There Is A Mound In The Valley,
Much Like A Tel In The Country Of Bashan Beyond The Jordan, That May
Have Been Built By Some Pre-Historic Race, And May Contain Treasure
And The Seated Figure Of A Preserved Chieftain On His Slow Way
To Paradise.
What the gentle and accomplished race of the
Mound-Builders should want in this savage region where the frost kills
the early potatoes and stunts the scanty oats, I do not know.
I have
seen no trace of them, except this Tel, and one other slight relic,
which came to light last summer, and is not enough to found the
history of a race upon.
Some workingmen, getting stone from the hillside on one of the little
plateaus, for a house-cellar, discovered, partly embedded, a piece of
pottery unique in this region. With the unerring instinct of workmen
in regard to antiquities, they thrust a crowbar through it, and broke
the bowl into several pieces. The joint fragments, however, give us
the form of the dish. It is a bowl about nine inches high and eight
inches across, made of red clay, baked but not glazed. The bottom is
round, the top flares into four comers, and the rim is rudely but
rather artistically ornamented with criss-cross scratches made when
the clay was soft. The vessel is made of clay not found about here,
and it is one that the Indians formerly living here could not form.
Was it brought here by roving Indians who may have made an expedition
to the Ohio; was it passed from tribe to tribe; or did it belong to a
race that occupied the country before the Indian, and who have left
traces of their civilized skill in pottery scattered all over the
continent?
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