Untitled - the Digital Library of Georgia

30 G-EOBGIA AND GEOEGIANS
pestles. 9. Numerous fragments of pottery. 10. Head and neck of
bird, a specimen of clay—baked. 11. Various little images. These
remains were found upon the surface of the tumuli and in the fields
around them. We may, therefore, eagerly anticipate the revelations
which will come to light when the Herculean task of exploring them has
been successfully accomplished.
Like the unsolved riddle of the Sphinx, there obtrudes upon the
imagination this question, which time has not yet answered: Who were
the mysterious Mound-Builders ? They must have been an extraordinary
race of people to,, have reared such enduring fabrics. But the days
when these primitive inhabitants roamed the continent lie far away
in the remote background of the past, beyond even the shadowy range
of tradition. The mantle of oblivion rests upon them. No historical
records have been left behind; and only from the internal evidence of
these tumuli can the least information be deduced. But Colonel Jones
speculates interestingly upon the subject. Says he: *
"It will be at once remarked by those who even to a limited.degree
have bestowed any attention upon the antiquities of our State, that these
remains are not at all Indian, in point of origin. They have nothing in
common with those which 'were ascertained to have been constructed by
the Indians who were here when the region was first peopled by the
whites. We have also the positive testimony of the -Cherokees to the
effect that they retained not even a tradition of the race by whom they
were made. The authors of these tumuli were probably idol worshippers.
Among the Cherokees this religious custom was never known to exist.
The belief cherished by them with respect to a future state forbids the
supposition that the idols found in the neighborhood of these tumuli
were fashioned by them. Again, no migratory or nomadic race of people
would have undertaken the erection of such vast earth works, involving
immense labor and designed for almost endless duration. Men must
have emerged from the hunter state-; they must have become more ad
vanced in civilization; population must have become more dense before
the erection of such temples—such fortifications—could have been under
taken. There was not in the sixteenth century a single tribe of Indians,
between the Atlantic and the Pacific, who had means of subsistence
sufficient to enable them to apply to such purposes the unproductive
labor necessary for the erection of such a work. Nor was there any in
such a social state as to enable a chief to compel the labor of the nation
to be thus applied. It is only under despotic forms of government that,
pyramids will ever be erected in honor of princes—or such huge earth
works be dedicated to religious purposes. It is evident that these monu
ments were never constructed by the Indians who possessed this region
when Georgia was first peopled by the whites. Without pausing to
enumerate the proofs upon which the supposition rests, we may here
state in general terms that all the probabilities point to Asia as the
country whence came the earliest inhabitants of America. When or
what place they located, cannot at this remove be definitely aseer-
1 Ibid., pp. 37-41.