Missouri Valley times. [volume] (Missouri Valley, Iowa) 1874-1931, 1909-09-09
THE mound BUILDERS
Mystery Of the Great Monuments
! Found In This Country.

round IN This Country.
RELICS OF A VANISHED RACE.
The Strangely Shaped Structures Are
Thought to Be More Than Two
Thousand Years Old-The Enigma
of Those Who Reared Them.
Scattered through the middle west
and in other parts of the United States
are more than 10000 monstrous, odd
shaped mounds. Some are built
like forts, others in queer, sharp geo.
metrical figures, others shaped like
huge serpents. crocodiles, buffaloes.
turtles, eagles, lizards, dragons with
eggs in their mouths, etc. Some of
these mounds are mile long, some
much smaller. In Newark, o., stands
Il continuous mound, constructed in q
perfect circle, more than 5000 feet in
circumference. The mounds are often
covered with trees that are many cen
turtles in age. I'hese strangely shaped
structures are thought to be more than
5000 years old
Who built them?
Certainly not the North American
Indians. The Indians have ever been
a lazy, rowing race, making their live
lihood chiefly by hunting and fishing.
seldom remaining long in one neigh
borhood and using tents or the rudest
| huts as their dwelling places.
| The mysterious people who built the
mounds were not a race of rovers.
| An infinitely long time must have
| been required for erecting each huge
earth shape. Nor were they ignorant
| sayages, for the mounds show deep
knowledge of geometry as we'll as of
astronomy and of the principles of
building. Carefully laid out military
| fortifications abound in the mound
builders country, indicating that tho
aborigines had martial lore and en-
| cheering skill and that they under
stood many modern principles of at
tack and defense.
There are also sepulchral mounds,
some of them sixty feet high. These
contain human bones, skulls, ETC., as
| we'll as copper utensils and bits of pot
| terry. The bones when exposed to air
crumble at once to dust AS the bones
of Europeans who died twenty CEN
turtles ago are often found intact and
strong, many authorities believe the
| mound builders date back at least
several centuries before the time of
julius Caesar.
Cleverly made pottery and copper or
bronze implements of war and peace
are found all through the mounds
! Ancient abandoned copper mines on
the mound builders we'll understood
the art of mining. The workmanship
| of the copper bracelets, bronze knives
ETC., prove their skill at the forge.
| In one Of the prehistoric Lake Su.
| perior mines has been found mass OF
copper weighing eight tons, resting on
a high platform, ready for removal to
the upper earth. This implies the use
of we'll constructed mine machinery
Pictures that have been found etched
upon copper and ivory portray much
artistic skill.
From all this 1t seems that in some
remote age the central part of North
America was inhabited by race OF
warlike, Industrious, decidedly civi.
lied beings who had splendid skill at
building, at the arts of mining. en-.
| gineering and higher mathematics and
who flourished apparently during nu-
merous centuries. Yet so long ago did
| the mound builders cease to exist that
in all Indian folklore there Is no men.
ton, no memory, of them.
None know where the Indians them
selves came from. Yet they apparent
i ly settled in America long after the
mound builders had vanished. The
skulls discovered in the mounds arc
not shaped In the least like skulls OF
Indians nor even of Europeans. Some
archacologists claim to find strong re
scmblance between the mound build
ers' skulls and those of the ancient
Egvntiaps. IL there were any connec
ion between the two. who can explain
ish in the middle west?
The fate of the mound builders Is
us mysterious as the strange people
Themselves. After reaching so high q
civilization and thriving for so long z
time 1t seems strange that they should
have been completely destroyed. Nc
satisfactory explanation has ever beer
offered. Perhaps the mound builders
moved south and became merged Will
the Mexican Aztecs or Peruvians, OF
some savage race from the north may
have swept down and utterly destroy
; ed them. or a wholesale pestilcnce may
have wiped out their nation.
The weird looking earthen monu
ments dhe purpose of most of them 1
puzzle to the best archaeologists) arr
the sole remaining proof that thi.
great lost American race ever existed
New York World.
How He Managed.