Fragments of Pilgrimage - Lower Scioto River, Ohio - Pike County

Graded way near Piketon, Ohio [Squier & Davis 1847, p. 197, fig. 20]

Where are you taking me?

Where are you taking me-

To the Witch making land

Trying to take me?

The Witch's bed

Where earth sparkles?

O'odham Oriole song #4 [Bahr et al. 1997]

Introduction

This article is a continuation of a previous article exploring earthworks in the Lower Scioto Valley between the great Middle Woodland complexes of Chillicothe and Tremper-Portsmouth.

Earlier, I looked at a possible location for Charles Whittlesey's Big Bottom Site. [Whittlesey 1850, Plate I] I also found an extant mound inside a rounded square close by. This turns out to be described and sketched by Whittlesey in Plate VII, sketch #3. I then easily found sketch #1 near Jackson, Ohio, with no mound, and also extant. Sketch #2 seems to be destroyed, but I believe I have found the location. I'm not sure that the hills just outside the enclosure is a mound. Whittlesey's description of the three enclosures is quite accurate, so I am wondering about how vague his description of Big Bottom is. The place I picked for the site is above the Ross County, Pike County line, and there is a second possible site, the same distance below the line in Pike County. He just states that it is 'near' the line. He does mention in his description that there are other possible sites close to Big Bottom and that he did not have a chance to look for them. Perhaps he found the three enclosures on a later trip, which was combined into his book. I believe that the northern site is the correct one, but until the location of Switzer's Point and any documentation on using ancient excavations in the construction of the Ohio Canal comes to light, this is still an open question.

Whittlesey's three enclosures [Whittlesey 1850, Plate VII, #1 - #3]

The three earthworks I will be looking at in this article are all in Squier & Davis. [Squier & Davis 1847] Cyrus Thomas in 1894 and Gerard Fowke in 1910 both examined Piketon, and in 2013, Jarrod Burks did important work on all three of these sites. [Burks 2011] Fowke rejected the concept of a 'graded way' and would be incensed by the drawing at the front of this article, which he considered a fake. I had heard about his critique of Piketon, but Marie Swartz of the Ohio Archaeology Inventory has notified me that he rejected all possible graded ways except Marietta. I will discuss these critiques in this article. Burks, at the end of his article, critiques the idea of a pilgrimage path through the lower Scioto Valley. I will address this critique in a future article.

In this article, I will essentially distill Burks' report and create an open GIS resource based on Burks' findings. I have tried to gather as many primary sources as possible, although at this writing, several have not been found. I intend to use this as a starting point for analysis.

Piketon Graded Way

A graded way is a walled pathway built through two levels of river terrace. The structure is built in such a way that the walls look flat on top, even though the level of the walkway has dropped from one elevation to another. This is a feature in Middle Woodland Ohio, with the most famous being the Sacra Via in Marietta, Ohio. The Great Circle at Newark, Ohio, is similar in structure in that the walls look flat but are higher at the entranceway; the main difference is that the parallel part is much shorter and attached to a circle. Piketon site, starting just south of Piketon, Ohio, consists of a mainly north-south set of parallel, mainly straight walls, extending south in a long, singular eastern wall with another wall jutting east near the end and then turning south to form an open enclosure. Just south and east of this enclosure is a set of four mounds with another large mound (30 ft.) just southeast.

In his 1820 book, Description of the Antiquities Discovered in the State of Ohio and Other Western States, Caleb Atwood wrote:

"Near Piketon, on the Scioto, nineteen miles below Chillicothe, are two such parallel walls, which I did not measure, but can say without hesitation that they are now twenty feet high. The road leading down the river to Portsmouth, passes for a considerable distance between these walls. They are so high and so wide at their bases, that the traveller would not, without particular attention, suspect them to be artificial. I followed them the whole distance, and found that they lead in a direction towards three very high mounds, situated on a hill beyond them. It is easy to discover that these walls are artificial, if careful attention is bestowed on them. Between these parallel walls, it is reasonable to suppose processions passed to the ancient place of sepulture; and what tends to confirm this opinion is, that the earth between them appears to have been levelled by art. On both sides of the Scioto, near these works, large intervales of rich land exist; and, from the number and size of the mounds on both sides of this stream, we may conclude that a great population once lived here."

[Atwood 1820 pp. 222-223]

Piketon Graded Way [Atwood 1820, p. 224, Plate XI]

Atwood's drawing was not much of a map. A much more comprehensive one was drawn by Squier & Davis in 1847. I have rotated it so that North points to the right. The map also shows a cross-section at each end of the graded way, four mounds in a group instead of three, several other mounds, including one very large one, and the measured lengths of each component of the walls.

"It consists of a graded ascent from the second to the third terrace, the level of which is here seventeen feet above that of the former. The way is ten hundred and eighty feet long, by two hundred and fifteen feet wide at one extremity, and two hundred and three feet wide at the other, measured between the bases of the banks. The earth is thrown outward on either hand, forming embankments varying upon the outer sides from five to eleven feet in height; yet it appears that much more earth has been excavated than enters into these walls. At the lower extremity of the grade, the walls upon the interior sides measure no less than twenty-two feet in perpendicular height. The easy ascent, here afforded has been rendered available in the construction of the Chillicothe and Portsmouth turnpike, which passes through it. The walls are covered with trees and bushes, and resemble parallel natural hills, and probably would be regarded as such by the superficial observer. Indeed, hundreds pass along without suspecting that they are in the midst of one of the most interesting monuments which the country affords, and one which bears a marked resemblance to some of those works which are described to us in connection with the causeways and aqueducts of Mexico.

From the end of the right-hand wall, upon the third terrace, extends a low line of embankment, (now much obliterated by the construction of the turnpike,) two thousand five hundred and eighty feet long, leading towards a group of mounds, as shown in the plan. At the distance of fifteen hundred feet from the grade, a wall starts off at right angles, for the distance of two hundred and twelve feet, when it assumes a course parallel to the principal line for four hundred and twenty feet, and then curves inwardly, terminating near a group consisting of one large and three small mounds. A ground plan of the latter is elsewhere given. This group of mounds is now enclosed, and constitutes the cemetery of the neighborhood. Forty rods to the right of this group, is a large mound thirty feet in height. Several small mounds occur upon the adjacent plain, though no enclosures of magnitude are found nearer than five miles lower down, on the river.

The left-hand wall of the grade as we descend seems continued down upon the second terrace for some distance, terminating near a low spot of ground, usually containing water. Similar depressions are observed in the ancient beds of streams. It has been suggested that the Scioto River once flowed along the base of the terrace at this point, and that the way led down to it. Without expressing an opinion upon the probability of this conjecture, it is sufficient to observe that the river now flows more than half a mile to the left, and that two terraces, every twenty feet in height, intervene between the present and the supposed ancient level of the stream. To assent to the suggestion would be to admit an almost immeasurable antiquity to the structure under consideration.

It is, of course, useless to speculate upon the probable purpose of this work.

At first glance, it seems obvious, namely, that it was constructed simply to facilitate the ascent from one terrace to another. But the long line of embankment extending from it, and the manifest connection which exists between it and the mounds upon the plain, unsettle this conclusion. After all, we are obliged to leave this interesting work with the single remark, already several times made in respect to others equally interesting and inexplicable, that future investigations, carefully conducted, may solve alike the problem of their purposes and of their origin."

[Squier & Davis 1847, pp. 200 - 201]

Piketon Graded Way looking West [Squier & Davis 1847, Plate XXXI]

There are a couple of points to be made from Squier & Davis' commentary and map:

• Correct or not, the authors have made measurements of the site. These are the earliest known, as Atwater did not.
  

• Deterioration of the site is already advancing, as it is in a major travel corridor.
  

• The cemetery, which protects the mound group to this day, is already in existence.
  

• The graded way ends 1/2 mile from the current Scioto River and forty feet above. The authors speculate that the river was perhaps much closer at the time of construction.

In 1894, Cyrus Thomas, another Smithsonian antiquarian, published Report on the mound explorations of the Bureau of Ethnology. [Thomas 1894] He did not create a new map of the Piketon graded way. His commentary is here:

"The excavation along which the walls extend is an old watercourse. Beaver creek comes down from the hills almost directly east of this work and turns south at the foot of the hill, gradually encroaching on the terrace for a few hundred yards, when it is sharply deflected toward the hill again. At this point is an Old cut-off, formed when the bed of the creek was much higher than at present, starting out toward the west and curving until it has a direction almost north. It leaves the upper terrace at the level of the second or next lower one and discharges its waters into the slough which extends along the foot of the upper terrace, or perhaps into the river when that had its course along here. This is a measure of its geologic age. It does not seem to have been at anytime a regular channel for the creek, but only a place through which a portion of its surplus water was discharged in time of freshets.

There is a secondary terrace along the west side of this cut-off for about half its length from the northern end; on the east there is a slight terrace for a few hundred feet along the last turn; the east wall, at its southern end, is built along this terrace, but rises to the main at its southern end, is built along this terrace, but rises to the main level at a short distance. In the other direction (toward the south) the terrace soon disappears.

The west wall is built its entire length on the minor terrace. It is much higher above the ground on which it stands than the eastern wall, though the absolute height of the latter is greater on account of the greater elevation of its foundation. At each end of the east wall there is a small mound. The south end of the west wall is higher and wider for about 100 feet than the other portions, being heaviest at the very end, resembling a dome-shaped mound when looked at from the level ground immediately south. Both walls have several turns or angles to correspond to the irregularities of the banks. The slopes were dressed off smooth, or else the dirt was piled close to the edge, that a considerable part rolled downward; at any rate there is a smooth regular slope from top to bottom.

The north end of the west wall has been so cut up by digging gravel that its form can not be determined, and it could not be learned whether there had been a mound there or not. A deep pond has been dug on the second terrace. a little way out. The pond shown in the plate is a natural depression.

The east wall has been dug into lately to a limited extent on the top and sides, and a woodchuck has excavated at the bottom in one place. All these exposures show sandy soil and fine gravel, but no clay. East of the nortli end of the east wall there is a depression, where dirt was probably obtained for the construction of this wall; and the owner in setting out some apple trees has reached a stratum of compact yellow clay, some of which may now be seen scattered about each tree; so that, if clay had been desired by the builders of the embankments, a very little additional labor would have given it to them. They could not have been ignorant of its existence, for it shows plainly along the northern slope very close to the surface.

Both walls went down the northern slope to the level below; whether they reached any distance out on it is not apparent now. Slight traces of the wall leading southward to the mound may be detected where it crosses the lowest part of the cut-off. Beyond this cultivation has effaced it."

[Thomas 1894, pp. 491- 492]

Thomas does not provide his own map for Piketon. Without a map, his commentary is confusing to me. There are several new points:

• The graded way follows an old channel of Beaver Creek.
  

• There is a small mound on each end of the east wall. At first, I didn't understand his meaning, but I believe he means the southernmost east wall that branches out of the northern east wall. I have labeled it the "Inner Wall."
  

• Despite there being a ready supply of yellow clay available, the walls are not capped with yellow clay. Many earthworks and even older mounds were covered with different layers of colored soils and often capped with yellow clay. This practice extended down into Kentucky and Tennessee.

Gerard Fowke was born in 18?? at ???, Kentucky as ??? Smith. In 1887, he changed his name after a distant relative. He took a few courses in geology and spent his life as an itinerant archaeologist, without a home or profession. He traveled mainly on foot, and it is estimated that he walked over one hundred thousand miles in his lifetime and had, among other travels, an intimate first-hand knowledge of most of the eastern United States. He did extensive work in Pike County, his main interest being the burial contents of mounds. He is known for an undiplomatic and confrontational style in his writing, which gained him no friends in professional circles.

Fowke was convinced that none of the possible graded ways in Ohio existed except for Marietta. I will go over his study of Piketon here and later in the article, talk about the other possibilities he mentions.

Fowke's map of the Piketon Graded Way [Fowke 1902]

Fowke's section compared to Squier & Davis' section of the northern end of the Piketon Graded Way [Figure 1]

The image above shows the section difference between the two maps, around fifty years apart. Despite the criticisms of Squier & Davis, and Thomas in particular, mentions their sloppy way of measuring, this is the only other map. To Fowke, this shows that some minor dirt was piled up along an old creek bed, not an engineered pathway. Alternatively, these two sections could illustrate the substantial damage that has been sustained over the years.

Between Fowke's book and Burks 2013 report, I have found only one other research at Piketon. This was done by W. H. Sassaman in 1952. [Sassaman 1952] I have not been able to find a copy at the moment. For the earthworks, I used Burks' final map to create a GIS model.

Figure 2: Piketon Earthworks on a contour map

Mounds and earthworks are usually both called earthworks, but for my purposes, they need to be seen as different. In the Middle Woodland period, most mounds were once large mortuary houses that were later burnt and covered. Often, later people buried their dead in them. Early Woodland peoples built conical mounds, some very large, from soil or stone. They sometimes built small enclosures around the mounds, and sometimes the enclosures had no mounds. Chris Carr states that the transition from what we call "Adena" culture to what we call "Hopewell" culture was from an ascetic favoring a vertical axis muni to an ascetic favoring horizontal lines on the landscape. [Carr 2021]

Squier & Davis' map shows 9 mounds near the earthworks. Four at the south end of the Inner Wall are still in existence, thanks to being in a cemetery. Fowke excavated the cluster of four mounds and a large mound that Squier & Davis show as 30' in height and 40 rods east of the cluster. The exact location of the mound is unknown, but with the contour map and the anomalies I found looking at a Relief Visualization Toolbox [Kokalj & Zakšek 2014] rendering, the closer mound to the cluster is the better location. It is interesting to note that the mounds were capped with yellow clay, clay Thomas found, but did not find topping the earthworks.

Figure 3: Mounds associated with the Piketon Earthworks

Fowke was convinced that the only real 'Graded Way' was the Sacra Vitae in Marietta. All the others, and he gives a comprehensive list, he believed did not exist. Fowke had only a course in geology, but his experience walking the land excelled. Every place he had been to. That Marietta was a one-off is hard to fathom, and the variety of different forms is a feature of all these structures. Roger G. Kennedy, in his book Hidden Cities, believed that the Graded Ways connected agricultural fields in the bottom lands with ceremonial centers on the terraces. [Kennedy 1994] Whatever the reason, I believe that the engineering of the earth by native peoples was perhaps greater than Fowke could have imagined.

A Middle Woodland habitation site has been found around the highway interchange just south of the southern entrance to the earthworks. Again, like at Big Bottom, someone walking north would be drawn into the enclosure, while someone going south would not. Someone walking south would also pass through a formal entrance, the Graded Way.

Maps

• Piketon
  

• Figure 2 Map
  

• Figure 3 Map

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• Atwater, Caleb. 1820. Description of the Antiquities Discovered in the State of Ohio and Other Western States. American Antiquarian Society.
  

• Bahr, Donald, Lloyd Paul, and Vincent Joseph. 1997. Ants and Orioles, Showing the Art of Pima Poetry. The University of Utah Press.
  

• Burks, Jarrod. 2011. Prehistoric~ Native American Earthwork and Mound Sites in the Area of the Department of Energy Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, Pike County, Ohio. Contact 2009·22·2. OVAI.
  

• Carr, Christopher. 2021. Being Scioto Hopewell: Ritual Drama and Personhood in Cross-Cultural Perspective. Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44917-9.
  

• Dalbey, Timothy S., ed. 2007. Geological Aspects of Key Archaeological Sites in Northern Kentucky and Southern Ohio. Division of Geological Survey.
  

• Fowke, Gerard. 1902. Archæological History of Ohio: The Mound Builders and Later Indians. Ohio State Archæological and Historical Society.
  

• Fowke, Gerard, and W. K. Moorehead. 1894. “Recent Mound Exploration in Ohio.” In Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.
  

• Henry, Edward R., and G. Logan Miller. 2020. “Toward a Situational Approach to Understanding Middle Woodland Societies in the North American Midcontinent.” Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 45 (3): 187–202.
  

• Kennedy, Roger G. 1994. Hidden Cities: The Discovery and Loss of Ancient North American Civilization. The Free Press.
  

• Kokalj, Žiga, and Klemen Zakšek. 2014. Relief Visualization Toolbox (RVT). V. 2.2.1. Released. https://www.zrc-sazu.si/en/rvt.
  

• Nolan, Edward J., ed. 1895. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.
  

• Purtill, Matthew P. 2020. “The Road Not Taken: How Early Landscape Learning and Adoption of a 2 Risk-Averse Strategy Influenced Paleoindian Travel Route Decision-Making 3 in the Upper Ohio Valley.” American Antiquity.
  

• Sassaman, W. H. 1952. Report on Waverly-Piketon Survey. Department of Archaeology, Pike County file, Ohio Historical Society.
  

• Squier, E. G., and E. H. Davis. 1847. Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley. The Smithsonian Institute. https://www.loc.gov/item/2021666743/.
  

• Thomas, Cyrus. 1889. The Circular, Square, and Octagonal Earthworks of Ohio. U.S. Government Printing Office.
  

• Thomas, Cyrus. 1894. Report on the Mound Explorations of the Bureau of Ethnology. With the University of Chicago and the Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of Ethnology. Washington. http://archive.org/details/bureauofethnology00thomrich.
  

• Whittlesey, Charles. 1850. “Descriptions of Ancient Works in Ohio.” Smithsonian Institution. https://digital.library.pitt.edu/islandora/object/pitt%3A31735060440959/viewer#page/34/mode/2up.
  

• Wright, Alice P. 2017. “Local and ‘Global’ Perspectives on the Middle Woodland Southeast.” Journal of Archaeological Research 25 (1): 37–83. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10814-016-9096-5.