The Mound-builders.

27

were exceedingly large as well as tall, they scooped out some which would carry fifty or sixty men. The construction of these with such miserable tools as the Indians possessed was a great curiosity. When they had found a suitable tree they made a fire at the root and continued burning it and cutting it with their stone axes till it fell. They then kindled a fire at such distance from the buct as they chose, and burned it off again. By burning and working with their axes, and scraping with sharp stones and shells, they made it hollow and smooth. In the same manner they shaped the ends, and finished it so that it could cut its way with ease through the water."

30. The Indians had no kind of coin, but they had a sort of money which they called wampum. It consisted of small beads most, curiously wrought out of shells, and perforated in the centre so that they might be strung on belts in chains and bracelets. "With respect to religion, the Indians believed that there was a Great Spirit or God, but they worshipped a variety of gods. They paid homage to the fire and water, thunder and lightning, and to whatever they imagined to be superior to themselves or capable of doing them an injury. They paid their principal homage to an Evil Spirit, and from fear worshipped him to keep him in good humor."

31. "Behind these Indians, who were in possession of the country when it was discovered by the Europeans, is dimly seen the shadowy form of another people who have left many remarkable evidences of their habits and customs, The moundand of a singular degree of civilization, but who, builders. many centuries ago, disappeared, either exterminated by pestilence or by some powerful and pitiless enemy, or driven from the country to seek new homes south and west of the gulf of Mexico.

32. The evidences of the presence of this ancient people are found almost everywhere upon the North American continent, except perhaps upon the Atlantic coast. They consist of mounds, sometimes of imposing size, and other earthworks,

so numerous that in Ohio alone there are, or were till quite recently, estimated to be not less than ten thousand of the mounds, and fifteen hundred inclosures of earth and stone, all evidently the work of the same people. In other parts of the country they were found in such numbers that no attempt has been made to count them all.

MOUND NEAR WHEELING, WEST VIRGINIA,1

33. There are no data by which the exact age of these singular relics of a once numerous and industrious people, living a long-sustained agricultural life, can be fixed; but it is evident from certain established facts that this must date from a very remote period. The chief seat of their power and population seems to have been in the Mississippi valley. The signs of their occupation are many along the banks of its rivers. It is very seldom that the human bones found in these mounds, except those of later and evidently intrusive

1 This, known as the Grave Creek Mound, is one of the most notable in the Ohio valley. It is seventy feet high and nine hundred in circumference. In it were found two vaults containing human skeletons. One of these skeletons was surrounded by about seven hundred shell beads. Another skeleton, besides a profusion of shell beads, had copper rings, and more than two hundred and fifty plates of mica. These facts, says Foster, show that the principal occupant of this mound was a royal personage."

66

English Discoveries.

29

removal, as they

These works are

burial, are in a condition to admit of their crumble into dust on exposure to the air. often also covered by the primeval forests, which are known to have grown undisturbed since the country was first occupied by the whites, and the annular growth of these trees has been ascertained to be sometimes from five to eight centuries." 34. "A broad chasm is to be spanned before we can link the mound-builders to the North American Indians. They were essentially different in their form of government, their habits, and their daily pursuits. The Indian, since known to the white man, has spurned the restraints of a sedentary life which belongs to agriculture, and whose requirements, in his view, are ignoble. He was never known to erect structures which should survive the lapse of a generation. His lodges consist of a few poles, one end planted in the ground and the other secured with withes at the top, and over which are stretched plaits of matting or of birch bark, or the skins of the buffalo. This frail structure is his shelter from the elements.

Were the Indians the moundbuilders?

35. The domestic economy of the Indians, as contrasted with that of the mound-builders, exhibits two widely different conditions of society. In the one case the people had fixed habitations and methodical pursuits, and the day's labor was crowned with definite and accumulative results. In the other case the people led a nomadic life-a feast followed a famine; and, with their shifting habitations the accumulation of personal property would prove an encumbrance rather than a convenience."

coveries.

36. The tidings of Columbus's discoveries produced astonishment and excitement not only in Spain, but in English DisPortugal, England, France, and other countries of Europe; and at once preparations were made for discovery and exploration in the new lands."

1 "The discovery of a strait into the Indian ocean is the true key to the maritime movements of the fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth century."-Prescott,

In 1497, John Cabot (kab'-bot), accompanied by his son Sebastian, sailing under a commission from Henry VII. of England, reached the coast of Labrador, and thus was the first to discover the continent of America. In a second voyage, made by Sebastian Cabot the next year, a large extent of the eastern coast of North America was explored.1

37. Columbus, it is certain, never realized how grand was the discovery he had made. It never dawned upon his mind that he had opened the way to another continent. His

America.

name, we all believe, should have been given to Origin of the name the new world, but that honor was reserved for Amerigo Vespucci (ah-mā-re'-go ves-poot'-che), an Italian navigator. Seven years after Columbus had made his discovery Vespucci visited the coast of South America (in 1499), and two years later made a second visit to the same regions. He prepared accounts of the two voyages, one of which being published, moved a German geographer, under an assumed name, in a Latin work printed the next year after the death of Columbus, to suggest the name America for the newly-discovered lands. In alluding to this person, Humboldt says: "I have been so happy as to discover the name and the literary relations of the mysterious personage who, in 1507, was the first to propose the name of America to designate the new continent."

The new lands

38. The opinion that the lands discovered by Columbus were islands of India was entertained several years after his death. It was finally dispelled (in 1513) by a Spaniard named Bal-bo'a, governor of a settlement at Darien. not India. "Floating rumors had reached the Spaniards from time to time of countries in the far west teeming with the metal they so much coveted; but the first distinct notice of Peru was about the year 1511, when Balboa was weighing some gold

1 It is not known with certainty when and where the Cabots were born, nor at what time and place they died, though it is supposed they were natives of Italy. Bancroft says of Sebastian Cabot that England a continent and no one knows his burial-place."

he gave

1513 The First Voyage around the Earth 31

which he had collected from the natives. A young barbarian chieftain who was present struck the scales with his fist, and, scattering the glittering metal around the apartment, exclaimed If this is what you prize so much that you are willing to leave your distant homes and risk even life itself for it, I can tell you of a land where they eat and drink out of golden vessels, and gold is as cheap as iron is with you.'

39. It was not long after this startling intelligence that Balboa achieved the formidable adventure of scaling the mountain rampart of the isthmus which divides the two mighty oceans from each other; when, armed with sword and buckler, he rushed into the waters of the Pacific and cried out, in the true chivalrous vein, that he claimed this unknown sea, with all that it contained, for the king of Castile, and that he would make good the claim against all, Christian or infidel, who dared to gainsay it.' All the broad continent and sunny isles washed by the waters of the Southern ocean! Little did the bold cavalier comprehend the full import of his magnificent vaunt.”1

around

40. No other evidence was needed to prove that the lands discovered by Columbus, the Cabots, and others were no parts of India, yet additional proof was given in the voyage made by a Portuguese navigator named Ma- The gellan (ma-jel'-lan), commanding a Spanish fleet. first voyage Sailing from Spain across the Atlantic, he discov- the earth. ered the strait which bears his name. Passing through this strait he reached the ocean which Balboa had seven years previously discovered. This ocean he called the Pacific, because of the mild weather he experienced on entering it and for several days after. Steering boldly for India, he reached a number of islands, but at one of the Philippine group was slain in a battle with the natives. His ship, however, pro

1 About twenty years after Balboa's discovery of the Pacific, Pizarro, a Spanish adventurer, crossed the Isthmus of Panama, and, with a small force, of whom four men were his brothers, and one was De Soto (see p. 34), proceeded against and conquered Peru.