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28 - HISTORY OF JEFFERSON COUNTY CHAPTER II PRIMEVAL MAN Leaves an Interesting Relic - The Mound Builders and Early Indian Artists. As an introduction to a paper by G. Frederick Wright, the well-known geologist, who has given special study to glacial conditions in Ohio and elsewhere, read before the Ohio State Archwological and Historical Society on February 18, 1886, the author said: "As yet no implements have been found in Ohio which can certainly be ascribed to the glacial age." Such relics had been discovered in the valley of the Somme, near Abbeville, in northern France, nearly fifty years before, and some ten or twelve years previous others had been found near Trenton, N. J., on the Delaware River, thus demonstrating that if primeval man originated in what is called the Old World he was not confined there. But if man could and did exist in the Delaware Valley at that early date, why not in the Ohio Valley? If his migration was from west to east, which, however, is only a theory, he should have been here first. Although Prof. Wright does not seem to have heard of it until later, an implement chipped from a pebble of black flint had been found eight feet below the surface at Madisonville, Ohio, eleven miles northeast of Cincinnati, in a depression connectino. the Little Miami River with Mill Creek, about five miles back from the Ohio River. It will be remembered that this section was covered by the glacier. Another similar implement, which was found shortly after at Loveland, on the Little Miami, in the same neighborhood, induced Prof. Wright to visit the locality, with the result of confirming the authenticity of the find. Subsequently, in 1887, another was discovered. These instruments are rudely:. chipped pointed stone weapons from two to six inches long, and one to four and one- half inches wide, roughly made predecessors of later flints and arrow heads. The immediate results of these and perhaps one or two other isolated finds were rather to excite controversy than to settle the question of human existence in the Ohio Valley during the glacial or preglacial period. It remained for a Jefferson., County scientist to make a further discovery which practically closed the discussion by conclusive evidence. Mr. Sam Huston;.to whose labors and discoveries We have referred on preceding pages, is entitled to this credit. His discovery consisted of a. chipped chert or flinty implement one and three-quarter inches long and three-quarters of an inch wide in its broader part, with a projecting shoulder on one edge; oivino. to it the character of what in alki- giving original usage would be called a knife. The object was found a mile and a half below Brilliant, and about. eight and one-half, miles below Steubenville. Prof. Wright; in an article published in the Popular'Sci ence Monthly for December, 1895, gives the following account of this. discovery; Written by Mr. Huston himself : "Steubenville, 0., August 13, 1895 "Prof. G. F. Wright, "My Dear Sir: Below Brilliant, Jefferson County, Ohio, is a very fine remnant of high level river terrace. AND REPRESENTATIVE CITIZENS - 29 Its length is two miles and maximum width over a quarter of a mile. On the West Virginia side of the Ohio River at that point the bluffs rise to a height of over 300 feet, directly from the water, at ordinary levels. On the Ohio side there is a flood plain from fifty to 100 yards wide and from twenty to thirty feet above low water. Along the west side of this flood plain is located the river division of the Cleveland & Pittsburgh Railroad, along the foot of the high level terrace. This terrace ranges from sixty-five to eighty feet above low water. Excavations in this terrace to a depth of forty-three feet show it to consist of inter-stratified sand, fine gravel, and clay in small quantities, all, with rare exceptions, cross-bedded. Coarse gravel is found at the top of the terrace; but, except for two or three feet on top, only rare pieces of gravel occur of more than one-half cubic inch in size. Two small ravines cut through the terrace at Brilliant. A mile below these, Block House Run, and a mile and a half below, Riddle's Run, cut through the terrace down to the flood plain of the river. Otherwise the surface of the terrace is a plain. A half-mile of turnpike was built on it, in which the original surface varied less than two feet. Indian mounds and intrusive burials occur at numerous places on the terrace, but the stratification and cross- bedding of the sands and gravels of it are such that intrusive burials or excavations can not be made without leaving evidence so distinct as to be readily seen, and at the face of an excavation a slip or talus is easily detected. Over three years ago a sandpit was worked in this terrace at its southern extremity below Riddle's Run. While the excavation was being Made, and at a noon hour, I found a plainly marked but rude flint implement imbedded in the freshly exposed face of the stratified sand and gravel, under about eight feet of undisturbed cross-bedded stratification, only the point of fie implement showing on the perpendicular face of the excavation. The condition of the stratification in all of the superincumbent eight feet, which was closely examined by me, was such as to convince me that the implement was not intrusive, but had been deposited with the remainder of the material of the terrace. The condition of the face of the excavation above the find is fairly, but not as clearly, as would be desired, shown by the photograph taken by Mr. Doyle, of the now abandoned sandpit, where the find was made, where slips and talus cover the face. "Sam Huston." Prof. Wright, with Mr. Huston, F. C. McClave and the writer, visited the place where the implement was found and made a careful study of the site and surroundings, which fully corroborated Mr. Huston's descriptions, which were preserved by Doyle's photographs. During that visit Prof. Wright also made an examination of the high level deposits, and in the article above referred to gives the following as the result of his investigations : "As shown in the accompanying illustration, the Ohio River occupies a narrow valley which might almost be called a gorge, which it has eroded in the nearly parallel strata of the coal measures to an average depth of about 300 feet. This gorge is continuous from Louisville, in Kentucky, to the headwaters of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers, a distance of more than 1,200 miles. All the tributaries of the river occupy gorges of similar depth. This erosion has evidently taken place with considerable rapidity consequent upon an elevation of the continent at the close of the Tertiary period, giving a .steep gradient to streams which, during the most of the Tertiary period, had been very sluggish. The evidence of this is seen in the narrowness of the gorge and in the gentleness of the slope above the 300-foot line. "Along the 300-foot level there is a line of rock shelves Which contains a shallow deposit of loam and pebbles. This is very conspicuous 'oil the Allegheny River and for some distance below Pittsburgh, but rather less as far' down as Steubenville. Still, those high-level deposits are clearly marked there. on both sides of the river. The most significant thing about these high-level terrace deposits is that they contain granite pebbles, which are a sure indication that the deposit is post glacial; for none of the tributaries of the Ohio River have access to granite rock, except as fragments have been brought over from Canada by the glacial .movement and de-- posited within their reach.'' While there has been considerable discussion concerning the age of the gravel deposits on these high rock shelves, some contending for two glacial periods with a long interval between, during which the rock gorge was made, Prof. Wright believes there is only evidence of one such epoch, and that, these high-level deposits were produced partly by an extensive filling up of the Allegheny gorge as far as Pittsburgh and somewhat below, and lower down by the effect of the Cincinnati ice dam, which set back the water up to this level, and is sufficient to account for many of the facts. Under this view these de- 30 - HISTORY OF JEFFERSON COUNTY posits would coincide approximately with what Dana calls the "Champlain epoch," during, which there was considerable depression of land at the north, the influence of which may have been felt as far south as the latitude of Pittsburgh. To this Mr. Wright adds : "But whatever may be the difference of opinion about the age of these high-level gravels, there is no disagreement about the glacial character and relatively late age of the lower terraces along the Ohio River, such as occur at Steubenville and Brilliant. The rock gorge extends on the average a hundred feet below the present bottom of the river, having been filled up originally by gravel not only to that extent, but to the level of the terrace in which the implement was found. That this extensive deposition of gravel in the old rock gorge is connected with the glacial period is clearly shown by the fact that these lower terraces can be followed up the bank of every stream which comes out of the glaciated region to the old ice border, where they emerge into the moraines which were deposited directly by the ice. Only those streams which rise in the glaciated area have these terraces. The contrast between the Monongahela and Allegheny in this respect is very marked. The Allegheny River throughout its coarse was gorged with this glacial gravel, but the Monongahela River neither had gravel within reach nor the floods of water *coming from the melting ice to distribute it if that had been within reach, therefore the gravel terraces are absent. The northern tributaries of the Ohio had both these advantages (or disadvantages), and therefore have the terraces. On the Ohio these are always larger and higher where a tributary comes in from the- glaciated region to the north, as, for example, at the mouth of Big Beaver Creek, where the terrace is 130 feet above low water mark. But down the river the supply of gravel diminished, and the terrace becomes correspondingly lower, being at Steubenville and Brilliant only seventy or eighty feet above low water. "So far as direct evidence is concerned in estimating the age of implements in these terraces, it relates to the question whether or not they have been found in undisturbed strata of the original terrace. If they are so found they are as old as the disposition of the gravel, which took place in glacial times; for since that period of deposition the action of the present river has been confined to eroding an inner channel, and to working over gravel within the limits of its own flood plains. No disturbances by present floods could affect the gravel of the eighty-foot terrace. That has remained constant from the time of its original deposition." This now famous implement was taken to the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science at Springfield, Mass., in August, 1895, and submitted to a number of experts, when the corroborative indications of its antiquity were readily and emphatically recognized. Prof. F. W. Putnam remarked upon the distinctness with which the patina or velvety oxidation had been preserved, indicative of the conditions in which it was said to have been found, and in itself bearing evidence of great antiquity. F. H. Cushing, the famous Zuni ethnologist, declared that there could be no question that it was a finished implement and not a "reject" and that not only had it been finished by careful chipping all along the edge, but it. had been finished twice, having been at least once reshaped upon its cutting edge ; and, what is of special significance, that it had been sharpened not by the more modern processes in which the chips were broken from the edge by pressing against, it with a, piece of bone, but by the older process of striking against the edge with another' stone. The type of the implement:. also was pronounced by Mr: Cushing to be the earliest known, although from the convenience of the form it has always continued in use. It was one, however, which appeared at the very dawn of human development. "Thus," as Prof. Wright says, "the circumstantial evidence connected with the implement itself confirms in a remarkable degree the dire evidence respecting it. And it deserves to be placed, as it doubtless will be, among the most important discoveries heretofore made connecting man with the Glacial period." As to the ability of man to live in this valley during the retreating ice front of the Glacial period, it is no more than the Esquimaux do in Greenland and Alaska to-day, the former country being timberless and the latter forested in the southern part, as was the Ohio Valley in Glacial times. Previous to the introduction of firearmls, those tribes used bone and stone implements, just as did their prehistoric southern neighbors. The habitations of Glacial man, when he had any, have long ago disappeared, and it is not likely that his permanent abodes were often located on the lower terraces where they were subject to floods, and it is only here and there AND REPRESENTATIVE CITIZENS - 31 we find a memento of this long forgotten race. But, as concluded by Prof. Wright, "the clear testimony of the ancient chipped knife discovered by Mr. Huston, at Brilliant, Ohio, must go far to close the question of man's antiquity on the Western Continent and to dispel the doubts upon the subject which, for one reason or another, have heretofore existed." The inquiry naturally arises, how long is it since primitive man ranged along this valley? That he was contemporary with the mastodon is indicated by finding remains of that mammoth animal in the same river terraces that held our human implement. About five years ago a mastodon skull was found while excavating for sand in the river terrace opposite the lower end of Steubenville, which was added to Mr. Huston's collection. But the mastodon lived almost down to the beginning of the historic period, and was possibly hunted by the "mound builders." Some very wild estimates have been given as to the first appearance of man upon the earth, some placing it as high as 100,000 years. This is pure guesswork, and not very good guessing at that. Fortunately, in this section, we have a great time keeper, which marks, at least approximately, the close of the Glacial period. Previous to that period there were no Niagara Falls and no Lake Erie. The recession of the falls from Queenstown heights back seven miles to their present location, represents the erosion of the Niagara River. Careful measurements by the United States surveyors and others have placed the average rate of recession at not less than three feet per annum, and during a portion of the way it may have been more rapid. This gives an outside limit of 11,000 years since the falls were at Queenstown, and it is possible that the limit may not be over 7,000, a thousand years before the building of the great pyramid of Cheops. Investigation of northern Ohio streams flowing into Lake Erie confirms these figures, so that it is safe to say that an estimate of 10,000 years since the first appearance of man in the Ohio valley is not an unreasonable limit. It is a long gap from the original pre. historic man to the mound builders. Even if we knew exactly who the mound builders were, it is conceded that they must have had their rise and fall at a period far subsequent to that which we have just been considering. In contradistinction to Glacial and pre-Glacial man, the mound builders have left quite voluminous, if not very definite, traces of their existence. Extended earthworks that have in turn been taken for fortifications, municipal boundaries, cemeteries and temple sites, crumbling skeletons; implements of the chase or war, household ornaments and utensils, with a few doubtful hieroglyphic characters, have enabled writers with vivid imaginations to create an empire of, at least semi-civilized, people, who were the progenitors of the Mexicans and Peruvians and who were finally overcome either by their own internecine wars or by the Indians, or both. Latest researches do not confirm these conclusions. A recent writer (Fowkes) sums up that : "So far as has yet been discovered, these people could not build a stone wall that would stand alone, or even wall up a spring. They left not one stone used in building that shows any marks of a dressing tool. Their mounds and embankments were built by ,bringing loads.of earth, never larger than one person could carry, in baskets or skins, as is proven by the hundreds of lens-shaped masses observable in the larger mounds. -They had not the slightest knowledge of the economic use of metals, treating what little they had as a sort of malleable stone; even galena, which it seems impossible they could have without discovering its low melting point, is always worked, if at all, as a piece of slate or other ornamental stone would be. They left nothing to indicate that any system of written language existed among them, the few "hieroglyphics" on "inscribed tablets" having no more significance than the modern Carving by a boy on the smooth bark of the beech, or else being deliberate frauds—generally the latter, in the case of the more elaborate specimens. They had not a single beast of burden. Beyond peddling from tribe to tribe a few ornaments or other small articles that a man could easily carry in a canoe, they had no trade or commerce. A close study of the enclosures leads to the conviction that the population was 'apt numerous except in the immediate vicinity; they were not necessarily built synchronously —in fact, some have the appearance of being of much more ancient date than others only a few miles dis- 32 - HISTORY OF JEFFERSON COUNTY tant. What their use may have been has always been a very puzzling question, any conjecture finding many difficulties to overcome. Among other suggestions is the plausible one that they were intended as a means of defense to the villages built within them. They (the people) were, no doubt, many thousands in number, but to suppose them to 'equal or exceed in number those now living in the same region of country' is absurd. Nearly all the enclosures of Ohio and of the allied works of the Kanawha Valley, whose condition is such as to admit of it, have lately been carefully surveyed, and not a single 'exact square' or 'perfect circle' has been found among them, though some of the works approach very closely to these forms." This is a pretty strong indictment, not of the real mound builders, but of the fictitious characters that parade under that title in many publications. While their habits were certainly different from their successors, if not their posterity, the red Indian, as a whole, it would be hard to prove their civilization to be markedly, if any, higher, although it may have had a different form. Some fairly worked-ornaments have been found in their mounds, but none that could not be duplicated or excelled by We Southern Indian tribes. There is no evidence that they ever formed a confederacy like the Iroquois, or had an individual chieftain, who was the equal of King Philip, Pontiac, Logan, Tecumtha, or many others who might be mentioned. But while we might proceed to pronounce in detail what the mound builders were not, this does not throw much light on whom they were. That some of them inhabited Jefferson county is evident from mounds found along the river terraces, although the number is not great. There is one mound of considerable size below Portland Station used as a private graveyard. There are, also, mounds in Wells, Cross Creek, Ross, Saline and other townships, perhaps ten or twelve in all. When the first settlers in the valley inquired of the Indians concerning these mounds, they could tell nothing about them, they had existed as far back as their traditions extended, and that is all they knew. There is a tradition of the Delaware Indians that, during the migration of that tribe from the West they came to a river beyond which dwelt a people called Tallegwi, who gave them permission to pass through their territory, but when the migrators divided, the Tallegwi attacked that portion which had crossed the river, and drove them back with great slaughter. A long and bloody war ensued, in which the Tallegwi made fortifications of earth and made a brave defense, but were gradually driven backward, building forts and other defenses as they went, until they finally passed beyond the Ohio. The Detroit River has been identified by Heckwelder as the meeting place of the tribes, when some of the defensive works of the Tallegwi were pointed out to him, as well as mounds where were buried bones of some of the slain. Mr. Fowkes, whom we have quoted above, furnishes some original testimony on this subject, which is worthy of record. In the summer of 1887, while at Munissing, Mich., he met William Cameron, a man of thorough education and extensive reading, who for more than sixty years—he then being eighty-four—had almost literally lived in the woods. He resided first among the Chippewas, who told him that when they first came into the country they found the Sioux in possession, and a war of several years' duration followed. They finally obtained firearms from the French and drove the Sioux westward. Afterward,_ Cameron went among the Sioux, and heard substantially the same story from the old chiefs. They added that in going westward they came to a race of people who lived in mounds, which they piled up. These people were large and strong, but cowardly. As the Sioux expressed it, "If they had been as brave as they were big, be tween them and the Chippewas we would have been destroyed ; but they were great cowards, and we easily drove them away." B. G. Armstrong, of Ashland, Wis., investigated this story and became satisfied of its truth. He added that, from all he could gather, these people, whom the Sioux called Ground House Indians, built houses of logs and posts, around and over which they piled earth until it formed a conical mass extending several feet above the roof. AND REPRESENTATIVE CITIZENS - 33 They occupied a portion of western Wisconsin and eastern Minnesota, and some maps give a "Ground House" river in the latter state. The Sioux exterminated the tribe, the last survivors being an old man and woman, who had married Sioux ; they were taken to the present site of Superior, near Duluth, where they died about two centuries ago. Many of the Chippewas were familiar with this tradition, and one of them declared to Mr. Fowkes that he had heard the old men say these Indians erected their houses of wood and piled several feet of dirt over them, and buried their dead in little mounds out in front of their houses, a few hundred feet away. He told of a mound that was opened, in which the position of the skeletons, two or three of chi], dren being among them, showed as plainly as anything could that the inmates had been sitting or lounging around the fire, when the roof fell in and killed them. There are thousands of small mounds in that neighborhood. It is a well known fact that Indian tales, and so-called traditions, like some other tales, must be rceived with a great deal of caution, but there is a circumstantiality about this which at least gives it an air of great plausibility. If the "Ground House" people referred to were indeed the remnant of a vanishing race, then their final. extermination took place less than three centuries ago, or near the beginning Of the seventeenth century. They no doubt had disappeared from the Ohio Valley a considerable time before that. That the Indians themselves wer.e mound builders, to some extent, is attested by members of De Soto's expedition to the Mississippi in 1541, when they found among the Cherokees many villages built on mounds erected by those people. Early accounts of the Natchez Indians describe the king's house as on a high mound,'with the dwellings of the chiefs on smaller mounds about it. When a king died, his successor did not occupy his house, but built another on a new mound. Even the Iroquois built mounds in their own country, and so did other Indian tribes. Hence the conclusion is irresistible either that the Indians found here by the first European discoverers were direct descendants of the Mound Builders, who had changed their habits and mode of living owing to constant wars and other causes, or that they had exterminated the former people and occupied their country. And from some incidents given above, the latter process would still seem to have been going on at the time of the arrival of Columbus. Of course, the origin of the Mound Builders is a different matter ; they may extend back to the Glacial period, but this is mere speculation. Of late, the trend of scientific belief has been towards the theory that they were simply ancestors of the Indians, but were they ancestors of the more civilized Aztecs and Peruvians? Data on this subject are yet too meager to dogmatize with any certainty. In this connection, as an illustration of how even scientific men allow their imagination to run away with them, and draw deductions from insufficient 'data, we copy the following from Prof. J. S. Newberry's chapter on the physical geography of Ohio, in Volume I of the Geological Survey, published in 1873: "During the last two seasons, which have been unusually dry, the waters in the Ohio and its tributaries sank down lower than was ever known before. At Smith 's Ferry, where the Pennsylvania. Line crosses the Ohio River, a ledge of rock was, by the continual drought, laid bare in the bottom of the river, which had never been so fully exposed to the observation of the present inhabitants of this region.. On this ledge, a surface from fifty to one hundred feet wide and several hundred yards long, was found covered with inscriptions, such as are usually ascribed to a race which densely populated this country anterior to the advent of the nomadic Indians. The existence of these ancient hieroglyphics, now almost constantly buried beneath the waters of the Ohio, seems to prove that these rocks were once longer and more fully exposed than they now are, and that the volume of water in the Ohio was then less than now. The facts I have stated, associated as they are with others of similar import which have come to my knowledge, indicate a period when our climate was drier that' now, or one when from natural or artificial causes the oscillations of level in the Ohio were greater than they have been during the last fifty years. It is among the possibilities that we have here the record of the effect produced upon the HISTORY OF JEFFERSON COUNTY - 34 climate of occupation years by a this portion of our country through its during hundreds, perhaps thousands, of dense, agricultural population. " It would be difficult to compress more misinformation, and consequently more faulty conclusions, within the limits of a single paragraph than is found in the above. The one single correct statement in the whole article is that a ledge of rock at Smith's Ferry does contain certain markings, as can be verified by the hundreds who visited the spot last summer and fall, when the river was lower than in INDIAN CARVINGS, SMITH'S FERRY. NO. 1. the previous record-breaking years. But the markings were not "found" on either of those occasions, from the simple fact that the "oldest inhabitant" heard of them on his first arrival. They have been known and talked about ever since the settlement of this valley and before, for the Indians met here by the first settlers, although they were familiar with the marks, did not know, or pretended not to know, by whom they were made. At the time the writer visited the spot last fall (1908), the river marks at Steubenville showed five inches on the bars, with a probable depth somewhat greater. No levels were taken, along the ledge, but a reasonable estimate placed the flat surface on which the figures were cut at not less than 18 inches above the water level, some of it higher. So, in order to cover the figures, the channel marks at Steubenville must show a depth of 23 or 24 inches. Now, there has been scarcely a season within the historic period when the river has not dropped below two feet at some time during the summer or fall, frequently remaining below that figure. for quite a while. Thus, no special aridity was necessary to give opportunity for this work. The rocks were exposed probably for a longer period in 1908 than at any other time in their history. As to ascribing the carvings "to a race which densely populated this country anterior to the ad.: vent of the-nomadic Indians," or "that we have here the 'record of the effect produced -upon the climate of this portion of our country, through its occupation during AND REPRESENTATIVE CITIZENS - 35 hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years, by a dense agricultural population," that is all the veriest nonsense. As to the real origin of these carvings, there is little doubt that they were made by the "nomadic Indians" aforesaid, some time anterior to the arrival of the whites in the valley. Their location is twenty-eight miles north of Steubenville, where the river has cut its way down to the Piedmont sandstone, the layers lying here practically horizontal. In the first illustration accompanying INDIAN CARVINGS, SMITH'S FERRY. NO. 2. this chapter, reproductions from a photograph, may be traced the outline of at least tive animals, and it is not unreasonable to assume that they represent respectively a deer, a turtle or a tortoise, a bird, a beaver, and a crawfish. The other cut evidently shows part of a man's body, a large bird, apparently hovering over a papoose, and a large, composite figure which probably includes two or more animals. The writer also made rough sketches of a number of other figures, including a man, boy, wolf, two birds, a bear, fish with both eyes on one side, turtle or tortoise, an Ohio River Hellbender with some nondescript lines. There are other markings, but not of special importance. The tools used may have been flint or copper, more likely the latter. Now, at the advent of the whites, the Iroquois confederation controlled the upper Ohio Valley. They were divided into eight clans or families, each tracing its descent to a common ancestry. This has nothing to do with their nationality, and for a description of the eight clans in the confederacy of five nations, the reader is referred to Parkman. Each of these clans was named after some animal, which was at once its symbol and evidence of kinship. The eight clans of the Iroquois were the Wolf, Bear, Beaver, Tortoise, Deer, Snipe, Heron, Hawk. There is no difficulty in identifying the above named animals along with others. These figures were regarded of sufficient interest to have plate casts made of them, which were exhibited at the Chicago World's Fair and placed in the Carnegie Museum at Pittsburgh. Their 36 - HISTORY OF JEFFERSON COUNTY antiquity than if made by the Iroquois, for the Algonquins were the predecessors and enemies of the Iroquois in this section. One of the figures bears a striking resemblance to the thunder bird of the Ojibwas, whose home is now in Canada. Some drawings made by Ojibwas while sojourning in northern Michigan last summer were strikingly suggestive of this carving. It has been suggested that a prayer for rain is carved here, which would be evidence, as is indeed INDIAN CARVINGS, BROWN'S ISLAND, NEAR STEUBENVILLE. the location of the figures, that droughts are not confined to recent periods. It has story, if they have any, has never been translated. In some other instances of such work there has been some clue by which an interpretation could be worked out, but here there is none. It has been suggested that they mark the location of some tribe, but as has been stated the Iroquois took care that no other tribes should remain hereabouts, so that the marks were made by their young men or by some tribe that antedated them. It is possible that the figures are of Algonquin origin and, if so, they are of greater been also suggested that the marks indicate tribal boundaries, records of visits as of a modern traveler to a hotel, a good fishing point, or possibly simply the work of some prehistoric William Stubbs, who certainly had no idea of becoming famous. However, some of them are at least significant, even lines drawn apparently at random ; but to theorize would require volumes. The Piedmont sandstone in which the figures are cut shows the marks of the wavelets when this section was an estuary of the Carboniferous age, which indicated to some of the visitors that the current of the river at one time flowed in an opposite direction. But the river was not there until ages later. There is another set of carvings on the West Virginia side of the river, opposite AND REPRESENTATIVE CITIZENS - 37 Brown's Island, six miles above Steubenville, quite as interesting as those at Smith's Ferry, although not so numerous. One represents a wild turkey and is about life size. Stretched across its neck, apparently in flight, is a wild goose with neck extended at full length. The heart of the goose is indicated by a small circle, with a line extending to the head. Such lines are frequently found, and appear to have some religious or legendary significance. Good photographs have been obtained of these and other animals, variously supposed to be a fox, bear, etc. There are also some outlines of feet and numerous strokes which are evidently parts of figures worn away and obliterated by the running waters. The river current is much stronger here than at Smith's Ferry, which would account for the more rapid obliteration of the figures, outside of a possible difference in the character of the sandstone. The lines of the figures are grooved, about the size of a small finger, and appear as though they were made by rubbing, and not' by chipping, although long action of the water has doubtless contributed towards wearing down the sharp edges. While we cannot say positively that metal instruments were not used in their construction, yet the indications point to the use of flint or some other hard stone. Some skepticism has been expressed as to the genuineness of these figures, and instances have been related of white boys cutting marks here in recent years. There are some modern imitations of the original carvings, but there is not the slightest difficulty in distinguishing the modern from the ancient inscriptions, and they really furnish strong testimony in favor of the genuineness of the older work. The figures are located at the upper entrance of Holliday's Cove, already referred to in connection with river terraces, and very possibly are on the line of an old Indian trail leading across the river, just as the ones farther up the stream find their natural location at the mouth of Little Beaver. It is not necessary to suppose that this work was all done at one time, although it could easily have been accomplished during a single dry season, but may have been added to at different times, as the tribes passed and repassed. Like the ruins of Phi what is left of these designs will soon be buried permanently beneath the waters. The slack-water system inaugurated by the Government is approaching completion on the upper Ohio. When that is accomplished these records will be permanently covered. Fortunately, they have been pretty thoroughly recorded by means of photographs, drawings and "squeezes," and in a few instances by the removal of the rock itself, so that for philological purposes they will still be accessible. In this connection, it may be of interest to note that, a few years ago, while excavations were in progress for the construction of the Pittsburgh, Wheeling & Kentucky Railroad at Short Creek, on the opposite side of the river from Warrenton, quite a large bed of freshwater mussel shells was encountered. The species was the same as in the adjacent waters. The collection, however, was evidently of artificial origin, indicating that the family or settlement there had used these bivalves for food, and thrown the shells in the most convenient place, which was, no doubt, the door of their dwelling, if they had any. Amongst other fantastic ideas in this connection, it has been suggested that the great serpent mound in Adams County is symbolic of events in the Garden of Eden, which was located in Ohio. If a site for the garden were to be chosen at the present day, no doubt Ohio would have preference over the Euphrates Valley, but it is hardly worth while to discuss that proposition. It is frequently asserted that the streams in this vicinity in the early days were practically the same the year round. This is not correct. No doubt the removal of the forests has made the shallow period longer and tended to increase the flood height, but the Indian carvings above described prove 38 - HISTORY OF JEFFERSON COUNTY that there was low water in the Ohio River before the advent of the white man, and there are plenty of Indian traditions as to floods. The record flood at Steubenville was February 7, 1884, when he marks showed 49 feet 1 inch. In 1907, it reached 48 feet 3 inches. The Pittsburg marks, however, are as follows: February 10, 1832 - 35.9 feet April 19, 1852 - 31.9 feet March 18, 1895 - 31.4 feet February 10, 1866 - 32.0 feet February 6, 1884 - 33.3 feet February 18, 1891 - 31.3 feet March 2, 1902 - 32.4 feet |