very
distinguished person, in which treasures of every kind, including great
stores of pearls, were consumed, or meant to be. Of this, Mr. Moorehead
says, in a letter to the author: "In the case of all altar offerings, a
fire had been kindled . . . and all these things were heaped upon it.
They were utterly ruined, save a few; . . . those at the top were not so much affected as those at the bottom."
Mr.
Moorehead's investigations already mentioned were in the years 1888 to
1891 inclusive; he next took up especially the remarkable Hopewell
groups of mounds, in 1891-1892, and explored these extensively for the
archaeological exhibit at the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, at
Chicago.1 This was his most important and elaborate
investigation, and will be described in some detail. In 1896, he made a
partial exploration of the Harness mound near Chillicothe, which has
been fully completed more recently by Prof. William C. Mills, and will
also be described further on.
The
investigations made in the Hopewell group of mounds were recorded by
Mr. Moorehead in a series of articles in the "Antiquarian."2
He gives a general account of the remarkable region of ancient remains
in Ross County, Ohio. The State archaeological map shows the "mound
belt," as a strip of country some fifteen miles wide and one hundred
miles long, extending through the Scioto Valley, from about Columbus to
Portsmouth. The ancient works noted on this map, though not all that
exist there, yet number over 900 mounds, 24 village sites, 36 circles
of earth and stone, 87 other inclosures and works of similar character,
and 31 sites of gravel or käme burials. Five groups of mounds in
particular exist in Ross County, all of them showing a "high culture"
state. "All of the lower Scioto Valley," says Mr. Moorehead, "was
occupied by a mound-building tribe ranking higher in intelligence and
numerically stronger than that of any other section of the whole Ohio
region." Among the many remarkable ancient works in that part of the
country, the five groups in Ross County are the most important, and
among these, the Hopewell group is preeminent. The first published
notice of them, which appeared in 1820, was by Mr. Caleb Atwater.3
Squier and Davis examined and described them in the years 1844-1846,
and obtained large and notable collections from them which are now in
England, in the Blackmore Museum at Salisbury, as not enough interest
in such matters then existed in America to induce the purchase and
retention of these valuable treasures. From that time until 1891, when
Mr. Moorehead began his explorations there, no one had paid much
attention to these mounds, all
'Now in the Field Museum of Natural '"American Archaeologist," May, 1897, to
History, Chicago, 111.
May, 1808.
' "Archaeologia Americana," 1820, p. 182.
