Notes on the Floridian Peninsula; its Literary History, Indian Tribes and Antiquities

Shortly previous to 1813, two mummies were found in the Gothic avenue of the Mammoth Cave, and not long afterwards, (1814,) another in the Audabon avenue.

The same year, several more were discovered in a nitre cave near Glasgow, Kentucky, by Thomas Monroe, who forwarded one to the American Antiquarian Society, described by Dr. Mitchell in the first volume of the publications of that body.

Again, in 1828, two more were found in a complete state of preservation in a cave of West Tennessee, mentioned in the American Journal of Science, (Vol. xxii. p. 124.)

With that zest for the wonderful, for which antiquarians are somewhat famous, the idea that these remains could belong to tribes with whom the first settlers were acquainted, was rejected, and recourse was had to Malays, South Sea Islanders, and the antipodes generally, for a more reasonable explanation. It was said that the envelopes of the bodies (all of which bore close resemblance among themselves) pointed to a higher state of the arts than existed among the Indians of the Mississippi Valley, and that the physical differences, the color of the hair, &c., were irreconcileable. I think, however, it may be shown that these objections are of no weight, and that the bodies in question were interred at a comparatively late period.

The wrappings consisted usually of deer skins, dressed and undressed, mats of split canes, some as much as sixty yards long, and a woven stuff called “blankets,” “sheets,” and “cloth;” this was often either bordered with feathers of the wild turkey and other birds, or covered with them in squares and patterns. Their ages, as guessed from appearances, varied from ten years to advanced life. In several cases the mark of a severe blow on the head was seen, which must have caused the individual’s death. Their stature was usually in conformity to their supposed age;330 the weight of one, as given by Flint, six or eight pounds; in all cases but one the hair of a “sorrel,” “foxy,” “yellow” or “sandy” color; and they were usually found five or six feet below the surface.

First, then, in our examination, the question arises, did the Indians of the Mississippi Valley, when first met by the whites, possess the art of manufacturing woven stuff of the kind mentioned? In answer we have the express words of the Inca,331 “These mantles the Indians of Florida make of a certain herb-like mallows, (malvas,) which has fibres like flax, (que tiene hebra, como lino,) and from the same they make thread, to which they give colors which remain most firmly.” The next explorer was La Salle; in Tonty’s account of his expedition,332 he remarks that he saw in a council lodge of the Taencas, “sixty old men clothed in large white cloaks, which are made by the women from the bark of the mulberry tree.” Still more to our purpose are the words of later writers, who mention the interweaving of feathers. Not only, says Dumont,333 do the Indian women make garters and ribbons of the wool of the buffalo, (du laine du beuf,) but also a sort of mat of threads obtained from the bark of the linden, (tilleul,) “qu’elles couvrent de plumes de cigne des plus fines, attachèes une à une sur cet toil.” Dupratz334 mentions similar cloaks of mulberry bark covered “with the feathers of swans, turkeys, and India ducks,” the fibres of the bark being twisted “about the thickness of packthread,” and woven “with a wrought border around the edges.” Of the Indians of North Carolina, Lawson says,335 “Their feather match-coats are very pretty, especially some of them which are made extraordinary charming, containing several pretty figures, wrought in feathers, making them seem like a fine flower Silk-Shag.” Other examples might be given, but these are sufficient.

The cane mat was an article of daily use among the tribes wherever the cane grew, and was bartered to those where it did not. The Arkanzas, Taencas, Cenis, Natchez, and Gulf tribes, used it to cover their huts;336 hence a piece even sixty yards long was no uncommon matter; while in one instance at least,337 we know that the eastern tribes rolled their dead in them, tying them fast at both ends. All the minor articles of ornament and dress, the bone and horn needles, the vegetable beads, &c., can be shown with equal facility to have been in general use among the natives.338

It has usually been supposed that these bodies were preserved by the chemical action of the nitriferous soil around them; but this does not account for their perfection and extreme desiccation, inclosed as they were in such voluminous envelopes. Yet it is quite certain that the viscera were never absent, nor has any balm or gum been found upon them.339 Hence, if artificially prepared, it must have been by protracted drying by fire, in a manner common among the ancient inhabitants of the Caroline islands, the Tahitians, the Guanches of Teneriffe, and still retained in some convents in the Levant. It is well known that in America the Popayans, the Nicaraguans, and the Caribs of the West Indies had this custom;340 but I believe that attention has not been called to the fact, that this very mode of preserving the dead was used more or less by the Indians of the Mississippi Valley. The southern tribes of Mississippi and Alabama dried the corpse of their chief over a slow fire, placed it in the temple as an object of adoration till the death of his successor, and then transferred it to the bottom or cellar (fond) of the building.341 Analogous usages, modifications of this and probably derived from it, prevailed among the tribes of North Carolina, Virginia, and the Pacific coast,342 while we have seen that Bristock asserts the same of the Apalachites. That a cave should be substituted for a temple, or that the bodies should be ultimately inhumed, cannot excite our surprise when we recall how subject the Indians were to sudden attacks, how solicitous that their dead should not be disturbed,343 and how caves were ever regarded by them as natural temples for their gods and most fit resting places for their dead.344

The rarity of the mummies may be easily accounted for as only the bodies of the chiefs were thus preserved. Yet it is a significant fact that a body is rarely, if ever, found alone. Moreover, in every case of which we have special description, these are of different sexes, and one, the female, and the youngest, sometimes apparently not more than twelve or fourteen years of age, evidently died by violence. How readily these seemingly unconnected facts take place and order, and how intelligible they become, when we learn that at the death of a ruler the Indians sacrificed and buried with him one or two of his wives, and in some tribes the youngest was always the chosen victim of this cruel superstition.345

The light color of the hair is doubtless caused by the nitriferous soil with which it had been so long surrounded; a supposition certified by one instance, where, in consequence of the unusually voluminous wrappings, and perhaps a later interment, it retained the black color of that of the true Indian.346

Though most of these references relate to nations not dwelling immediately in the area of country where the mummies are found, it is quite unnecessary for me to refer in this connection to those numerous and valid arguments, derived both from tradition and archæology, that prove beyond doubt that this tract, and indeed the whole Ohio valley, had changed masters shortly before the whites explored it, and that its former possessors when not destroyed by the invaders, had been driven south.

Hence we may reasonably infer, that as no article found upon the mummies indicates a higher degree of art than was possessed by the southern Indians, as the physical changes are owing to casual post mortem circumstances, as we have positive authority that certain tribes were accustomed to preserve the corpses of their chiefs; and lastly, as we have many evidences to show that such tribes, or those closely associated with them, once dwelt further north than they were first found, consequently the deposition of the mummies must be ascribed to a race who dwelt near the region where they occur, at the time of its exploration by Europeans.

APPENDIX III.

THE PRECIOUS METALS POSSESSED BY THE EARLY FLORIDIAN INDIANS

The main idea that inspired the Spanish expeditions to Florida was the hope of discovering riches there, equal to the gorgeous opulence of Peru and Mexico. Although the country was supposed to be north of the auriferous zone—in accordance with which geological notion in his map of the world (1529) Diego de Ribero inscribes on the land marked “Tierra de Garay,” north of the Gulf of Mexico, now West Florida, “This land is poor in gold, as it lies too far from the tropic of Cancer”347—yet an abiding faith in its riches was kept alive by Spanish traders obtaining from time to time morsels of gold from the natives. As early as the first voyage of De Leon (1512), they possessed and used it as an article of barter in small quantities.348 The later explorers, Narvaez, De Soto, Ribaut, and Laudonniére, report both gold and silver, but never, as far as their own observations went, in any abundance. The savages were always eagerly questioned as to its origin and always returned one of two answers; either that they had pilfered it from the wrecks of vessels driven on their coasts, or else they referred the inquirer to a distant and mountainous country to the north, known both to the nations on the Gulf of Mexico, those at the extreme south of the peninsula, and those on the Atlantic coast as far north as the Savannah river, as Apalache. Here, said the rumors, the men wore cuirasses of gold and shields of burnished silver, while the women were impeded in their dancing by the weight of their golden ornaments and strings of pearls. We have seen that this name was at one period applied to a large area of country, and hence have no difficulty in appreciating the error that Narvaez committed when he supposed the small town of that name east of the Apalachicola to contain the major part of the nation. Fontanedo, whose long residence among the Indians renders him one of our best authorities on certain points, says expressly that the snowy mountains of Onagatano whence the gold was obtained were the furthermost possessions of Apalache.349

There is a general similarity in the accounts of the direction and remoteness of the mines. The coast tribes north of the St. Johns river had pieces of sieroa pira, red metal, which was tested by a goldsmith who accompanied Laudonniére and found to be pure gold. When asked where this was obtained they pointed to the north. Another chief who gave them slips of silver said it came from a country at the foot of lofty mountains ten long days’ journey inland, towards the north. A third had small grains of gold, silver, and copper, procured, according to his own account, by washing the sands of a creek that flowed at the base of lofty mountains five or six days journey in a northwesterly direction. The artist Le Moyne de Morgues, drawing somewhat on his imagination, represents in his forty-first sketch this method of cleaning it. Hence on some maps of a very early period the southern Alleghanies bear the name Apalatcy Montes Auriferi. Years afterwards, rumors derived from the Indians were rife among the Spanish colonists of a “very rich and exceeding great city, called La Grand Copal, among the mountains of Gold and Chrystal,” fifteen or twenty days journey northwest of St. Augustine.350

Now as the gold mines of Georgia and Carolina lie about three hundred miles north or northwest of Florida, such accounts as these can leave no reasonable doubt but that they were known to the Indians, and to a certain extent worked before the arrival of the white man. Indeed, may we not impute to them the ancient and unrecorded mining operations, signs of which are occasionally met with in the gold country of Georgia? Such are the remains of what are called “furnaces,” the marks of excavations, various rude metallurgical instruments, the buried log houses, and other tokens of a large population in some remote past, found from time to time in the vicinity of Dahlonega and various parts of the Nacooche valley.351 These were referred by the finders to De Soto, who offers a favorite and ready explanation for any construction of unknown age, in that part of our country; thus I have been told that the bone mounds in Florida were the burial places of his soldiers, and on one occasion a post pliocene bank of shells on Tampa Bay was pointed out to me as the ruins of one of his forts. It is unnecessary to add that the soldiers under this ill-fated leader spent no time in digging gold either in north Georgia or anywhere else.

That in the course of barter small quantities of the metals here obtained—for we must ascribe to shipwrecks the “lumps of gold several pounds in weight” said to have been found in modern times on the shores of Florida and Carolina352—should have gradually proceeded to the nations on the shores of the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico, and even to the Caloosas in South Florida, four hundred miles from their starting point, will not astonish any one acquainted with the extent to which the transportation of metals was carried by the aborigines in other portions of the continent.

END

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