Antiquities of the Southern Indians, Particularly of the Georgia Tribes

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER V. General Observations on Mound-Building.-Bartram's Account of the Georgia Tumuli.-Absence of Megalithic Monuments and Animal-shaped Mounds.Distribution ·of the Ancient Population~-Few Sepulchral Mounds erected since the Advent ofEuropeans.-Antiquity of the Tumuli. WHAT Sir Tholnas Browne 1 quaintly styles" the restless inquietude for the diuturnity of our lllemories ," an ambitious desire to ,vrest from oblivion the names and graves of such as ,ver~ famed for feats of arms or remarkable for some individual excellence, an appreciation of the fact that in the tomb of the dead hero lived reeollections which, while they dignified the past, also inspired hope in the present and proved a powerful incentive to future action, and that inclination (so natural to the human heart in all ages) to render the most affectionate and honorable sepulture to the departed, have llnited in causing the erection of some of the oldest and most prominent artificial monlIments extant upon the earth's surface. Urnal interments , burnt relics and earth-mounds, inasllluch as they" lie not in fear of worms," endure w·hen personal and even national memories llave perished. In some of them rest the surest and earliest physical proofs of the antiquity of man. Amid the depths of forests, 1 " Hydriotapbia." ANTIQUITY O~' EARTH-MOUNDS. 119 where every thing like a history or even a tradition of the peoples who once dwelt beneath their shadows, IS, to us of the present day, emphatically· "in the urn," the curiosity of subsequent ages has, in ancient graves and sepulchral tumuli, caught a glimpse of many things appertaining to a forgotten past, learned lessons of the general pyre, the last valediction, the funeral customs , the religious rites and the domestic economy of nameless nations whose former existence could otherwise have been scarcely more than conjectured. In periods the most remote, the earth-mound seems to have suggested itself as the most natural and enduring method of perpetuatillg the memory and of designating the last resting-place of the illustrious dead. The mound at Aconithus, erected over Artachies -the superintendent of the canal at Athos-remains , to this day, a memorial of Persian usage, a public recognition of the ability of that engineer, so famous in his generation, and a proof of the fidelity of Herodotus as an historian. Those mighty tumuli which tower along the banks of the Borysthenes are the tombs of Scythian kings. The neighborhood of the Gyg~an Lake, near Sardis, in Asia Minor, is rendered remarkable by the presence of circular mounds, among which, perhaps, the most recellt is that" prince of tumuli," the tomb of Alyattes, King of Lydia, which for nearly twenty-five hUlldred years has braved the changing seasons. Allusions to such structures are not infrequent among the ancient poets. Thus Orestes, when ad· dressing the nlanes of the murdered Agamemnon, says: " If but some Lycian spear 'neath Ilium's walls Had lowly laid thee, A mighty name in the Atridan .halls Thou wouldst have made thee. 120 ANTIQUITIES OF THE SOUTHERN INDIANt;. Then hadst thou pitched thy fortunes like a star To son and daughter shining from afar! Beyond the wide-waved sea the high-heaped w,ound Had told forever Thy feats of battle, and with glory crowned Thy high endeavor." The ceremonies attendallt upon the burial of Patroclus are thus cOlnmemorated III the" Iliad: " "The Greeks obey. Where yet the embers glo'v Wide o'er the pile the sable wine they throw, And deep subsides the ashy heap belo,v. N ext·the 'vbite bones his sad companions place, With tears collected, in the golden vase. The sacred relics to the tent they bore; The urn a vale of linen covered o'er. Th1\t done, they bid the sepulchre aspire, And cast the deep foundations round the pyre. High in the midst they heap the swelling bed Of rising earth, memorial of the dead." Tydeus and Lycus were buried under earthen barrows, and Alexander the Great callsed a tUllilllus to be heaped above his friend Hephoostion at a cost of twelve hundred talents. So ancient are some of these earth-mounds that they were old and mysterious in the days of Homer. Even in lllore polished ages, and in seasons of extreme opulence, the memory of the mound-tomb was not forgotten. Its rude earth dome ,vas seen surmounting a circular arrangement of exquisite porticos, columns, and decorated walls, facing...