parallel walls

among the earthen enclosures of Ohio and his tendency to explain site features "which do not

exist" see Gerard Fowke, Archaeological History of Ohio: Mound Builders and Later Indians

(Columbus, 1902), 158-59.

38. Stephen D. Peet, "First Annual Meeting of the Anthropological Association," Printed

Circular, Ashtabula, Ohio, July 16, 1877, Brinkerhoff Papers, OHS. Same in Peet Papers, BCA.

• 15
 

140                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

sessions at Nashville.   As he told Brinkerhoff, "Our Anthropological

Association did not meet with the kindest treatment after its separate session,

but I think we know who are its friends and who its foes."    When the

American Anthropological Association held its second and last known meet-

ing on August 29, 1879, it was in conjunction with the annual meeting of

the American Association for the Advancement of Science at Saratoga, New

York. Peet, who did not attend the meeting, informed Brinkerhoff that "It is

probable that it will be absorbed into the A.A.A.S."³⁹ That prediction appar-

ently came true. The American Anthropological Association was either in-

corporated into the Subsection of Anthropology at Saratoga or the Subsection

simply superseded it. Either way it expired on the spot, a casualty of the di-

verging paths of professional and amateur anthropologists.

 

 

The American Antiquarian: Religion and Science

 

The founding of the first American Anthropological Association did, how-

ever, result in one significant outcome. Peet, as the corresponding secretary

of the AAA, established the "Archaeological Exchange Club." The aim of

the club was to exchange fugitive papers and to bring forward a journal of cor-

respondence and specialized studies in archaeology and ethnology.⁴⁰ The re-

sult of that initiative was the appearance of the American Antiquarian in April

of 1878, edited by Peet. A quarterly journal of archaeology, ethnology, and

history, the American Antiquarian was the primary medium of publication

and correspondence for American archaeology and ethnology prior to the ap-

pearance of the American Anthropologist in 1888. Peet continued to edit the

American Antiquarian until 1911, and it remains an invaluable source of in-

formation about the concerns of the American anthropological community in

the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Much of what we know

about the proceedings of the Ohio Association and the first American

Anthropological Association, for example, is found among its discursive

pages. Apparently Peet used some or all of the membership dues of the Ohio

Association to launch the American Antiquarian in 1878. He would later be

taken to task for that action by Matthew Canfield Read, who accused Peet of

using the Ohio Association to advance his own reputation.⁴¹

 

 

39. Peet to Brinkerhoff, Ashtabula, January 1, 1878, and Peet to Brinkerhoff, Unionville,

Ohio, August 13, 1879, Brinkerhoff Papers, OHS.

40. Stephen D. Peet, "Archaeological Exchange Club," Printed Circular, Ashtabula, October

5, 1877, Brinkerhoff Papers, OHS, and "The American Antiquarian," Printed Circular,

Ashtabula, Ohio, February 22, 1878, Peet Papers, BCA. Published by "the Archaeological

Exchange Club." E. A. Barber, "Anthropology, Archaeological Exchange Club," American

Naturalist, 11 (March, 1877), 180.

41. Read to Albert Adams Graham, Hudson, Ohio, October 6 and October 8, 1887, Officer

and Administrative Offices Records, Secretary-Editor Correspondence, Series 4005, Box 1254,

• 16
 

In Search of the Mound Builders                                 141

The establishment of the American Antiquarian was yet a further reflection of Peet's estrangement from the anthropologists within the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His differences with that group ran far deeper than squabbles over the venues of annual meetings for the American Anthropological Association, as important as they were. A con- flict between evolution and scripture also played a part. One of Peet's mo- tives for founding the American Antiquarian, though certainly not the only one, was to address such "conflicts of thought." The good reverend saw a need to create an anthropological journal that would cooperate with the secular scientific establishment, but could also speak independently of it. "Anthropology is the battleground for all the conflicts of thought now going on between Revelation and Nationalism, faith and skepticism-creation and evolution, etc." It would be necessary for his proposed journal to "open its     Folder 1. Archives-Library Division, the Ohio Historical Society.

• 17
 

142                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

pages [to] the controversy." Significantly, he asked: "Has the time come to

appeal to clergymen[,] theologians and evangelical Christians etc. to join the

standard against the powerful Journals which are now advocating so strongly

the skeptical views of the adored thinkers of the scientific world?" 42

The American Anthropological Association, Peet privately acknowledged,

was partly established as a means of giving a voice to archaeologists and eth-

nologists with religious sentiments, as a counterbalance to the "strong evolu-

tiona[ary] sentiments" he attributed to members of the American Association

for the Advancement of Science. "We may have to struggle to secure a

foothold and this Journal may need to [take] a position as strictly

Archaeological-before the real contest is begun."⁴³ It is good for Peet's his-

torical reputation that he chose not to incite an open contest between religion

and science in the American Antiquarian. Owing to the immediate success of

the journal, he chose not to alienate the leading lights of the anthropological

community who were frequent contributors to its pages. Questions relating

to the origin, antiquity, geologic position, and physical structure of prehis-

toric man were brought within the scope of the journal, but he kept the

American Antiquarian primarily secular in tone and content. Had he done

otherwise, the goal of making the publication the primary medium of research

and correspondence among American archaeologists and ethnologists would

have greatly suffered.

The battle between religion and anthropological science in the late nine-

teenth century is nowhere more evident than in the thought of Stephen

Denison Peet. He was stuck on the horns of a dilemma from which he could

not free himself. He sought to promote anthropological science, a passionate

avocation, but to do so within the framework of his own religious convic-

tions. Peet managed to harmonize his archaeological and theological pur-

suits, at least to his own satisfaction, across a long and productive career.

Yet he clearly turned his face against those in the scientific community who,

as he believed, sought to banish God from anthropology.

 

It is singular that the men of the Am. Assn. have so much control and that so much

of the unbelieving sentiment prevails and that that class has the power. I can see

the way before us very clearly as indicating a rally of the Christian scholars of the

country .... Very quietly but surely we can work together an association which

shall be a power in the country.⁴⁴

 

That was the arena in which the battle between religion and science was to be

fought.

 

 

 

42. Peet to unknown party, letter draft, Ashtabula, Ohio, December 22, 1876, Peet Papers,

BCA.

43. Ibid.

44. Peet to Brinkerhoff, Ashtabula, July 15, 1877, Brinkerhoff Papers, OHS.

• 18
 

In Search of the Mound Builders                                      143

 

Peet's private struggle as a man of the cloth and "Christian scholar" against

the "unbelieving sentiments" he attributed to those who controlled the

American Association for the Advancement of Science was never resolved.

Peet cooperated more times than not with the scientific community from

which he often felt estranged, but worked quietly behind the scenes to ensure

that he and other Christian scholars would be heard. As he explained, "The

Naturalists of the AAAS are a very scholarly set and they imagine that no

one outside of their circle of young scientific skeptics can do anything." Yet

he was determined to give a voice to scholars, "some of whom are religious,"

without regard to "the clique" which sought to rule the AAAS.⁴⁵ So far as

the history of American anthropology is concerned, it was the secular-minded

scientists who carried the day. If Christian scholars like Peet were unwilling

to go quietly into the night, they were equally reluctant to discredit the sci-

ence of anthropology to which they were irresistibly drawn.

Brinkerhoff addressed the struggle between scripture and science at the open-

ing of the Ohio State Archaeological Convention by asking a trilogy of ques-

tions: "What are we? Whence came we? Whither are we tending?"

 

It is true we have a written revelation which answers these questions, and many of

us. and perhaps all of us who are here today, believe that it answers them rightly,

but still we all know and all admit that there is another gospel, which, so far as its

revelations are extended, is more conclusively true to most minds than the other.

The gospel of Nature is a thing of the senses .. .  and therefore if the gospel of

Nature comes in conflict with the gospel of Revelation, the latter must go to the

wall. It is inevitably so in the nature of things.

 

Brinkerhoff confessed his belief in the truthfulness of both gospels and their

essential harmony. "Nevertheless, let us have the truth, wheresoever it may

lead." By studying human experience archaeologists may discovery a glimpse

of human destiny besides. "Archaeology, it is true, is but a single chapter in

the gospel of Nature, but it is so associated and correlated that its interpreta-

tion demands mastery of all the others." He was willing to let rationalism

lead where it would on the question of the origin and antiquity of man.

Similar sentiments were expressed in the American Antiquarian by another

prominent member of the Ohio Association, Matthew Canfield Read. Read,

an accomplished geologist and archaeologist, saw "coincidences" of science

 

 

45. Peet to "Dear Bro." [John Thomas Short], Unionville, Ohio, June 20[?], 1879, Townsend

Papers, OHS.

46. Brinkerhoff, "Address of Welcome," Minutes of the Ohio State Archaeological

Convention, 11. His musings on the relationship between religion and evolution clarify how he,

and presumably other members of the Ohio Association, resolved their faith as Christians with

their faith in science. See Brinkerhoff, Recollections of a Lifetime, 15, 19, 85, 87, 342, and 425.

His "philosophic convictions" on the origin of life were given in an essay prepared for the

Mansfield Lyceum in May of 1886. See "Law of Biogenesis in Its Application to Man," Ibid.,

342-48.

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144                                                    OHIO HISTORY

 

and scripture. There were no irreconcilable differences between the evolution-

ist's natural laws and the theists divine will, if the Biblical account of cre-

ation was accepted as allegory. Read rationalized Genesis and the geologic

revolution of the nineteenth century as a "theistic evolutionist," one who be-

lieved that the divine will which animated life was none other than the natural

law of the evolutionist.⁴⁷  Biblical cosmology and the symbolism of the

Garden of Eden were meant to instruct, he believed, and should not be consid-

ered a literal record of the origin and descent of man.⁴⁸ Read's position on

evolutionary science relative to literal creationism is significant. It further

explains the views of Brinkerhoff, Peet, and other members of the Ohio

Association who chose to have faith in both science and scripture. It would

be unwarranted to assume that all members shared that conception. But those

who provided intellectual leadership had worked evolutionary principles into

their formulations of faith as Christian scholars.

 

The Call for State Support and the Inability to Coordinate

Fieldwork

 

The success of the Ohio Association's archaeological exhibit at

Philadelphia and the leading role it played in the founding of the first

American Archaeological Association appeared to bode well for the future.

With such auspicious beginnings, the Association's mission seemed well in

tow. The ultimate results of those early accomplishments, however, fell far

short of early expectations. Whittlesey and Read had originally intended to

make a complete report on Ohio's antiquities, including both a descriptive and

illustrative catalog of the association's archaeological exhibit and an expanded

version of Whittlesey's archaeological map of Ohio. But due to the inade-

quacy of state funds, the project was abandoned. The attenuated report they

submitted to the Ohio Board of Centennial Managers did little more than tab-

ulate the number and class of artifacts exhibited at Philadelphia. A further in-

adequacy was that the report identified a meager 119 of the estimated 10,000

Ohio mounds and earthworks believed to be in existence within the state of

Ohio. Such incompleteness satisfied few, least of all the report's compilers,

Whittlesey and Read.

The mission of the Ohio Association clearly went beyond the resources and

capabilities of individuals and amateur associations. The creation of a state

museum and the completion of accurate archaeological surveys required liberal

support from the state if it was to be done at all. Whittlesey and Read force-

 

 

 

47. Matthew Canfield Read, "Evolution," American Antiquarian, 3 (October, 1880), 35, 38.

48. Matthew Canfield Read, "The Symbolism of the Garden of Eden," American

Antiquarian, 3 (January, 1881), 131.

• 20
 

In Search of the Mound Builders                                   145

 

fully made that point in their report to the Ohio Centennial Managers. Ohio,

they noted, was once the homeland of a skilled and long-departed people. It

was incumbent upon its inheritors to do all that was possible to properly

study and preserve the mute records they left behind.

 

It is of the first importance that all these works should be carefully explored, sur-

veyed, and platted, and all information that can be gathered be systematized and

preserved. Private explorers often demolish important works, and preserve no

valuable information in regard to them. Mere curiosity-hunters frequently destroy

these ancient mementos, thus doing irreparable injury to the work of the scientific

archaeologist. It is confidently hoped that in some way the Legislature of the

State will make some provision for this work.⁴⁹

 

That eloquent but unanswered call for state support foreshadowed the ultimate

cause of the Association's demise. Although long on enthusiasm and laud-

able objectives, it was ever short of the ways and means to carry them out.

The failure of the State Archaeological Association of Ohio to get state

support for its stated purposes was not for want of trying. The officers and

trustees submitted a memorial to the Senate and House of Representatives in

February of 1878, seeking the release of the balance of the $32,000 appropria-

tion made by the Ohio General Assembly to fund the state exhibits at the

1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. That balance would be used to

fund a state archaeological survey and the establishment of a "State Cabinet of

Archaeology" at Columbus. Governor Richard A. Bishop was said to favor

the idea of a state cabinet and the appropriation sought in the association's

memorial to the legislature. Brinkerhoff, William B. Sloan of Port Clinton,

and Ebenezer Baldwin Andrews and Silas H. Wright of Lancaster were ap-

pointed to the committee that drafted and presented the association's memorial

to the legislature.

The memorial was introduced into the Ohio Senate by Senator Henry C.

Lord of Hamilton County, a member of the Senate Finance Committee and

the Committee on the Geological Survey. Senate Bill Number 82 authorized

the archaeological association of Ohio "to make accurate surveys and descrip-

tions of the pre-historic works of the State, and to collect pre-historic relics

for a State Cabinet of archaeology, to remain forever the property of the

State." The work was to be conducted by the Ohio Association and paid for

with the $5,000 balance reported to be in the centennial fund. The bill was

referred to the standing committee on the state geological survey which rec-

ommended its passage. Peet reported that among the association's officers

and trustees Charles Candee Baldwin, Whittlesey, Andrews, and Isaac

Smucker all favored a separately-funded archaeological survey, but it was bet-

 

 

49. M. C. Read and Charles Whittlesey, Final Report of the Ohio State Board of Centennial

Managers, 82.

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146                                                          OHIO HISTORY

 

ter that it be initiated as part of the state geological survey than not at all.

Brinkerhoff favored that approach, while Peet was unsure. The bill passed the

Senate by a simple majority, but failed to met the required constitutional ma-

jority.⁵⁰ The Ohio Association came that close to obtaining state aid only to

come away empty handed.

The legislative setback on the state archaeological survey and cabinet came

hard on the heels of another. The Ohio Association also failed in its petition

for the release of 1,000 of the 15,000 copies of the Report of the Ohio

Centennial Commissioners, which included the association's report on the

"Antiquities of Ohio." Incomplete as the report was, it could nonetheless be

used to promote interest in Ohio archaeology and to keep the association's

name before the public. The association's memorial to the state legislature

for the release of additional copies of the report echoed Whittlesey and Read's

earlier plea for assistance.

 

We are doing all in our power to awaken attention to the wonderful evidences of

the races which once existed here. They are fast disappearing. Other States and

other countries are gathering our relics. We have no cabinet. The wear of time and

advance of civilization are destroying the earthworks; they have never been com-

pletely surveyed. May we not expect that you will interest yourself in this?⁵¹

 

That appeal likewise went unanswered. It would be the Association's last.

Whittlesey, who had long supported the idea of a state supported archaeo-

logical survey, knew that nothing would be done unless the Association or its

mouthpiece at Columbus would "hound" the state legislature for funds.

 

Are there any members who will make it a subject of personal effort? Is there any-

one ready to lobby the measure at Columbus? No appropriation should be ex-

pected without both commitments. We know of no one who will do the work[,]

certainly none of the officers of the Archaeological Society at Columbus.⁵²

 

Even Peet grew disheartened and increasingly frustrated after the Association's

leadership failed to regroup and renew its lobbying with the legislature. He

was convinced that the association could yet be made a "protege of the state,"

 

 

50. Peet to Brinkerhoff, Ashtabula, January 15, 1878 and January 23, [1878]; Whittlesey to

Brinkerhoff, Cleveland, January 18, 1878; and E. B. Andrews to Brinkerhoff, Lancaster, Ohio,

April 13, 1878, Brinkerhoff Papers, OHS. "Archaeological Matters.  Memorial to the

Legislature-Bill Being Drawn, Etc.," Columbus Dispatch, February 13, 1878), 4; The Journal

of the Senate of the State of Ohio for the Session of the Sixty-Third General Assembly,

Commencing Monday, January 8, 1878 vol. 74 (Springfield, Ohio, 1878), 187, 982; and

"Senate Bill No. 82," Senate Bills Reg. Session, 63rd Gen'l Assembly, 1878, 1-191 [Series

1217], bound volume, no pagination, State Archives of Ohio, Archives-Library Division, Ohio

Historical Society.

51. Stephen D. Peet, Ashtabula, January 14, 1878, [Untitled, Printed Circular], Brinkerhoff

Papers, OHS. Same in Peet Papers, BCA.

52. Whittlesey to Brinkerhoff, Cleveland, January 18, 1878, Brinkerhoff Papers, OHS.

• 22
 

In Search of the Mound Builders                                147

if its officers and friends at Columbus would only "push." He repeatedly complained that he could not recoup the money due him for the printing of circulars and for postage issued on the Association's behalf. Despairingly, he reminded Brinkerhoff that "It costs something to run such a society and I am not a man of ease and fortune to work for nothing and pay the expense."53 Another measure of the association's ineffectiveness was its inability to coordinate or direct archaeological fieldwork in Ohio. There was an explosion of activity in the state during the late 1870s and early '80s, throughout which the Ohio Association largely remained a passive spectator. It could do little more than encourage local organizations to take the field and report on the progress of their investigations at its own annual meetings. As Peet noted in the American Antiquarian, amateur associations and exploring parties were the order of the day. The Central Ohio Scientific Association at Urbana investi- gated archaeological remains in the Mad River Valley, where Thomas F. Moses opened mounds in 1876 and 1877, and J.E. Werren surveyed the earthworks near Osborn, Ohio. Even more noteworthy were the explorations of the Literary and Scientific Society of Madisonville in the Little Miami Valley. Those much-publicized investigations were funded by the Cincinnati Society of Natural History, which became the repository of the human crania recovered from the Madisonville site. The reports of Charles F. Low, Charles     53. Peet to Brinkerhoff, Ashtabula, June 24, [1877], August 4, [1877], January 1, 1878, January 15, 1878, January 23, [1878], and May 12, [1878], and Peet to Brinkerhoff, Unionville, Ohio, August 13, 1879, Brinkerhoff Papers, OHS.

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148                                                          OHIO HISTORY

 

L. Metz, and Frank W. Langdon on the Madisonville excavations were mod-

els of archaeological reporting.⁵⁴ The vitality exhibited by these local associ-

ations rendered the state association all the more ineffectual by comparison.

Equally symptomatic of the association's troubles was its position relative

to the activities of Harvard's Peabody Museum in Ohio. The curator of the

Peabody, Frederic Ward Putnam, sought an annual fund at the museum of

$3,000 to promote archaeological investigations in Ohio, "before it is too

late." The time had passed, he noted, when haphazard explorations and

"chance gatherings" of materials were considered the chief aims of archaeol-

ogy. This was the great era of mound exploration and museum building at

the Peabody, when prehistoric materials were leaving Ohio literally by the

barrel. Putnam was well on the way to making the museum the central de-

pository of American antiquities, even as the Ohio Association struggled for

its very existence. The Peabody had the funds to support systematic field-

work in Ohio, and there were many able hands in the state willing to offer

their services as field agents. That situation represented a decided predicament

for the Ohio Association, since some its own officers and trustees were work-

ing for Putnam too. Ebenezer Baldwin Andrews of Lancaster explored Ash

Cave in Hocking County and mounds in southeastern Ohio, John Thomas

Short of Columbus opened three mounds in Delaware County in 1879, and

Matthew Canfield Read sent Putnam pottery fragments and stone chips from a

rock shelter at Hudson in June of 1878.55 It was better for the more active

members of the Ohio Association to cooperate with the Peabody than do

nothing at all.

Peet's position relative to mound explorations in Ohio leaves little to the

imagination. The Ohio Association had been partly established to control the

conditions under which explorations occurred, how they were conducted, and

by whom. It had failed miserably in that endeavor, but Peet thought it better

to encourage those who were capable of scientific exploration and reporting

than to abandon the field entirely to "relicologists." He praised the fieldwork

 

 

54. Stephen Denison Peet, "Recent Explorations of Mounds, and Their Lessons," American

Antiquarian, 1 (July, 1878), 101-09; Charles L. Metz, "The Prehistoric Monuments of the Little

Miami Valley, Journal of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History, 1 (1878-1879), 119-28;

Thomas F. Moses,."Report on the Antiquities of the Mad River Valley," Proceedings of the

Central Ohio Scientific Association 1, Part. 1 (1878), 23-49; and J. E. Werren, "Report on the

Survey of Ancient Works near Osborn, 0.," Ibid., 52-61. The Central Ohio Scientific

Association was established at Urbana in November of 1874. Thomas F. Moses, a physician,

was corresponding secretary and curator. "Notes," American Naturalist, 9 (April, 1875), 225.

55. E .B.Andrews, "Report on Exploration of Ash Cave in Benton Township, Hocking

County, Ohio," Tenth Annual Report of the Trustees of the Peabody Museum of American

Archaeology and Ethnology, 2 (1880), 48-50, and "Report on Explorations of Mounds in

Southeastern, Ohio," Ibid., 51-74. F. W. Putnam, "Report of the Curator," Thirteenth Annual

Report of the Trustees of the Peabody Museum, 1880 in Reports of the Peabody Museum of

American Archaeology and Ethnology, 2(1876-1879), 721 and "Additions to the Museum and

Library for the Year 1879," Ibid., 743.

• 24
 

In Search of the Mound Builders                                           149

 

of Harvard's Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, and

the care taken by Putnam and his Ohio associates in conducting those explo-

rations. The skill they manifested stood in bold relief to the "superficial" and

"haphazard" digs of relic hunters.⁵⁶    He was less complimentary of the

Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of American Ethnology, charging it with

the wanton destruction of mounds in an effort to enlarge the collections of the

National Museum.⁵⁷

Peet railed against the rage for relic collecting and museum building,

which, he charged, often destroyed mounds before they had been properly sur-

veyed. He regretted that some in Ohio considered relic hunting a proper line

of research, which somehow promoted the cause of archaeological science.

"The collector who hoards relics and digs into the mounds for the sake of col-

lecting, imagines himself to be a contributor to science." That misplaced be-

lief was no longer to be tolerated, nor were the "positive evils" to which it

gave rise.⁵⁸ Particularly vexing were those persons, known in their localities

as "Eminent Scientists," who boasted of exploring hundreds of mounds, but

whose accounts of their destructive deeds contained nothing of archaeological

importance.⁵⁹ There is a hint of frustration, disappointment, and perhaps

anger in   Peet's fulminations.    He and    his  compatriots in    the  Ohio

Association never realized the goal of establishing a state archaeological sur-

vey and museum, nor of controlling the activities of others within the state.

 

 

The Mound Builders: A Divergence of Views

 

Any assessment of the State Archaeological Association of Ohio must take

into account the divergent views of its members on the origin and identity of

the venerable Mound Builders. The question of who were the ancestors and

who the descendants of the Mound Builders led to animated discussions at an-

nual meetings, and sometimes pitted members against each other in a war of

 

 

56. Stephen Denison Peet, "The Peabody in the Field," American Antiquarian, 6 (July, 1884),

277.

57. Stephen Denison Peet, "Explorations of Mounds,"American Antiquarian, 5 (October,

1883), 333. Peet's editorializing on mound explorations led Cyrus Thomas, director of ar-

chaeological fieldwork at the Bureau of American Ethnology, to defend its methods. See

Cyrus Thomas, "The Destruction of Mounds," American Antiquarian, 6 (January,1884), 41,

and "Manner of Preserving Mound Builders' Relics," Ibid. 6 (March, 1884), 103-06. Peet

eventually made peace with the Bureau of American Ethnology. He briefly became a field

agent in Wisconsin, making corrections and additions to Thomas's list of prehistoric sites.

Cyrus Thomas, "Catalogue of Prehistoric Earthworks East of the Rocky Mountains," United

States Bureau of Ethnology, Bulletin 12 (Washington, D.C., 1891), 7.

58. Stephen Denison Peet, "Relic Hunting Versus Archaeological Survey," American

Antiquarian, 6 (May 1884), 205, 208.

59. Stephen Denison Peet, "Destruction of Mounds," American Antiquarian, 6 (July, 1884),

276.

• 25
 

150                                                 OHIO HISTORY

 

papers and pamphlets. The assumptions and assertions expressed in those ex-

changes offer a broad cross section of opinion, and provide a revealing index

of nineteenth-century attitudes towards American Indians. While some mem-

bers readily accepted the idea that at least some American Indians groups were

the descendants of the Mound Builders, others insisted upon more exotic ex-

planations. Some of those arguments have long been relegated to the bin of

exploded hypotheses, while others were essentially correct if woefully inade-

quate in many particulars. Several of the more-informed members of the

Ohio Association asked the right questions about Ohio's prehistoric past, but

lacked the knowledge-base and methodologies needed to provide the answers.

By the late 1870s and early '80s, however, more sites were coming under

study and earlier information reinterpreted in light of new discoveries. The of-

ten contentious members of the Ohio Association were at the center of the

ensuing debate. Several cherished pipe dreams would be demolished along the

way.

No subject received more attention or stirred more controversy among ar-

chaeologists in the nineteenth century than the authenticity and presumed

meaning of the engraved stone tablets that were periodically recovered from

mounds. The discovery of the Grave Creek stone in 1838, the Cincinnati

tablet in 1842, the Newark "holy stones" in 1860, the Berlin tablet in 1876,

and the Wilmington tablet and "Welsh Butterfly" in 1879 each represent an

intriguing and important episode in the history of American archaeology.

The uncertainties attending those discoveries resulted in heated exchanges as

to their alleged genuiness or fraudulence. The difficulty of documenting the

authenticity of these finds was a problem that plagued American archaeolo-

gists throughout the nineteenth century. Some seemed most certainly to have

been hoaxes, and the genuiness of others was difficult to assess. Some en-

thusiasts uncritically accepted those tablets as proof that the Mound Builders

had used some form of hieroglyphic or alphabetic writing. Others dismissed

them as frauds or, if they thought them genuine, denied the possibility that

their inscriptions or designs were in any way alphabetic. Opinions among

the members of the Ohio Association represented both schools of thought.

One of the least objectionable discoveries of an engraved stone tablet was

that recovered by Dr. John E. Sylvester and Linsey Cremeans from a mound

on the Edward Poor farm, near Berlin, Ohio, June 14, 1876. The Berlin

tablet was taken to Philadelphia for exhibition by Thomas Waller Kinney of

Portsmouth, a member of the Ohio Association and an avid collector in his

own right. Lacking conclusive evidence of its authenticity, however, Kinney

withheld its presentation. It was with much "timidity" that Dr. Sylvester

later presented an account of his discovery at the annual meeting of the Ohio

Association, held at Cincinnati in September of 1877. Sylvester's detailed

and unornamented account was supported by letters from Cremeans and Poor,

• 26
 

In Search of the Mound Builders                                            151

 

attesting to its truthfulness. His testimony, which concerned itself only with

the question of the tablet's genuiness, was well received. No grounds were

found to deny its authenticity. Agreement on the meaning of its perplexing

design, however, was another matter. Some interpreted it as the representa-

tion of a labyrinth or a fortification, while others saw it as an idol, a human

figure, a duck, or even as "petrified-chicken tracks."⁶⁰ The Berlin tablet is to-

day recognized as an authentic Adena artifact. The incised lines of its engrav-

ing represent a raptorial bird, and it shares stylistic similarities with other

Adena tablets.

Sylvester's account of the Berlin tablet's discovery and its resemblance to

other well-documented tablets later recovered from Adena mounds laid the

matter of its genuiness to rest.   More controversial and protracted was the

Ohio Association's inquiry into the authenticity and alleged alphabetic nature

of the Grave Creek stone.⁶¹ Certain members of the association were mired

in that controversy from its very inception, largely due to the personal crusade

and incendiary rhetoric of James E. Wharton. Wharton, one of the first to

assist Brinkerhoff and Peet in founding the Ohio Association, had firsthand

knowledge of the Grave Creek stone and the alleged circumstances of its re-

covery. He said he was unaware that stone's authenticity was in question be-

fore discussing the matter with Isaac Smucker and others at the state archaeo-

logical convention at Mansfield in 1875.       There he learned that Charles

Whittlesey had identified the inscription as a fraud in a tract published in

1872. After reading the article in question, Wharton forthrightly stated his

own views in the Cleveland Herald in September of 1875.62      Wharton said it

was due to archaeological truth that he should fully state what he knew of the

 

 

60. Jno. E. Sylvester, "Description of An Engraved Stone Found Near Berlin, Jackson

County, O.," American Antiquarian, 1 (July, 1878), 73-75. Otis Tufton Mason observed that

engraved stone tablets were a "tender point" with Midwesterners.  Sylvester's account,

"backed with affidavits," looked more like "the report of a Congressional committee" than

anything else. "There is no doubt that much less temper would have been evoked by these ob-

jects if some of their admirers had not insisted on seeing in their rude lines symbols of some-

thing which never entered into the minds of those who manufactured them." Otis T. Mason,

"Anthropological News," American Naturalist, 12 (December, 1878), 824.

61. See Terry A. Barnhart, "Curious Antiquity? The Grave Creek Controversy Revisited,"

West Virginia History, 46 (Annual, 1985-86), 103-24.

62. J. E. Wharton, "Archaeology," Cleveland Daily Herald, September 24, 1875), 3.

Wharton's defense of the Grave Creek stone in the Cleveland Herald was supported by a letter

from W. C. Howells, the U.S. Minister to Canada and one of Wharton's old acquantainces. W.

C. Howells to the Editor, Quebec, September 28, 1875, "Archaeology," Cleveland Daily

Herald, October 6, 1875, 3. The account referred to is "Archaeological Frauds--Inscriptions

Attributed to the Mound Builders-Three Remarkable Forgeries," Tracts of the Western

Reserve and Northern Ohio Historical Society, no. 9 (February, 1872), 1-4. Whittlesey made

quite a study of the Grave Creek stone and related topics. See "Ancient Rock Inscriptions in

Ohio, An Ancient Burial Mound, Hardin County, O.," Ibid., no. 11 (August, 1872), 1-16;

"Archaeological Frauds," Ibid., no. 33 (November, 1876), 1-7; "Rock Inscriptions in the

United States-Ancient Alphabets of Asia," Ibid., no. 42 (March, 1878), 41-55; and the

"Grave Creek Inscribed Stone," Ibid., (April, 1879), 65-68.

• 27
 

152                                                    OHIO HISTORY

 

circumstances surrounding the stone's discovery in 1838.

Wharton was editor of the Wheeling Daily Times in 1838, and claimed to

have been present during the excavation of the Grave Creek mound (located at

present-day Moundsville, West Virginia) when the stone was found in the dirt

and debris that workmen had removed from the mound's interior. It bore "the

unmistakable evidences of age and long residence in that same dirt."⁶³ He af-

firmed that no one at Grave Creek would have committed a fraud, least of all

the owner of the mound and the stone's alleged finder, Abelard Tomlinson.

Wharton believed the stone to be incontestably genuine, objections from

skeptics notwithstanding. "I am as sure of the genuiness of the stone as I am

of that of the earth, and cannot but think that the skepticism that throws

doubt on such things, without good and sufficient reasons, is very harmful to

the progress of science." The skepticism of the stone's first and best-known

detractor, Ephraim George Squier, he found to be especially irksome.

Wharton charged that Squier knew nothing about the stone's discovery or

even archaeology for that matter, save what he learned from his former associ-

ate in mound investigations, Dr. Edwin Hamilton Davis of Chillicothe. He

was no less respectful of Whittlesey's views on the subject, defying him to

bring forth one shred of evidence that would prove the Grave Creek stone a

fraud.

It was largely due to Wharton's constant agitation on the subject that an-

other vindication of the stone's authenticity was brought forth by Peter

Peterson Cherry, Secretary of the District Historical Society. That society

was an auxiliary of the Ohio Association, conducting archaeological investi-

gations in Medina, Summit, and Wayne counties. Cherry had devoted consid-

erable time to the study of the inscribed oddities that were widely attributed to

the Mound Builders, and was initially among the skeptics who discounted the

Grave Creek stone as a forgery.⁶⁴ After conducting his own "earnest investi-

gation," however, he concluded that it was genuine and of remote antiquity.

Cherry mustered a battery of corroborative correspondence relating to the dis-

covery of the Grave Creek stone and reaffirmed its authenticity in 1877.65 He

bolstered his case with the eyewitness testimonies of the stone's purported

finders, who by then were greatly advanced in years. All still agreed on the

stone's authenticity, but could not concur on important details relating to ex-

actly where it had been found. Wharton's statement that the stone was found

among the loose dirt and debris brought outside the mound, for example,

contradicted the original accounts of its discovery and the recollections of

 

 

63. J. E. Wharton, "Archaeology," Cleveland Daily Herald, September 24, 1875, 3.

64. See P. P. Cherry, Curious Stones! (Wadsworth, Ohio, 1878), where Cherry shows himself

to be quite the student of inscribed oddities.

65. P. P. Cherry, The Grave-Creek Mound: Its History, and Its Inscribed Stone, With Its

Vindication (Wadsworth, Ohio, 1877).

• 28
 

In Search of the Mound Builders                              153

others.  Whether found inside or outside of the mound, Wharton still categorically denied the remotest chance of it having been planted by mischievous hands.66 Wharton's letter in the Cleveland Herald and his testimony in Cherry's vin- dication were but the opening salvos in the renewed controversy surrounding the Grave Creek stone. Wharton remained a vocal critic of those who contin- ued to gainsay its archaeological value, and who perversely kept "one eye shut, [and] would not look out the other."67 He returned to the attack during the second annual meeting of the Ohio Association, held at Cincinnati in September of 1877. In a long and intemperate paper "pungent with abuse" of the stone's critics,68 Wharton challenged the members of the association to take up the question of the stone's authenticity in a fair and impartial manner. After thoroughly cross-examining Wharton over the details of the stone's dis-     66. Wharton to Cherry, April 7, 1876 and August 31, 1877, Ibid. 67. J. E. Wharton, "The Mound Builders, The Ohio Valley 1 (May, 1876), 6. 68. The reported version of Wharton's intemperate and abusive paper before the State Archaeological Association of Ohio on September 4, 1877, appears in "Archaeological Association of Ohio," Cincinnati Commercial, September 5, 1877, 3.

• 29
 

154                                                 OHIO HISTORY

 

covery, his challenge was accepted. The Ohio Association appointed John

Patterson MacLean, president of the Butler County Geological and

Archaeological Society; Archibald Alexander Edward Taylor, president of

Wooster College; and Matthew Canfield Read, professor of geology and zool-

ogy at Western Reserve College, as a special committee to reinvestigate the

tortured history of the Grave Creek stone. The committee was asked to report

its finding at the association's next annual meeting, to be held at Wooster in

September of 1878.

It was Matthew Canfield Read who wrote and submitted the committee's

report at Wooster. Like several members of the Ohio Association, Read came

to archaeology through his study of geology. He was appointed in 1869 as

assistant geologist on the second Ohio Geological Survey. He lectured on

geology and zoology at the Western Reserve College in Hudson, Ohio, and

was widely recognized as an excellent field man owing to his scientific train-

ing and experience on the state geological survey. Read's knowledge of lithic

materials was rivaled only by that of his colleague Charles Whittlesey, who

had earlier turned to the study of archeology during the first geological survey,

and who shared with Read the same scientific turn of mind. It was unques-

tionably due to the expertise and energy of Read and Whittlesey that the asso-

ciation's "Antiquities of Ohio" exhibit had been so well received at the 1876

Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia. They were the only archaeologists in

the state who could have done the work as well or as fast, and only they could

have written the association's report for the Ohio Board of Centennial

Managers with the same authority when discussing Ohio's archaeological

sites and artifacts.

Read endeavored to divorce himself from all received opinion concerning the

Grave Creek stone, investigating the subject de novo. He claimed that his

only objective was to finally end, either pro or con, a quarter-century of con-

troversy concerning the authenticity and alleged alphabetic significance of the

Grave Creek stone. Determining the stone's precise location at the time of

its discovery was a fundamentally important point of inquiry. If found undis-

turbed inside the mound, as most witnesses had testified, the argument for its

authenticity was greatly strengthened. If it was found outside the mound as

Wharton had stated, the chance of fraud would be similarly advanced.

Contacting those said to have been present at the excavation of the Grave

Creek mound in 1838, Read attempted, as best he could after the lapse of

thirty-nine years, to reconstruct the circumstances of the stone's discovery.

Not surprisingly he found serious contradictions in the accounts of correspon-

dents, confirming that memories were fading fast. In the face of such muddled

testimony, he concluded that evidence of the stone being found within the

mound was entirely "circumstantial and inferential." The passage of time, the

irreconcilable conflicts between the accounts of alleged eyewitnesses, and the

• 30
 

In Search of the Mound Builders                                           155

 

haphazard conditions of the mound's excavation all cast permanent doubt on

the stone as authentic antiquity.⁶⁹

As for the stone's alleged alphabetic or phonetic inscription, Read con-

ducted an experiment which he believed demonstrated that it was neither.

Selecting several persons who claimed to have never before seen an ancient

inscription, he asked them to fabricate twenty or more characters not resem-

bling any alphabet or phonetic figures known to them. His only requirement

was that their productions be composed of straight lines and their combina-

tions. The result, said Read, was that "In every case an inscription was pro-

duced presenting as many indications of being alphabetical" as that on the

Grave Creek stone. Accordingly, he concluded that the Grave Creek inscrip-

tion was "just such a medley of characters as anyone would produce who un-

dertook to invent an inscription to puzzle the curious." Even if genuine,

Read considered it of little importance.  If not alphabetic it mattered little

whether it was of ancient or recent origin, making the anomally at best an

overvalued curiosity. Read's finding restated long-standing skepticism against

the stone's authenticity, reaffirmed Charles Whittlesey's views, and clearly

demonstrated that "there is nothing more uncertain than human testimony in

regard to events long past."

Read's conclusions on the Grave Creek stone were accepted by co-commit-

tee member Archibald Taylor and the Ohio Association at large. But they

were not accepted by the other committee member, John Patterson MacLean.

Having been absent from the Wooster meeting, MacLean had been unable to

present the results of his own inquiries. He published his findings on the

Grave Creek stone in 1879,⁷0 the same year that Read's report appeared in the

American Antiquarian.     MacLean's dissenting opinion dealt only with the

question of the stone's authenticity. He agreed with Read that the stone's

characters could not be alphabetic, and believed that frequent and "idle specula-

 

 

 

69. M. C. Read, "Inscribed Stone of Grave Creek Mound," American Antiquarian, I

(January, 1879), 139-49. Read returned to the subject of alphabetic writing and engraved

tablets in his "Archaeology of Ohio," Tracts of the Western Reserve Historical Society, no. 73

[1]888], 101-09. He remained the nemesis of those who accepted such discoveries in an un

critical manner. See M. C. Read, "The'Welch Butterfly'-Is the Inscription Upon It Old?,"

American Antiquarian, 4 (April-July, 1882), 225-27.

70. [John Patterson] MacLean, The Mound Builders (Cincinnati, 1879), 99-105. The

Reverend John Patterson MacLean became a popular writer and lecturer on the subject of

American archaeology. His lectures were illustrated by the stereoptican, charts, and artifacts,

while his writings defended archaeological method against those who dismissed it as "a mere

bundle of guesswork," and made a clear distinction between relic hunting and archaeology.

Real archaeologists were those who "dug for their facts" and who freely borrowed from the

natural sciences to decode them. See J. P. MacLean, "Lecture on the Mound Builders,"

Broadside, November 24, 1886, OVS 1154, Box 15, Archives-Library Division, The Ohio

Historical Society, and J. P. MacLean, "A Study of American Archaeology, Part Three.

Processes of Investigation," Universalist Quarterly, (July, 1881), 112. Pagination is from a

reprint.

• 31
 

156                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

tion" in that regard was completely unwarranted. Moreover, he fully con-

curred in Charles Whittlesey's opinion that the expectation of finding written

records in the mounds no doubt accounted for the supposedly alphabetic in-

scriptions that were offered to an impressionable and eager public. After sift-

ing through the accumulated evidence on the Grave Creek stone, however,

MacLean did not hesitate to pronounce that its authenticity was incontestable.

He noted that "a shrewd lawyer can pick flaws and badger witnesses," but such

tactics could not alter the record. Regardless of who found the stone or

whether it was discovered inside or outside of the mound, all professed wit-

nesses agreed that it came from the mound.

Controversy over the Grave Creek stone has continued to this day, but the

appearance of the Read and MacLean accounts at least brought the personal

rancor between members of the Ohio Association to an end. That dispute is

indicative of the friction that existed between its more theoretical and less cau-

tious members, and scientifically-trained fieldworkers like Read and

Whittlesey whose orientation was more toward the classification and descrip-

tion of archaeological sites and artifacts. Such discordant voices often moved

in an uneasy alliance in promoting the association's larger aims and purposes

resulted in strained relations between members, and made for lively annual

meetings. Theorists, to be certain, were present among the eclectic ranks of

the Ohio Association. Few of its members doubted that Ohio's mounds and

hilltop enclosures contained evidence of a civilization as hoary with antiquity

as that of Babylon and Nineveh, perhaps even older. They never tired of cal-

culating the cubic contents of these ancient citadels of the forest, the age of

their adorning trees, nor of speculating on the amount of labor and type of so-

ciety required to have built them. The degree to which some members luxuri-

ated upon those details and the romantic cache they brought to the subject of

the Mound Builders in general represents a distinct problem in the history of

archaeological thought.

The mystery and romance of the mounds-the seemingly impenetrable

questions concerning their origin, antiquity, and purposes-stimulated roman-

tic imaginations with a fascination that bordered on a cult. Antiquaries lin-

gered among the shadows of the mounds or stood atop their summits as if to

divine their age-old secrets from the very air. When the Ohio Association

held its annual meeting at Newark in October of 1876, the imaginations of its

members were easily swept away by the monumental grandeur of the Newark

earthworks. Surely this had been the seat of "an extensive empire." Peet re-

ported that "wonder was increased at each step" of their investigation.

"Everyone was left to make out his own theory." Peet felt the presence of the

remote past at the Newark earthworks, and had a theory about their ancient

purpose. "They all form a system of structures which were doubtless used for

a grand and mysterious ceremonial religious purpose, and one can almost

• 32
 

In Search of the Mound Builders                                   157

 

imagine the solemn pageant of a numerous but religious people, filling the

long line of parallel walls or gathering in the great circles at the strange reli-

gious festivals."⁷¹

Witness, too, the remarks of the Reverend John Patterson MacLean, author

of the Mound Builders (1879). Maclean had spent many a pleasant hour

strolling among the works in Butler County, and he too felt the impress of

the past and the spirit of the departed Mound Builders.

 

Standing upon one of the monuments the lover of the mysterious will lose himself

in meditation, or else in imagination will behold a strange people toiling under

the heat of a burning sun, or perhaps see them suffering from the effects of a win-

ter's wind while erecting structures devoted to such rites as are recorded in the

pages of history.⁷²

 

No one wove a richer tapestry of speculation about the Mound Builders than

the ardent members of the Ohio Association, to whom the origin, antiquity,

and fate of Ohio's prehistoric inhabitants were all-consuming and tireless top-

ics of inquiry.

 

 

Ohio's "Lost Race" School

 

It is not surprising that the more theoretical members of the Ohio

Association were among the staunchest defenders of the "lost race" school as

it came under increasing attack in the late 1870s and '80s. The moonstruck

musings of James E. Wharton of Portsmouth, Ohio, are a case in point.

Wharton gave full expression to his theories in the Ohio Valley, a monthly

journal of archaeology, history, and science he published at Portsmouth.

Ohio pamphleteers, Wharton noted, published accounts on local archaeology

that were often "abounding in crude speculations, that are erroneous and dan-

gerous to truth." After emphatically asserting that "The fathers of these lazy

red-skins never made them! [the mounds]," he proceeded to indulge in some

crude speculations of his own. Postulating an European origin for the Mound

Builders, Wharton cited the reputedly Phoenician inscription on the Grave

Creek stone as supporting evidence.  He little doubted that the Mound

Builders were descended from one of the ancient civilizations of Europe or the

Middle East, most likely the seafaring Phoenicians of the Mediterranean. At

the heart of this theory were Wharton's efforts to rationalize the apparent con-

tradictions which New World antiquities posed for the Biblical account of cre-

ation, the origin of civilization, and the chronology of man.⁷³

 

 

71. S. D. P., "Antiquities of Ohio," Unidentified Press Clipping, [October 1876], Peet Papers,

BCA.

72. McLean, The Mound Builders, 3.

73. Wharton, "The Mound Builders," The Ohio Valley, 1 (May, 1876), 1-6.

• 33
 

158                                                    OHIO HISTORY

 

Revelation taught the unity of man and gave a chronology of his antiquity.

The ancient monuments of North and South America seemed to belie the ve-

racity of that account, and to some suggested that man in the New World was

an autocthaneous species; that is to say, that the American aborigine had orig-

inated in the New World through a separate creation. Wharton thought oth-

erwise. He saw no contradiction of the unity of man, but rather confirmation

of the Old Testament's account of the origin of man and civilization. If there

had been but one creation, and that it occurred in the Old World as Scripture

attested, then perforce the ancients of America must have migrated to the New

World from the Old. Wharton allowed that geology had shown that the

Mosaic account of a six-day creation was not literally true, but that did not re-

fute the truthfulness of the whole. He was unwilling to abandon Biblical

ethnology as authority. The ancients of the Old World must have been the

ancients in the New, who peopled the American continent sometime after the

deluge. Such single-line reasoning explains the preoccupation of theorists

with the supposed Egyptian, Phoenician, or Jewish origin of the Mound

Builders.

Wharton was uncertain which of those ancient centers of civilization had

been the progenitors of the Mound Builders, but was confident they had ar-

rived in the New World sometime after the Phoenicians had invented and dis-

seminated their alphabet throughout the Mediterranean. He believed the cor-

rectness of that theory had been confirmed by the discovery of the supposedly

Phoenician characters in the Grave Creek inscription, which he interpreted as

"the missing link" in the search for the origin of the Mound Builders.

Wharton refuted Caleb Atwater's assertion

 

that there never has been found a medal, coin, or monument, in all North America,

which had on it one or more letters, belonging to any alphabet, now or ever in use

among men of any age or country, that did not belong to Europeans or their de-

scendants, and had been brought or made here since the discovery of America by

Christopher Columbus.⁷⁴

 

Wharton saw the Grave Creek stone as one such piece of prehistoric evidence.

He considered the characters composing the three lines of its enigmatic in-

scription to be mostly Phoenician, but also partially Runic. Such a medley

of characters explained the difficulty of its translation by European and

American savants. Yet it was "the very work we must expect from a people

who had partially lost their own language by combination with others."

Having derived the Mound Builders from Europe, Wharton made distinc-

 

 

74. Caleb Atwater, "Description of the Antiquities Discovered in the State of Ohio and Other

Western States," Archaeologia Americana: Transactions of the American Antiquarian Society,

1 (1820), 120. Wharton's assaults on what he called the Atwater-Whittlesey thesis were unre-

lenting.

• 34
 

In Search of the Mound Builders                                      159

 

tions between them and other prehistoric groups in America. He regarded the

prehistoric inhabitants of the Lake Superior region and those in northern

Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois as an earlier and less cultivated group, who had

migrated from Asia across the Bering Strait. The "genuine Mound Builders"

were a later people who came from Europe, sometime after the Phoenicians

had invented and spread their alphabet, probably after "the Babylonish captiv-

ity." Just when the Mound Builders arrived in the New World was uncertain,

but they probably came, whomever they were, some 600 years before Christ.

They had obediently labored under "an absolute monarchy," for no other cir-

cumstance could explain the erection of mounds and earthworks which com-

pared in monumental grandeur to the pyramids of Egypt and the walls of

Nineveh. The Mound Builders possessed "some degree of letters and science"

and were far more advanced than their Indian neighbors and enemies. Wharton

derived American Indians from northern Tartary, and characterized them as a

warlike group who probably had driven the Mound Builders from the Ohio

Valley. Whether the ancient Mound Builders were driven southward by the

Indians or had chosen to migrate in that direction, they reached their cultural

zenith in Mexico.

Samuel Giles Booth Hempstead of Portsmouth also believed the Mound

Builders had arrived from Europe. He interpreted the physiology of mound

crania as indicating the presence of two prehistoric races in America, one

dominate and the other servile. No doubt the Mound Builders were the former

and the prehistoric ancestors of the North American Indian the latter. As to

the origin and identity of the Mound Builders, Hempstead asked why they

could not have been the former inhabitants of Plato's Atlantas, the fabled is-

land continent located west of the Pillars of Hercules. He refused to accept

the views of those who saw North American Indians as the direct descendants

of the Mound Builders, and perhaps only a few centuries removed from the

height of their culture. He doubtless spoke for many old-guard theorists when

he averred, in the last year of his life, that "If this is correct I can only say the

Indian sinks lower in my estimation than ever before. Since in a few cen-

turies he could depart far from the customs of his illustrious predecessors into

the savage and useless condition in which we find him."⁷⁵ Such attitudes cast

 

 

 

75. Giles Samuel Booth Hempstead, Antiquities of Portsmouth and Vicinity (Portsmouth, Ohio,

1875), 4, 9, 16, and 17. Only 200 copies of this rare pamphlet were printed. Hempstead in-

sisted, like Wharton, that the mounds were "never made by the lazy and unprofitable Indians

we found occupying the country when we took possession." Ibid., 8. Isaac Smucker, another

prominent member of the Ohio Association, thought it possible that a remnant of the ancient

Mound Builders, "the more effeminate, indolent, and demoralized" of them, had eventually

become one or more of "the numerous degenerate tribes of savages." Smucker painted a bleak

picture of cultural devolution: each generation had gradually fallen further and further from

the presumed semi-civilized state of their ancestors "into a mild state of barbarism, and ulti-

mately into hopeless savagery." laaac Smucker, "Ohio Pre-Historic Races and Pre-Territorial

History," Annual Report of the Secretary of State, 1877 (Columbus, 1878), 15.

• 35
 

160                                                       OHIO HISTORY

 

a long shadow over the development of American archaeology and represent

the least useful aspect of its past. Archaeology both shaped and reflected such

deep-seated sentiments about American Indian peoples throughout most of the

nineteenth century.

Hempstead saw the Mound Builders as being more advanced than their pre-

Bronze Age counterparts in Europe. He credited them with discovering the

use of copper in America "sooner than their ancestors did in Europe, and pre-

vious to their descendants in Central America," who took their knowledge of

copper with them when they migrated south. He did not doubt that mound

explorations would someday produce decipherable pictorial or hieroglyphic

records that would reveal the lost history of the Mound Builders.

 

It is not to be supposed that a people so industrious and laborious, so numerous

and intelligent, had no means but tradition to perpetuate and preserve some ac-

count of their previous history. Their displays in angles, squares, and circles are

evidence of their scientific knowledge .... Many years will not pass till some cu-

riosity seeker will drop an auger into Kinney's hill [a mound near Portsmouth] and

display a find that will astonish the world.

 

The views of Wharton and Hempstead represent the more extreme tenden-

cies of nineteenth-century theorists, as well as the racist attitudes towards

American Indians that often informed them. Such reveries had already become

archaic, given the degree of change afoot in the archaeological community.

Theorists like Hempstead and Wharton were out of step with the more sober-

minded opinions of Whittlesey and Read, while even romantic antiquarians

like Peet chose not to be associated with such extreme and unsubstantiated

views. Archaeological evidence was making it increasingly apparent in the

1870s and '80s that Ohio had been home to a succession of ancient peoples.

It was recognized that the ancient fire hearths discovered at Portsmouth by

Whittlesey in 1838 and those found by S.H. Binkley of Dayton near

Alexandersville in the Miami Valley in 1884 indicated the presence of a peo-

ple far older than the Mound Builders. The discovery of human remains and

associated implements in Ohio's caves and rock shelters revealed yet another

presence.⁷⁷ Added to this expanded if inchoate temporal conception was an

 

 

76. Giles Samuel Booth Hempstead, The Mound Builders.  A Particular and Minute

Description of the Ancient Earth Works at Portsmouth Ohio (Portsmouth, Ohio, 1883), 8. The

pagination cited here is from a transcript of this published pamphlet in the collections of the

Ohio Historical Society. People in search of a myth, Robert Silverberg has noted, usually find

one. James E. Wharton and Samuel Giles Booth Hempstead were just such seekers. For other

examples of nineteenth-century chimeras see Silverberg, Mound Builders of Ancient America:

The Archaeology of a Myth (Greenwich, Conn., 1968). Exercises in wishful thinking and the

problem of archaeological frauds also receive attention in Steven Williams, Fantastic

Archaeology: The Wild Side of North American Prehistory (Philadelphia, 1991), especially

Chap. 4, "The American Humbug: They'll Believe Almost Anything!," 77-97.

77. Thomas Waller Kinney, "Antiquity of Man. Was Man in America More Ancient than

• 36
 

In Search of the Mound Builders                                            161

 

increasing chorus of voices who argued that at least some groups of North

American Indians were the descendants of the beloved Mound Builders.

 

 

The Mound Builders' Identity: Conflicting Views

 

Conflicting theories as to the identity of the Mound Builders were advanced

with renewed vigor in the 1870s and '80s. The views entertained by certain

members of the Ohio Association epitomized that broad range of opinion.

John Thomas Short attributed both the mounds and the cliff dwellings of the

ancient Pueblos to migrating Nahuas, who later established themselves in

Mexico. He first presented his views on the subject at the association's third

annual meeting at Wooster in 1878, which he elaborated in The North

Americans of Antiquity (1879).78     That work appeared in at least three edi-

tions and was recognized as the best manual of information on American ar-

chaeology that had yet appeared. It earned Short a doctoral degree at the

University of Leipzig in 1880, where he had studied for a year, the friendship

of historian George Bancroft, and election as a corresponding member of the

Institution Ethnographique de Paris, the Societe Americaine de France, and

the American Antiquarian Society. The North Americans of Antiquity is

largely forgotten today because of its attempt to link the Mound Builders, the

cliff dwelling Pueblos, and the Nahua-speaking peoples of Mexico. It re-

mains, however, an historically significant record of archaeological theory in

 

 

the Mound Builders?," American Antiquarian, 1 (April, 1878), 36-37. As Kinney stated matters

to Peet: "I would be glad to hear of your coming over to the theory of man being indigenous to

America, and if we accept this theory, I think it is very reasonable to accept the idea that each

race of people is of separate and distinct origin or creation-probably at different periods of

the existence of the earth-at all events that the existence of man in America was of a date

beyond what is known as the Mound Builder period, I think we shall be able to prove." Ibid.,

37. See also S. H. Binkley, "Ancient Hearths," American Antiquarian, 6 (March, 1884), 100-

01; and Charles Whittlesey, "On the Evidences of the Antiquity of Man in the United States,"

Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 17, (August, 1868),

268-87 and "Relics of Aboriginal Art and Their Ethnological Value," Tracts of the Western

Reserve and Northern Ohio Historical Society, no. 52 (May, 1880), 125-26.

78. John Thomas Short, The North Americans of Antiquity: Their Origin, Migrations, and

Type of Civilization Considered, Third Revised Edition (New York, 1881), 100. On supposed

Nahua migrations to the American Southwest and the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys, see Ibid.,

[vii-viii], 54, 518. Short presented his Nahua-Mound Builder theory at the association's third

annual meeting in Wooster, Ohio September 3, 1878, in a paper entitled "The Direction of

Nahua Migration and the Evidence that the Mound Builders Sprung from the Nahua Race." S.

D. Peet, "Proceedings of Societies," American Antiquarian, 1 (July, 1878), 109. The July num-

ber of the American Antiquarian, which reported on the September 3 meeting at Wooster, must

have been issued in late fall or early winter. See also John M. Becker, "On the Migration of

the Nahuas," 13th Paper, Congres international des Americanistes, compte-rendu de la seconde

session, Luxembourg-1877 Tome I (Luxembourg and Paris, 1878), 345-46 on "Nahua Mound

Builders" allegedly alluded to in Iroquois and Algonquian traditions. For another statement of

the southern migration theory, see Robert S. Anderson, "The Mound Builders of America,"

Ibid., 39-50.

• 37
 

162                                                       OHIO HISTORY

 

the late nineteenth century, and the issues and problems that agitated the field.

Short advanced the theory that the remains of the Mound Builders, the cliff-

dwelling Pueblos of New Mexico, and the traditional history and architectural

remains of the Nahuas were all intertwined. Nahua traditions vaguely claimed

a northern origin. Short believed some of them had migrated to the south-

west, becoming the cliff-dwelling Pueblos of the San Juan Valley and Aztec

Springs, while others established colonies in the Ohio and Mississippi val-

leys. His study of the art and architecture of the Mound Builders led him to

see a gradual transition southward in the Mississippi Valley. "Here we see

but the rude beginnings of a civilization which no doubt subsequently un-

folded in its fuller glory in the Valley of Anahuac, and spreading southward

engrafted a new life upon the wreck of Xibalda." Short conjectured that the

Huehue Tlapalan of the Nahuas had been located in the Mississippi Valley, a

conclusion which, to him, cranial, architectural, and artifactual evidence

seemed to support. There was nothing particularly new about that conclu-

sion, as any number of earlier writers had subscribed to migration theories

that linked the Toltecs and Aztecs to the Mound Builders. Short's work was a

later and more elaborate exposition of familiar speculations, and his Mound

Builder-Pueblo connection a significant variation of an established theme.

Manning Feguson Force of Cincinnati, a member of the Ohio Historical

and Philosophical Society and the State Archaeological Association of Ohio,

was of a different persuasion. He saw nothing in the mounds or their con-

tents that led him to believe that they had been built by anyone other than the

ancestors of North American Indians. He presented those views in a series of

papers that deserve a larger hearing in the history of American archaeology

than they have received. Force first stated his position on the Mound Builder

question in a paper read before the Cincinnati Literary Club on April 15,

1873. He reaffirmed those views in a paper written for the meeting of the

International Congress of Americanists at Luxembourg in September of

1877, and shared his "rather dogmatic and sweeping assertions" in a paper read

at the Ohio Association's second annual meeting at Cincinnati that same

month and year.⁷⁹ The importance of Force's work rests not in its original-

ity, but in the manner in which he marshaled well-known facts into a sus-

 

 

79. "Some Considerations on the Mound Builders," read before the Cincinnati Literary Club,

April 15, 1873, published in Manning Ferguson Force, Pre-Historic Man (Cincinnati, 1873), 50-

81; Manning Ferguson Force, "To What Race Belong the Mound Builders?," 7th Paper,

Congres international des Americanistes, compte-rendu de la seconde session, Luxembourg-

1877 Tome I (Luxembourg and Paris, 1878), also published in Force's Some Early Notices of

the Indians of Ohio (Cincinnati, 1879), 41-75. The "rather sweeping and dogmatic assertions"

made in Force's "Desultory Suggestions about the Mound Builders" were read by Julius Dexter

in Force's absence during the second annual meeting of the Ohio Association at Cincinnati in

September of 1877. "The Antiquaries. Who Built the Mounds, and What Did They Build

Them For?," Cincinnati Daily Gazette, September 6, 1877, 2, and "Ohio Archaeological

Society," Cincinnati Commercial, September 6, 1877, 8.

• 38
 

In Search of the Mound Builders                                   163

 

tained argument. He acknowledged that there were notable differences in the

material aspects of the Mound Builders and American Indians, but those dif-

ferences could be explained and did not outweigh the significance of the simi-

larities.

Force drew upon several standard authorities in arriving at his well-argued

conclusions. He noted Desoto's description of sedentary, agricultural peoples

who built mounds and lived in permanent, fortified villages in the southeast;

that the historic Mandans on the Upper Missouri had also lived in stockaded

villages at first contact; and that the earthworks described by Ephraim George

Squier in western New York were the remains of the palisaded villages of the

Iroquois. He also saw architectural similarities between the Pueblo Indian ru-

ins at Ojo Caliente and Rio del la Plate and the presumably defensive works

described by Squier and Davis in the Ohio Valley. The two groups appeared

to him to have reached the same stage of development, despite the contrast in

their environments, to the extent "that each might have become the other by

an interchange of locality." Force made that Pueblo-Mound Builder compari-

son not to suggest an ethnic connection as Short had done, but simply to

bolster his case that one need look no for further than North America to ex-

plain the works of the Mound Builders, or their presumed stage of cultural de-

velopment.

 

It may be said with confidence that the Mound-builders reached a stage of ad-

vancement intermediate between the Algonquions [sic] and the Aztecs, and in the

same plane with the Pueblos; and that there is nothing in their condition, so far as

we can infer it from their works, that is inconsistent with their having been tribes

of North American Indians.⁸⁰

 

Force concluded that the Mound Builders were tribes of North American

Indians, albeit more "advanced" tribes than the groups known to history.

While tree-ring dating indicated that some mounds were abandoned more than

a thousand years earlier, others appeared to have been abandoned much later.

Some had even continued in use "either by the builders or by later intruding

tribes, until a comparatively late period." As to the fate of the Mound

Builders, he thought it likely that individuals, clans, or the remnants of tribes

were adopted into the tribe or tribes that succeeded them, in accordance with

known Indian customs. As to the oft-cited differences in the art of the Mound

Builders and Indians, they "differed not in character, but in degree. The older

workmen were more skillful, but they worked in the same crafts." The pot-

tery of the Natchez and Mandans, with few exceptions, compared favorably to

specimens recovered from mounds. Smoking pipes, which differed in style,

 

 

80. Manning Ferguson Force, "To What Race Did the Moundbuilders Belong?," Some Early

Notices Of the Indians of Ohio (Cincinnati, 1879), 56. For supporting arguments see Ibid., 51-

52, 55-57, 62, 68-72, and 75.

• 39
 

164                                                    OHIO HISTORY

 

still suggested that tobacco served the same ceremonial significance among

the Mound Builders as among historic Indians. Further evidence of Mound

Builder-Indian continuity was offered by authenticated (as opposed to intru-

sive) mound crania. Several Mound Builder skulls had artificially flattened

occiputs, suggesting that infants were strapped to cradle boards as was com-

monly done by various North American Indians.

Early historic accounts of North American Indian groups were at the center

of Force's arguments. His contribution to the Mound Builder debate was that

of an informed historian. He noted that the Gulf tribes encountered by

Desoto's expedition of 1539-40 and described by the Gentlemen of Elvas, by

Biedmas, and by Garcilasso de la Vega, exhibited traits commonly associated

with the Mound Builders. The latter authority described the construction of a

truncated pyramidal mound like those which the Natchez were known to have

used as the residences of their chiefs. Those structures suggested that the

Mound Builders of the Ohio Valley were driven south by enemies from the

northwest, "which was the Germany, the vagina gentium, of the

Moundbuilders empire." The remnants of the Mound Builders were the tribes

living along the Gulf of Mexico at earliest notice. They had abandoned many

former habits, yet still retained discernable traits. The aboriginal game of

chungke, for instance, was played with stone discs similar to the discoidal

stones occasionally found in Ohio mounds. In the eighteenth century, the

game was played among the Creeks and described by William Bartram; among

the Natchez as described by Le Page Du Pratz; and among the Choctaws,

Cherokees, and Chickasaws as described by James Adair. Even the distant

Mandans played the popular game, according to Lewis and Clark, which they

also called chungke.

While some members of the Ohio Association were prepared to entertain

such views, others were not. As the "Indian theory" gained ground during the

1880s, for example, John Patterson MacLean became irritated by those who

were presumably presenting new evidence showing that Indians were known

to have built mounds. As MacLean scornfully noted, that was

 

... a fact which, probably, no archaeologist ever denied. That this has been fully

recognized any one may find out by examining such books as are devoted to antiq-

uities. That one tribe or another of Indians possessed and even made implements

common to the mound builders has always been admitted, and there appears to be

nothing singular about it. Similar implements and ornaments are found in the

stone age of Great Britain and the continent, but this by no means proves that all

these pre-historic people belong to one race or type. ... If this be a correct

method of argument, then it can easily be shown that the Caucasian [sic] is identi-

cal with the negro [sic].⁸¹

 

81. J. P. MacLean, "Were the Mound Builders Indians?," American Antiquarian, 4 (January,

1882), 131-33 and 135-36. MacLean remained an adherent of the Toltecan theory as the

Mound Builder-Indian debate raged onward. See J. P. MacLean, "Who Were the Mound

• 40
 

In Search of the Mound Builders                                   165

 

Similarities in archaeological implements and ornaments alone, said

MacLean, were not enough to determine race or ethnic identity. Before it

could be proven that North American Indians were the descendants of the

Mound Builders, it must first be shown that the migratory Toltecs and Aztecs

who had invaded Mexico from the north had not been the ancient Mound

Builders of the Mississippi Valley.

The uncertain views of Charles Whittlesey may be taken as a barometer of

the revolution in archaeological thought that was occurring in the 1880s.

Earlier in his career Whittlesey believed that the burial customs and imple-

ments of the Mound Builders suggested that they were distinct from North

American Indians. Later, however, he identified the Southeastern tribes as the

likely descendants of the Mound Builders, yet attributed the low-lying earth-

works of northern Ohio to a people distinct from either the Indian or the

Mound Builder. Despite his years of research and reflection, Whittlesey could

still not satisfactorily answer the question put to him by Peet: who were the

ancestors, and who the descendants of the Mound Builders? It was a simple

question requiring a complex answer. He was neither willing to connect the

Mound Builders with the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico, as Short had done,

nor to the Aztecs of Mexico as had MacLean. He was inclined to believe that

the ancestors of the Gulf tribes had been the Mound Builders of Ohio. As for

the origin of mound building he was still "too much in the dark to hazard an

opinion.^"82

Mound Builder archaeology, if it may so called, denotes a distinct regional

tradition within the history of American archaeology, and, more broadly, a

particular literary tradition in the cultural history of nineteenth-century

America. Colonel L.J. DuPre of Austin, Texas, a vice president of the first

American Anthropological Association and one of Peet's correspondents in

the American Antiquarian, worked within that genre. His poem "The Silent

Races" (1879) fully captures the mood of awe and mystery that the Mound

Builders brought forth in fertile imaginations like his own.

 

This western world her voice of might

Lifts up amid her dreamless night,

With weird and wondrous tone;

For silent, vanished races sleep

Beneath her tossing forests deep,

Where hoary-headed ages sleep

While restless murmurs round them creep....

 

Whence came they? Whither did they go?

What myriad tales of joy and woe

 

 

Builders?," Ohio Archaeological and Historical Publications, 13 (January, 1904), 91-96.

82. Charles Whittlesey to Stephen Dension Peet, Cleveland, Ohio, November 16, 1881, in

American Antiquarian, 4 (January, 1882), 153-55.

• 41
 

166                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

Resound with mingled tone

Above this consecrated ground

That speaks with hollow ghastly sound.

Its orator a nameless mound....

 

No answer comes, no music rings,

No Solon speaks, no Homer sings

Where sleep and silence reign like kings!⁸³

 

A more artful expression of the Mound Builder cult is not wanted.

 

The Demise of the State Archaeological Association of Ohio and

the Emergence of the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical

Society

 

The debate over the origin and identity of the Mound Builders raged on

through the 1880s, but time had run out for the State Archaeological

Association of Ohio. Enthusiasm and voluntarism, just as the sober-minded

Whittlesey had predicted, could not achieve the association's lofty goals. The

inability to obtain state funds or to recruit a sustaining membership left little

hope of future success. The death of John Hancock Klippart in 1878 deprived

the association not only of its Librarian and Depository at the statehouse, but

of a potentially valuable lobbyist. The loss of Peet's promotional talents

was yet another crippling blow. When Peet moved to Clinton, Wisconsin, in

1879, the association lost direction. The death of Ebenezer Baldwin Andrews

in 1880, one of the association's more active members and a central figure in

its legislative initiative, further eroded its leadership, while Brinkerhoff be-

came increasingly involved in penal reform and charity work from 1878 on-

ward. What began with such great expectations and fervor at the Ohio State

Archaeological Convention at Mansfield and at the Philadelphia Centennial

Exposition ended with dissension in the ranks as to how to best proceed, and

a deterioration in leadership.

The sole bright spot in the last years of the State Archaeological

Association of Ohio was the presence of John Thomas Short, professor of

History and English Literature at the Ohio State University. Short succeeded

Peet as secretary of the Ohio Association in 1878, and continued to seek leg-

islative appropriations to promote its mission.  By 1879, however, the

Association could muster only twenty members, only twelve of whom were

reported to be more or less active. The once well-publicized annual meetings

of the Ohio Association had become little more than poorly-attended gather-

ings of officers and trustees. Short remained the animating spirit of the Ohio

 

 

83. L. J. DuPre, "The Silent Races," American Antiquarian, 2 (October-December, 1879),

145-46.

• 42
 

In Search of the Mound Builders                                            167

 

Association until ill health befell him in the summer of 1883. His death on

November 11 of that year forestalled a promising career as a scholar and

marked the effective end of the Ohio Association.⁸⁴         Isaac Smucker of

Newark, the last-known president of the Ohio Association, stated his regret in

1884 that it could no longer continue the work it had begun with such great

promise.⁸⁵ Although the association still existed on paper, it had become en-

tirely moribund.

The movement for the revival and reorganization of the state archaeological

association was spearheaded by Albert Adams Graham in late 1884 and early

1885. Graham, a compiler of county histories and state gazetteers, had first

met Brinkerhoff at Mansfield in the spring of 1879 and was associated with

him in publishing histories of Richland, Knox, Licking, and Coshocton

counties. He moved to Columbus in 1881 and may have been a member of

the association during its last years.⁸⁶  By January and February of 1885,

Graham was receiving correspondence variously addressed to him as "Secretary

of the Archaeological and Historical Society" and "Secretary of the

Archaeological Society." He was making arrangements for a meeting at

Columbus in March to formally organize the new society, and working

closely with Governor George Hoadly and Secretary of State James S.

Robinson to make it an agency of the state in more than name only.⁸⁷

 

 

84. Washington Gladden, A Life Worth Living: A Discourse in Memory of John Thomas

Short (Columbus, Ohio, 1884), 4-5, and Alexis Cope, History of the Ohio State University vol. 1,

Thomas C. Mendenhall, ed., (Columbus, 1920), 75, 84; "Additional City Matters.  The

Archaeologists," Columbus Evening Dispatch, August 26, 1879, [1], no pagination;

"Archaeological Association," Ibid., August 27, 1879), [1]; and "The Archaeologists," Ohio

State Journal, August 27, 1879, [4]. After assuming Peet's mantle of leadership, Short found it

difficult even to call a meeting given the "short list of names" found among its paid members.

The meeting at Columbus on August 26, 1879, was purposely held during the Ohio State Fair as

a strategy to get members to attend, and, perhaps to recruit new ones. Peet to "Dear Bro."

[John Thomas Short], June 20 [?], 1879, and Norton Strange Townsend to Short, Columbus,

Ohio, August 9, 1879, Townsend Papers, OHS.

85. Iaaac Smucker, "Archaeology in Ohio," American Antiquarian, 6 (January, 1884), 45.

86. A. A. Graham, History of Richland County, Ohio (Mansfield, Ohio, 1880), [i-iii].

Graham's movement to revive and reorganize the Ohio Association between January and

March of 1885 can be traced in Officer and Administrative Offices Records, Secretary-Editor

Correspondence, Series 4005, Box 1254, Folder 1. Archives-Library Division, the Ohio

Historical Society. Hereafter, Secretary's Correspondence, OHS. Letters offering advice and

encouragement from members of the old state archaeological association are of particular in-

terest. See laac Smucker to Graham, Newark, Ohio, February 16 and November 4, 1885; M.

C. Read to Graham, Hudson, Ohio, February 17, February 22, and March 9, 1885; Roeliff

Brinkerhoff to Graham, Mansfield, Ohio, February 24, 1885; Charles Whittlesey to Graham,

Cleveland, March 2 and 25, 1885; and Charles Candee Baldwin to Graham, Cleveland, April 1,

1885, Secretary's Correspondence, OHS.

87. Jas. S. Robinson, N. S. Townsend, and A. A. Graham, Printed Circular, Columbus, Ohio,

February 1885, VFM 1937, Archives-Library Division, the Ohio Historical Society. Reprinted

as "The Call for a Convention" in "Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society.

Organization and Proceedings for the Year 1885," Ohio Archaeological and Historical

Publications, 1 (June, 1887-March, 1888), 83-84. Graham and company issued the call for a

• 43
 

168                                                           OHIO HISTORY

 

It was important that the problems which had plagued the state archaeologi-

cal association be addressed at the outset. Graham corresponded with former

officers and trustees of the old association as to how to broaden the aims and

membership of the new society. Matthew Canfield Read advised him that it

should be made clear at the outset that the two entities had been merged, lest

there be competition and jealousy of interest between members.⁸⁸ Graham

noted in the circulars calling for the establishment of the new society that it

was to be a revived and reorganized version of the old. His efforts resulted in

the founding of the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society at

Columbus on March 12, 1885, and its incorporation on March 13. The con-

nection between the old and new societies was made explicit in the Charter

and By-Laws of the Ohio       State Archaeological and Historical Society:

"Organized as the Ohio Archaeological Association, September 1, 1875.

Reorganized, as the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society, March

12, 1885.^"89 The old association died unmourned but not entirely forgotten.

Graham credited Brinkerhoff with first suggesting the revival of the state ar-

chaeological association, and with lending money, influence, and advice dur-

ing its reorganization. Fittingly, he asked Brinkerhoff to make some extem-

poraneous remarks at the chartering of the new society.90      Brinkerhoff re-

sponded by highlighting the accomplishments and failures of the old state ar-

chaeological association and the work that remained to be done by the new

one. The lessons of the past were clear. If the new society was to be a suc-

cess it would need an active and sustaining membership; a full-time, paid di-

rector; and, most important of all, state support. The failure of the earlier as-

sociation had finally convinced Brinkerhoff that archaeology alone lacked

enough popular appeal to sustain a successful state organization. For every

 

 

 

 

state convention at Columbus on March 12, 1885, after a preliminary organizational meeting at

Columbus on February 12, 1885. The stated purpose of the February meeting was "to consider

not only the revival and reorganization of the former Archaeological Society, but the addition

to it of an historical side, which would largely increase the value of the Society and the scope

of its labors." Ohio Archaeological and Historical Publications, 1 (June, 1887-March. 1888),

82.

88. Read to Graham, Hudson, Ohio, February 22, 1885, Secretary's Correspondence, OHS.

89. Charter and By-Laws of the Ohio State Archaeologicaland Historical Society (Columbus,

1885), [p.l]. Irregular pagination. Brinkerhoff became second vice president and a trustee of

the new society, Norton Strange Townsend a trustee and a member of the Executive

Committee. Along with Alexis Cope of Columbus, Brinkerhoff and Townsend were among the

list of 28 charter members who signed the Articles of Incorporation on March 13, 1885.

Brinkerhoff subsequently became president of the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical

Society. Printed copies of the Charter and By-Laws of the Ohio State Archaeological and

Historical Society (a very scarce pamphlet) are in the Roeliff Brinkerhoff Papers, OHS, MSS

31, Folder 1, and in the security vault of the Archives-Library Division, Ohio Historical

Society, V 977.106, Oh3ch.

90. Brinkerhoff to Graham, Mansfield, February 24, 1885, Secretary's Correspondence,

OHS, and A. A. Graham to Rev. William E. Moore, Albuquerque, New Mexico, November 10,

1894, Ohio Archaeological and Historical Publications, 4 (Annual, 1895), 425.

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In Search of the Mound Builders                              169

one person interested in Ohio archaeology, he noted, there were ten interested in history. The new organization was enlarging the scope of its activities to include history in recognition of that fact.91 In June of 1885, the museum and library of the new society were located on the campus of The Ohio State University, and Graham's office as secretary at the Ohio Statehouse. The old state archeological association had a small col- lection of artifacts and some cases from the 1876 Centennial exhibit that were passed on to the new society. Some of the cases and collections were at the Western Reserve and Northern Ohio Historical Society in Cleveland, while others were in the State Library or elsewhere in Columbus in care of the Secretary of State.92 Precisely what archaeological collections the old associ- ation owned and how it acquired them is unclear. It appears that artifacts were     91. "Archaeology and History," Columbus Dispatch, March 12, 1885, no pagination; "The Relics of Antiquity," Ohio State Journal, March 13, 1885, no pagination; and "Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society. Organization and Proceedings for the Year 1885," Ohio Archaeological and Historical Publications, 1 (June, 1887-March, 1888), 87-89. 92. Read to Graham, Hudson, Ohio, February 22 and March 23, 1885; Whittlesey to Graham, Cleveland, March 15, 1885; and Charles Candee Baldwin to Graham, Cleveland, Ohio, April 1, 1885, Secretary 's Correspondence, OHS.

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170                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

either donated to the association or purchased at the end of the Centennial

Exposition, and kept at the statehouse in the care of John Hancock Klippart.

William Corlis Mills, curator of the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical

Society, noted in the report on the state museum for 1899 that the new soci-

ety's first archaeological collections were from the old association's modest

and nondescript museum at the Ohio Statehouse.⁹³ Efforts to identify those

collections with any degree of certainty have been inconclusive.

So closes the colorful and significant history of the State Archaeological

Association of Ohio. It was at the center, if only briefly, of the leading ar-

chaeological controversies and concerns of the late nineteenth century. The

divergent and often combative opinions of its members provide historians a

rich source of attitudes and theories regarding the origin and identity of the

Mound Builders. The association failed in its efforts to obtain funding for a

state archaeological survey and museum, although it came close to achieving

those ends. Nonetheless, its activities and memorials to the state legislature

laid the groundwork for the archaeological fieldwork, museum, and preserva-

tion efforts of its successor, the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical

Society. And if failures and frustrations of the earlier state association are

cataloged, then its accomplishments and rightful place within the history of

American archaeology must also be recognized.

What must be noted, for example, is the movement to create a state associ-

ation that led to the archaeological convention at Mansfield, the archaeologi-

cal exhibit at Philadelphia, and the founding of the first American

Anthropological Association. No less significant were the activities of the

association's members in subsequent years. Read and Whittlesey's report on

the "Antiquities of Ohio" still bears reading today, despite its incompleteness,

as does the association's critical inquiry into the authenticity and archaeologi-

cal value of the Grave Creek stone.   The earnest efforts of the Ohio

Association to promote systematic archaeological investigations, to popular-

ize the subject of archaeology, and to draw attention to the importance of pre-

serving Ohio's numerous prehistoric sites and collections deserve more ac-

knowledgment than they have received. It is hoped that this inquiry has

brought the neglected history of the State Archaeological Association of Ohio

into clearer focus, for it merits close attention.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

93. W. C. Mills, "Report of Field Work. Part II. Report [on the] Ohio State Archaeological

and Historical Society Museum for the Year Ending May 31, 1899," Ohio Archaeological and

Historical Publications, 8 (Annual, 1900), 329, 331.

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