pearl and shell beads taken out amid the ashes are estimated at not less than 100,000.
The
Effigy mound, "a place for ceremony, for sacrifice, for burial," as Mr.
Moorehead calls it, thus combining the character of the first three
classes distinguished by Squier and Davis, is seen not to have been
constructed at one time, but to have developed gradually through
perhaps a long period. The several altars, the more important burials,
the store of copper objects, each was surmounted by a small and
separate mound. "These may have been built on the level dance or
ceremonial floors, from time to time. When the entire floor was
covered, the people brought large quantities of earth and gravel,
heaped it on top of the irregular contour of the small mounds, and this
formed the present Effigy."
The
population that occupied the main inclosure was apparently not very
large, as compared with some other of the important earthworks, such as
Fort Ancient, or Madisonville. From the distribution of village-site
debris, Mr. Moorehead estimates that there could have been only from
two hundred to three hundred lodges, even if these were all occupied at
the same time. But the indications of traffic and of art show that it
must have been a community advanced in culture beyond most of its
neighbors. Mr. Moorehead believes it to have been a sort of capital
among a body of allied or affiliated tribes who made and occupied the
similar earthwork towns of the "mound belt,"—a center of production and
distribution of art objects, and a place for the holding of great
religious ceremonials. It may be noted, however, that the art was
developed in certain directions and not in others wherein it might be
expected. In hammered copper-work and in drilling, it was most
remarkable, in the latter extending even to the perforation of quartz
crystals, but of pottery there is little, and that not very choice—a
striking contrast to the abundant and elaborately ornamental potter's
art of the tribes in the Southwest.
Tonti,
the historian of La Salle's expedition, in the eighteenth century,
states that La Salle actually saw mound-dwellers among southern tribes
of Indians, living very much as the Ohio mound-builders must have done,
and quite untouched as yet by any contact with the whites. Tonti
describes the dwellings, made of sun-dried mud and with dome-shaped
roofs of cane ; two of them were larger and better constructed than the
rest, one the chief's house and the other a temple, both about forty
feet square. The latter held the bones of deceased chieftains, and was
surmounted by three rude, wooden eagles. In the center was apparently
"a kind of altar," where was maintained a perpetual fire of logs,
watched by two aged men. A recess, to which strangers were not
admitted, contained the treasures of the tribe, espe-
