Hide Article Text (OCR)
sehtn-tiemit-idtsQ»8,3ieas0-leidan-r-dExtraordinary Archaeological Discovery in Missouri,ot.1,ddsri-ddsdker3Austin, Tex., March 11.—In Stoddard County, Mo., strange archaeological discoveries have been made anc unique relics of a forgotten race exhumed. I have written to the Work, already of inscriptions on a tablet^ oi stone inserted in the inner wall of a ruined temple in Guanajuato. The writing is in the same characters, ii my memory be not grievously at fault, as those used by the Sun Worshipers ot lt;the old temple of stone in Western Mexico. The tablet exhumed in Stoddard County is of glazed terra-cotta, and is almost as perfect as when deposited in the mound from which it was taken a few days ago. It is 10£ inches wide and 13 inches long, and covered with characters clearly cut, bearing a suggestive resemblance to Sanscrit letters. On both sides of the tablet appear these unique hieroglyphs. The tracing was evidently executed when the clay was yet soft and thin; it was dried, hardened and glazed. The whole appearance of this undeciphered leaf from the continent’s remotest history has many characteristics of the library tablets of the Assyrian King Assur-bani-pal recently dug from the mounds at Nineveh, and when 1 remember how near the likeness is to the inscriptions in the old Mexican temple, I am persuaded that some explorer will yet have photographs made of all these drawings and of that discovered on a stone not far from Tuscaloosa, Ala., and, comparing the strange records of the unknown races, ascertain their origin and determine, perhaps, the vexed question of unity. The characters on this Missouri tablet are arranged in regular lines or rows, and are clear and distinct in outline. A key to solve the mysteries involved in these two “pages ” of prehistoric lore would be an “ open sesame ” to the prefoundest mystery that affects the fortunes of the human race. Is there no Champollion to make stones eloquent, dead centuries loquacious, and to invest mummies with habiliments of ancient life P Were the Moufcd-builders of the Valley of the Mississippi of the same race with those who reared temples at Chichon and Copan and Otolum and Palenquc? Were the bearded Natchez Indians the descendants, as they claimed, of this race, whose power was coterminous with the two oceans, and extended, as their raconteurs told the followers of Bienville and of La Saile, even to Africa? They said that when the continent was convulsed, as never before or since, their broadest, richest domain east of Florida and South America was submerged and the West was upheaved. The French forefathers of the writer of this said further that the Natchez Indians were never beaten till their priests were made drunk and sacred fires that burned perennially on the great mcund below Natchez were suffered to become extinct. When this cataclysm befell the hapless race no further serious resistance was encountered by the French invaders. The Natchez were destroyed or dispersed, and this was the end of the latest and very remote descendants of the Mound-builders that left traces of their toil everywhere, from the great lakes to the Gulf, in the Valley of the Mississippi. Whether the writer on the strange glyphs on the Stoddard County stone was of the Colhuas, or Toltecs, or a wanderer from the Orient, a voyager with Hanno or some Phoenecian who
Newspaper Details
Bowling Green Review
Bowling Green, Indiana, US
Thu, Apr 05, 1877
Page 3
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
USA 24 Sep 2020
Other Publications Near Bowling Green, Indiana
Bowling Green Clay County Democrat
Bowling Green Weekly Archives
Bowling Green Democratic Archives
Bowling Green Clay County Citizen
Bowling Green Clay County Review
