Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1883-02-28
ABORIGINAL BRICK MAKING.

Prof. j. D. Butler, of Madison, has
addressed letter to the London Times
in proof that style Of brick making just
discovered in Troy by Schleinman, and
described in the Times as hitherto unde
tected elsewhere, was in use among the
aborigines of our adjacent village OF Az
ITALIAN 1t will interest our readers to
peruse the following letter. and set some
of our antiquarians in search of evidence
of brick making in Aztalan
Following is DR.. Buffers letter;
BRICK BAKED IN STU.
Editor Of the London Times:-In
letter of DR.. Scleinmann's published in
your issue of January &c, one of the chief
Trojan discoveries is set down as "brick
baked in stu" The crude brick, or the
clay moulded into form, was piled up in
walls either of temples or of the city,
and then burned by means of wood piled
up on each side of the structures. In
the doctors opinion his Roman discovery
is the first instance thus far detected of
such an inversion of modern methods in
brick making.
Accordingly it will be pleasant for him
and perhaps for your readers, to learn of
a similar procedure in the manufacture
of brick among the prehistoric dweilers
west of the great lakes of North America.
AEtalan. abb ut thirty miles east of this
capital of Wisconsin, and on the way to
its principal city, Milwaukee. is the larg-
est aboriginal monument in the northwest
and one of the argest in the United
States. At that point about eighteen
acres are inclosed by breastwork, form
ing three sides Of a parallelogram, the
fourth side lying along a stream too deep
to ford. There were thirty-three proiec
'tions, which were probably thanking tow
ers.
The region was first settled by whites
in 1886, and the 'ancent city," as they
called it, was discovered the same year.
The rampant was then in some places
much broken down, and everywhere ap
peared grassy bank. But wherever one
dug through the green sward he found
brick, very fairly burnt, but always of ir.
regular forms.
The ruin was described first in The
Milwaukee Advertiser in January, 1887,
then in The American Journal of Science,
New Haven, 1912, (vol. Al, p. 81, and
more fully in the Smithsonian Contribu
ton TO knowledge (vol. VII, PIP. 41-5l J
Ininone of these articles, however, j. there
any attempt to explain how the Aztalan
brick were manufactured
1t WIS on visit which I made to this
unique work last spring that the process
OF brick-making here, first struck me as
in all probability the seltsame as that just
detected by Schleinmann at Troy.
About all the acres at Aztalan have
been plowed up for 40 years. A vandal-
ism as gross as any which has disgraced
any section of the world has driven the
plow-sh over and over the breastwork.
Yet the soil is still full ot brick fragments.
/ examined many of them, some as large
as my fist In the middle of one there
was stick an inch thick burned to char
coal In all of them were holes where
the sedge from the river bank had been
mixed with the clay, and the shape of
each stalk and blade was plain. 1t seem
ed clear that the sofia sort of loam-had
been thrown up into a rampant, that the
whole was coated with clay. matted and
massed together with bushes and sedge:
that over all was heaped abundance of
prairie grass, with perhaps huge trees,
and the whole set on fire. Yet it would
not have been necessary to burn trees for
turning clay to brick That transtorma-
ton is still wrought in Nebraska, where
wood is scarce. with prairie grass alone.
For myself am already satisfied as to
the process by which the terra sofia RAM
parts at Aztalan were formed, but in or
der to accumulate evidence for those
who are weaker in faith | propose t,
visit that unique work again when win
ter breaks up. My hope is sanguine
there yet remain various hooks whereby
scrapiDg off the dust which ages have de-
posted IN thick layers, shall lay bare
broad surfaces or iDcrustations Of prehis-
toric brickwork which could only have
been bsken just where they le--in stu
ipsissimo.
In many other aspects Aztalan is Of
great antiquarian interest, but my aim
is merely to show a noteworthy coinci-
dence between obstructive methods there
and in Asiatic Troy. 1t is a good illus
tration that men in similar stages Of Gull
ture, no matter where they live, will
adopt identical means for securing iden-
tical ends.
JAMES D. BUTLER
Madison, Wis, Feb, Is, 1883.