The Dragon Stone

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Archaeological finds at the village site of 'The Serpent Mound of Ohio' written by Frederic Ward Putnam (1890).

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On a preceding page brief mention has been made of mounds and burial-places on the plateau which spreads to the southeast from the coiled tail of the serpent. It is now essential to refer to the discoveries made during the exploration of these places; where, by the aid of the pick and the spade, much of the history of the past has been revealed. Here, under a mound, there, deep down in the clay, and here, again, in the recent soil, were the several pages of the book which we must now read. The language of this book is that of stones, bones, and ashes; and it will tell us anew of the great drama of life.

It is said that fifty years ago that part of the plateau which is near the serpent was a foot or two above the level of the rest. Constant cultivation of the soil, and the washing away of the loose earth, has now reduced this portion to the common level, but it is evident from the difference in the color and character of the soil that this part of the plateau has been the dwelling-place of man. Beginning at one edge of this darker soil, it, and the clay below, for a foot in depth, was examined inch by inch, as the men worked forward in a line, throwing the earth behind them. Evidence was thus obtained of the former existence of habitations, shown by the burnt places and ash beds marking the sites of dwellings. In these ash beds and in the soil around them were thousands of chips and flakes of flint and other stones, as well as rough pieces of jasper, quartz, and other rocks, just as they were brought from the gravel bed of the opposite hill, or from other places, to be here worked into implements of various kinds. About the o1d hearths, and here and there in the earth, hundreds of finished implements were found - hammers which were simple nodules or pebbles of hard stone with abraded edges, or pebbles with pits pecked upon the sides; chisel-shaped implements with a sharp-cutting edge; axes of various sizes; knives of many shapes, some made of long flakes of flint or chalcedony and others beautifully chipped from various kinds of stone, some long and slender and others like long spear-points, which, in fact, they may have been; chipped drills and perforators; and many small chipped points of different sizes and shapes, some of which were arrow-heads and others the blades of knives or dagger-like implements. Several ornaments made of stone were also found, and in the ashes were bones of deer and of birds, which had been sharpened to a point. Everywhere were pieces of rude pottery, the fragments of cooking and other domestic utensils. In the ash beds were also many bones of fish, turtles, birds, and mammals, the remains of animals used for food. All these things showed beyond question that here had been an ancient village; and although the land had long been subjected to the white man's plow, so that everything near the surface had been thrown out of place, it was still evident that the ash beds and objects found on and in the clay, below the twelve to fifteen inches of dark soil, were older than those near the surface. As our explorations were continued we discovered that here had been dwellings and burials of different times. Some of the graves were only deep enough to reach the clay, while others were in the clay; and over one, at least, a small mound had been raised, of which the plow had left only the base undisturbed.¹¹ In one place a grave had been made to a slight depth below the soil, and here had been placed portions of the skeletons of three persons. The skulls, with a large part of the long bones and some of the smaller bones of the three skeletons, had apparently been brought to the spot in a bundle and placed in this grave. These bones, while evidently of considerable antiquity, were far more recent than several other extended skeletons near them in the clay. Does not this burial of bones show that the spot was revered, either as the home of ancestors, or from its vicinity to the sacred shrine, about which traditions may well have been preserved long after the immediate descendants of its builders had disappeared from the region? Not far from this pile of bones was a grave near the surface, about which stones had been placed on edge. This was in every way like the unquestionably recent Indian graves on the surrounding hills, which are referred to in the note below.¹² This grave was so near the surface that the side stones had been thrown down by the plow, which bad made one furrow directly through the skeleton. On the ribs of this skeleton was the shell of a box-turtle, and, near by, a bone from the foot of a deer. The grave had been made, all unwittingly, partly over an ancient grave of particular interest. This older grave had been made about five feet deep in the clay, and was about nine feet long and five wide. A pavement of flat stones was placed over the bottom, and on them, at the south side, compressed into a mass of ashes and charcoal not over an inch in thickness, were the fragments of a skeleton. The pieces of skull found at the southeastern corner of the grave were twice the usual thickness. Over these remains were ninety-six large stones, brought from the creek; and on these stones were found portions of another skeleton. In this instance the body was extended along the eastern edge of the grave, with the head to the southwest. Several stones were found over these fragments of bones, and four inches above the stone covering the skull was the bottom of the central portion of the most recent grave, in which the body had been placed with the head to the east. I mention these positions to show that there was no uniformity as to the position in which the bodies were placed. This was the case with all the burials about here. It may be that some peoples and tribes have particular customs in regard to this point, but our explorations have shown that no uniform rule was followed, in ancient times, in many parts of America.¹³

Pages could be filled with instructive details relating to this burial-place and village site, with its fireplaces and graves, and little refuse piles containing animal bones and various objects upon the clay; showing that at one time either the dark soil had been cleared away and fires built upon the clay, or, as I consider by far the more probable, only a few inches of soil had formed at that period.

Footnotes

11 An elderly gentleman has informed me that he remembers noticing in his youth many small mounds in the woods then covering this spot.

12 A hundred years ago there were several settlements of Indians in this part of Ohio, and so recently as the year 1800, and for several years after, a small hand of Indians were living on the bottom-land near the forks of the river on the opposite side, and not far from the serpent cliff. The sites of the wigwams were pointed out to me by Mr. Hewes, whose grandfather settled on the place and had much to do with the Indians who were living there. On many of the hilltops ahout the valley I have seen gronps of the graves of these recent Indians. The graves are only a foot or two in depth, and wide and long enough for the body to be placed, at full length, between rongh stones set on edge around the body and projecting above the ground. Occasionally these graves are covered with flat stones. So far as my experience goes, very few ojects are found with the skeletons in such graves.

These recent graves, found in Kentucky, Ohio, and to the westward, have often been described and discussed as having the same character as the carefully constructed stone graves of the Cumberland Valley in Tennessee. But there is in reality only a very general resemblance between them, and neither by their structure nor by their contents do they indicate one and the same people, but on the contrary they show marked differences; and the great antiquity of the Tennessee stone graves as a whole is in marked contrast with these recent graves on the hills along Brush Creek Valley. On the points of the hills are also many stone mounds, with an occasional earht mound, which are monuments over graves of far more recent times than the building of the serpent and other great earth structures of the Ohio Valley.

13 I have recently explored a burial-place of the Massachusetts Indians at Winthrop, near Boston. Of eight skeletons found here all had their heads to the south, and of five adults and one child all but one faced the east, one adult facing the west. Two infants were in the same grave, resting upon their backs, between the skeletons of a man and a woman, placed on their sides, facing the east.

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