Multitude as the glorious luminary arises in
majesty and beams upon his adoring people, a promise of renewed
life and happiness. Vain promise, since his rays cannot
penetrate the utter darkness which for ages has settled over
this people.' Thus imagination suggests, and enthusiasm paints,
a scene, but from positive knowledge we can neither affirm nor
deny its truth."
The largest of the burial mounds is situated at the junction of
Grave Creels and the Ohio river, twelve miles below Wheeling,
West Virginia. It measures seventy feet in height and is nearly
one thousand feet in circumference. An excavation made from the
top downward, and from one side of the base to the center
disclosed the fact that the mound contained two sepulchres, one
at the base and one near the center of the mound. These chambers
had been constructed of logs, and covered with stone. The lower
chamber contained two skeletons, one of which is supposed to
have been a female. The upper chamber contained but one
skeleton. In addition to these, there were found a great number
of shell beads, ornaments of mica, and bracelets of copper.
It mast have been indeed a great work for people who had neither
metallic tools nor domestic animals to have erected such a great
mound. The earth for its construction was probably scraped from
the surface and carried to the mound in baskets. A people who
could erect such a monument as this, with such scanty means at
their command, must have possessed those qualities which would
sooner or later have brought them civilization.
Charles Dickens, when visiting America, gives this impression
that the Big Grave made upon him "...the host of Indians who lie
buried in a great mound yonder - so old that mighty oaks and
other forest trees have struck their roots into the earth, and
so high that it is a hill, even among the hills that Nature
planted around it. The very river, as though it shared one's
feelings of compassion for the extinct tribes who lived so
pleasantly here in their blessed ignorance of white existence
hundreds of years ago, steals out of its way to ripple near this
mound, and there are few places where the Ohio sparkles more
brightly than in the Big Grave Creek."
Standing here in this lovely region, chosen by a vanished race
as their last resting place, we recalled the words of an Ohio
poet:
"Lonely and sad it stands
The trace of ruthless hands
Is on its sides and summit, and around,
The dwellings of the white man pile the ground,
And curling in the air,
The smoke of thrice a thousand hearths is there:
Without, all speaks of life; within,
Deaf to the city's echoing din,
Sleep well the tenants of that silent Mound,
Their names forgot, their memories unrenown'd.
