over an immense tract of country from the great lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, and from the Rockies to the Atlantic, but are specially frequent in the valley of the Mississippi, along its left tributaries, in Arkansas, Kansas and the basin of the Ohio. But the old theory that the mound-builders were a distinct race of highly civilized agriculturists, who had lived from remote antiquity in the regions of the mounds and were eventually exterminated by the nomadic hordes coming from the northward, represented to-day by the present Indians, is no longer supported by the principal American ethnologists, who hold that the Indians are their descendants.
In Ohio there are thousands of mounds, some in the form of circles, others four-sided, and in a few cases eight-sided. Sometimes a square and a circle are united. Altar-mounds, small rounded heaps of earth, are found in Ohio. At their centre is a basin-shaped mass of hard clay showing effects of fire. These basins are 3 or 4 ft. across, and contain ashes and charcoal. Upon these altars are found many objects.
The most famous mound in Ohio is the “Great-Serpent,” in Adams county. It lies upon a narrow ridge between three streams which unite. It is a gigantic serpent made in earth. Across the widely-opened jaws it measures 75 ft.; the body just behind the head measures 30 ft. across and is 5 ft. high; and, following the curves, the length is 1348 ft. The tail is in a triple coil. In front of the monster is an elliptical enclosure with a heap of stones at its centre. Beyond this is a form somewhat indistinct, thought by some to be a frog.
In Wisconsin the most interesting mounds are the effigy mounds—earthen forms of mammals, birds and reptiles—usually in groups and of gigantic size. Among them are buffalo, moose, elk, deer, fox, wolf, panther and lynx. Some panthers have tails 350 ft. long, and some eagles measure 1000 ft. from tip to tip of outspread wings. Occasionally the figures are cut or sunk in the earth, and near them are hundreds of simple burial mounds. It seems most probable that the purpose of these effigy mounds are totemic, and that they were objects of worship as guardians of the villages.
Further south in west Tennessee another class of mound is found. This contains graves made of slabs of stone set on edge. The simplest have six stones, two at the sides, two at the ends, one at the top and one at the bottom. Sometimes there is one of these graves in a mound, sometimes many. In one, 12 m. from Nashville, 45 ft. across and 12 ft. high, were found a hundred skeletons, mostly in stone graves ranged one above the other. The skeletons in the upper graves had been buried stretched at full length. The lower graves were short and square, and the bones in them had been cleaned and piled in little heaps.
The mound-builders were Stone-Age men, and made many beautiful objects of stone, shell, bone and beaten metals, but they had no knowledge of smelting. That they were not one race is proved by a study of the skulls from the mounds.
Authorities.—E. G. Squier and E. H. Davis, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley (1847); I. A. Lapham, Antiquities of Wisconsin (1855); Stephen D. Peet, Emblematic Mounds; Cyrus Thomas, “Burial Mounds of the Northern Sections of the United States,” in the Fifth Report (Washington, 1887), and “Mound Explorations” in the Twelfth Report (1894) of the Bureau of American Ethnology.
MOUNDSVILLE, a city and the county-seat of Marshall
county, West Virginia, U.S.A., on the Ohio river, 12 m. S. of
Wheeling. Pop. (1900) 5632; (1910) 8918. It is served by
the Baltimore & Ohio railroad, by an electric line to Wheeling,
and by boats to Pittsburg, Cincinnati and intermediate ports.
Near Moundsville, at the mouth of Grave Creek, is Grave Creek
Mound, one of the largest relics of the “American mound-builders”;
it is in the form of a regular cone, and is about
320 ft. in diameter at the base and 70 ft. in height. Two
sepulchral chambers were discovered in it in 1838. In the
upper chamber, about half-way between the centre of the base
and the apex, was a single skeleton, adorned with beads, copper
bracelets and plates of mica; in the lower chamber, directly
under the upper and partly in the natural earth, were two
skeletons, one adorned with beads and the other without
ornament. On the sides and top of the lower chamber was a
framework of timbers, which seems to indicate that the mound
is of comparatively recent date. The city of Moundsville was
formed in 1866 by the consolidation of the town of Moundsville
(laid out on the Ohio river in 1831, and incorporated in 1832),
and the town of Elizabethtown (laid out, about 12 m. from the
river, in 1798, and incorporated. in 1830).
MOUNET-SULLY, JEAN (1841–), French actor, was born
at Bergerac, on the 28th of February, 1841. He entered the
Conservatoire at the age of twenty-one, and took the first
prize for tragedy. In 1868 he made his début at the Odéon
without attracting much attention. His career was interrupted
by the Franco-Prussian War, and the liking he developed for
soldiering had almost decided him to give up the stage, when
he was offered the opportunity of playing the part of Oreste in
Racine’s Andromaque at the Comédie Française in 1872. His
striking presence and voice and the passionate vigour of his
acting made an immediate impression, and the eventual result
was his election as sociétaire in 1874. He became one of the
mainstays of the Comédie Française, and distinguished himself
in a great variety of tragic and romantic parts. Perhaps his
most famous impersonation was that of Oedipus in L’Oedipe roi,
a French version by Jules Lacroix of Sophocles’s drama. This
was first performed in the old Roman amphitheatre at Orange in
1888. Other prominent parts in Mounet-Sully’s répertoire
were Achille in Racine’s Iphigénie en Aulide, Hippolyte in
Phèdre, Hamlet, the title parts in Victor Hugo’s Hernani and
Ruy Blas, Francis I. in Le Roi s’amuse, and Didier in Marion
Delorme. He was created chevalier of the Legion of Honour
in 1889. He also wrote a play, La Buveuse de larmes, and in
1906, in collaboration with Pierre Barbier, La Vieillesse de Don
Juan in verse.
MOUNIER, JEAN JOSEPH (1758–1806), French politician,
was born at Grenoble (Isère) on the 12th of November 1758.
He studied law, and in 1783 obtained a judgeship at Grenoble.
He took part in the struggle between the parlements and the
court in 1788, and promoted the meeting of the estates of
Dauphiné at Vizille (July 20, 1788), which on the eve of the
Revolution created an immense stir. He was secretary of this
assembly, and drafted the cahiers of grievances and remonstrances
presented by it to the king. Thus brought into
prominence, Mounier was unanimously elected deputy of the
third estate to the states general of 1789. There, and in the
Constituent Assembly, he was at first an upholder of the new
ideas, pronouncing himself in favour of the union of the Third
Estate with the two privileged orders, proposing the famous
oath of the Tennis Court, assisting in the preparation of the
new constitution, and demanding the return of Necker. On
the 28th of September 1789 he was elected president of the
Constituent Assembly. Being unable, however, to approve the
proceedings which followed, Mounier withdrew to Dauphiné,
gave in his resignation as deputy, and, becoming suspect, took
refuge in Switzerland in 1790. He returned to France in 1801,
was named by Bonaparte prefect of the department of Ille-et-Vilaine,
which he reorganized, and in 1805 was appointed
councillor of state. He died in Paris on the 28th of January
1806. His principal writings are Considérations sur les gouvernements
(1789); Recherches sur les causes qui ont empêché les
Français de devenir libres (1792), and De l’Influence attribuée
aux philosophes, aux francs-maçons et aux illuminés sur la
révolution de la France (1801).
See F. A. Aulard, Les Orateurs de l’assemblée constituante (2nd ed., Paris, 1905); De Lanzac de Laborie, Un Royaliste libéral en 1789; J. J. Mounier (Paris, 1887); A. Rochas, Biographie du Dauphiné (Paris, 1856); Berriat St Prix, Éloge historique de M. Mounier (1806); F. Boïanovski, “Quelques lettres inédites de J. J. Mounier,” in the Revue historique (1898).
MOUNT, WILLIAM SIDNEY (1807–1868), American artist,
was born at Setauket, Long Island, New York, on the 26th of November 1807. He studied in the schools of the National Academy of Design, New York, and in 1832 was made a full Academician. Among his better-known works are “Turning
