ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS OF AMERICA. 191 



Although the copper mines of the mound-builders were their 

 most important ones, they had others by which they procured 

 things that were of no less value to them. Of the coal, which con- 

 stitutes the mainspring of modern civilization, and of iron, its 

 most important adjunct, though existing in unequaled abundance 

 in the country they inhabited, and trodden under foot in their 

 daily vocations, they seem to have been utterly and strangely 

 ignorant. Yet they worked with much labor the mines of mica 

 in North Carolina, from which they procured what was by them 

 highly prized as an ornament ; the soap-stone quarries of the Alle- 

 ghany range, where they obtained material for their domestic 

 utensils and the all-important ceremonial pipe ; and those of flint 

 in Ohio and elsewhere, from which came the material out of which 

 the greater number of their tools and weapons were fashioned. 



In addition to these, I can assert from my own observation 

 that they worked at least one lead mine in Kentucky, and sank 

 wells from which they obtained petroleum in all our principal 

 oil regions. 



As these facts have not been reported by others, and yet are 

 unquestionable, I venture to emphasize them with a few words of 

 description. 



Near Lexington, Ky., is a vein of lead ore which is traceable for 

 half a mile or more through cultivated and forest land. The ore 

 is galena in heavy spar, which has resisted the solvent carbonic- 

 acid water that has removed the limestone wall rocks and shows 

 conspicuously at the surface. Thus it attracted the attention of 

 the mound-builders, who seem to have prized the galena only for 

 its brilliancy, as we find it in many of the mounds, but so far we 

 lack evidence that it was smelted. To obtain it in the mine to 

 which I have referred, they made a deep trench along the course 

 of the vein, taking out the ore to the depth of perhaps ten or 

 twenty feet. One hundred yards or more of this trench is now 

 visible, running through forest which has never been disturbed 

 by the whites. Here it is five or six feet deep, and is bordered on 

 either side by ridges of the material thrown out. On these, trees 

 are growing which have reached their maximum dimensions, 

 showing that at least five hundred years have elapsed since the 

 mine was abandoned. 



The working of the oil wells by the mound-builders is as 

 plainly proved. When drawn to Titusville by the first successful 

 oil wells, I was struck by the peculiar pitted surface of the soil of 

 the forest which covered the bottom lands of Oil Creek. The pits 

 were ten feet or more in diameter, and two to three feet deep, con- 

 tiguous, and innumerable. Subsequently I discovered that each 

 of these funnel-shaped depressions marked the site of an ancient 

 well, sunk through the alluvial deposits, but not into the rock. 



