A Brief Chapter on Sacrificial Mowiids. 67 



with the imperishable structures of Mexico, modified only by the 

 different conditions which our own country presented— one class being 

 of earth, the other of stone or brick. To the same modifying influences 

 may be attributed the erection of wooden temples, that in the course 

 of ages have decayed and became resolved again to earth ; while in a 

 rocky and at best sparsely wooded country, doubtless soon denuded 

 of timber by a teeming population, nature compelled resort to a material, 

 which, by indelibly preserving the results of art, reacted upon art itself, 

 and thus produced magnificent pyramids and temples which compare 

 with the finest efforts of ancient oriental nations. 



In the Missouri mound, however, we have more substantial proof in 

 the stone altar, that in form also marks a period antedating the Aztec. 

 The Aztec altar or stone of sacrifice was usually a single rectangular 

 block, with a convex top, over which the body of the victim was 

 bent in such a way as to facilitate the tearing out of the palpitating 

 heart from the upturned breast; but among the antiquities of a more 

 ancient date, discovered in Mexico and Central America, are altars 

 with the upper surface hollowed into a basin-shaped cavity, with a 

 groove or channel leading from it, similar to the one in question. 

 Such altars were not unknown to other ancient nations who practiced 

 similar rites. Tacitus, speaking of the ancient forests of Anglesea, 

 the stronghold of Druidical worship in England, describes such altars of 

 stone upon which the blood of slaughtered victims was evaporated. 

 The numerous remains of altars and dolmens, discovered there in 

 recent times, comprise many corresponding precisely, in the feature in 

 question, with the altar-stone of the Missouri mound. Such a depres- 

 sion is the universal characteristic of the altars covered by the so-called 

 "altar-mounds" of Ohio, though none of these, so far as known, consist 

 of a single stone. They are generally composed of burned clay or 

 stones, heaped with care into symmetrical forms, and rest upon the 

 original surface of the ground. The depressions, in most instances, are 

 found to contain calcined human bones and fragments of utensils or 

 ornaments, deposited with the dead in whose honor the mounds appear 

 to have been raised; and from the uniformity of this circumstance, 

 in mounds of this description, their construction is mferred to have been 

 solely for sepulchral purposes, or at least in connection with sacrifices 

 performed for the dead. It is probable that the so-called "signal 

 mounds," and high hills, upon whose summits the evidences of long 

 contmued fires are apparent, served the purpose of the Teocallis among 

 the ancient Mound-Builders, as places of general sacrifice and also 

 signal stations, as was the case among the Aztecs. The debris of burned 



