Unrecogniized Archaeology II

This is a follow up to my latest blog on unacceptable archaeology.

     Rural America is what this country is all about. Indiana and Tennessee have their share of pyramids and ancient mysteries. As all over the midwest , there are many remains of ancient pyramids,mounds and habitations. At Brewersville, Indiana, on the banks of the sand River, a stone pyramid was excavated in 1879 that was 71 feet in diameter and between 3 and 5 1/2 feet tall. . It was found to contain a number of skeletons, one measured over 9'8" tall. It wore a necklace of mica and at its feet stood a rough human image made of burned clay with pieces of flint imbedded in it. Weapons nearby were unlike any used by local Indians.
     This digging was made under the supervision of the Indiana state rchaeologis and included great scientists from Ohio and New York,as well as the neighborhood doctor, Dr. Charles Greene and the owner of the property, a man named Robinson. The bones and the artifacts were cared for by the Robinson familyin a basket at a grain mill nea the site, until a flood swept the mill away in 1937.
     At Walkerton, Indiana, 20 miles from South Bend, a group of amateur archaeologists opened a mound in 1925 and unearthed the skeletons of eight giants ranging of eight to nine feet tall. All were wearing heavy copper armor. From the bungling of these amateurs and the lack of interest of local archaeologists, these articles are now lost to time. One may wonder if the se artifacts may have ended up in the Smithsonian secret vaults?
      Kentucky also has it's share of mysteries. According to Charles Berlitz, Amastadon's skeleton was discovered at Blue Lick Springs, Kentucky at a dig which had reached a depth of 12 feet deep below the surface. Incredibly, as the excavating team dug deeper, looking for more bones, they came across a set-stone pavement, three feet under the mastadon.
     Jim Brandon, author of   Weird America, says that a sizable network of tunnels is supposed to lay somewhere beneath the city of Lexington, Kentucky. According to Brandon, "G. W. Ranck relates in his 1872 History of Lexington that hunters from th pioneer town of Boonesborough in 1776 discovered rocks of "particular workmanship" with a tunnel behind them. Small at first, this port eventually expanded to a sort of gallery, four foot wide and seven feet high, that inclined sharply down into the rock. The ramp led after a few hundred feet to a chamber 300 foot long, 100 foot high, and 18 foot high. Inside this lay idols, altars, and about 2,000 human mummies.
     According to the legend, these catacombs were subsequiently explored a number of times. In 1806, they were visited by Thomas ashe, the Irish travel writer. Eventually, the story goes that the entrance was lost as the city grew overhead. W.D. Funkhouser and W.S. Webb conceded that limestone caves and spring water passages in the rock are present beneath and in the vicinity of Lexington, but as for the mummy chamber: 'the tale is probably was nothing more than the figment of a well-developed imagination and there are absolutely no facts to support it.' apparently Funkhouser and Webb never really took the time to explore the area.
     The story of the tunnel and the mummies is quite possibly fact. At Mammoth cave National Park just north of Bowling Green, were found a number of different mummies. There have been strange reports since 1809 of unusual preserved cadavers in and around the huge cave network. One of these mummies was found in 1920 0n a ledge deep within the cavern,; it was red-headed and only 3 feet tall, so naturally it was deemed a child. many of the remains were fragile and have not survived the test of time, but one mummy can still be seen at the state Museum of Anthropology in Lexington.
     Mammoth Cave is believed to be the world's largest cave system. It has been determined that mammoth cave connects with the Flint Ridge System. mammoth cave has still not been entirely explored and probably never will be.
     the Mammoth caves are believed, by some, to a part of a a vast subterranean cave system that exists all over the world. whatever the case, mammoth Caves has some strange mysteries. Besides red haired midget mummies, there are found in the caves a set of human footprints reorded here and there in th rock floor of the caves. Dr. Lathiel F. Duffield , director of the Museum of anthropology at Lexington (in 1978) told Jim Brandon in Weird America that the footprints had accidentally been stamped in the rock when it was mud. Dr Duffield did not say what kind of time frame he was talking about, but one would think a rather long period of time for conservatives scholars.
     Other humanoid footprints in solid stone have been found in Kentucky. In Janurary 1938, geologist Wilbur G. Burroughs announced that he had found a set of ten footprints molded in sandstone. They were found in the north end of Rockcastle County, on the farm of O. Finnell, in an 'Upper Coniferous rock formation." burroughs believed the tracks "so human in appearance that they might have been made by one of the earliest ancestors of man." he found that left and right feet were distinctly imprinted and that the arch structure was visible. sadly, vandals destroyed them in the 1960's.
     In 1925 Burroughs explored  a "fort" that he said was of stoneage vintage, covering 320 acres atop a mountain near Berea, Kentucky, he described remnants of walls 1200 feet long, observing that they could withstand all but the most modern artillery.

     A Louisville historian named Reuben F. Durret, has attempted to explain the many legends of white Indians in Kentucky by explaining that they are the descendants of the Welshman, prince Madoc. Durrett lists reports of skeletons dug up in the present-day sand Island around the year of 1900 that wore brass plated armor bearing symbols of the mermaid and the harp, elements of the Welsh coat of arms. He also mentions a tombstone fragmant that bore the date of 1186. he believes Sand Island to be part of a Welsh settlement. So far sand island has not been excavated by archaeologists.
     The story of prince Madoc is a fascinating par of Americana. More than three centuries before Columbus, an obscure welsh prince named Madoc is believed to have landed in Mobile Bay. The welsh prince was Madoc ab Oain Gwynedd, and according to Welsh history and American historians, he sailed into Mobile Bay and found it to be "this pleasante and fruitful lande," and returning to wales to gather some of his fellow countrymen, then returned to his new found country.
     Centuries later came reports from European travelers to the New World of a tribe of "Welsh Indians" believed to be descendants of Madoc, and who actually spoke welsh. A number of curious stories are told of these welsh indians including a story of how shortly after the Revolutionary , when the lands west of the mississippi river were still claimed by Spain and England, an English surveying party visited a camp of Mandan Indians in what is now Missouri. When the officer in charge spoke to his orderly in Welsh, they were both suddenly astonished when a nearby Indian suddenly joined the conversation. They soon discovered the mandan language was about 50 % Welsh.
     Mandan Indians were often blue-eyed and their skin was much lighter than most other tribes of Indians.  Mandan women were often attractive to english explorers and said to be exceedingly fair. The English/Welsh officer then remembered Madoc and how he escaped wales in 1170 AD.
     In 1792 a Welshman named John Evans was hired by his countrymen to locate the Welsh Indians of North America. He journeyed to New Orleans and up the Mississippi River in search of them. Unfortunately, he was captured by the Spanish, and in order to save his own life, became a spy for the Spanish. Even though he made contact with the Mandans and was satisfied they were Welsh, he was paid by the Spanish to deny the fact, as it was politically incorrect for English subjects to be living in Spanish New World holdings.
     Later, the famous American painter george Catlin lived with the Mandan Indians in 1833. He agreed with others that the Mandan were of Welsh descent. They had dark brown hair instead of black, their eyes were many different colors: brown, gray, blue, and hazel. Only a short time later most of the Mandans were wiped out due to a plague brought in by European travellers and reduced the tribe to being absorbed by other tribes thus ending any true-blood Mandans.

Tomorrow we will discuss the natives of Tennessee and their ancestry.