One Township's Yesterdays Chapter VII  

THE MYSTERY OF THE MOUNDS

"And the mound-builders vanished from the earth. The solitude of centuries untold Has settled where they dwelt... ... The gopher mines the ground Where stood their swarming cities. All is gone; All-save the piles of earth that hold their bones." ...William Cullen Bryant

BEGINNING AT ANOTHER BEGINNING, this time concerning the earliest man in what is now Union Township, we run into a real problem. Who was the first man to reside in the, township? What kind of being was he? Was our earliest human inhabitant a so-called Mound-Builder? It is true that mounds have been found in the township. But were they the work of those little-known aborigines, or merely of later comers, the Indians? We cannot answer. So far, the mystery of the mounds of Union Township remains unsolved ... and doubtless will remain forever without a satisfactory explanation.

Those mysterious people of the past, the Mound-Builders, are said on good authority to have been inhabitants of certain sections of Indiana, and it is reasonable on our part to claim at least a small portion of;' their population for Union Township. We shall do that. Assuming that they 'were here ... how long ago, we cannot conjecture ... we must give them at least passing mention in our history.

Let us first turn the clock back again ... a, long, long way. We find ourselves ... in another flight of imagination ... at the beginning of the great lee Age. "Vast ice-floes march down upon northern America." The clock ticks, seconds for years, or more likely for centuries, or for ages. We have 'little idea what extent of time our fanciful seconds should represent. But time flies, for now "appears man, hunter and savage, fighting for his life on the edge of the retreating ice." The history of mankind begins.

Although it was about six thousand years ago that the written record of history began ... and enough has been written since then to make some mighty big mounds.. we have been unable, to date, to find a single word mentioning the Mound-Builders of Union Township, This may have been an oversight. At all events, their place in the history of mankind is hidden behind a very dark cloud of doubt. But we do know that the Mound-Builders were a terribly ancient race and a very industrious race to have built "the mighty mounds that overlook the rivers, or that rise in the dim forest crowded with old oaks." Since that race lived and died, there have been many and sundry "footsteps on the prairies." And says Bryant, "I think of those on whose rest he tramples," the rest of the dead of other days.

Little we know, and we may wonder greatly. Let them, the dead, answer our questions. Let them tell us the secret of the mounds. A race, that long since has passed away, built them; - a disciplined and populous race heaped, with long toil, the earth while yet the Greek was rearing the Parthenon. So says the poet. Finally, the red man came, the roaming hunter tribes, warlike and fierce, arid the Mound-Builders vanished from the earth.

Homes on High Land.

The Mound-Builders were said to have built their homes on high points of land. They left mounds of sundry shapes and sizes, representing serpents, elephants (it seems that they must have known the mammoth or mastodon after all), various other animals, and what-not. Their history is. Sealed; we have learned little about them. It is said by some writers that traces of them, were left in Union Township. These traces have been carefully investigated, and we shall let our readers know just about all we know about them, which is scarcely anything to crow about.

On the "Burr Oak Flats," mounds were discovered many years ago on what was then the J. S. GARVER farm, located south of Burr Oak community. The portion of the farm on which the mounds were standing is that which includes the original GARVER homestead. It is now, in 1934, the WILLIAM LAKE farm. DANIEL MC DONALD reported, in 1881, "There are three what are called Indian Mounds near Maxinkuckee Lake on the farm of JOHN GARVER, on the `Burr Oak Flats'." He said they were not over two hundred or three hundred feet apart and were situated in a triangular position from each other. They were probably thirty feet in diameter, and when first discovered were about six feet in height above, the surface of the ground. Since the settlement of this part of the country, they have been cut down and plowed over until, even in 1881, they were not more than half as high as originally. Excavations were made in one of these mounds in the 70's or thereabouts, and some human bones were discovered, from which it was conjectured that a battle at some time had been fought there, and the mounds had been made in burying the dead. This, however, was more or less guess-work.

Mounds on GARVER Land.

J. S. GARVER, in the 70`s, had property on both sides of the road connecting Burr Oak with Lake Maxinkuckee. The homestead, still standing, is south of the Hibbard cross-road and on the east side of the Burr Oak road. Mr. GARVER had rather extensive lands. He had one parcel east of the FRANKLIN OVERMYER property and north of the Hibbard cross-road. The mounds are situated south and east of the old GARVER farmhouse, a couple of hundred feet or more from the Burr Oak road. They are in the southeast corner of the present Lake farm, which takes in only a portion of the much more widespread GARVER lands as originally owned.

In describing the mounds, MINNIE H. SWINDELL says that at one time their tops rose to a height of about six 'feet and they were about seventy-five feet across. Upon them grew trees and shrubbery. JOHN MC FARLIN and HENRY GRUBE of Plymouth remembered when the mounds were very high; but since the settlement of this region, they have been plowed under until very little trace of them remains. They were supposed to have been burial places. Grisly skulls covered with mould, and other human bones were found when the mounds were excavated. Near the bones were tools and implements of stone, iron, pottery and copper. These showed that the tribe they represented was somewhat advanced in civilized methods. According to this historian, they built their homes on high ground as a protection from roving Indians, and where spring floods could not reach them. Also, during such floods, animals took refuge on high ground; thus the inhabitants had an abundance of food. They were clever people; instead of permitting the elements to do them harm, they turned such would-be menaces to account.

WILBUR BROWN and other old residents remember when the mounds on the GARVER farm used to be conspicuous, while today they are barely distinguishable, having been greatly leveled in the cultivation of the fields. Anyone not already familiar with their location, would have considerable difficulty in finding the old mounds today, since they are now so unassuming. The erosion brought about by wind and rain, added to the leveling-off due to cultivation of the soil, has about obliterated the original contour of the mounds. They now appear like natural waves or swells on the surface of the land, and much like the rolling ridges so common to the countryside in this region. On close observation, however, the mounds can be discerned in their triangular formation, the larger mound of the three being the, easternmost.

Find Relics.

A visit to the former GARVER farm by the writer was without what may be called success, in so far as supplying further evidence to help solve the enigma: who built the mounds? Some proofs of Indian or other early occupation of the territory were found in the form of chips such as are cast aside by the ancient arrow-makers. These chips were invariably of white or greyish flint. On the mounds and near by were some pieces of granitic stone, broken off apparently from primitive implements, such as grinding stones and tomahawks. Some of these fragments were of serpentine, the technical name, for a greenish grey granite, a hard solid rock that was a favorite with the Indians for the making of certain utensils and weapons. Other debris indicated that an antique race once frequented the spot. Fossils and geological specimens were also found in the glacial drift near the mounds. Today there are no trees or shrubbery directly on the mounds, but between one of them and the dry bed of a former pond to the east is a clump of quick-growing trees.

In his later history, published in 1908, Daniel McDonald speaks of the Mound-Builders leaving traces since the days of the mastodon. These strange people are supposed to antedate the American Indian, he said. Mr. MC DONALD examined two mounds situated close together, on the "Burr Oak Flats." "Digging a considerable distance into them," he wrote, "nothing unusual was found." In a comparatively level country, the height of the mounds indicated to him that they had been built for some purpose by human hands, but as they were composed of solid earth with nothing in them to show why they were built, it was difficult to figure out what they were for. A mile or so farther west from these mounds, he found quite a large mound which seemed to have been investigated, for there had been, considerable digging in and around it. He knew of no discovery in this mound of anything that would indicate its purpose of use. Mr. MC DONALD could not say whether these were the work of Mound-Builders. "They were here, however, long before the Indians came to this part of the country," he wrote, "as trees and shrubbery grew on some of them and were of considerable size when they came. These mounds were supposed to have been intended as burial places for the dead, as, in excavating in some of them, human bones were found as well as tools and implements of stone, pottery, iron and copper."

Another Large Mound.

In the early days quite a large sized mound existed on the west side of Lake Maxinkuckee, on or very near Long Point. It was dug into more than half a century ago, and from time to time since then many curious investigators repeated the process. Some human bones were found, also charcoal, stone arrow-points and other trinkets and relics. The discovery of these vestiges seemed to indicate that this was a burial place of Mound-Builders or of Indians of a later period, most probably the latter. Practically the same conclusion may be advanced regarding several small mounds at "Pashpo," as originally known, located west of the Michigan Road and three miles south of Plymouth. Investigation of the Pashpo mounds was also made at an early date.

Who was the first settler in this region? "The Indians were the very first people to live in Union Township," wrote ULEE MCCLANE of Mt. Pleasant School, some years ago. "Mounds have been found that we suppose were Indian mounds. Some of them have been opened, and all kinds of Indian relics found." And how old is the township's first man? This is just about as unanswerable as a sort of riddle that years ago, but "within the memory of modern man," became a popular expression of the times; "How old is Ann?" No answer is recalled. Likewise, no attempt can be made to explain the antiquity of man in this region, or anywhere. He is very, very old; that is all we can say. What matters a thousand years or so, one way or the other? Like Jane 'Taylor, we should be contented, and "The first thousand years as a specimen take The dates are omitted for brevity's sake." In an interview, some years ago, with, Dr. JUNIUS HENDERSON, a distinguished authority on ancient things-fossils, bones of prehistoric man and beast, and the like--the writer ventured to ask his opinion as to the age of some bones dug up in the far West, the remains, it seems, of the so-called Santa Barbara Man. The scientist smiled. He would not hazard a statement. The bones might have been 25,000 years old, or 100,000. What mattered it? Colossal, staggering figures! The age of a star in the, firmament! Figures that cannot be grasped; things so ancient we cannot sense their age, because it is all out of proportion when compared with time as we evaluate it. Union Township's first settler may be a million years old; maybe not. "How old is Ann?"

History Varies.

The Pliocene skull that BRAT HARTE versed about, was said to be a remnant, not only of the earliest pioneer of California, but the oldest known human being. A geologist thought that man existed contemporaneously (a contemptible, word) with the mastodon, but this fossil was said to prove that he was here before the mastodon was known to exist.

The Mound-Builder had various reputations. He was said to be of gigantic height, and a cannibal, a farmer, hunter, fisherman, very religious and a sun-worshiper, also a scientist. He even knew the secret of "squaring the circle." He was a wonder and a wizard.

There may be some cause, therefore, for people feeling superstitious about him. The story is told that at one time some one looked over the GARVER farm with the idea of buying, but when the prospective buyer saw the mounds and learned they had been built by some mysterious human hands a long time ago for a mysterious reason, he refused to become a. buyer. He was superstitious, no Joubt [doubt], and had some fear of the supernatural. We may recall how Longfellow's Skeleton in Armor, when asked to speak, replied: "Take heed, that in thy verse Thou dost the tale rehearse, Else dread a dead man's curse; For this I sought thee."