Americans had at any rate better visit America before going to the Old World to be laughed at for their ignorance of their own country and their ignorance generally. Mr. A. P. F. Coape, an English nobleman, who is here with me assisting in directing the excavations into this ruined city has spent six years in this wild part of New Mexico. We are both Englishmen and are proud to say that we visited our own country and other parts of Europe before coming to America. That is considerable more than the vast number of uncultured Americans can say when they are found proclaiming their ignorance at Pompeii, the field of Waterloo, the Pyramids of Egypt, and other places that Mr. Coape and I have met them. They knew nothing about the Mammoth cave, Niagara Falls, The Garden of the Gods, Pike's Peak, the Yellowstone National Park, Yosemite Valley, Wyandotte cave, or anything of the wonders of the American continent. That was too near home. Pompeii and the Pyramids were farther away, and you know distance lends enchantment to the view, besides being quite fashionable too. And now it happens in the curious course of human events that Englishmen and English capital and English scientists generally are taking the lead in archæology in America. The reason of this strange anomoly is that the science of archæology is quite English and flourishes among the classes of the highest degree of culture, enlightenment and refinement only. We have the Royal Archæological Society of London with over five thousand members; with a fine property and in a flourishing financial condition. Then there is the Gaulic Archæological Society of Paris, the Scottish Archæological Society of Edinburg, Scotland, and others in the Old World too numerous to mention. The people of the United States being a floating, hetrogeneous, conglomerate, cosmopolitan mass with a scattering spirit of archæological and scientific culture wedged in, here and there with this unsympathetic crowd of wealth and position seekers, have no time to devote to archæological culture nor the formation of archæological bodies as are found in so great numbers in the Old World. America now is ripe for the prosecution and study of the interesting science of archæology; the prehistoric races of America, their ruined cities and villages; the Cliff Dwellers; the mummifled and petrified remains of their races; their instruments, pottery, implements, temples, mausoleums, etc., all of which Mr. Coape and I are at present unearthing, is certainly an interesting study for Americans in America. It certainly is for us English people who are members of the Royal Archæological Society of London. It will be impossible to write a detailed description of our discoveries in this ruined city up to date. Two articles have alrealy gone to the American Press Asssciation regarding all the preliminary work and discoveries up to May 9. We have unearthed considerable pottery in an excellent state of preservation. Numerous copper vessels and ornaments, some of gold and silver. We are now down to a macadamized street, and have entered a mausoleum in an excellent state of preservation, and containing eighty-four illustrious leaders of the pre-historic races, each in a sarcophagus made of agate and illuminated by obsidian or volcanic glass. Two of the subjects are petrified, and two mummified. A full description has gone to the American Press Association, New York, and if you will kindly reproduce it all in the columns of The Archæologist you will greatly oblige the writer, as he would much prefer to make That is my archæological discoveries than to write a description of them. hardest work, and I always commence an article with great reluctance. Mr. Coape throws all this part of the work on me while he pursues his archæological and scientific investigations uninterrupted. We are firmly of the opinion that this is the city of Quivira that Vasquez Coronado came up here to seek in 1540. There was a tradition current among the people he found from the coast all the way up to Abiguiu, that there was in this neighborhood a great city with temples adorned with silver and gold. It was called Quivira, correctly pronounced "Kee-ve-rah". Coronado found thriving cities and villages all the way along his march. He had 1,150 followers. At Santa Fe he found a city of 15,000 inhabitants. There are only 7,000 there today, 352 years later. At Abiquiu he found a town or pueblo of over 800 people. He also found copper and gold mines. He established a mission there, built a city across the river now in ruins. Copper was mined; gold also in large quantities. The city of Coronado across the Chama river from Abiquiu flourished for about fifty years. It was destroyed about 1590 by an uprising or revolt of the Peons whom Coronado and his followers held as slaves. They destroyed the city, massacred over five hundred Spaniards, and filled up the approaches to the rich mines. This neighborhood is in a financial sense therefore well worthy the attention of archæologists as well as prospectors and mineralogists. Mr. Coape and I will be amply repaid by the intrinsic value of our discoveries for the expense of carrying on the excavations and investigations. We firmly believe we have found what Coronado failed to find and that is Quivira, the ruined city and Pompeii of pre-historic America. ABIQUIU, NEW MEXICO, May 19, 1893. AN IDOL PIPE. [BY A. F. BERLIN.] There is found no work of Aboriginal art which so much commands the attention of archæologists and collectors as do the pipes made by our Pre-historic North American races, and discovered in mounds, graves, and often on the surface. Even more were they appreciated and held in esteem by their makers, which is evinced by the great amount of artistic work done upon many of them. With our red people, even as at the present day was there no habit as universal as that of smoking. The narcotic influences of this plant gave a certain amount of solace to the smoker in his home of relaxation and rest. Nor was he without his favorite pastime even when away at war or on the chase. He believed that tobacco was of Divine origin, coming as a direct gift for his especial benefit from the Great Spirit, who himself was addicted to the habit of smoking. Says Stevens in his "Flint Chips." p. 318: "The pipe therefore came to be regarded as a sacred object, and st king partook of the character of a moral if not of a religious acts. The incense of tobacco was deemed pleasing to the Father of Life, and the ascending smoke was selected as the most suitable medium of communication with the world of spirits." Without the presence of the pipe filled with lighted tobacco was there no declaration of war, nor made a treaty of peace, and we are told by Col. Jones in "Antiquities of the Southern Indians", p. 384, that "Among the primitive inhabitants of at least some of the Southern regions, they were elevated to the dignity of idols before whose elaborately carved forms of man, and beast, and bird, the deluded fell down and worshipped. It is only among the North American Indians that such peculiar historic interest attaches to the pipe-only among the ancient people of this region that we locate customs, ceremonies, and traditions, at once most curious and unique". In Irving's "Life and Voyages of Columbus", Vol. 1, p. 184, quoted from "Navarrete", tome 1. p. 51, we read that "When Columbus was upon the coast of Cuba he beheld several of the natives going about with firebrands in their hands, and certain dried herbs which they rolled up in a leaf, and lighting one end put the other in their mouths and continued inhaling and puffing out the smoke. A roll of this kind they called a tobacco, a name since transferred to the plant of which the rolls were made. The Spaniards, although prepared to meet with wonders, were struck with astonishment at this singular and apparently nauseous, indulgence." Fig. 1. Figs. 1, 2, and 3, profile, front, and back, represent an idol pipe in the collection of C. F. Causey, M. D., Sartartia, Miss. This rare relic of aboriginal art, made of a fine grained sandstone of brownish hue was ploughed up from a low flat mound in a field ten miles from Sartartia. It is nine inches high, four inches across the shoulders, and weighs six pounds. It represents a female, devoid of dress,. in a sitting posture, one leg overlapping the other with the hands clasping or resting on the knees. The face appears idiotic; the forehead retreating; the eyes closed; the mouth partly open, with heavy lips that have more the appearance of those of the negro than that of the Indian. The hair appears to have been done up in rolls, with a knot or coil at the back. The ears are covered with some kind of ornament which may have been fastened to the hair covering the side of the head. The opening for the bowl of the pipe enters immediately below the neck, with the aperture for the stem some distance further down. It is a most elaborate piece of workmanship, taking into consideration the standing of the maker: and one is at a loss to conjecture what idea was dominant in the mind of its authors. Fig. 2. Col. C. C. Jones appears to think that the makers of these rare pipes received their ideas of art from a civilization in Mexico. He says: "These pipes are obviously very old, and in all likely-hood antedated, by an indefinite period of time, the occupation of this valley by the Cherokees. So far as recorded observation extends, nothing like them was noted in the use or possession of the modern Indians. There are at least plausible grounds for believing that the ancient peoples who piled up these august tumuli along the banks of the Etowah,-Georgia-and departing, left behind them enduring monuments of their combined labor for a wonder and an enigma to later tribes, may have borrowed some of their ideas of sun-worship, idolatry, agriculture, and art directly or indirectly from the southern cradle of American civilization." Antiquities of the southern Indians, p. 403. The great mounds referred to above are located near Cartersville, Georgia, and cover an area of some fifty Fig. 3. acres. The largest is 65 feet high. It is nearly quadrangular in shape, unless one takes into account a slight angle to the south. This gives it a pentagonal shape measuring at the summit, which is nearly level, on the northern side, 150 feet; eastern side, 160 feet; south-eastern side, 100 feet; southern side, 90 feet, and western side, 100 feet. East and west its longest apex diameter is 225 feet; north and south, 220 feet. In Mississippi, where was found our idol-pipe, near Seltzertown is situated a mound so large that one is almost forced to believe that it is of natural origin. It is a truncated pyramid nearly 600 feet long, 400 feet at its base, covering nearly six acres of ground. It is forty feet high, its summit of four acres being reached by a graded way. One marvels at the immensity of these stupendous works. which must have been erected by an agricultural and stationary people under some form of paternal government. Being in this condition of civilization they could certainly at their pleasure produce works of art as the idol pipe figured in this paper. A few more words in reference to the plant which gave so much exhiliaration to our North American aboriginal people when using it may be of interest to my readers. We know that they cultivated the plant, but the question arises, where was it first found in its wild state? Botanists declare that a very lengthy course of cultivation is required so to alter the form of a plant that it can no longer be identified with the wild species: and still more protracted must be the artificial propagation for it to lose its power of independent life, and to rely wholly on man to preserve it from extinction. Now this is precisely the condition of the maize, tobacco, cotton, quinoa, and mandioca plants. * All have been cultivated from an immemorial time by the aborigines of America, and except cotton. by no other race: all no longer are to be identified with any known wild species; several are sure to perish unless fostered by human care. What numberless ages does this suggest? How * 4 * many centuries elapsed ere man thought of cultivating Indian corn? How many more ere it had spread over nearly a hundred degrees of latitude, and lost all semblance to its original form? Who has the temerity to answer these questions? The judicious thinker will perceive in them satisfactory reasons for dropping once for all the vexed inquiry "how America was peopled" and will smile at its imaginary solutions, whether they suggest Jews, Japanese, or, as the latest theory is, Egyptians. That the plant came originally from near the equator can not for a moment be doubted, for like Indian corn it thrives best in hot regions. The Choctaw Indians who lived in the territory now called Mississippi raised so much tobacco that at times they had a surplus to sell to traders. When using for smoking they mixed it with the leaves, and a transparent, balsamic juice, or sweet gum procured from a tree called liquid-amber. Often too, was no doubt mixed with tobacco the leaves of other plants having narcotic properties. For the construction of his pipe, which our readers have been told the Indian valued highly, the choicest material was selected. Often did he go far away from his home to procure the stone from which he made it, and in shaping and polishing it spent much time, days and even months! He had to learn by experiment what sort of stone best withstood the action of continued heat, and as it was his almost constant companion one can easily understand why when possible he made it so elaborately, and when laid in his grave "his messenger of peace, through the stem and bowl of which he pledged his friends, was with his other implements placed into his long fancied, mild and beautiful hunting grounds." Catlin's eight years, Vol. 1, p. 235. AN ADDITIONAL LIST OF STANDARD ARCHÆOLOGICAL LITERATURE. The list of "some standard archæological literature" published in the May number of this journal is an excellent one, though the author has omitted some important works, a small list of which is here appended: BOOKS: Lubbock, Sir John. Origin of Civilization. Ranke, Johannes. Der Mensch. Ratzel, Fr. Volkerkunde. Topinard, Paul. Elements d'Anthropologie Generale. Tylor, E. B. Primitive Culture. Tylor, E. B. Early History of Mankind. Wilson, Sir Daniel. Pre-historic Man. JOURNALS, ETC. Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien, Mittheilungen. Vienna. Archæological Institute of America Publications. Cambridge. Ausland. Stuttgart. Berliner Gesellschaft fur Anthropologie, Verhandlungen. Berlin. |