the filson club history quarterly - The Filson Historical Society

THE FILSON CLUB 

HISTORY QUARTERLY 

Vol. 29 LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY, JULY, 1955 No. 3 

THE MOUNDBUILDERS 

BY LUCIEN BECKNER 

Louisville, Kentucky 

INTRODUCTION 

This new but ancient story is of one of the greatest tragedies in 

American history, the driving of the Moundbuilders from the Ohio, 

the Great Lakes, and the Upper Mississippi valleys. Its items have 

been garnered from the scant evidences which have survived the careless 

centuries. It is not an archaeological excursus, it is history/ 

It is offered because of the need of our archaeologists for historic 

foundations, like archaeologists have in some Old World lands, and 

to rescue from oblivion a great but forgotten people. An occasional 

surmise has been indulged when it is a seemly filling for a historic 

vacuum or needed to paint a picture for understanding; but each is 

recognizable. 

Its happenings were amongst unlettered peoples and were lacking 

in visibility and value to the eyes and interests of the literate Europeans; 

so, its few scattered grains have had to await the gleanings of research 

for their harvest home. 

Tile reason no one has heretofore attempted this story perhaps is 

because its items are so scattered in time and place their relationship 

and continuity were not discerned; and besides had to be garnered 

from four European languages, from uncertain ethnologic gropings, 

from uncorrelated archaeology, and some Indian traditions. 

Having learned their story I must tell it, for knowledge is an obligation. 

THE PEOPLE 

The people who built the wonderful earthworks in the Ohio, 

Great Lakes, and Upper Mississippi valleys, and later throughout the 

South, have been thought to be prehistoric, mysterious, superior to 

Indians. They are not mysterious or entirely prehistoric, being typical 

Indians, but were superior in cultural attainments to the wild northland 

*EDITOR'S NOTE: Colonel Beckncr i al o publishing this article as a pamphlet. 

203

20,1 The Filson Club History Quarterly [Vol. 29 

Algonquians who succeeded them in the same regions and whom many 

wrongly consider aborigines. 

Forty years of research have yielded items which, arranged to 

correlate their chronologic, ethnic, and geographic data, reconstruct the 

epic story of the brilliant but unfortunate people who, after the 

Europeans got flashing glimpses of them, vanished as if they had never 

been, leaving their earthworks, mute monuments, to intrigue the future 

with a puzzle. 

Their cultural advancement was not realized until the forest-woven 

curtain of obscurity was torn aside by the axes of the settlers; then it 

was deemed too late to do more than wonder and surmise. Now at 

the touch of the magic wand of research the vanished people come 

back and tell the grim story of how, despite their uprooting and dispersion, 

they fought for and gained new homes beyond the reach of 

their ravening enemies. 

The Bureau of American Ethnology long ago discovered that the 

earthworks people are the ancestors of the modern Sioux, Catawbas, 

Osages, Omahas, and others of the same linguistic stock. Their 

language, which belongs to the Hokan group, along with the 

Coahuiltecan of Mexico and Texas, the Yuman of Arizona and Mexico 

and other southwestern tongues, tells from whence they came to the 

rich eastern lands of Chisca and Akan. u 

The Spanish in Florida called them Chiscas and ]acans (j is the 

Spanish h) ; the French in Canada, Akans, Chiscas, or just Southerners 

(Chaouanons); the Algonquian Delawares in their Walam Olum, 

Akonapi and Towakan; the Iroquois, Ontoaganhas; the English in 

Virginia, Occaneechees and Rickahockans (Rique Akans) and in the 

Carolinas, IP'occans, Chiskers, Catawbas, and Westos. Western Siouans 

yet speak of themselves as wakanda, a which connotes wonderful, sacred, 

not gentile. Both Spanish and French speak of their language as 

Chisca. The Ohio and the Wabash rivers on early French maps are 

named Akanseacipi (cipi is Algonquian for river). French maps use 

Algonquian names because the French settled on the St. Lawrence 

River amongst Algonquians and learned their geographic terms. 

THEIR COUNTRY 

Generally speaking, they filled the land between the sandstone 

mountains of western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Eastern Kentucky, 

the Great Lakes, the valley of the upper Mississippi, and the 

valley of the Cumberland. 

Marquette's map of 1673 describing the level country of the middle 

Ol io Valley says: "This river bathes a very beautiful land in which

1955] The Moundbuilders 205 

are found apples, persimmons, grapes and other wild fruits. For a 

large part it is open but has trees here and there (espace in espace). 

The Iroquois have destroyed most of the inhabitants and are preparing 

to destroy the rest." This entry is placed on the map south of 

the Ohio about where Lewis and Mason counties, Kentucky, now 

are; and where a traveler down the great river leaves behind the rough 

Carboniferous sandstone tors and valleys and passes into the level 

Silurian and Ordovician limestone lands, called on the earliest French 

maps Kentayenton-ga, an lroquoian word meaning the level country 

but which we call the Bluegrass. In this rich homeland lived a people 

happy and great. 

THEIR CULTURE 

The archaeology of the Moundbuilders reveals an aboriginal culture 

superior to any north of the Pueblos. At Circlevitle, Chillicothe, 

Newark, and dozens of other places in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, West 

Virginia, and Kentucky; at Cahokia and many other places in Illinois, 

Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota are the finest earthworks 

in the United States; the most famous being the Serpent Mound in 

Adams County, Ohio, and the great mound at Cahokia, Illinois. The 

highest phase of this culture has been named Hopewell; but radiating 

are phases differing about as city and country cultures. The phase 

found in Kentucky and Indiana has been named Adena. Their differences 

are not significant but their identities are. Because of their 

many mounds, they are spoken of as the Moundbuilders. Excavations 

have yielded lovely works of art in shell, bone, stone, and copper; and 

a few in silver, gold, and even meteoric iron.4 They could gracefully 

depict outlines and conceive of complicate conventions but, like the 

Aztecs and Mayas, had not achieved perspective. 

Besides these indigenous central cultures, Hopewell-like cultures 

were established wherever the refugee Akans made settlements. Many 

of them, as at Etowah, Georgia; Moundsville, Alabama; Marksville, 

Mississippi; Spiro, Oklahoma, are as impressive as the original Hopewell. 

The scattering refugees established their culture in Virginia, 

the Carolinas, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, 

Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, 

and Dakota. 

The Moundbuilder culture has many close resemblances to that of 

the Aztecs and Mayas; too many to be accidental. 

SOME CULTURAL TRAITS 

They were governed by a number of city states or weak 

amphictyonies, more ethnic than civic, which permitted no combina-

206 The Filson Club History Quarterly [Vol. 29 

tion for defense. This, with their wealth, brought about their destruction 

by the predatory Iroquois. 

They were farmers, rather than hunters, raising maize, beans, 

pumpkins, gourds, tobacco, and other crops. The artichokes cultivated 

by them are now wild along our streams--Indian relics. Nature also 

furnished them a wide variety and great abundance of meats and 

vegetables. So much easy food allowed time for both study and 

improvement which dependence on hunting would not have done. 

As maize is a tropical plant, it proclaims the origin of its users. They 

domesticated the dog and perhaps the turkey. 5 Living in such 

natural and self-wrought abundance, they gave war little heed until 

less cultured, but better armed people, assaulted them. Then it was 

too late. 

Beverly, the early Virginia historian, says the totem of the Occaneechees 

was a snake. The Walam Olum, the picture "history" of 

the Delawares, calls the Akans "snakes." The Serpent Mound is the 

greatest earthwork in the world. Many shells have been found bearing 

engraved rattlesnakes. Some of their pictured snakes have plumes 

like the mythical snake of the Mayas. The word Sioux means snakes. 

The Osages were called "snakes." All of these imply serpent worship, 

perhaps like their Pueblo kin today, and based on the mystery 

of venom. 

One of their shell carvings shows two warriors with lines, running 

from the breast upward; exactly like the cruel sun-dance of the western 

Sioux seventy-five years ago. Pictures on shells and copper plates, 

found from Missouri to Georgia, show many identical details of 

symbolic costume, headdress, and instruments; the men's faces are 

painted, their noses made up to resemble an eagle's beak, with eagle 

wings on their shoulders and an eagle's tail behind; very like the 

eagle-dance of Pueblo Indians today. Such things indicate religion; 

but religion is subjective and cannot be recovered from objective relics. 

Small figurines from their graves show their summer dress was 

breech-clouts for men and skirts for women. In winter they dressed 

in skins and furs and cloth with feathers or rabbit fur skillfully interwoven. 

Both sexes wore many ornaments and painted face and body. 

Their music was song, time, and din. They had flutes, whistles, 

panpipes, shell trumpets, rattles, rasps, jingles, and drums. The flute 

and panpipes suggest a scale. Stomp was used. 

They were traders, importing sea shells and perhaps feathers from 

Florida, gold and perhaps tapa-cloth from Georgia, mica from North 

Carolina, copper from upper Michigan, lead from Iowa and Kentucky, 

obsidian from Wyoming, grizzly-bear teeth from the Rockies, and 

pipestone from Minnesota. For these they traded both stone and


copper ornaments, tools and weapons, and perhaps corn, tobacco, 

buffalo skins, furs, and salt. They kept accounts with quipus or knotted 

strings as did the Incas and the Hawaiians. 

They venerated the calumet, a staff adorned with white feathers 

and skins of snakes; which, borne by a herald, commanded peace. 

When a pipe was attached, as an altar on which tobacco the sacred 

plant was burned, it became the peace-pipe. It is the caduceus of 

Mercury, messenger of the gods; and is yet used to command peace 

as a scepter by royalty, a mace by deliberative bodies, a badge by 

physicians, and a flag of truce. It was introduced into the East Indies 

by Phoenician traders five thousand years ago and brought to America 

ages before Columbus by Polynesian sea-rovers. 

They were miners of flint, catlinite, steatite, slate, clay, mica, and 

copper; using crude picks made of antler, stone mauls, and fire when 

helpful. Their granite and diorite axes were made from small boulders 

from the glacial drift of northern Kentucky northwards. 

They had trades and crafts, such as currying, weaving, basketry, pottery, 

bone-carving, wood-working, coppersmithing, and many others. 

They practiced the firewalk. John Lederer, traveling amongst the 

refugees in Virginia in 1670, saw an Occaneechee dance in fire for an 

hour without hurt. This unexplained miracle came to America as 

did the calumet and is yet practiced in Pacific lands. Shadrack, 

Meshach, and Abednago walked in the fire (Daniel 3:26) ; and Isaiah 

tells the sailors of Dan, who were to go on a voyage in the Indian 

Ocean, when they walked "through the fire, thou shalt not be burned." 

(Isaiah 43:2) 7 It is known in ancient English law. 

They also shrank heads. Lederer tells that a Woccan chief sent 

three young men to a neighboring tribe to kill young girls to accompany 

the spirit Of his dead son. They returned with the skins of the 

heads of three girls. This is the first step in making a shrunken head. 

They left copper plates and shells on which are engraved a dancing 

shaman holding fi shrunken head. You will see shrunken heads also 

en the Mayan sculptures in Yucatan. The art is still practiced in the 

forests of the Amazon. 8 

They maintained cities of refuge where a fugitive was safe. Per. 

haps each tribe, certainly the Mascoutins, kept a sacred fire, like the 

ancient Romans. The Jesuit Relation of 1647-1648 mentions the Fire 

Nation, and says they were On.toaganhas. 

They used the lance, the throwing-stick or atlatl, the blow-gun, the 

bow and arrow, the bolas, the macana or flint sword, the drill, the 

fish-hook, the dibble and hoe, and the stone and bone tools and 

weapons, which we find everywhere.


They often flattened heads by pressure of the cradle-board. The 

Spaniards accused them of cannibalism which should not be hastily 

denied when it is remembered that the cultured Aztecs ate human 

flesh. But no one else accuses them. 

They had achieved many subjective victories over their objective resources; 

but had reached a time when they needed a messiah to lead them 

spiritually out of shamanism and fear of fl e mysteries of the world 

around them; to teach them the superiority of the subjective; that 

dancing and singing are not purification; that sacrifices do not appease 

the gods; that tom-toms do not driye out devils; that the adoration of 

objective things is fruitless. They had evolved as far as they could, 

they next needed a mutation; but what they did get will now be told. 

CHISCA 

One July day in 1540, an Indian chief in northern Alabama told 

De Soto about a land to the north called Chisca, whose people were 

rich. De Soto, one of Pizarro's palladins in Peru, eager to find 

another golden empire, sent two soldiers to spy out that Land of Chisca. 

They traveled up the Tennessee River in canoes, crossed the high 

ranges through Cumberland Gap, and marched northward along the 

Traders' or Warriors' Path to Chisca. After twenty-eight days they 

returned and reported the country between so scant of maize and with 

such high and rough mountains it was impassible for the army; and 

described Chisca as "a poor, little town where there was nothing of 

value." 

On Wyffliet's map of 1597 Chisca is located south of the big 

northern bend of the Ohio, in the present Kentucky Bluegrass. On 

Franc[uelin's map of 1684 Chisca is more exactly located. A stream 

runs into the Ohio above the Kentucky named "Skippakicipe ou la 

Riveire Bleue" (our Licking); to the northeast of it is "Chaskepe," 

which means Chisca-people; and between the Licking and a stream 

running into the Kentucky from the north, which the map names 

"Misseouiecipi" (our Red River), is Chisca. 

Today Chisca's visible remains are a mound and a circle on the 

farm of Mr. and Mrs. W. D. Clark, at Indian Fields in Clark County, 

Kentucky. A larger circle and other mounds disappeared a century 

or more ago. "This was De Soto's farthest point north? 

THE WARRIORS' PATH 

In 1670 John Lederer, a German traveling in western Virginia and 

Carolina, was told by Occaneechee (Akenadzy) Indians about Zynoda, 

a great gap in the western mountains. They had come through it in


their flight from the Ohio Valley. This is the earliest historic mention 

of Cumberland Gap and pethaps the third historic mention of a 

particular place in Kentucky; Chisca being the first; and The Fails 

of the Ohio, reported to La Salle in 1669 by a Seneca chief, the 

second. The Warriors' Path running through Cumberland Gap was 

mapped by-Franquelin in 1684, which shows it was known early by 

the French. 

This great path is often confused with "buffalo trails." Buffalo 

came into the Ohio Valley too recently to have worn trails ten to 

twenty feet wide and two to four feet deep. They were made by 

mastodons and mammoths, whose remains are found at all the greater 

licks. They and other salt-seeking animals made paths from salt-lick 

to salMick. One of these paths can be seen in Lower Blue Licks State 

Park; the erosion of huge feet for thousands of years. 1° The buffaloes 

used them later. 11 The Traders' Path followed these when the licks 

were eu route because game was always found at them. 

The Traders' Path ran from Lake Erie through central Ohio down 

the Scioto Valley, crossing the Ohio River at several fords above 

Maysville, Kentucky; thence south, past the upper Blue Licks in 

Fleming County, Kentucky, to Chisca, (twelve miles east of Winchester) 

which was a mile or more from a lick now called Oil Springs. 

Crossing the Kentucky River near the mouth of Red River, it ran 

through Estill and Jackson counties to the Flat Lick north of Barbourville 

in Knox County; thence to the Wasioto Ford of the Cumberland 

at Pineville, and on through Cumberland Gap. From there one branch 

struck into Virginia; another to the Georgia and Florida coast near 

present St. Augustine; and another to the upper Tennessee River where 

the travelers took canoes to what is now Georgia and Alabamli. 

From Cahokia, Illinois, probably the largest center of Akan population, 

another traders" path crossed southern Illinois and Indiana, forded 

the Ohio River above The Falls, ran the ridges eastward and then the 

divide between the Kentucky and the Licking to join the Warriors' 

Path at Cbisca. This Cahokia Path on Van KeuIen's Map, 1720, is 

labeled "The route which the French take to resort to Carolina. ''lu 

The Akan name for the north-south path was perhaps Scioto, as the 

river it followed in Ohio was so called; the Cumberland ford at Pine. 

ville, Kentucky, is called Wasioto; and the German, Lederer, who 

probably recognized the Sinuan nasal n, spells the gap "Zynoda." 

Also the Akans who lived along it in Ohio were called Honisioto or 

variants of that name. The Shawnees later called it Athiomiowe, the 

Path of the Armed Ones, as they knew nothing of its commercial 

past, only its more recent tragedies.


FRANQUELIN'S 1684 MAP 

Tl*e map maker thought the Upper Tennessee emptied into the Ohio through the 

Kentucky. The arrow points to Chisca. 

I wisll to express my dlanks to Dr. John R. Swanton, Director of the United States 

Bureau of Ethnology, who from his vast store of knowledge helped me whenever called 

upon; also to Samuel G. Stoney of ti*e South Carolina Historical Society.


Chisca was in a rich corn-land, but had no other trading resources.- 

It was only a road junction, winning its prosperity by servicing traders. 

The more detailed and exact information on Franquelin's map implies 

unrecorded explorations in the Ohio Valley in the seventeenth 

-century. One relic of this is a stone found in Jackson County, Kentucky, 

on the Traders' Path on which "June 3, 1632" was carved) 3 

None but Spaniards was there so early. In 1630 a group of Spaniards, 

having journeyed from Florida, appeared in western New York looking 

for a lake containing pure silver which they had heard was near 

there. They had traveled the Traders' Path through Chisca. 

The Spanish early founded missions on the Georgia-Florida coast 

and tried to spread inland. In November, 1566, only sixteen years 

after De Soto, Juan Pardo built a fort "northward from St. Elena," 

and left Sergeant Boyano in charge. In January, Boyano reported a 

war with a chief named Chisca, and how with his fifteen soldiers 

he had killed a thousand Indians! (Spanish self-laudation is not 

always restrained by truth.) Later Chisca, with several thousand 

Indians (Spanish self-expiation) laid in wait for Pardo, who was 

hastening to his sergeant's help, and drove him back to St. Elena. 

(Not as doughty as Boyano's immortal fifteen.) Chisca's "several 

thousand" was a merchant with his slave porters, assisted by local 

Indians. He doubtless resented a Spanish establishment on the Traders' 

Path where it might try to collect duties from those ancient freetraders 

as the Spanish did from other Kentuckians two hundred and 

fifty years later at New Orleans. 

In 1639 Governor Castro y Pardo of Florida reported to his king 

that "heathen Indians who called themselves Ysicas14 are roaming 

through this province. They speak the Chisca tongue and say they 

are from a great river in the north." (Ohio) This was another 

trading party, "roaming" to find customers and slaves. 

AN ENGLISH NOTICE 

In 1608 Indians told Captain John Smith about Massawamiki, an 

Algonquian word meaning Great Southland. They described its people 

as so great that modern commentators, not knowing about the 

Akans, have thought the Iroquois were meant. But the Iroquois did 

not become great until twenty or more years later when they got guns 

from the Dutch; and besides Iroquois were Northerners to John Smith's 

gossips. 

VERY POPULOUS 

Marquette on his map of 1670 says they were "in such numbers 

that they reckon twenty-three villages in one district and fifteen in


another, lying quite near each other; they are by no means warlike, 

and are the people the Iroquois come so far to seek in order to wage 

an unprovoked war upon them." 

Each Jesuit missionary in Canada in the seventeenth century made 

a Relation (report) regularly to his superior in France. In one of 

them we have a glimpse of Akan life. An Indian convert had just 

returned from a visit to an Akan town in present Ohio and reports 

the people so thick that the missionary comments, "It must have been 

like a market day in France." 

On Van Keulen's map of 1720 there is another glimpse of Akan 

life. About where are the sandstone cliffs in Eastern Kentucky, it 

notes: "The people live in caves [rock shelters] in summer to avoid 

the great heat of the sun." Camping out. 15 

The life of these people was idyllic: filled with abundance and no 

enemies. The Jesuit Relation of 1661-1662, by Father Lalemant, TM 

says their country "has none of the severity of our winter, but enjoys 

a climate that is always temperate, . . . Their villages are situated 

along a beautiful river which serves to carry people down to the 

Great Lake (for so they call the sea) where they trade with 

Europeans [Spaniards] who pray as we do." 

THE RIQUE AKANS 

Upon this ci(,ilization, just evolving into a Copper Age, the Iroquois 

burst: a pack of ferocious werwolves. In the Old World the barbarians 

overran the Roman Empire but were not so devastating. 

Iroquoians about 1585 had formed a confederacy of their Mohawk, 

Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Seneca tribes; the best Indian political 

organization north of Mexico. The Jesuit Relations tell that it made 

war on the Hurons from 1634 to 1649; on the Neutrals in 1651; on 

the Eries or Cats in 1654; on the Andastes and the rest of the 

Southerners (Chaouanons) from 1660 to 1676, when it claimed to 

have driven them all out. The rich Ohio Valley was a scorched and 

bloody desert; its cultured nations far-wandering east, west, and 

south) 

The Senecas were the westernmost Iroquoian nation. Westward 

from them were the Riques (Ericas, Erigas, Eries) or Cat Indians 18 

inhabiting the south shore of Lake Erie and southward into present 

Ohio. Their chief town Rique, in northeastern Ohio, was a city of 

refuge. 

In 1654 a Huron fled to Rique for refuge whereupon it sent an 

embassy to the Senecas to beg clemency. But the ambassadors were 

murdered while in the Seneca Council House! This arrogant violence,

1955] The Moundbuilde 213 

this treachery against ambassadors (sacred in all countries), against a 

delegation pleading peace was an act of war and so intended. The 

Iroquois had become so sure of their superiority because of the edged 

tools and firearms they had bartered from the Dutch, they decided 

they would raid and ravage. (Hitler's policies were not new.) The 

Senecas by 1630 had three hundred guns. They invested Rique and 

doubtless raided all nearby.. 

The Akans were nowhere prepared for war, having only Stone Age 

weapons and could not unite for resistance. Bishop Cammerer, of 

the Moravian Church, writing in 1750 about this war, says the Eries 

had only bows and arrows. The contemporary Jesuit Relation says 

their ammunition gave out. 

Franquelin's map, 1684, locates forty-odd Akan villages destroyed 

in this and the succeeding wars. Their earthworks yet standing show 

the accuracy of the map. Peace had produced a large and wealthy 

population which, depending on its wealth and prestige, had grown 

feeble and did not acquire war efficiency until later when as fugitives 

they had to fight for new homes. 

Indian warfare is a succession of raids made horrible by savage 

sadism. There were no war correspondents in those far-away days 

but a few incidents did reach some recorders. A Jesuit Relation tells 

that at the siege of Rique a Seneca chief, a Christian convert, called 

to the besieged, "You had better surrender; the Lord of Life is on 

our side," meaning Jesus. The besieged chief replied, "We do not 

know your Lord of Life; our tomahawks are our lords of life!" 

Homer's heroes spoke nothing bolder but helpless Rique fell to the 

overwhelming magic of firearms. 

In the first fury neither age nor sex was spared; the Jesuit Relation 

says blood stood in puddles. Later so many were taken as slaves 

that for a generation there were more Akan slaves in the Seneca 

nation than there were Senecas. What a melting-pot problem! 

FLIGHT SOUTH 

Some got away and the people of the nearby towns doubtless fled 

with them. The rout was panic. Southward they fled along the 

Traders' (from then on the Warriors') Path, down the Scioto to the 

Ohio, their enemies hot on their trail. Every impediment was cast 

aside. The aged and the little children died of fatigue, exposure, and 

hunger, but they could not stop to bury them. 

They held off their pursuers occasionally with hurriedly extemporized 

fortresses on hilltops. The Catawba (Rique) tradition says they built 

a fort on the headwaters of the Kentucky near the Warriors' Path.


This would make it near the present Berea in Madison County, Kentucky, 

u° Having lost their granite axes in fight or flight they made 

new ones of sandstone which could not cut wood but could crack 

skulls. Fort Ancient in southern Ohio dates from this time. There 

are many other forted hilltops in the Akan land, makeshift and feeble, 

but each declaring defiance and defense; and each helpless against 

firearms. 

The Catawba tradition further tells that they left the Kentucky fort 

and fled along the Warriors' Path through Cumberland Gap into Virginia. 

The Virginia records21 tell how the horde irrupted into Virginia 

six hundred strong; how in 1656 they whipped a Virginia army 

under Colonel Hill; and how Colonel Abram Wood was then sent 

against them who induced the desperate "Rickahockans" to move south 

towards the Carolinas. 

In this same year one band of them asked admission into the Creek 

Confederacy and were settled on the Tallapoosa River, in Georgia, 

calling their town Tucket Batchet, "the town of the refugees.''m 

Here we must leave them to their modern historians and watch the 

spreading Iroquois fury. 

The Iroquois now assailed the Akaos next beyond, the Honiosants, 

Nyhyssans, Monohysanoughs, Onasiotos of the Scioto Valley; the 

Mesopeleas (Monsouperias) of southeastern Ohio, West Virginia, and 

northeastern Kentucky; the Cheskapes and Misseouians of central Kentucky; 

the Akans of southern Indiana and the Wabash Valley; and 

others whose names are not given on the maps or elsewhere. Some 

fled through Cumberland Gap but most took to their canoes and fled 

down the Ohio. 

There are but few data about them. There are two forts on 

Harrod's Creek in Oldham County, Kentucky, built evidently in a 

hurry, which can safely be attributed to the fleeing Akans? 3 

Some stopped at The Falls for awhile, as a Seneca chief tells La Salle 

they were there in 1669; and a pile of whitened human bones was 

found by the Virginia settlers on Sandy Island just below The Falls. 

Tobacco, a Miami chief, told General George Rogers Clark they were 

relics of a battle after which the ancient inhabitants fled down the 

river and Kentucky was lost. 

Col. James F. Moore, of Kentucky, was told by an old Indian that 

the early Kentuckians had perished in a war waged against them by 

Indians, and that in the last great battle the defenders were driven 

to a small island below the Ohio Falls where they were cut to pieces. 

Cornstalk told Colonel McKee, commander on the Kanawha, that 

Ohio and Kentucky had once contained a white people, familiar with 

arts of which the Indians [Algonquians and Iroquois] knew nothing,

1955] The Moundbuilde 215 

who had been exterminated by the Iroquois; that they, and not the 

Indians, had built the old forts long ago. 

The Osages, who once brought suit against the United States to 

recover their Ohio Valley fatherland, left a tradition of their flight 

down the Ohio. 

Imagination can paint a grim picture of this exodus. The Ohio, 

Kentucky, and Wabash rivers must have been covered at times and 

places with fleets of crowded canoes dug out of huge tulip or chestnut 

logs, holding thirty or more each. Whole nations afloat--unknown 

terrors ahead, certain death behind--fleeing from a ghastly past into 

a menacing future; nothing sure but their own stout hearts. Almost 

the only treasures carried from their despoiled homes were tearful 

memories of peace and plenty and happiness. Fear of the bloodthirsty 

Iroquois and their magic gunpowder closed ears of husbands 

and fathers against all pleas for rest by their weary and despairing 

families; almost overwhelmed by sickness and fear and saddened often 

by death. They camped at night close together for comfort and 

protection, their fires blinking dimly through chill river mists. To 

these, the men who had hunted alongshore by day, brought meager 

harvests to their huddling hordes of misery. 

At the mouth of the Ohio an Osage tradition says half of them 

got over the Mississippi when a storm wrecked the canoes and those 

left behind had to wander afoot down the eastern bank. This disaster 

gave rise to two names: Omaha, up-streamers, who got over; and 

Quapaw (Kappa), down-streamers, who did not. From here on the 

distraught refugees can be followed with some detail and accuracy 

on the French maps. 24 

In the last quarter of the seventeenth century and on into the 

eighteenth the French were busy on the Ohio and Mississippi laying 

the foundations of empire. The data they gathered were made into 

maps. These showed not merely physiographic but ethnographic, 

historic and all other data they deemed pertinent to the interests of 

Church or State. Ofttimes conditions reported would be so changed 

by the time they were published the same map might show historic 

data many years apart. 

They show that the "Missouris or Osages," and some of the 

"Akanseas or Kansas," got across, Omahas; and that the Mesopelias 

(Monsoupereas) and some of the Akans did not, Kappas (Quapaws). 

Thevenot's map of 168l puts Akans and Mesopeleas in West Tennessee; 

but this same and later maps show them congested about the 

mouth of the Arkansas River. When the troubled refugees saw that 

mighty river, it must have awakened memories of their beloved Ohio


and Wabash of happier days; and they seized it, drireing off its 

aboriginal Caddo inhabitants. 

Several Akan splinter tribes, as Ofos and Uspies, settled on the 

eastern bank of the lower Mississippi; and the Biloxis and Pascagoulas 

found pleasant seats on the Gulf Coast near the present cities which 

bear their names. From there they raided the Spanish missions in 

Georgia and Florida. 

The leader of a Spanish retaliatory raid, Captain de Florancia, 

reported to Governor Salazar of Florida, "Many years ago the Chisca 

Indians would come on the trails and assault and kill the Christians, 

or carry them off for slaves. Last year [16761 it became clear they 

were Chiscas." Whereupon he led thirty soldiers with firearms and 

one hundred and sixty-seven archers against them. (It sounds like 

Kentuckians going against the Shawnee towns in Ohio.) They 

marched from St. Augustine eighteen days westerly and reached the 

Chisca town "on the eve of St. Matthew the Apostle." This was 

near the "Choctaws and Pensacolas near the sea." They peeped 

through the palisades of the village, which was over three hundred 

paces across. "The Chiscas were not sleeping but making much noise 

around big fires." The Spanish set fire to the town with the loss of 

seven killed and forty wounded; the Chiscas lost over sixteen dead 

and many wounded. On October 5th the Spanish army got back to 

Apalachi "by the favor of God and the Virgin of the Rosary." Later 

these Chiscas helped the English drive the Spaniards out of Georgia. 

The Omahas found a home in the rich Iowa and Nebraska cornlands, 

where their river and farm culture availed. =a 

The Osages became the dominant banditti of the Old Southwest, 

compelling the stationing of the largest part of our army there. 

One of their descendants, Charles Curtis, became Vice-President o/ 

the United States. 

Missouri, Iowa, Dakota, Kansas, and Arkansas were named for the 

refugees. Minnesota and Nebraska are Siouan words. One of the 

Siouan tribes of the Missouri River, the Mandans, kept a knowledge 

of their eastern origin and were called "white people" by other Indians 

because they frequently had gray eyes, chestnut hair, and light skins. 

They also made glass beads, a European craft. 26 

The items on the early maps are largely the new locations of the 

refugees. There is not space in this paper to give them all but a 

few citations will show their character. The Amsterdam map of 1720 

has Akans just below the mouth of the Ohio; Thevenot's (1681) and 

De Lisle's (1720) put them opposite the mouth of the Arkansas in 

Mississippi. Van Keulen's of 1720 shows the "Kansa or Akansa or 

Missouris" on the south side of the Missouri in Missouri. Pirsson's


map of 1727 puts Akans and Quappas on the Arkansas River. Van 

Keulen puts the Osages on the lower Missouri. The Mesopelias 

(Monsonperias), whom Franquelin located in northeastern Kentucky, 

West Virginia, and southeastern Ohio, are located on Joliet's map 

(1674) on the eastern bank of the lower Mississippi. The general 

fact the maps tell is that the people had to scatter, tribes, neighbors 

and doubtless families, in hurried and harried flight, never again to 

see old neighbors or kin. 

Everywhere they carried memories of their loved ones slaughtered, 

their prolific fields laid waste, their pleasant homes burned, their dead 

left behind forever; the gains of generations of thought, love, and 

labor lost. Those who had so suffered carried their anguish to the 

grave; but their tales of tragic cruelties goaded the descendants of 

those peaceful farmers, traders, and craftsmen into becoming the 

fiercest, boldest warriors the advancing white man met; warriors who 

could not be overcome by pioneer militia, as Kentuckians overcame 

the Shawnees; but only by professional soldiers with national backing. 

Even then the professionals had their set-backs by such Siouan victories 

as Custer's Defeat and by such generals as Red Cloud and Sitting Bull.2v 

T MA 

In his Relation of 1661-1662, Father La[emant says, "A band of 

Iroquois is going four hundred leagues from here [Montreal] in 

pursuit of a natiofi whose only offense consists in its not being Iroquois• 

It is called Ontoaganha." 

Four hundred leagues (twelve hundred miles) would put them on 

the Mississippi River where were the rich Tamas of Cahokia, wellworth 

a robber's raid. They were perhaps the last Chisca-speaking 

people remaining on the original Akan lands. 

The ruins of the great Tama metropolis can now be seen at Cahokia, 

opposite St. Louis. Its greatest mound is about one hundred feet high, 

one thousand feet long, seven hundred feet wide, and covers sixteen 

acres. It has a flat top on which was a cornfield before Illinois bought 

it for a State monument. In sight from its summit are fifty or sixty 

mounds, many of which would be great elsewhere. Those who built 

it must have had a deeply religious fervor to believe in such a 

necessity,es It is the largest mound in the United States. Maybe, 

• like the Pyramids, it was built with slave labor. They were perhaps 

greater traders than the Ohio Hopewells but like them were not 

warriors. They likely bought their slaves, although the Spanish say 

the Chiscas captured Christian Indians. Their trade articles were stone 

and copper weapons and tools but mostly copper ornaments. They

218 The Filson Club History Quarterly [Vol, 29 

may have been also salt merchants. The remains of the great Akan 

saltworks at Shawneetown, Illinois, are older than its occupation by 

Pierre Chartier's renegade Shawoees, about 1760, from which it got 

its name, and too extensive to have been the work of the few months 

the Shawnees were there. 

COMMERCE 

Commerce is the swapping of things and ideas. Each new idea 

increases control of resources and a consequent growth in wealth and 

ability. Wealth gives time for thought and ability gives power to 

implement it. Commerce compels comparisons and creates desires, 

makes routes and roads and develops geography and mathematics. 

Without commerce a people accumulates only stagnant centuries; lolls 

in unmoving, satisfaction; has only the infertile dreams of narrow 

horizons. Commerce quickens life, spreads peace and confidence, and 

increases populations. It builds and builds. It is the vanguard of 

civilization. 

On Lake Superior the Akans got their supplies of native copper. 

Being at the head of the St. Lawrence River system and close to the 

head of the Mississippi River system, the copper mines were ideally 

placed for canoe transport over an immense area. Verrezano, in 1524, 

saw copper ear ornaments on the New England coast. Longfellow's 

Skeleton In Armor was mailed with Akan copper. In 1535 Cartier 

found copper in use on the St. Lawrence. In 1539-1540 De Soto 

found copper amongst the tribes in the Southeast. To all these places 

it could have come only from Lake Superior, brought by Akan 

merchants. In 1632 Champlain was told by Indians of copper, on Lake 

Superior; and in 1636 Segard's History Of Canada says that copper 

is found one hundred leagues (three hundred miles by water) from 

Lake Huron. This would put it at the western end of Lake Superior. 

The Jesuit Relation of Father Dablon (1669-1671) mentions red 

copper from the Ontonagon River in Upper Michigan. Ontonagon is 

a variation of the Iroquois word Ontoagana. This name locates an 

Akan operation. 

The Akan miners would take their copper by canoe to Soult Sainte 

Marie and from there some would go up Lake Michigan to what was 

then and is yet the Chicago River; some would go down Lake Huron 

to what is now Sandusky or some other canoe port on Lake Erie; and 

some would go east by the Ottawa River or other water routes. From • 

the Lake Erie port it was taken to the Ohio Hopewell towns where it 

was worked up by master craftsmen and sent south by way of tim Scioto 

River and the Traders' Path. That whicfi left Lake Michigan up the 

Chicago River-"9 was carried to the Illinois and "shipped" down it to


Cahokia where it was made by master craftsmen into trade articles 

for the traffic south. 

On Thevenot's map of 1681 is "Mine of Copper" at Chicago; and 

on Joliet's map of 1674 is "Mine of red copper" near Cahokia. We 

now know there were no mines of copper at those places; the maps 

hut show the guesses of the French about its origin. Those were 

points of transport and manufacture. There were no French explorers 

in central Ohio early enough to note the copper coming by way of 

Lake Erie. 

The mounds along the water and land routes have produced quantities 

of copper ornaments with some tools and weapons. The Tamas 

of Cahokia controlled the trade routes on the Mississippi, Ohio, 

Cumberland, and Tennessee rivers and had one by land to Chisca; 

and doubtless used the Indiana and Kentucky rivers. The Hopewells 

or eastern Akans controlled the upper Ohio and its tributaries and 

land routes east and south. 

A cache of copper found in Pulaski County, Kentucky. There are five axes, two 

spearpoints and two knives; a trader's package. 

What the Indian traders got for their copper and other wares is 

aot well known. Sea shells made into art objects and utensils have 

been found throughout the inland Akan country; and are sometimes 

found in caches where their Indian porters had hid them. Doubtless 

many of the trade articles from the South were perishable, as feathers, 

pearls, and tapa-cloth; but they also brought mica, a little gold, and 

perhaps slaves. In southern areas, where there is little or no such 

stone, large quantities of northern stone artifacts are found. Salt and

, i :l ,: ,ll ¸ I .!, i ii II !i I , V ! K :l ! :l i : ]: ::L: j , ;, r,4,, 

,.i i li , i ,M ! . : ,I


furs, if exported, left no relics. Both salt and stone are heavy and, 

if transported long distances by people with neither beasts of burden 

nor wheeled vehicles, must have been by water or slave porters. Copper, 

slaves, and pearls are almost the only articles noticed in the old 

chronicles. 

No incidents of the Iroquois attack on the Tamas of Cahokia have 

been found, a° Some of them lived at the present St. Louis where 

they also left great mounds; and some lived in Iowa, where a county 

and a town are named for them. Down the Mississippi where they 

traded they must have had friends, but the Ohio Valley Akans had 

gotten ahead of them. 

Some of them took to their great trading canoes, dropped down the 

Mississippi and up the Ohio and the Tennessee. In 1673 Gabriel 

Arthur visited them on the upper reaches of that river and says they 

had "one hundred and fifty great canoes," the smallest holding twenty 

men. He calls them Tamahittans.zl 

Any town on the upper Tennessee was too easily found by the 

Iroquois, so they moved to the Etowah River in northern Georgia, 

near Cartersville, where they were protected by the valiant Creek 

Indians, and built a mound there which is second only in size to the 

one they left at Cahokia.m 

About this time the Spanish governor in Georgia mentions, as 

towards the north, the countries of Tama, of Catufa (Catawba), and 

of Guale. 

One of the mounds at Etowah has been opened and amongst its 

many artifacts are two copper plates with repousse figures of a dancing 

shaman, the same dancing shaman engraved on shells found in 

Missouri, western Kentucky, and Tennessee. Their costumes, ornaments, 

and postures are practically identical. 

They mark the trail of the Tamas from Cahokia to Etowah. The 

eagle copper plate found near Cahokia has the same convention for 

wings and other features as the dancing shaman of Etowah. 

They had a war with their English neighbors in South Carolina 

where they were known as Westos because of their origin. In 1682 a 

delegation of them came to La Salle, back in Illinois, to ask French 

protection against the English in the Carolinas who had burned one 

of their towns. La Salle calls them "Chisca." The only Indian war 

in Carolina at that time was with the Westos. 

Of the movements of the Siouan peoples across the northern Mississippi, 

it can only be said that their descendants were found on the 

plains and in the mountains where they had forsaken their fishing 

and farming and adopted a horse and buffalo culture.


Copper plate from Etowah, Georgia. 

Note shrunken head in the sharnan's hand. 

Shell carving from Lyons County, Kentucky. Shell carving from Central Tennessee. 

\


CONCLUSION 

The Joliet map of 1674 says, "All of the nations have left the 

country, from terror of the Iroquois." In 1681 La Salle wrote Abbe 

Bemou that people were even afraid to hunt in the devastated 

country. 

Archaeologists delving in the remains of Indian towns have found 

thirty or more which show refugee Hopewell cultures in the southern 

and western states; and several have been found in the northeast 

which may have been built by captive Akans or by Akan copper 

merchants of the eastern routes. 

Today there are about 45,000 people of refugee Siouan stock in 

the United States--the largest groups being in the Dakota and Montana 

reservations; the Catawbas in the South being very few. Besides 

these, many have left the reservations and become citizens. They all 

are becoming farmers or other businessmen, and their children are 

going to school and college, and doing their turns in army and navy. 

The time approaches when they will vanish as separate nations as the 

Oklahoma tribes have done. The remaining Iroquois, not counting 

peaceful Cherokee, number about 18,000, all in New York, Quebec 

and Ontario. The scattered Siouans seem to have done better; but 

they were more numerous originally. 

Kentucky histories tell us that the State was not inhabited when the 

white men came, but was only a hunting ground; but Dragging Canoe, 

the Cherokee chief, told Judge Henderson it was a "dark and bloody 

ground," referring to the extirpation of the natives in the brutal 

Iroquois wars and the then continuing Iroquois raids through Kentucky 

to attack the Catawbas. 

ALGONQUIANS 

As the Iroquois never colonized their conquest, it was squatted on 

by Algonquian fur hunters--S/iawnees, Delawares, Miamis, Ojibways, 

Ottawas, Illinois, and others who surged in from north of the Great 

Lakes and from the Atlantic seaboard to gather furs for British 

merchants. But none settled permanently in Kentucky, and none 

left the aboriginal cultures in the Ohio Valley. 

After nearly one hundred years (1650 to 1750) of desertion of the 

Ohio Valley by mankind, the fur-bearing animals had increased until 

they were a bonanza to the Indian trappers.8z After the French and 

Indian War the fur merchants of London had the king issue an edict 

prohibiting white settlement west of the mountains, holding that vast 

region for the Indian trapper. This British policy did much to turn 

the West against them in the Revolution; and it did not help that


they considered American scalps as fur and paid their savage employees 

for them. 

In 1691 New York sent Arnold Viele south to bring "back home" 

the Algonquians who had fled after the Pequot war and King Philip's 

defeat. He brought back only the Shawnees. The first application 

of the word Shawnee (southerner) to Indians by the English was to 

these returning Algonquian Wabans (easterners). 

These Algonquian tribes were interlopers without rights in the Ohio 

Valley, but were sicked onto the western settlers, first by the French 

and then by the British, until Indians and whites were enemies at sight 

throughout the French and Indian War, the Revolution, the campaigns 

of Fallen Timbers and Tippecanoe, and on into the War of 1812. Not 

until they realized that the British could no longer hire them nor protect 

them, did they move west. 

This paper and my former ones on John Findley and-Eskippakithiki 

forna a trilogy of the history of the Old West, never before attempted. 

FOOTNOTES 

The statements herein are a minor part of the notes taken ; and every one is authorized 

by contemporary map or otficial reports or archaeological discoveries or supported by 

ethnologic kinships and topographic features. Limitation of space forbids the use of 

all the data acquired, and for the same reason, complete documentation. 

Siouan is the generic name for all tribes of that stock; as Algonquian is of tribes of 

that stock. Akan is often used herein as a synonym of Siouan; but has to be used 

specifically also because it is so used on the maps. Chisca and Ontoaganha are Siouan 

and are nearly always generic. The Delawares and Shawnees are Algonquians. Tbe 

French called the Shawnees Wabans or Easterners because they knew them only in their 

pristine home; the English called them Shawnees or Southerners because they had sojourned 

for awhile in tile Gulf States, whither they had fled from New England (and Virginia?) 

wars. The English word Shawnee and the French Chaouanon, both mean southerner, and 

have been thought to mean the same people causing long standing confusions. The 

Chaouanon (southerner) of the Frenchman in Canada was a Siouan of the Ohio Val ey; 

the Shawnee (southerner) of the seaboard Englishman was an Algonquian returning about 

1700 from the south. 

* In modern Siouan tribes, "Wakan" is the name of Ogallala, Iowa, and Hunkpapa 

bands; and of an Oto gens. Wakanda is used by Omaha, Ponea, Osage, Quapaw, Kansas, 

Oto, Missouris, and lowas. Akan in some form is still known to all Siouan stocks. 

•In the report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1916 there is "The Art of The Great 

Earthwork Builders of Ohio" by Charles C. Willoughby. It gives pictures of their art 

in stone, bone, and copper. Their art is also depicted in many governmental and private 

publications. 

*The Indians furnished De Soto two hundred "hens" (turkeys) a day. So many could 

have been furnished only from domestic flocks. David lngram who traveled from northwest 

Florida to New Brunswick in 1587, saw domestic turkeys. 

' The Commons House of Assembly of South Carolina early resolved to keep accounts 

with the Indians with knotted strings (quipu) because they understood them. Its use was 

widespread throughout the Pacific and both Americas. It was used in Mediterranean 

and Indian Ocean lands before the days of Solomon. It is mentioned in the Koran. It 

was a highly developed mnemonic device. We still tie a string around our finger. 

v It seems out of place to find a rite of Phoenician fire-worship practiced in the wolfhaunted 

forests of aboriginal North America. In excavating Indian town sites in the 

Tennessee Valley, Dr. W. S. Webb found several hearths which were probably fire-walk 

hearths. (See Bulletin 118, Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, 

1938.) Your author found one at Fullerton, Carter County, Kentucky.


* There is a shrunken head at the Louisville Free Public Museum which came from 

Ecuador. 

"Mrs. Clark is a Filsonian. This location has not been recognized heretofore by De Soto 

students; but the nearest contemporary maps permit no doubt. Garcillaso de Ia Vega who 

wrote down the memories of the De Solo survivors after they had become old and forgetful 

seems to identify Chisca with Quizquiz, a Caddo town west of the Mississippi. His 

work is useful, if understood; but as unreliable as the memories of the ancient men he 

interviewed. Chisca was later named Eskippathika by Shawnee settlers. 

10 At Big Bone Lick, in Boone County, Kentucky, when discovered in 1729, there were 

the leg-bones of four mammoths standing, like pillars, the other bones lying where they 

fell when the ligaments decayed. Bones of extinct animaIs are found in all our licks. 

** Buffaloes were very early in the West but not in the East. No buffalo bones are 

found in Indian mounds or graves or rock-shelters. No buffalo-bone artifacts are ever 

found in the East; or, if so, they are recent. The vast Atlantic coast rain-forests stretched 

across the Mississippi; but the white settlers into the Ohio Valley found much of it bad 

been burned to make grasslands for the wild cattle; and the natives were yet burning the 

forests off of western Kentucky and parts of the adjoining states. This made much of 

western Kentucky as treeless as parts of Illinois. 

**The late Mr. B. T. Bedford, whose farm was where Franklin, Scott, and Woodford 

counties corner and about where the Cahokia Path might have gone, told me that once 

a hole broke into his pasture disclosing an unsuspected spring walled with rock. The 

logs covering it had rotted. Also, in digging holes for fence-posts nearby, a foot or more 

down he found one scissors blade and a piece of blue-figured china. Nothing in history 

or tradition accounted for such things there. In an old court paper in Clark County I 

remember seeing a statement of an "old Indian trail, then discernible, about two miles 

north of Winchester, and directed towards Chisca. 

** See Collins' History of Kentucky, Jackson County. 

a° Ysica is a Siouan word meaning river-men. Ysa is river and nika, men. The Siouan n 

is nasal and sometimes hard to distinguish or is even elided in talking. 

**Many of these "caves" have been explored by the University of Kentucky. The best 

archaeological work done in Kentucky has been by the University of Kentucky. Its department 

was founded by Drs. W. D. Funkhauser andW. S. Webb. The Kentucky Geological 

Survey under Dr. W. R. Jillson did excellent work. But for these there would be little 

about Kentucky available to the lay- or scientific-reader. Webb and Funkhauser published 

jointly Ancient life in Kentucky and an Archaeological Survey of Kentucky. Webb's bibliography 

is extensive and of high scientific value. Funkhauser became so thrilled he wrote 

a romance about the rock-shelter people. Beginning with Ohio, the Akan States have 

done a great amount of archaeologic exploration; and the refugee sites in the South and 

West have also attracted much scientific work. There is a voluminous Moundbuilder 

literature. 

aJ Father Lalemant was smeared with rosin, encased in bark and burned by the Iroquois. 

He suffered three days before kindly death ended his agony. 

ITHerman, map of 1670, says the Akan refugees formerly "came over the Alleghenies 

and as far as Delaware to trade; but the Iroquois Indians went over and destroyed that 

very great nation." 

,iEries were not Iroquoian, as often asserted. All contemporary and near-contemporary 

authorities, without exception, say they are Ontoaganhas, Occaneechees, Akans. Rique, 

Erica, Eriga, Erie are forms of the Siouan word for raccoon. Arikun is the word as 

used by the Algonquians who adopted it when they migrated from the north where there 

were no raccoons. The early French thought the raccoon a kind of cat and therefore called 

the Eries, the Cat nation. If to the English word cat is added the Algonquian awba, 

people, we have Catawba. No other as plausible derivation for Catawba has been found. 

))Bancroft who writes of this war against the Eries from the Iroquoian reports, says 

they burned hundreds, even little children with fiendish tortures. 

rathe head waters of the Kentucky River, near tha IVarrio 's Path would have to be 

in the present Jackson County, Kentucky. The Berea fort is the onIy one in that region 

and is but a little way from the path. It has been described by Dr. W. D. Burroughs of 

Berea College, in a Kentucky Geological Survey report, series 6, volume 19, pages 138 fie 

1926. 

= Henning, 402, article iv, of March 10, 1655-1656; also page 422, Dec., 1656. 

n This *'town of the refugees" on the Tallapoosa was very close to Etowah. Its people 

are said to have had some sacred copper plates which they displayed in their religious 

feasts and dances. Such plates as were found at Etowah on which were depicted a dancing 

shaman in ritualistic attire and accouterments. To unliterate people such plates might 

be a holy record, a kind of Bible.


n An Osage chief in Missouri told Major Sibley, the Indiana Agent, that his people 

had lived at The Falls for some time, and some had had villages nearby. I was told first 

of these forts by blr. Theo. Chamberlain, one of the most enthusiastic and learned amateur 

archaeologists of The Falls region; and was taken to one of them by his son, Mr. Carlyle 

D. Chamberlain. 

. *'One of the great mounds opened at the mouth of the Ohio (Wickliffe, Kentucky) 

has nothing but infant skeletons. Could these be babes stricken by a pestilence like croup 

or the record of the murder of little ones they could not carry with them? 

" A distinguished Omaha Indian, Dr. Francis La Flesche, an accomplished ethnologist 

of the Smithsonian Institution, graciously gave me helpful interviews on two occasions. 

** The myster/ of the bfandans has intrigued all who knew them. They called themselves 

People of the Ruffed Grouse a bird of the eastern forest lands not of the western 

pla as. Their blond features, traditions, and making glass beads suggest European blood 

and craft. In the early Seventeenth century there were sent to Virginia some Germans and 

Italians. They disappeared, some notices saying they decamped to the Indians. In Virginia 

no Italian and few, if any, German names survive which can be attributed to those 

people. Taliaferro is a large Virginia family with an Italian name, but the first one came 

in with Sir Thomas Lunsford after the battle of Nasbey, one of his "beef-eaters" at the 

Tower of London fleeing Parliamentary wrath. The Minors, another large Virginia family, 

descend from a man named Mindert, whose antecedents are not known but are thought 

to belong in Holland rather than Germany. The Maodans have aIso been "identified" 

with the Welsh who came with Prince Madog. 

*7 1 met Sitting Bull once, with thirty or forty of the leading men of his nation, en route 

to Washington to see the President. Words cannot describe the impression made by the 

magnificent dignity of those men. Great heads, noble countenances, and splendid figures 

were characteristics of every one. They were impressive relics of Akan civilization, 

descendants of the Moundbuilders. I bought Sitting Bull's pipe, catlinite with totems 

carved on its long ash stem. 

** The Siouan peoples believed their deities resided in high places. This may be the 

motive of the mounds. To the Dakotas, when they went west, the Black Hills were 

the home of their gods and they resented their sacrilegious invasion by the gold hunters. 

The Aztecs, Toltees, and Mayas built pyramids for the same reason. The aigurats of the 

Sumerians, the Tower of Babel, and the Greek Olympus were the same idea; and perhaps 

our monuments and mounded graves are its attenuated relics. 

Chicago is a Siouan word meaning "the main stream." The little Chicago River was 

not a "main" stream but it was the stream which ancient travelers took to go from Lake 

Michigan to the main stream, the Mississippi, as the Algonquians called it. 

to Bancroft says La Salle saw at Cahokia, twenty years after, "the slain were left to be 

rent in pieces by the wolves. Not only had the recent dead [AIgonquian] but in nnheard 

of sacrilegious wrath the Iroquois had burst open the pits of past generations [Tamas] 

and scattered their bones over the plain." 

Arthur went with them to raid the English in Carolina and the Spanish in Florida; 

and later against an Akan town in northwestern Kentucky on "a very great river," (Ohio). 

He was wounded and captured but treated kindly. He says, "This is a great towne and 

a great number of Indians. [The Ashland (Ky.) works.] This river runs northwest 

about a day's journey lower [down] where the inhabitants are an innumerable company 

of Indians." [The Scioto Valley and Mason and Carter counties, Kentucky, works.] 

Arthur's story has been published by Swanton in his ",The History of the Creeks" and 

byt illson in "The Kentucky Historical Society Register.' 

The great mound on the north bank of the Etowah River near Cartersville, Georgia, 

although truncated, is 61 feet high. The diameters of the base are 380 by 330 feet; the 

diameters of the top are 170 by 176 feet. It has a road running up one side to within 

18 feet of the top. Its shape is very nearly a duplicate of the Cahokia mound. Your 

author has visited both Cahokia and Etowah. 

u Joliet's map I674. By this date he reports great increase in "castor" (beaver).

the filson club history quarterly - The Filson Historical Society

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?