Exploration of the Tremper Mound / by William Corless Mills.

  • William Corless Mills
Date:
1917
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Exploration of the Tremper Mound / by William Corless Mills. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    those of Wisconsin, was perhaps' a natural conclusion, in view of their observations and of what up to that time was known of the mounds and their purpose. As the result of several visits to the Tremper mound within the past dozen years for the purpose of examining- the general form and surroundings of the work, I had fully decided that the mound was not intended as an effigy of an elephant or of any other animal, but was very likely a burial mound belonging to the Hopewell culture. In many respects it resembled the Seip mound,* along Paint creek, in Ross county, its irregular form apparently being due to additions made to the great charnel- house. This opinion is borne out by our present examination, which shows that the Tremper mound was not intended as an effigy of any kind, but that its shape was entirely the result of additions to the main site or structure, made and completed as needed. According to Squier & Davis, who published the survey made by Charles Whittlesey, which is shown in Fig. i, the earthwork is an almost perfect ellipse, with an extra wall closing the opening to the south-west. By referring to the topographic map made by our survey. Fig. 2, it will be seen that the early surveyors very likely used nO' instruments' in making these sur¬ veys. It would seem that they made certain measurements from the mound center, and drew on paper what appeared to them to be the general form of the earthwork. It is true that one standing on the mound and viewing the earthwork from that viewpoint, receives the impression of an almost perfect ellipse; but the present survey found the earthwork to be a round-cornered rectangle, practically four hundred and twenty feet by four hundred and forty feet in size. Special inquiry among old residents concerning a possible embankment in front of the entrance to the earthwork, elicited the information that to their knowledge no earth had been hauled away, and our survey could find no trace of there ever having been a wall in front of this opening. * Explorations of the Seip mound found in “Certain Mounds and Village Sites in Ohio.” Vol. 2, Part 1. Mills, 1909.