Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, Vol. I. — A Closer Reading

Measured Language and Qualified Claims

The authors’ diction reveals a persistent tension between empirical reporting and interpretive restraint. When describing the “city or ruins of Aztalan” in Wisconsin, they note that a “cellar and stairway within one of the square mounds, and a subterranean passage arched with stone, are mentioned as existing here; but they lack confirmation and deserve little credit.” This sentence does more than report a rumor—it enacts the authors’ evidentiary standards. Similarly, when discussing the possibility of burned bricks, they state that “we shall be warranted in ascribing the use of burned bricks to the race which built these works, only upon the most conclusive evidence, and such we do not at present possess.” The conditional “shall be warranted” and the explicit lack of evidence place the burden of proof squarely on future investigation. Such hedging is not weakness but a deliberate rhetorical strategy that defines the work as a scientific document rather than a speculative narrative.

The Vocabulary of Form and Measurement

The authors rely on a precise but limited vocabulary to describe earthworks: “truncated pyramids,” “elevated way,” “crescent-form work,” “bastions,” “embankments.” These terms are drawn from architecture and fortification, imposing a familiar grid on unfamiliar shapes. For instance, the Aztalan enclosure is said to have “the general outline of an oblong square,” and its walls are “interrupted, at intervals of from two to five rods, by bastions of the same height as the main wall, and extending seventeen feet beyond it.” The specificity of measurement—rods, feet, acres—creates an air of objectivity, yet the authors acknowledge that the plan they reproduce is “palpably an imperfect one,” with no gateways or entrances represented. This admission undercuts the illusion of completeness and reminds the reader that the survey is a partial, mediated record.

Attribution and the Problem of the Builder

Throughout the excerpts, the authors carefully avoid naming the builders. They refer instead to “the race which built these works” or “the ancient people.” This circumlocution is a deliberate choice, reflecting the uncertainty that pervades mid-nineteenth-century American archaeology. When describing the “horned bird” mound in Grant County, Wisconsin, they rely entirely on the observations of a Mr. S. Taylor, whose accounts are quoted at length. The authors do not vouch for Taylor’s interpretations; they simply present them. This layering of voices—Squier and Davis reporting Taylor reporting local knowledge—creates a chain of testimony that is both a strength and a limitation. The reader is left to weigh the credibility of each link. The authors’ own voice remains that of the cautious compiler, not the omniscient authority.

Structure as Argument: The Plate and the Text

The volume’s organization—plates numbered in Roman numerals, with corresponding text entries—mirrors the taxonomic impulse of the era. Each plate is a visual claim, and the text serves as its annotation. For example, Plate XLIV is described as showing “Ancient Work No. 1. On Rock River, Wisconsin. Nos. 2–8. Various localities.” The text then enumerates features: the “brick wall” five feet high, the truncated pyramids “forty or fifty feet square upon the top, and between fifteen and twenty in height.” But the authors immediately complicate the visual evidence by noting that “several conical mounds are mentioned in the description as occurring within the enclosure, but do not appear in the plan.” This discrepancy between what is drawn and what is reported highlights the editorial choices behind the plates. The reader is thus invited to see the plates not as transparent records but as constructed representations, shaped by the surveyors’ decisions about what to include and what to omit.

Readers approaching this work should attend to the interplay between the authors’ measured prose and the ambitious scope of their project. Squier and Davis are not simply cataloging ruins; they are building a case for a scientific archaeology at a moment when the discipline was still taking shape. Every qualified statement, every borrowed observation, every admission of uncertainty is a brick in that foundation. The value of the volume lies not in its conclusions—many of which have been superseded—but in its demonstration of how to describe what one does not fully understand.

Reading Squier and Davis’s cautious speculations about the mound builders, I felt that same quiet patience—how slowly we earn our certainties. The way they let the earth speak, rather than forcing answers, reminds me of a later book that ponders our own animal roots with equal gentleness. On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals — Reading Companion holds that same tone, and I thought of it again today.