Wyandot County Republican. [volume] (Upper Sandusky, Ohio) 1869-1903, 1872-07-18
The MOund.BuiIderS.

Bernard de Sahagua, the most impor-
tant of the Spanish authorities at the time
of the conquest, whose work was sup
pressed by the Council of the Indies as
interfering with their policy of extermi
nation, speaks of a universally received
tradition among the natives of New Spain,
of foreign Atlantic colony arriving be-
fore the Christian era on the shores of
Florida, proceeding across the Gulf of
Mexico, landing on the Peninsula of Yu
catan and founding great cities now in
ruins, the greatest of which was destroy
ed a thousand years before the arrival of
the Spaniards. Conirmatory of this
landing of foreign Atlantic colony, is
the statement of Montezuma to Cortez
that the ancestors of the Mexicans came,
as did the Spaniards, from the place of
the rising sun.
Passing down the Atlantic coast, and
following up the great valley of the Anna
zon to the headquarters of its atfluents
near the Pacific, we come to the city of
CuZco, and the vast remains of the sun
worshippers of Peru, in the high valleys
of the Andes. Upon the shores and isl
ands of the sacred lake of Titicaca we
find the remains of civilization analo-
gous to that of Copan, but more purely
Egyptian and Assyrian, and holding re-
lation of priority to the religion of the
Incas, like that of the ruins of Copan to
the Aztec line of the Montezumas. The
highest type of the crania of the ancient
races of Peru suggests strongly the head
of the mound builder before given. The
principal deity of these ancient sun wor-
shippers of Peru appears to have been
ChOn, answering in name and attributes
to the old Phenician Baalchon, or Saturn.
Passing northward and leaving behind
those colossal monuments which excited
the wonder and admiration of Humboldt,
we follow the high valleys of the Cordil-
leras through Central America, and COM
ing out in the valley of Mexico, with its
temples and teocalli, we arrive at the
great pyramid of Cholula, the eliminating
point of the entire mound-building sys-
tenn of the two continents. From this
point northward, following the Gulf of
Mexico and the Mississippi, we arrive at
the pyramid groups of Cahokia, opposite
what is now st. Louis, the site of the an
cient capital of the mound-builders of the
present United States. The mounds of
the United States must be looked at as
the northern terminus of system which
had southern center and tendency.
Working northward, being pressed upon
by the nomads of the Northwest, to cover
and protect its agricultural civilization,
it was forced into the building of earth
works, serving the double purpose of
teocalli and Notifications. Such state
of affairs would leave the northern mound
builders little leisure or inclination to
build on the vast scale of their southern
brethren, even could they have command
ed the material and the laborers. The
eastern Asiatics of Central America ap-
pear to have arrived there with a suffi-
GENTLY pronounced civilization of their
own to be able to modify the monuments
of more cultured race by the interfu-
sion of their own ideas and symbols,
uniting with them to build those colossal
and bizarre specimens of architecture SO
perplexing when viewed as the product
of one people.
The emOund-builders of the United States
had no such plastic material in the wild
nomadic tribes of the north, by whom
they were always liable to be overborne
and driven southwark. In these circum-
stances they appear to have taken pos
session of central point near the juno
ton of the Mississippi and Missouri Riv-
ers, which they held with great strength,
throwing out their lines of Notifications
along the aff1uents of these rivers. AT
the headwaters of the Ohio their lines OF
defence met kindred system of fortifi
cations, which held the aff1uents of the
Chesapeake and the region south of Lake
Ontario, from its military center at Onon
daga, thus covering and protecting the
important agricultural civilization of Cen
trail and Western New York. Within
these lines of defence, between the Mis-
sissippi and the Atlantic, was embraced &
region in which traces of a truly vast ag
ricultural civilization are found, anG
which must have reckoned it's inhabitants
by Millions" Ianamuz and the Mound
Builders" IN July GALAXY