William
C. Mills, in the Harness mound, seven miles north of Chilli-cothe,
Ohio, near the Scioto River, in Ross County. This locality had been
previously explored in part, by Professor Putnam in 1885, and Mr.
Moorehead in 1896; it was now systematically examined down to the
original surface at every point.
Squier
and Davis divided these ancient monuments into four classes: (1) Altar
mounds, which contain what appear to be altars, and are also called
hearths, of stone or hardened clay; (2) Burial mounds, containing human
bones; (3) Temple mounds, with neither altars nor bones, but seeming to
have had some special religious significance; and (4) Anomalous
mounds, including "mounds of observation" and others of mixed or
uncertain character. The burials are found to be of two kinds, simple
interment and cremation; and these are sometimes met with in the same
mound.
This
classification has been generally followed in describing these ancient
structures, although the whole subject is obscure and difficult, from
our ignorance of the purposes and conditions of their formation. In
many of the mounds of the first two classes especially, not only have
pearls been found, but quantities of interesting and remarkable
objects, many of which have been brought from distant points, and prove
clearly the existence of an extensive intertribal commerce at a remote
period. Galena from Illinois and Wisconsin, mica from North Carolina,
obsidian from beyond the Rocky Mountains, and sea-shells from the Gulf
coast, are among these objects, and particularly native copper from
Lake Superior, from which many articles were fashioned by hammering.
Pearls are extremely abundant, and were at first supposed to have been
brought from the coast, and may have been the pearls of the common clam
and the common oyster, the pearls being found in opening the mollusks
for food; but the recent development of pearl hunting in the western
rivers, where the freshwater mussels (Unios) are so abundant and
produce such beautiful pearls, shows that these treasures were
undoubtedly gathered, partly, if not wholly, in the region where the
mounds exist. The enormous numbers found are, indeed, no source of
surprise, as such quantities of pearls have been obtained, for over
twenty years past, from the same regions. The mollusks are still
abundant in all the streams of the Mississippi Valley, except where
they have been reduced or exterminated by the reckless methods of pearl
hunting employed where the "pearl fever" has prevailed.
It
is quite possible that the fresh-water Unios were not sought for their
pearls alone, but were also used as food, and perhaps as bait for
fishing. They were evidently gathered in great quantities, as is shown
by the old heaps of shells found along the banks of streams at many
