The Mound-Builders

Chapter XII: A Tour of the Ohio Mound Area

CHAPTER XII A TOUR OF THE OHIO MOUND AREA The Circleville works-Chillicothe, the heart of the Mound-builder countryThe Portsmouth works-The Marietta works-The Newark works-The Miami valleys-The Cincinnati works-The Miamisburg and Enon mounds. IT IS not possible within the scope of these pages to describe all the major groups of mounds and earthworks of the Ohio area; yet their very impressiveness demands that a few of them be given some measure of attention. This is all the more desirable in view of the facility of present-day motor travel and the quickening of interest in our prehistoric forerunners evidenced by the thousands of motor tourists who annually visit the important mounds and earthworks in the various states where they occur. For these reasons it seems very well worth while to indicate routes touching the more important remains of the several cultures in the preeminently interesting Ohio area and to furnish brief descriptions of them for the benefit of the visitor. The logical starting point for a tour of the Ohio mound area is Columbus. After a visit to the Ohio State Museum, where the world's most extensive collections of mound relics are displayed , the tourist finds himself impatient to view the tumuli from which this wealth of material was taken, together with their accompanying earthworks. Although most of the works of major importance might be visited in a single roundabout motor tour, the more enjoyable plan is that of three separate trips out of Columbus: one directly southward through the Scioto valley to the Ohio River; another southeastward through the valley' of the Muskingum to Marietta; and the third southwestward through the valleys of the two Miamis to Cincinnati and vicinity. A TOUR OF THE OHIO MOUND AREA 251 FIG. 163. AN EARLY MAP OF CIRCLEVILLE This old map of the historic capital of Pickaway County, Ohio, drawn by G. F. Wittich in 1836, affords an illustration of how white settlers frequently came to occupy the sites of prehistoric villages and earthworks. The town was laid out on the site of an extensive group of works, with Circle Street conforming to the enclosure, at the center of which an eight-sided courthouse was located. Within and in the immediate vicinity of the city of Columbus there are several fine mounds, and a few miles up the Olentangy River from the capital city is the most northerly of the Hopewell groups. Proceeding southward from Columbus, the tourist first finds himself on hallowed ground at Circleville , the county seat of Pickaway County. THE CIRCLEVILLE WORKS The Circleville works, from the circular portion of which the town takes its name, were the first of the great groups to be recorded. In the year 1772, the Rev. David Jones of New Jersey, incidental to his travels among the western THE MOUND-BUILDERS Indians, recorded in his journal a plan and computation of the group. Later, in I820, it was described by Caleb Atwater, Ohio's "first historian," and it was accorded further attention by Squier and Davis in Ancient Monuments. The romantic story of the founding of the town, which was laid out to conform to the great circle, with the eight-sided courthouse 10CEDAR -BANK WORKS ROI5~ CO