The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-11-28
AZTEC CULTURE RELICSF0UND ON
 MISSOURI SOIL
Evidence Seems To Link Mound Builders With
 Central Americans

While American archeologists are now practically unanimous in the belief that the great prehistoric mounds which have been found scattred widely throughout the Ohio and Mississippi valleys and Gulf states were the works of the aboriginal Indian tribes rather than of some mysterious vanished race, every now and then some discovery is made that tends to raise doubts as to the finality of this conclusion, says the Kansas City Star. Missouri was pro life field for the mound builders thousands of mounds have been located within the present borders of the state. All the indications seem to point to the probability, if not absolute certainty, that these mounds were either the burial places, or observation mounds of the aboriginal tribes. Yet the origin of the serpent mounds and other mounds made in the shape of animals, in the Ohio valley. indicating a certain artistic culture, is not so easily ac- counted for. Some of the pyramidal- shaped mounds. found in the Gulf states notably the Uunih Wayah mound in Mississippi. sacred to the ancient Choctaws-seem to establish a
 
 races in Mexico and Central America. The migration legend of the Choctaws traced their original habitat to Mexico.
 Lending additional color to the theory that the early civilizations of the country now covered by the United States might have been linked with the mysterious peoples whose works in Cen tral America and Mexico attest a much higher state of culture than was ever attained by the American Indians, comes the recent report of discoveries of Aztec characters on rock walls in the state of Nevada. These markings, re- tembling Egyptian hieroglyphics and showing kinship with the stone carvings of Central America. are considered of importance by archeologists, as they are the first to be discovered so far north within the territory of the United States. Yet Missouri may lay claim to remains, apparently Aztec in origin, that would seem to point at least to the probability that some time in the dim remote past the people whose tenn ples and stone structures and undeciph- cred hieroglyphics in the southern countries have given the scientists so much trouble, must either have dwelt in or pa d through the Mississippi val lev. Either that, or the so-called mound builders must have had commercial in tercourse, in some degree, with the peo- pie of Mexico and Central America.
 In 1907 most interesting and sig nificent discovery of tight copper plates, plainly of Aztec origin. was made in Dunklin county, Missouri. These plates have all the artistic in- dica of thost strange races in Mexico and Central America, whose sculptured inscriptions have given the tehnologists so much trouble and whose architec- kural remains are today being freshly explored with the hope of finding some Sey to their mysteries. They represent eagles, double eagles. and what looks like humanized eagle and are distlnc- lively of the Aztec type of sculpture. Their discovery on Missouri soil, linked with the recent findings of Aztec mark hgs on the stones of Nevada, would teem to indicate that the old mound kuilders-at least the .ilders of the f1ounds that were not strictly burial or observation mounds-werC either the remote ancestors of the southern Aztec tribes or became commercially asso- ciated with them in the course of the treat tribal wanderings over the con- finent to which all the aboriginal mi grafton legends point. The copper plates, which reproductions are given herewith taken originally from photo graphs, were ployed up by man named Ray Groomes, on the farm of Mrs. Baldwin, two and half miles south of the town of Maiden, in Dunkin coun- ty? near where the country road crosses the Cotton Belt railroad. In Houck's History of Missouri the following ac- count of their discovery and subsequent history is given:
 How The Plates Were Found
 "Mr. Ray Groomes makes the follow ing statement as to the manner in which these plates were discovered. He was blowing much deeper than usual, probably sixteen or eighteen inches. His attention was attracted by some- thing shining or glittering on the land turned over by his blow and he stopped to examine it. He found q few small scraps of copper. On looking at the bottom of the furrow whence these had come, he found that his blow had atruck the upper end of these copper plates, which lay in close contact, with the heads down. and inclined at an an gle of about forty-five degrees. He saw no evidence that they had ever been wrapped in cloth or any .other sub- stance, either separately or together. He dug around them with his pocket hnife, the loose sand and the soil being easily removed, and drew them out of the earth one by one. There was some thing with them that looked like a email piece of shale, such as he had frequently noticed in the land when blowing, and some white substance not 0avcd or identified. Mir Wade, who examined the plates, is inclined to think that this is q fragment of pot or vase of sun-dried or soft-burned clay, which went to pieces with the earth and of which only fragment or two remained. Mir. Gruomes, however, is positive in his statement that the specimens were in immediate contact, as he lifted them out one after another, and they lay so close together that very little earth had worked in between them.