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00 Some Facts and Considerations about Fort Ancient. 



ants could retreat into the smaller work, Avhere, defended on all sides 

 by the precipitous declivity, they had only to guard the connecting 

 passage between. The Tlascalan gateway and the two mounds in 

 the connecting passage were manifestly constructed to defend against 

 invasion from the larger fort. It is true that the only evidences 

 of such occupation thus far discovered, are in the heaps of debris 

 from long continued fires, in mounds which have been leveled by 

 the plow ; but when we consider the long period which has elapsed 

 since the abandonment of the work, and the vigorous and exuberant 

 growth which every year adds to the accumulation of vegetable deposit 

 over the remains of the ancient people, we may reasonably anticipate 

 the discovery of certain evidences of their occupation whenever ex- 

 cavations are made deep enough to reach them. The plow only turns 

 up those lying near the surtace and marking a comparatively recent 

 period ; and the remains thus far discovered, with few exceptions, may 

 be assigned with certainty to the later Indians who successively occupied 

 the entire area covered by the remains of the ancient builders of these 

 works. Some of the arrow and spear heads found in the fort and upon 

 the adjacent hills exhibit a finer material and finish than is common 

 among implements of the Indian races, and fragments of stone imple- 

 ments, gathered in the ancient burial ground before mentioned, cor- 

 respond in finish and shape with some of the incomprehensible imple- 

 ments taken from the Scioto mounds. But in general, there are no in- 

 ferences to be drawn from the few specimens recovered, which exclude 

 the supposition that they were used by the later occupants. A beauti- 

 ful discoidal stone of red ferruginous quartz, pierced in the center, an 

 axe of green-stone, pierced for a handle, and fragments of flat, rec- 

 tangular stones, such as are supposed to have been used for various pur- 

 poses— such as sizing threads, weaving, sinking nets, or as "gorgets" 

 or badges of oflPice — are perhaps the only relics thus for found upon 

 which any supposition of an earlier origin could be based. Yet, the 

 fort itself, hoary with age and imposing in its magnitude, bears inter- 

 nal evidences which exclude the restless Indian from all consideration 

 of its orio-in ; while the remains of the sacrificial mounds and the 

 avenue connecting them, and the elevated roadway upon the river 

 slopes opposite the work, seem to connect the Builders with that remote 

 race whose record is still to be deciphered from the palimpsest of Mex- 

 ican and Central American archeology. 



Fort Ancient belongs unquestionably to the same era as the works of 

 the Scioto valley and others of great antiquity. Its place in the gen- 

 eral system of defenses extending through Ohio, has been noticed by 

 Judge Force in the pamphlet to which allusion has been made. It is 

 manifest that it is not the erection of a single tribe, for an independent 



